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Does Anyone Have a Grip on the G.O.P.?
NY Times Magazine ^ | October 12, 2011 | MATT BAI

Posted on 10/13/2011 10:37:09 AM PDT by neverdem

It wasn’t that long ago that Republican moneymen and operatives in Washington were moping around K Street like Eeyore in the Hundred Acre Wood, lamenting their party’s extremist image and casting about for a candidate with a chance of beating Barack Obama in 2012. Citing what he called the “near self-immolation” of House Republicans during the debt-ceiling fiasco, Bill Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, worried in early August that a “large number of Republican primary voters, and even more independent general-election voters, will be wary of supporting a Republican candidate in 2012 if the party looks as if it’s in the grip of an infantile form of conservatism.”...

--snip--

If that’s the case, then it now seems like only a matter of time before the Republican empire, overwhelmed by insurrection for much of the last two years, strikes back at last. “I think it’s waning now,” Scott Reed, a veteran strategist and lobbyist, told me when we talked about the Tea Party’s influence last month. Efforts to gin up primaries next year against two sitting senators — Utah’s Orrin Hatch and Indiana’s Dick Lugar — have been slow to gain momentum, Reed said, and it’s notable that more than half of the 50-plus members of the Tea Party caucus in the House ultimately fell in line and voted with Speaker John Boehner on his debt-ceiling compromise. Party leaders have managed to bleed some of the anti-establishment intensity out of the movement, Reed said, by slyly embracing Tea Party sympathizers in Congress, rather than treating them as “those people.”

Did he mean to say that the party was slowly co-opting the Tea Partiers?

“Trying to,” Reed said. “And that’s the secret to politics: trying to control a segment of people without those people recognizing that you’re trying to control them.”...

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Editorial; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: 999; bipartisan; gop; goprulingclass; socialism; teachers; teaparty; teapartymovement
The author is pretty good as far as the NY Times goes. Rush is talking about this article, or I'm nuts. I haven't finished it, but it seems to be an excellent essay on the RINO ruling class.
1 posted on 10/13/2011 10:37:11 AM PDT by neverdem
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To: neverdem

This election is about We The People vs the media/political elites. Obama is the light work after the battle. I know who should win this battle but only time and a lot of hard work will make it so.


2 posted on 10/13/2011 10:40:06 AM PDT by vicar7 ("Polls are for strippers and cross-country skiers" Sarah Palin)
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To: neverdem
This election cycle is not about Republican vs Democrat.

Nor is it about liberalism vs conservatism.

This election is all about Washington vs The Rest of Us.

3 posted on 10/13/2011 10:43:46 AM PDT by okie01 (THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA: Ignorance On Parade)
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To: okie01

“This election is all about Washington vs The Rest of Us”

Well stated.


4 posted on 10/13/2011 10:46:30 AM PDT by freeangel ( (free speech is only good until someone else doesn't like it)
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To: neverdem

GOP establishment couldn’t be more patronizing toward TEA Party. Corrupt bastages...


5 posted on 10/13/2011 10:48:08 AM PDT by Josh Painter ("The only thing these 'investments' will get us is a bullet train to bankruptcy." - Palin)
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To: neverdem
The Gop left me and the Independents are too wishy washy so I am a Conservative.
6 posted on 10/13/2011 10:52:55 AM PDT by mountainlion (I am voting for Sarah after getting screwed again by the DC Thugs.)
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To: neverdem
“Party leaders have managed to bleed some of the anti-establishment intensity out of the movement, Reed said, . . .”

Hey RINO’s, watch what happens in the next election, just like the 2010 landslide, pushing out some more RINO GOP!

Krystal light needs to find another job, (Weekly Standard) since the GOP RINO Romney (his boy) is going down!

