Posted on 10/07/2015 5:54:05 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
In 1952, the combatants were Dwight Eisenhower and Sen. Robert Taft of Ohio. In 1964, it was Barry Goldwater and Nelson Rockefeller. Today, they are outgoing House Speaker John Boehner and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas.
All have been at the center of an endless struggle that has roiled Republicans for decades as conservatives attempt to yank the party to the political right while more moderate or establishment Republicans try their best to nudge their way toward the center.
In the vivid glare of an intense presidential race, party conservatives such as Cruz and Rep. Jim Jordan of Urbana are defying U.S. companies that have financially backed the GOP for years. Those same Republicans are also the ones willing to force a shutdown of the federal government to get their way on issues ranging from the 2010 Affordable Care Act to stopping the flow of federal dollars to Planned Parenthood.
They have aimed their fury at Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, both of whom resisted conservative efforts to close the government. When a frustrated Boehner, the architect of the Republican takeover of the House in 2010, said last month that he would resign his seat, conservatives at a gathering in Washington erupted in cheers.
“This has never been a country that has been short of certain groups seeking irrational levels of purity from their elected officials,” said Tony Fratto, White House press secretary for President George W. Bush.
To conservatives, Boehner and McConnell are too timid to stand up to President Barack Obama, with Jordan saying, “You have to fully commit to the debate, take the case to the American people. You can’t concede before the game starts, and you can’t forfeit before the ref blows the whistle."
The acrimonious struggle for supremacy inside the Republican Party delights Democrats, who see Jordan and Cruz as their unwitting allies in holding the White House in 2016 and regaining control of the Senate.
Mary Anne Marsh, a Democratic consultant in Boston, said the House conservatives “could take everyone” else down, “but they’d still run the House” because their districts are so safe, thanks to gerrymandering.
“The ones who will pay the price will be the Senate Republicans and the ones wanting to win the White House,” she said.
Meanwhile, even the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is fighting back. Horrified that conservatives are blocking an overhaul to the nation’s immigration laws and the re-authorization of a federal agency that helps companies export their goods, the Chamber has vowed to spend as much as $100 million next year to defeat tea party conservatives.
With the disappearance of the Republican liberal wing led by Rockefeller and the moderate wing headed by Eisenhower, today’s Republicans are more philosophically conservative.
“We do not have in the Republican Party big disagreements about policy,” said Charlie Black, a political adviser to the Republican presidential campaigns of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bob Dole. “The battles we have had inside the beltway are about tactics.”
But not everyone believes that battles are just about tactics. Others see deep ideological disputes raging between establishment conservatives and conservatives such as Cruz.
Gov. John Kasich’s talk of modernizing laws to allow undocumented immigrants to eventually find a path to remain in the country has been drowned out by presidential candidate Donald Trump’s boisterous vows to deport the 11 million who entered the country illegally.
But with social conservative presidential candidates such as Cruz and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee emphasizing opposition to abortion rights, most Americans might be tuning out their approach.
Exit polls show that except for the 2008 Iowa caucuses, the economy was been the top issue in every Republican presidential primary and caucus in 2008 and 2012, prompting Republican pollster David Winston in Washington to say that too often “the political discourse wasn’t addressing what voters were interested in.”
Election results show that Republicans and tea party conservatives have yet to broaden their appeal. In five of the past six presidential elections, the Republican nominee has not won 50 percent of the vote.
In the 2010 and 2012 Republican primary elections, tea party activists — aided by conservative organizations such as the Club for Growth — defeated GOP establishment candidates in Nevada, Delaware, Indiana, Colorado and Missouri. Yet the primary winners were so conservative, they lost in the general election to Democrats.
But Jordan appears confident of the future. He points out that last year, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia lost in a Republican primary, and that Trump, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson and former Hewlett Packard chief executive officer Carly Fiorina are leading the GOP presidential primary polls.
“And for the first time I know of, the speaker of the House stepped down midterm,” Jordan said. “ It just doesn’t happen. It’s a whole new framework. It’s incumbent upon us to take some time and figure out what the voters are trying to tell us, and remember we had better start doing what we said we were going to do.”
The BIG QUESTION will be: Who does The Establishment run as Third Party to try to prevent Trump from winning next November. My money is on Romney...but maybe someone that can pull-in some conservative votes, like Huckabee.
Ike did zilch for the GOP, left it in ruins by the 1958 elections when it was reduced to 1/3rd of Congress. Robert Taft/Douglas MacArthur should’ve been nominated in 1952.
You have the order backwards.
No, no. Taft would’ve been President for just 6 months before his death in the Summer of ‘53. Gen/VP MacArthur would’ve served the balance.
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