Posted on 11/13/2013 9:48:16 AM PST by IChing
Back in January of 2010, I drove my old Honda from D.C. up to Massachusetts to help out the Scott Brown campaign in the final days of the push to get him elected to the U.S. Senate. It was a very stimulating experience, because the entire country was caught up in the special-election drama of a charismatic Republican’s bid to win what had for decades been Democrat Ted Kennedy’s senate seat, and of course because Brown did end up winning.
It was exhilarating, to join in and be part of what seemed to be such an historic accomplishment in American politics.
Something very unsettling happened on that trip, however, which illustrates and exemplifies the ongoing rift within the GOP–the sort of civil-war split between the grassroots, Tea Party rank-and-file in the “flyover” states(whose voting-turnout loyalty to the GOP can be somewhat fickle depending on the conservative bona-fides of a candidate) and the elitist, establishment,cocktail-party/consultant types, who frequently call most of the shots and dole out the mother’s milk of politics, the money, sometimes to whom they often incorrectly deem more electable “moderate” nominees(also known as “squishes” to those on the hard right).
When I arrived at Brown campaign headquarters, I was given a hotel room (lodging paid for by the campaign) with another arriving male campaign volunteer as a roommate. Like me, he had just traveled(in his case, flown) all the way from Washington, D.C., to lend a hand for the final get-out-the-vote effort in the last 72 hours of the campaign.
There was some kind of instant tension between the guy and me. He was a lot younger than I, incidentally, by about 20 years. I was eager to make friends among the crew of campaign staff and numerous volunteers who had come in from all over, but to me he seemed a bit irritated that he had to hob-nob with what I think he saw as the riff-raff, the hoi polloi of GOP activists. I soon found out why.
It turned out that this guy(whose name I remember, but will not mention), despite working on the Brown campaign as a volunteer, was actually a paid, professional political consultant on Capitol Hill. He was there mainly to network, and to enhance his resume, I could tell.
Whereas I had taken unpaid leave from my full-time ordinary job to make the trip, he did this kind of thing for a living–most of time that he wasn’t manning the phone banks alongside myself and others for the Brown campaign, he was in a frothing frenzy on his cell phone to his D.C. colleagues, loudly arguing and screaming about the political advertising campaign they were trying to create and coordinate for whoever, wherever.
Like many Capitol Hill political operatives, he came across as very tightly-wound, abrasive, and intense, to the point of being obnoxious.
Mind you, now, it wasn’t necessarily his preoccupied, frequent, agitated hollering into his phone that I found particularly unsettling while we were back in the hotel room together at the end of the day–I understood fully how trying to collaborate with others on a competitive, creative project on an urgent deadline can often compel one into hysterics to get one’s points across.
But this guy seemed arrogant, and angry that he even had to share a hotel room with me. I sensed that to him, my political acumen wasn’t sophisticated enough or something, seeing as he’d accurately sized me up as an ardent Tea Party activist, and an amateur. Despite my having served as the Republican precinct captain in my McLean, Virginia neighborhood, and as a state delegate to the 2009 Virginia GOP convention, to him I was just another rube of the rabble, by virtue of my identifying with the Tea Party.
It was contempt.
People had literally come in from all over the country to pitch in on the Brown campaign, and this was at the height of the massive Tea Party tidal-wave that was sweeping the land in response to the massive stimulus bill, the Obamacare bill, the quasi-nationalizing of GM and AIG, and so on.
I met and talked with excited, enthusiastic volunteers who had driven to Massachusetts from as far away as Tennessee and Ohio. We all knew the score as far as Scott Brown was concerned; that he wasn’t necessarily a Tea Party candidate(more like a RINO, of course), but that getting him elected in “blue” Massachusetts would not only give us the needed, promised additional republican vote that we thought could block Obamacare in the Senate, and would also send a loud and clear message to Washington about the seismically-shifting political landscape in the country.
My roommate definitely seemed more interested in using the occasion to connect with other professional political types, and with prospective clients, than discussing the mood and direction of the country with us ignorant, God-guns-n-guts Tea Party bumpkins.
I even caught him in an under-handed, vain attempt at one-upsmanship, which can only be explained as egotistic mind-games or something along those lines: We had been working the phones all day at rows of tables in a big hotel banquet room, calling up registered voters from lists in a computerized phone bank system. He was sitting a different table than I was all day, and seemed to be avoiding me, but in what appeared at first to be a rare moment of collegiality, he suddenly sauntered over to where I was and asked me how I was doing; how many calls had I made?
I looked down at the digital display on the phone itself, which gave me the number, and told him what it was. He then smirked and scoffed at my number, saying how he had me beat by whatever number it was he stated. Then he waltzed off to the men’s room or somewhere, out of the room. I got up and went over to the phone he’d been using–the digital display showed that he’d actually made fewer calls than I had.
I felt a mixture of mild disgust and a teensy bit of pity for him.
I could go on and on with other details of what transpired between he and I over the course of three days, all the way to the pandemonium/aftermath of the victory party in downtown Boston(site of the original Tea Party, don’tcha know), when his luggage was still in the trunk of my car after he’d persuaded me to give him a ride there(because of his behavior on the trip into downtown, I considered ejecting him from my car and leaving him to fend for himself in the January rain). But I’ll cut to the chase, as they say in show business.
At some point, my roommate let it be known to me, in the open: ”I hate the grassroots,” he blurted out sullenly, in response to what specifically, I can’t recall. But his utterance rings in my ears to this day, especially when I listen to Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, and others describe how the Republican establishment elites hold us Tea Party types in disdain.
It’s a fact. They do have contempt for us. I have to confess, there’s definitely some mutuality to the sentiments. What the ramifications are, and what should be done about it all, may have to be the subject of another column.
Maybe I should look up my roommate from the 2010 Scott Brown campaign and get his professional opinion about it all…?
Although I’m positive that the GOPe are into whips and chains by virtue of their constant submissive behavior and self-flagellation in the war against democrats; I’m guessing that you meant Whig Party.
Doh!
Ricky tic tic works for the other side...he was blocking for Romney last time round....amazing how many conservatives fall for his crap...
I agree, what I saw was him running his block, and then as he became a kind of last man standing, and as conservatives started clinging to him out of desperation, I think he decided to run with his new status, and see if he could actually become a real candidate.
Santorum was thrown out of office by a larger margin than O'Donnell lost, in her effort to win her first office. Santorum is looking for a way in politics to make his living, and out of work rinos looking for a niche in American media/politics, is always bad news for conservatives.
You got that right... parasites all.
Why?
What makes you so valuable?
shot = short...
If the GOP-E wins by their usual backstabbing of conservatives/double dealing/hook and crook, the Republican party is dead.
And it deserves to be dead.
Beware of the faux conservatives from Gucci Gulch.
PING!
He was supposed to be the vote that destroyed Obamacare. That’s why we were all walking on air when he won. And he did vote against it, even though Obama had put the Senate through a wringer by that time and got his votes elsewhere. He never promised to be conservative on everything. This was Massachusetts and “Teddy’s district.” He would not have won if he had pledged to be conservative on everything.
You mean the Whig party, whom the Republican Party replaced in 1860?
I blame my stupid fingers.
LOL — most of us also have the term “party whip” in our minds — the job in the Senate to round up the votes.
The feeling is mutual.
An arrogant, entitled, airheaded, “rhymes with rich”. Riding solely on her name, she doesn’t hve two working brain cells to rub together. And she’s not even that attractive.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.