Posted on 11/09/2013 9:48:18 AM PST by Bratch
Because I am a nice guy and don't want anyone to waste their time, here is a quick list of those who won't enjoy this post:
1) People working for Mitch McConnell's reelection.
2) People who come from families that internalize everything rather than fight it out and get it over with.
3) People who are Mitch McConnell.
The last several weeks have brought to the fore some ugly realities that the establishment GOP was hoping it could deal with using its go-to conflict resolution strategy: put it off, hope the problem goes away and then perhaps a nap.
Led by a host of Republican senators whose most notable achievement is getting elected a lot, the old guard has been busy publicly admonishing the more Tea Party-minded additions to the fold that they don't know anything.
Because they haven't been elected a lot.
Now, I will concede that, yes, the establishment dinosaurs do have a knack for winning elections. However, the gaps in between those victories tend not to be filled with much to crow about unless you're a fan of things like the Department of Homeland Security, Medicare expansion or being part of a team that's only won the popular vote in a presidential election once in twenty five years.
A school of thought is emerging amongst us extremists that it might be rather refreshing if they applied some of that ability to battle and prevail over Democrats in elections to the legislative process.
So a schism is erupting that sees one side yelling, "Hey, we win elections and stuff!" and the other side responding, "Yeah, but you're kind of hosing us once you do!"
The eruption, however, isn't from a new source of conflict. In fact, this is a decades-old ideological volcano in the GOP that has had spectacular consequences after blowing up in the past.
This New York Times article almost deserves a sentence by sentence examination but let's just grab a couple of chunks and look at them.
After the budget standoff ended in crushing defeat last week and the political damage reports began to pile up for Republicans, one longtime party leader after another stepped forward to chastise their less seasoned, Tea Party-inspired colleagues who drove the losing strategy.
“Let’s face it: it was not a good maneuver,” Senator Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, the senior Senate Republican and supporter of the deal that ended the showdown, said on Thursday in an interview from his Capitol Hill office. “And that’s when you’ve got to have the adults running the thing.”
Hatch is indeed "seasoned". Four hundred and thirty seven years old and serving his fiftieth term (okay maybe only his seventh) in the Senate, Hatch can not only win elections but will more than likely survive the zombie apocalypse.
By the way, Hatch was first elected to the Senate largely by campaigning on the premise that his three term incumbent opponent had been in Washington too long. You can't make this stuff up.
The adults Hatch mentions are the same grown-up election winners who brought the Republican party to the point where it was helpless to stop the passage of Obamacare.
These same adults also spent the last debt ceiling showdown whining about Ted Cruz rather than discussing the ticking time bomb of debt that will one day blow up this economy. These adults actually sped up the countdown timer on the bomb.
But, hey, winning elections and stuff.
Oh, the "political damage" from the "crushing defeat" was so overwhelming for the GOP that less than three weeks later President Obama's job approval hit an all-time low.
The obvious reason for this swan dive in The Lightbringer's approval numbers is that Obamacare had a rocky start. Because it's awful.
I believe it was Ted Cruz who was mentioning that a lot in September and early October. Silly unseasoned kid.
Let's look at one other thing from the Times article:
The moment draws comparisons to some of the biggest fights of recent Republican Party history — the 1976 clash between the insurgent faction of activists who supported Ronald Reagan for president that year and the moderate party leaders who stuck by President Gerald R. Ford, and the split between the conservative Goldwater and moderate Rockefeller factions in 1964.
Some optimistic Republicans note that both of those campaigns planted the seeds for the conservative movement’s greatest success: Reagan’s 1980 election and two terms as president.
Oh, the Times will be the Times-there is nothing "optimistic" about it, that's actually what happened.
The Republican party is not, and has not been for quite some time, an ideological lock-step affair. That's something that we should be celebrating rather than having fits about. If you don't like in-fighting and you want to pretend a lot, the other guys would love to have you.
The present battle is a most necessary one not only for the future of the party but the future of the country.
