Posted on 11/03/2010 7:06:37 PM PDT by rabscuttle385
Long-simmering tensions within the Republican Party spilled into public view Wednesday as the pragmatic and conservative wings of the GOP blamed each other in blunt terms for the party’s failure to capture the Senate.
With tea party-backed candidates going down in Delaware, Colorado and Nevada, depriving Republicans of what would have been a 50-50 Senate, a bloc of prominent senators and operatives said party purists like Sarah Palin and Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) had foolishly pushed nominees too conservative to win in politically competitive states.
(snip)
Former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott put it plainly: “We did not nominate our strongest candidates.”
Had Republicans run Castle in Delaware and establishment favorites Sue Lowden in Nevada and Jane Norton in Colorado, Lott said, Tuesday would have turned out different.
“With those three we would have won and been sitting at 50 [senators],” he observed.
Another high-profile senator went even further, placing the blame for the Senate GOP’s failure squarely at the feet of Graham’s South Carolina colleague, DeMint.
This Republican senator said that the tea party was the “big winner” by helping bring enormous energy behind GOP candidates Tuesday, but he said that “Sen. DeMint was the big loser.”
“It’s like you’re on the five-yard line ready to score and the quarterback calls the play and some member of your team tackles one of your members and keeps you from scoring,” the senator said. “We came tantalizingly close to a majority.”
“I’m completely mystified by it,” the senator said of DeMint’s tactics.
The senator credited House Speaker-in-waiting John Boehner for keeping House Republicans unified behind a common purpose but he said that DeMint took a selfish path that hurt the party’s common cause.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
Palin and DeMint didn’t cast people’s votes, the party-backed candidates in Delaware, Colorado and Nevada LOST THEIR PRIMARIES, which means the people didn’t want them.
Bass is still much more conservative than McLame or idiot Kirk.
Politico at its liberal finest. Barf!
Yup. And the Party establishment did nothing to help conservative candidates win. The Left out organized us and beat us again on the ground - which happened here in Colorado.
‘We might have gotten Colorado though’
Considering the disaster in the gubernatorial contest, it is a miracle that it got as close as it was.
You know what? I'm sure he really is mystified by it - which is why he (or she) will have a conservative, Tea Party candidate to run against in their primary next time around.
And then after his defeat, maybe - just maybe - he'll get it as he is packing the boxes.
...what we have here, is a failure to communicate. Lott obviously the has been, wants relevance. WE THE PEOPLE want RINO’s banned from participating. GUESS WHO’S NOT LISTENING?
Dude, don’t let the morons in the party get you down.
I know we’ve disagreed on things in the past, like Mitt...but I think we can BOTH agree Trent Lott and Lindsay Grayed Ham are RINOs who are in danger of extinction.
Let ‘em have their pity party—they’re going to be out on their asses just like other RINOs soon. We just can’t go out and purge them all at once.
Conservatives had a hell of a night last night, and these Beltway RINOs are going to have to learn there is a new order of things in town. And they’re not the HMFICs anymore.
This sounds about right. One day after winning back the House, and the GOP is busily planning it’s strategy for capitulation.
1) Politico is hardly a dependable source
2) Even the RINO’s seem to have recognized a need to shift to the right or else McCain would have lost hands down. Odds are that once Congress is back in session, McCain will once again become the “reach out to our friends across the aisle” babble machine that he has always been. How Arizona keeps electing this babbling idiot is a mystery to me.
No...it was the RINOs that screwed the pooch on this.
Castle should have endorsed O’Donnell. The beaten RINOs in Nevada should have rallied around Angle.
I’ll give it to McCain. At least he went up to Nevada for Angle in the last few days. But, where were the Nevada Republicans?
Its just the RINO trying once again to sell their soul to the devil(Dems) for a Taste of Power.
We just gonna have to fire some more of them in 2012.
Lott is a scum RINO lobbyist now, so he wants no part of the Tea Partiers. Bad for business.
The un-named cowardly senator certainly doesn't understand the metaphor. It was they who paraded on all the MSM shows bad-mouthing O'Donnell et al. It was they who tackled their own teammates leading up to the general election ensuring failure. But that's what makes them RINOs. They're as blind to their own hypocrisies as the libs.
Are Jonathan Martin & Manu Raju an item?
I mean, are the boyfriends?
I mean, are they as faggot as they sound in tripe they publish?
Sue Lowden would also have lost. Norton may have won in CO, but would have weakened our caucus. Castle would have been disastrous for our side. Kirk is bad enough as it is. I understand the obsession with Lott and Rove with gaining a majority via RINOs because they just want to deliver pork for their corporate clients. We tried that corrupt approach and the American people punished us for it in 2006. To hell with Graham, Lott and Rove. We will win the Senate with TRUE Constitutional Conservatives in 2012.
The purge can’t begin soon enough.
These RINOs like Trent Lott sure have their nerve....they complain about the TEA party candidates, but it was these very same RINOs who wouldn’t lift a finger to help Sharron Angle, Christine O’Donnell, etc. The RINOs couldn’t wait to throw these fine conservative candidates under the bus.
As for Joe Miller, the RINOs tried their best to undermine him as well. I hope the TEA party goes after more of these fake Republicans in 2012.
Progressives of a feather flock together.
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