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Eleanor Clift: Inside the GOP, a Shadow Battle for Control
Newsweek ^ | July 9, 2010 | Eleanor Clift

Posted on 07/11/2010 1:28:52 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet

The prospect of the November elections becoming a replay of 1994 has Democrats running scared everywhere except, apparently, the White House, where the famous Obama cool keeps everyone’s emotions in check. Sure, losses are expected in the first midterm of a new president, but let’s not lose too much sleep over it. Indeed, some of the president’s allies think all the attention on the Democrats is misplaced, that the real replay of ’94 is happening on the Republican side, with a new generation of self-described young guns maneuvering to topple the old guard.

In this scenario, Republican whip Eric Cantor is the new Newt: substantive, focused, and with a plan, although the intervening years haven’t been kind to the GOP gene pool. Cantor can’t hold a candle to Newt Gingrich when it comes to brain power and the ability to sway an audience with grand political theorems, and I’m not even a fan of Gingrich. Still, everything is relative, and in today’s dumbed-down GOP, Cantor is what passes for an intellectual.

Republican leader John Boehner, the Dean Martin of the GOP, tanned and ready for a game of golf, is today’s version of former GOP leader Bob Michel, a congenial moderate from Illinois who was pushed aside and retired to make room for Gingrich and his band of conservative revolutionaries. Boehner messed up when he said the Democrats’ plan to rein in Wall Street was “killing an ant with a nuclear weapon.” Highlighting the GOP love-in with big business is not in the Republican playbook for this fall when the party wants to portray itself as fighting for the little guy against the excesses of big-bad-government Obama.(continued)

(Excerpt) Read more at newsweek-interactive.com ...


TOPICS: Campaign News; Issues; Parties; U.S. Congress
KEYWORDS: 2010; congress; democrats; ericcantor; johnboehner; jourbalism; obama; pelosi
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It's sad to see an elderly lady slip into dementia, isn't it?
1 posted on 07/11/2010 1:28:56 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Let them believe what they will, and let idiots like Eleanor Clift encourage it. All the better for us...


2 posted on 07/11/2010 1:36:52 AM PDT by csense
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
She's right. The GOP leadership is ideologically thin, vapid, timid, and with the exception of fake conservative, but good talker, Gingrich and real Conservative Reagan, the GOP political class has been a real thin gruel.


The Famous, Big Time( one time ) Cantor/Bush/Romney Talking Tour.

3 posted on 07/11/2010 1:44:24 AM PDT by Leisler ("Over time they create a legal system that plunders and a moral code that glorifies it." F. Bastiat)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

“Elderly lady”? I think “old bat” would be permissible in this case.

Here’s the statement that infuriated me this time: “... in today’s dumbed-down GOP, Cantor is what passes for an intellectual...”.

More arrogance from the nation’s self-appointed “intelligensia”!


4 posted on 07/11/2010 2:27:43 AM PDT by Joann37
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To: Leisler

Maybe GOP leadership is “thin”, but what’s really infuriating is the “southern gentlemen” who keep ending up as Senate minority/majority leader over the years. Mc Connell, Trent Lott, Bill Frist, etc. are all too polite to go up against the street fighters on the other side, such as Harry Reid, Tom Daschle, etc.

The Dems leaders are as vicious as can be, but our side plays nice, actually wanting “bipartisanship”, etc. When we do have power, we cede it to the dems, but when they’re in power, our side gets streamrolled at every turn.

Boehner is much more of a fighter than any of these “nice guys” the GOP has had in the Senate as of late! But no more. We need a “bad guy” from WWE to defend our side!


5 posted on 07/11/2010 2:36:18 AM PDT by Joann37
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

When was she ever out of it?.....:)


6 posted on 07/11/2010 2:43:11 AM PDT by Salamander (If I'm too rough, tell me.......I'm so scared your little head will come off in my hands......)
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To: Joann37
Boehner is much more of a fighter than any of these “nice guys” the GOP has had in the Senate as of late!

Geez, that is being awfully gratious. Boehner has only been seen from time to time to take politically safe pot-shots at Obama. Where are these guys on a daily basis taking the Dems to the fire like say someone in the vane of Beck, Church or Limbaugh? Boehner is Newt's big establishment pal and as far as I'm concerned, if Boehner listens to us like Newt did with Scuzzy, Adios chump.

