Posted on 05/11/2014 9:04:26 AM PDT by QT3.14
Results of Tuesdays primaries, particularly the victory of state House Speaker Thom Tillis in North Carolinas Republican Senate primary, are being hailed or decried as a victory for the Republican establishment over the Tea Party movement. Theres something to that. Tillis benefited from support from Karl Roves American Crossroads and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and endorsements by Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush.
In contrast, Sen. Rand Paul flew in on the day before the election to campaign for second-place finisher and fellow physician Greg Bannon, who was also endorsed by Tea Party Patriots and FreedomWorks. Mike Huckabee campaigned for the third-place candidate, minister Mark Harris.
(Excerpt) Read more at rightwingnews.com ...
We have different ideas of what constitutes success. People with my point of view haven’t had a success since 1984.
It’s an opinion, not a lie and there is a very big difference. If Conservatives cannot field candidates who are capable of winning in this year’s political climate, then they will have forfeited all hopes of ever regaining political power.
The party that controls three out of three elective bodies of government is successful. Two out of three, and one out of three is partial success. Zero out of three is a failure.
Electing a party that uses the power we delegate to it to increase Federal spending and the administrative state represents a failure to me.
The tea party has won the real war. We have candidates voting against measures that they worked on in an effort to be conservative enough for the voters.
Remember Reagan’s words about how much you can accomplish if you don’t take credit for it. By remaining a liquid movement and not an established party, the tea party has allowed its values and principles to succeed.
It is a demonstrable lie. I have supported Republicans. Non of them have been perfect.
I have no opinion of you as I know nothing about you or who you may have supported. When did you get the idea that I was talking about you? Goodbye.
You can’t seriously say that when the GOP-E is doing everything it can to squash conservative candidates. They should be able to beat the GOP-E easily, but you know what happens. The GOP-E is trying to kick us out. They fight harder to beat The tea party than democrats.
Are you going to deny you were talking to me?
Go kiss a RINO’s rear end.
Republican Senate Majority is no guarantee that you will get conservative Judges, some of the Worst were put in place by the GOPe.
Ditto.
Those who insist we vote for the lessor of two evils gave us the current government, which can only be describes as communistic.
Same here...but I've had that policy for years.
McCain
Romney
Voted for all three, but d@mned if I vote for another, so take your "surrender to the commies crap" and stuff it.
Correct. In the primaries we should be nominating the most conservative candidate that CAN win.
But the establishment has had some pretty major whiffs on the Senate side too, and who can forget the social conservatives nominating Todd Akin (the TEA Party candidate was Sarah Steelman and she would have almost certainly defeated Claire McCaskill).
As we see one of the fault lines dividing the more conservative grass roots is actually TEA Party versus socon's as evident in N.C. where Huckabee (and his traditionalist, religious wing of the party) endorsed Reverend Mike Harris who would never have won a general election anyway. Give Harris's votes to Brannon and it would have been extremely close instead of a runaway Tillis victory.
Either way, all the talk about the TEA Party being dead is nonsense. It is pushing the party to the right, even when it doesn't win primaries. It forces "establishment" candidates to go on record as further to the right than they'd otherwise choose to be. It's kinda like the now defunct 99% Occutard movement in one way. We all laugh at that silliness, but it took debt off the national agenda and replaced it with income inequality as an issue. Even today that effect lingers. The TEA Party doesn't have to win every election, they just have to yank the party rightward.
And of all the people bemoaning the Republican Party being too centrist, I wonder when they can point out in modern history when it has been any better? I'd say the GOP, however unwilling, is more conservative now than it has been in forever. People forget the Republican party in the 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's and up until the Gingrich revolution was a limp wrist go-along, get-along token opposition with the likes of Bob Michel essentially running it. Was Ike very conservative? Was Nixon? Geeze, Nixon gave us the EPA, price controls and all manner of liberal badness.
But I do agree, conservatives need to vet our candidates better and line up behind folks that CAN actually win. Nominating someone who has no chance, and worse - no future, is a total waste of time.
Huckabee was a spoiler with McCain. He is a spoiler again. Keep following the cross to defeat. Or is he a wolf in sheep’s clothing?
I don't like Huckabee and don't even consider him particularly conservative at all, but he does represent a wing of the Republican party that feels like so many people express here (except on the TEA Party side). That is, if the party doesn't nominate someone they consider sufficiently shares their views, they won't vote at all. This particular group is largely evangelicals who vote on religious issues. They will vote only when they really like the candidate, which is often ministers, reverends, people known primarily as socon's, etc. They don't care about electability in general elections, and end up dividing the conservative primary vote backing candidates who have no real chance to win a general election.
I don't really even consider these people particular conservative on anything but social issues. I think many would be happy to grow government on the issues they care about, like hire 10,000 regulators to ban porn on the Internet, etc.
This is the problem with the all or nothing types. They don't think particularly strategically and won't understand that general elections are a choice of viable candidates (which is almost always 2 in our two party system), not an affirmative endorsement of any candidate. In our winner take all system with no opportunity for coalition building, in general elections we will almost always be voting just as much against a candidate as for one.
Nope, not waiting on a perfect candidate, just a conservative one. A candidate that supports abortion, gun-control, socialized medicine, or amnesty won't get my vote.
If you like living under liberals, vote for the liberal republican.
The republicans are the problem. They hate conservatives. They say so. They spend millions against conservatives. And still, you give them your vote.
You are the loser. Anyone that votes for a liberal, D or R, is.
/johnny
When so called “conservatives” believe a path to victory with a RINO is a win, then collapse is certain.
It’s not at all our conservative candidates. It’s clearly the useful idiot syndrome that composes the electorate.
This now has to include “conservatives”, who are willing to be rolled by the process over and over like Pavlov’s dogs. Reversing this process can’t be achieved so long as the voters board the same trains to nowhere.
One of these days they’re going to be let off at a very unpleasant destination.
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