The GOP elitist will not pick my candidate!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Reed can go to hell with the rest of the RINO’s

7 posted on 10/13/2011 10:55:07 AM PDT by paratrooper82 (We are kicking Ass in Afghanistan, soon we will be home to kick some more Asses in Congress!)
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To: neverdem
Rush is devoting a lot of time to this New York Times article. He admits that there is a wide schism in the Republican party between conservatives and 'moderates', i.e. the GOP 'establishment', many of whom are quoted in the long article. Rush has always been a GOP guy but even he finally sees the reality that a politician simply labeled 'Republican' does not mean 'conservative'. Today, it's the thoroughly corrupt political 'establishment' - Democrat and Republican - that are working against the American people, albeit in different guises. The Democrat and Republican establishment are working (separately) to bring down the biggest threat they have ever faced, the TEA party - and all it stands for. The 2012 election will be a political Armageddon and the results will determine whether we continue to grow and prosper as a nation or slowly but surely devolve into a second-rate power with insurmountable financial and social problems. Frankly, I'm not optimistic and now believe that Ayn Rand was prophetic.
8 posted on 10/13/2011 10:57:35 AM PDT by Jim Scott
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To: neverdem

GOP establishment couldn’t be more patronizing toward TEA Party. Corrupt bastages...


9 posted on 10/13/2011 10:59:37 AM PDT by Josh Painter ("The only thing these 'investments' will get us is a bullet train to bankruptcy." - Palin)
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To: okie01
“This election is all about Washington vs The Rest of Us”

Yep, it is about whether the status quo establishment (amnesty, open borders, homosexuals, EPA nonsense, NEA sedition, union thuggery, encroaching Marxist police state) supported by both parties, prevails, or whether or not American are able to wrestle their government away from the beltway beast that has seized it.

Romney, more than any of the other is the status quo perpetuated. He is the establishment's guy.

10 posted on 10/13/2011 11:23:16 AM PDT by 240B (he is doing everything he said he wouldn't and not doing what he said he would)
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To: 240B

Reed’s quotes are, in my opinion, cynical and braggart.

So, he thinks the Tea Party people don’t know they’re (Republican establishment) attempting to “control” us?

Maybe us “hobbits” aren’t as STUPID as they seem to think.


11 posted on 10/13/2011 11:43:59 AM PDT by Twinkie (John 3:16)
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To: neverdem

I’d like to have a ‘Grip on them’. That’s for sure....Come November 2012 or before in a primary, whichever RINO GOP Senator from Georgia is running (Isakson or Chambliss), I’m gonna vote-wring the life out of them. Every time I turn around they’re backsliding into a liplock on Obama’s ass.

NO FRICKING MORE RINOS! These two are as bad as Boehner or any of the other RINOs....


12 posted on 10/13/2011 11:50:28 AM PDT by Gaffer
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To: neverdem
We have a great Conservative running for President right now but people think that he talks to slow. The Republican “establishment” are mainly on the east coast. Establishment does not accept anyone not on their “party circuit” Perry has done what he can for Texas and the nation. He cannot deport the illegals. The Feds have a catch and release program. Sine we are saddled with illegals might as well educate them.
13 posted on 10/13/2011 12:01:38 PM PDT by Irish Eyes
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To: neverdem

No, this is typical NYTimes doing their “DIVIDE AND CONQUER” of the GOP and the right.

We let the liberal media create so much distrust of our own side that is distracts us from what the President and the Democrats are doing daily (screwing us badly) and preventing us from uniting and fighting against it.


14 posted on 10/13/2011 3:13:58 PM PDT by WOSG (“Legion of Acceptibility”)
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To: okie01

That could be a campain slogan!


15 posted on 10/13/2011 3:44:46 PM PDT by painter (No wonder democrats don't mind taxes.THEY DON'T PAY THEM !)
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To: neverdem

No, this is typical NYTimes doing their “DIVIDE AND CONQUER” of the GOP and the right.

We let the liberal media create so much distrust of our own side that is distracts us from what the President and the Democrats are doing daily (screwing us badly) and preventing us from uniting and fighting against it.


16 posted on 10/13/2011 4:20:36 PM PDT by WOSG (“Legion of Acceptibility”)
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