7 posted on 07/11/2010 2:56:50 AM PDT by mazda77 (Rubio for US Senate - West FL22nd - JD Hayworth - US Senate)
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To: mazda77

I agree; Boehner is certainly not an ideal leader! But he’s better than anything going on in the Senate.


8 posted on 07/11/2010 3:03:11 AM PDT by Joann37
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To: Joann37

“I agree; Boehner is certainly not an ideal leader! But he’s better than anything going on in the Senate.”

Can you name one ideal congressional leader in the past fifty years? Either party? I can’t. Everett Dirkson came close, but he was in the minority.


9 posted on 07/11/2010 3:18:25 AM PDT by billhilly
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To: Joann37

There is no fighting in Congress. It is a struggle of ideas and communication. The left come from the media arts and take in school complex and deep classes in various leftism.

Republicans don’t. They don’t do theator, media, art. They don’t do philosophy, Marxism or even much free market ideas either. By and large they are uneducated, pleasent, hacks.

And, rightly, they get their butts kicked and will continue to do so.

However they represent by and large Republican voter, whom also disdain political arts, philosophy.

A single House ‘Great Leader’ isn’t going to do it.


10 posted on 07/11/2010 3:20:44 AM PDT by Leisler ("Over time they create a legal system that plunders and a moral code that glorifies it." F. Bastiat)
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To: billhilly
Can you name one ideal congressional leader in the past fifty years? Either party?

Gingrich in '94. He took the reins away from the dems with a dem president.

11 posted on 07/11/2010 3:44:45 AM PDT by raybbr (Someone who invades another country is NOT an immigrant - illegal or otherwise.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
where the famous Obama cool

He would have loved to have left Netanyahu wandering around the White House basement again, but suddenly, he's Oy'bama with an unBarackable bond to Israel. They saw through it, and that ain't cool.

12 posted on 07/11/2010 4:08:06 AM PDT by gusopol3
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To: raybbr

Too bad he burned out so quickly and has left nothing but the occasional ash smear on the party ever since.


13 posted on 07/11/2010 4:29:20 AM PDT by 9YearLurker
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
Republican leader John Boehner, the Dean Martin of the GOP, tanned and ready for a game of golf

Anyone got any links to Clift's snarky comments about Obama's golf game? What? There aren't any?

Clift, along with execrable pantywaist Carl Leubsdorf, have been reduced to playing the 'GOP in turmoil' card four months before the election. Even true believers like these two have NOTHING to promote (or lie about) where the current administration is concerned.

14 posted on 07/11/2010 4:30:49 AM PDT by relictele (Me lumen vos umbra regit)
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To: Joann37

Newsweek.
The magazine of dentists’ offices and little else.


15 posted on 07/11/2010 5:14:34 AM PDT by Eric in the Ozarks (Impeachment !)
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To: Eric in the Ozarks

Inside Eleanor’s shriveled brain their is a shadow battle between her two remaining functioning brain cells. Her gray matter has transmuted into doesn’t matter.


16 posted on 07/11/2010 5:19:08 AM PDT by hal ogen ($10 (I think) amounts through the internet from all over the world.)
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To: 9YearLurker
Too bad he burned out so quickly and has left nothing but the occasional ash smear on the party ever since.

Revised:

Too bad he crashed and burned due to his own personal and ethics problems and has left nothing but the occasional ash smear on the party ever since.
17 posted on 07/11/2010 5:20:08 AM PDT by TomGuy
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To: TomGuy

I was pussyfooting around that!


18 posted on 07/11/2010 5:28:24 AM PDT by 9YearLurker
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To: 2ndDivisionVet; Mr. Silverback; martin_fierro; Slings and Arrows; Allegra; Liz; maggief; onyx
There are specialty publications targeted towards poor, clueless dears like Our Eleanor:


19 posted on 07/11/2010 5:52:16 AM PDT by KentTrappedInLiberalSeattle (http://www.conservatives4palin.com/)
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To: raybbr
How much of that was voters sweeping out Democrats and Newt running to the head of the popular wave?

If it was Newts ‘leadership’, what happened to him?

20 posted on 07/11/2010 6:51:55 AM PDT by Leisler ("Over time they create a legal system that plunders and a moral code that glorifies it." F. Bastiat)
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