“But true grassroots conservatives like Sarah Palin? Forget it. Rove & co. know they cannot control her.”
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We know where Rove is coming from. His attempts to dynamite Christine O’Donnell outed him. But let’s go on a little walk down memory lane on Ed Gillespie, former RNC Chair under Bush 43 (and Rove). His comment that the GOP was no longer for limited government generated major controversy back in 2003 when he was interviewed by the Manchester Union Leader and upbraided by Rush Limbaugh:
“JUST LIKE RON? The Republican Party’s national chairman tried to douse a political wildfire yesterday by assuring The Union Leader that “the party of George W. Bush is very much the party of Ronald Reagan.”
But Publisher Joe McQuaid isn’t buying it.
While the Status was vacationing last week, RNC Chair Ed Gillespie stopped in to chat with McQuaid and two top editors. The visit, while friendly, resulted in three editorials critical of the new GOP. One charged that Gillespie had “said in no uncertain terms that the days of Reaganesque Republican railings against the expansion of government are over.”
That editorial, published on Sunday, caught the attention of national talk show host Rush Limbaugh, who spent considerable time talking about it during his post-holiday Tuesday show. In phrases taken from his monologue, he wrote on his Web site that The Union Leader’s editorial had “taken the wind out of my sails” and left him wondering if his 15 years of fighting for conservatism had been “flushed down the toilet.”
“Yes, Rush, it’s true,” The Union Leader responded in an editorial yesterday (EDITORIAL). Gillespie, it said, had defined “fiscal responsibility” as increasing the federal budget at a slower rate than the Democrats.
This guy (Gillespie)’s attitude was — and he was very pleasant about it — that ‘the people have made it clear they are for a federal government role in education and for prescription drugs, and, therefore, the Republican Party is for it because the people are for it.’” McQuaid said he was disappointed by Gillespie’s view of Bush’s GOP.”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/974566/posts?q=1&;page=74#74
Gillespie and Rove dislike and fear Sarah Palin because they well know she means what she says. Neither of them ever supported Reagan until after he had won and only BECAUSE he had won. The Cheneys...ditto. Ford/Bush to the core. Malek is another Establishment guy who tried to insinuate himself into Palin’s inner circle in 2008 but has been given a wide berth (or has withdrawn himself) for the simple reason you point out: She cannot be controlled by them. She doesn’t trust them. They on the other hand DO trust her (to do what she says) and it scares the bejabbers out of them.
This is the same playbook the Ford/Bush cabal tried to use on Reagan in the mid to late 1970s. Their spawn, the young Gophers from 1976 and and 1980 (Rove, Gillespie, and others) have reached full term now and are plotting to do to Palin what their forbears failed to do to Reagan. Later, however, through the Bush selection as VP in Detroit and Baker’s entree into his administration, the Establishment were able to sow the seeds of the counterrevolution of 1988 in which the Reaganites were effectively purged and the big Government Nixon/Ford/ Bush GOP re-empowered.
What scares these Establishment Beltway types about Palin is that she shows absolutely no signs of permitting this crowd to insinuate themselves into any key posts in her administration, much less the Vice Presidency. And she is helping to create a solid bench of conservative constitutionalists (Joe Miller, Christine O’Donnell, Nikki Haley, Susanna Martinez) from which future CONSERVATIVE Presidents can be drawn.
Al And I Have seen this movie before and I think both of us have a pretty good idea how it is going to turn out. So far, I would say, the sequel is exceeding expectations.
We sure do. The only issue for me is whether it will end peacefully or not.
Reagan historian Craig Shirley wrote an interesting piece in the Washington Post in April, 2006 warning the GOP that it had lost its way and conservatives would sit out the 2006 election in droves. The impetus for the article was the immigration debate but Shirley spends much of the article talking about the Washington wing of the GOP ignoring its Reagan roots and sewing the seeds of its own demise in the 2006 & 2008 elections. Very prescient stuff that concludes as follows:
"The Republican Party is now unraveling. Sept. 11, 2001, and the war on terrorism stanched a lot of wounds inside the party, but resentment is growing over steel tariffs, prescription drug benefits, a League of Nations mentality, the growth of government and harebrained spending, the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, the increasing regulation of political speech in the United States and endemic corruption. On top of all the scandals, it has just come to light that the RNC paid millions in legal bills to defend operative James Tobin, who was convicted with associates in an illegal phone-jamming scheme aimed at preventing New Hampshire Democrats from voting. In doing so, the GOP appears to sanction and institutionalize corruption within the party.Shirley is right about Reagan and Gingrich energizing the conservative movement, but in each case it couldn't be sustained. Reagan was too old to continue as the champion and Newt Gingrich let his own human weaknesses do him in.The elites in the GOP have never understood conservatives or Reagan; they've found both to be a bit tacky. They have always found the populists' commitment to values unsettling. To them, adherence to conservative principles was always less important than wealth and power.
Unfortunately, the GOP has lost its motivating ideals. The revolution of 1994 has been killed not by zeal but by a loss of faith in its own principles. The tragedy is not that we are faced with another fight for the soul of the Republican Party but that we have missed an opportunity to bring a new generation of Americans over to our point of view. [emphasis mine]
All agree that the Democrats are feckless and without a plan or agenda. But most Americans are now presented with a choice between two parties that are both addicted to power -- the Democrats to government power and Republicans to corporate and governmental power. Who speaks for Main Street Reaganism?
It was the populists under Reagan, and later under Newt Gingrich, who energized the party, gave voice to a maturing conservative ideology and swept Republicans into power. We would be imprudent and forgetful to disregard this. But it may be too late, because conservatives don't want to be part of the looming train wreck. They know that this is no longer Ronald Reagan's party."
Who speaks for Main Street Reaganism?
Thankfully, we now have a champion and she's 46 years old. No wonder the 'Big R' crowd in DC is apoplectic.