The problem with the "capitulation for the sake of fighting another day" approach the GOP has taken for decades is that it allows the Democrats to push the center ever leftward by increments. We are now at a point where the nation's wealth is shifting to those who bloat and perpetuate the federal behemoth. The IRS is going to punish you if you don't purchase something that is going to be far more expensive now that it is required than it was when it was a free choice.
Shall I go on?
Let's say your case for maintaining the status quo on either side isn't a very strong one at this juncture. In a sane world, anyone seeking to oust the people who have been in charge while the country headed down this path would be lauded. Instead, we are demonized by a GOP establishment that is eerily in concert with the MSM and the Democrats.
Whenever I talk to my more moderate Republican friends (and I have many) about challenging incumbents their side of the conversation is always filled with the same excuses masquerading as reason.
"I have no problem with incumbents being challenged but this just isn't the right time/challenger."
And: "You (Tea Party people) just need to find better candidates."
My only response to them now is, "How are you not at the point where you want to go out and find better candidates?!?!?!?"
If you can survey the political landscape in America for the past twenty years and are OK with at all that has gone on while Orrin Hatch, Mitch McConnell and the rest of the adults in the GOP have held sway in the party then you and I definitely have a problem.
If you think it's all right for McConnell to be reelected and continue his capitulating reign of "meh" while the progressives in the Democrat party run roughshod over the Constitution, your liberties and anything else they can get their filthy statist paws on then yes, we are going to fight about some things.
The "another day" and "next time" approach to governance employed by GOP leadership in recent years isn't a strategy, it's a pathetic reality avoidance mechanism.
And it is ruining the country.
The Republicans had better find a way to provide, and articulate that they are providing, a clear contrast to the Democrats. That they have done both so poorly for several years is the real problem the party is facing. Not demographics the culture or whatever other monsters they want to find under the bed.
Decimating economically crippling policy before it becomes law is far more important than whether everybody is happy in the Senate lunchroom. And if you want to continue to enjoy your rights you may want to think about getting behind candidates and legislators who aren't afraid to lose friends while thwarting the statist onslaught.
There is no inherent virtue in bipartisan cooperation with an opponent who never gives anything in return. In fact, it's becoming rather dangerous. Republicans could use some leaders who grasped this simple fact. They don't have any at present.
So, yeah, let's fight for the party.
If those of you fond of the GOP status quo want to remain true to form and just wait to fight another day while we run you over I'm OK with that too.
It is a fight that has to be had.
It’s a fight the GOPe is going to lose, but by then it will be too late.
My only response to them now is, "How are you not at the point where you want to go out and find better candidates?!?!?!?"
Maybe they're reconciled to the idea that we live in an imperfect world?
Die, GOP, die.
Do not linger.
Long live the Tea Party.
These old timers just want to sit back in the Capitol Lunchroom and have a great time with their pals from the Democrat party. They don’t want to fight for their constituents, they just want to sit back and enjoy their perks. It’s a fraternity that is run by Democrats, because the republicans allow them to run it.
As Senator Cruz phrased it on the Tonight show last night, “This is a struggle between the entrenched politicians of both parties and the American people.”
Both parties have declared war on the working American middle class and the the productive upper classes.
The GOP can lead, follow or get the **** out of the way. So far all that the GOP-e’s `leadership’ (the McCains, McConnells, Bushs, Issas, et al.) has shown for us is contempt. They are content to settle for a a statist, oligarchical socialist dystopia.
Like the Anti-federalists—and the Whigs—their time is past.
We will destroy them and replace them with a party structure that is willing to fight for a free American Republic.
Good description.
So now we who complain about Mitch and his NRSC buddies are wrong because we "expect perfection"?
That sounds like a strawman fallacy to me.
These folks are now at the point where they fail to back viable conservative Republican nominees.
What they did in VA was a disgrace. The things they are saying about other Republicans who dare to use a strategy that doesn't include capitulation, is disgraceful.
That sentiment is EXACTLY the way Conservative must think in this brave new world we find ourselves in. Too many are afraid of evoking the wrath of the PC police. Call a spade a spade, call an idiot an idiot, and suffer not fools lightly. And I am not talking about when safely ensconced behind the anonymity of the internet. I am talking about when you are face to face with the evil of liberalism.
