Posted on 11/03/2011 11:31:27 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
A new CNN poll finds that about half of Republicans sympathize with the tea party movement. The other half either remain aloof or (5%) even express hostility.
That second group of Republicans has received remarkably little media attention this cycle. Yet their man -- Mitt Romney -- has held steady in first or second place for the past three years. Meanwhile tea party Republicans have bounced from Sarah Palin to Donald Trump to Michele Bachmann to Rick Perry to (now) Herman Cain, transfixing the media every time they lose faith in one messiah and search for another.
Yet sooner or later, the tea party Republicans must converge on a single choice. When they do, they will present the non-tea party Republicans with a troubling menu of possibilities.
Possibility 1: Romney is nominated, Romney is elected.
From the point of view of non-tea party Republicans, this is the ideal outcome of the 2012 election. Yet it is also an outcome that looks worryingly out of reach. As we enter the final 12 months of the election countdown, Romney still cannot rise above 30% support in his own party. Worse, while it's easy to imagine (say) Herman Cain's voters shifting to Rick Perry or vice versa, it is very hard to imagine where Mitt Romney will find the additional Republican votes he needs.
Possibility 2: Romney is nominated, Romney loses.
For non-tea party Republicans, this second outcome opens all kinds of ugly, ominous possibilities. If candidate Romney loses, tea party Republicans will claim that the GOP lost because it failed to nominate a "true conservative." That claim may fly in the face of political math (how would a more extreme candidate win more votes?), but it will pack a lot of emotional punch....
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
So CNN figures it is the Tea Partiers who are the problem and not the other way around? So the rise of the Tea Party was for what reason? Hmmmmmm, CNN? If the o-called RINO establishment were doing the job we sent them to DC to do, ther would most likely not be a Tea Party movement.
So, the 5% of the R’s (RINOs natch) are suicidal.
That’s NEWS??
AND they are the moneymen. We don’t call them the “Stupid Party” for nothin’.
It's not the job of "the Party" to "give" the base anyone. For one thing, there is no "Party" that can do that.
WE are the party, and it's our job to nominate our best standard bearer. Since I'm pushing 60 and have yet to vote in a primary that made a difference, I am philosophical about the choice that early primary/caucus voters are going to make on my behalf. With all due respect to those of you who live in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, you have not been doing a very good job.
I will support the Republican nominee unless the Democrat is more conservative. Again, I'm pushing 60 and have never seen that happen, and I don't expect it to happen this year either. What I won't do is stay home, or support a split-the-vote, throw-the-election protest candidate. The country is headed off a cliff, and it's no time for circular firing squads and purity police.
Romney would not be my first choice, but then again, my first, second, and third choices declined to run this year. I am, however, reasonably confident that Romney will sign the right kind of reform legislation if we can elect a Congress that can pass it. A working conservative majority in the Senate is far more important than whomever we elect as President. If we win the WH but Harry Reid is able to filibuster everything for four years, as he mostly did to President Bush, we will just have elected a Republican figurehead to preside over the disaster.
Frum IS Debbie Wasserman Schultz in drag.
THAT is why they have never been seen together.
Too bad. So sad.
It's called the general election and the Tea Party will converge against Obama and his idealists in Congress.
Dickhead, for the alternative to be "more extreme" Romney would have to be moderate to conservative. He is not. He's a liberal, therefore the alternative would be LESS extreme. Drooling moron. (not you 2DV)
See, Frum, here you fail to allow for the possibility that TPers are smarter than you and know that your belief that high deficits produce jobs is wrong. It's a false dichotomy which means you are stupid or a liar. Well, maybe both, I guess.
that cutting deficits and tightening credit will accelerate economic growth
Cutting deficits WILL help growth. Not sure the TP is in favor of tight credit, but whatever.
that high taxes and over-regulation are the most important reasons that growth has not revived
Do you have any evidence to contradict that vicious pack of facts?
and that America still offers the world's best opportunity for the poor to rise.
If you don't believe that, why are you still here? Why are you even in politics.
Jerry Pournelle, who I have read religiously for around 35 years, refers to him as “The Egregious Frum”. From all I can tell, this nails it.
I have a dream: Republicans who never once got dirt under their fingernails and attended Ivy League universities as “legacies” are destined to defend their spacious homes in the Hamptons and in Fairfield County, Connecticut against the OWS hordes with whom they publicly sympathize with nothing more than polo mallets and $5,000 shotguns they don’t know how to load.
I concur, I can’t stand Frum. He needs to go away.
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