That sentiment is EXACTLY the way Conservative must think in this brave new world we find ourselves in. Too many are afraid of evoking the wrath of the PC police. Call a spade a spade, call an idiot an idiot, and suffer not fools lightly. And I am not talking about when safely ensconced behind the anonymity of the internet. I am talking about when you are face to face with the evil of liberalism.
This article has a way to cheery flavor about it. We are at WAR. We will take some losses and inflict some. Hopefully we will get 5 or 6 of these has beens out on their ear - or some place a little lower on the body. Go Tea Party! Go Ted! Go Sarah!
Maybe one thing we could do (since freepers are very clever at humor) is be a clearing house of possible ads to run against the entrenched Rhinos and another to articulate the conservative position as to the real reasons we are against the undocumented Democrats. Name names and voting records.
Maybe we need a Freepathon to raise $ to take out the most vulnerable. Great article by Jeffery Lord over at Am. Spectator that shows a little of the history of how long this has been going on.
“Like the Anti-federalists—and the Whigs—their time is past.”
You do know, I assume, that the Anti-Federalists were the ones who gave us the Bill of Rights. It was the Anti-Federalsits who warned against the new govenment having too much power, and thus would be prone — if left unchecked — to authoritarian rule.
Today’s Tea Party is far more akin to the Anti-Federalsits than to the Federalists.
“It is a fight that has to be had.”
And it is a fight that has to be won, what ever the cost!
Yes, I do know that.
Repeating myself, they changed into something else when their time had passed.
We are no longer Anti-federalists, Whigs or Republicans.
The GOP’s time has passed.
I agree with you that the GOP-e’s time has past. If the GOP will not or cannot embrace conservatism (and it is debatable if it can or will), then it should — as you indicate — go the way of the Whigs.
Really?
“We will destroy them (the GOP)...”
Obama couldn’t have said it better.
He wants his minions to get America’s patriots to fight one another and thereby give his Democrats a “free pass” in the 2014 election.
Colorado’s successful recall election shows that Colorago’s patriots SHOULD have a good chance to replace incumbent Democrat Senator Mark Udall.
But there seem to be 5 (FIVE!) Colorado Republicans “fighting” among themselves now. Advantage? Udall!
Iowa’s Democrat Senator Harkin is retiring. 6 (SIX!) Republicans are “fighting” among themselves to run for Harkin’s seat. Advantage? Democrats!
I’d say that any Tea Party candidate who runs against a DEMOCRAT deserves my support, but I’d also say that any Tea Party candidate whose “mission” it is to knock out a “safe” REPUBLICAN is probably a pawn of the White House.
Just how does replacing one Republican Senator with a different Republican Senator gets us the VOTES we patriots need to actually CHANGE the law?
Really?
“We will destroy them (the GOP)...”
Obama couldn’t have said it better.
He wants his minions to get America’s patriots to fight one another and thereby give his Democrats a “free pass” in the 2014 election.
Colorado’s successful recall election shows that Colorago’s patriots SHOULD have a good chance to replace incumbent Democrat Senator Mark Udall.
But there seem to be 5 (FIVE!) Colorado Republicans “fighting” among themselves now. Advantage? Udall!
Iowa’s Democrat Senator Harkin is retiring. 6 (SIX!) Republicans are “fighting” among themselves to run for Harkin’s seat. Advantage? Democrats!
I’d say that any Tea Party candidate who runs against a DEMOCRAT deserves my support, but I’d also say that any Tea Party candidate whose “mission” it is to knock out a “safe” REPUBLICAN is probably a pawn of the White House.
Just how does replacing one Republican Senator with a different Republican Senator gets us the VOTES we patriots need to actually CHANGE the law?
Depends on where you live, I guess. Where I live, it would take a miracle to get a Republican elected to Congress, so I’m not going to snipe at one who might manage to get elected from a state like mine. Also, I’d want to make a choice based on the strengths and weaknesses of actual candidates in a primary, not just decide to throw out anybody who’d been in Congress for some time and had made the inevitable compromises that anyone in politics has to make over the years.
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