Posted on 02/03/2015 7:14:48 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
There is movement in the tectonic plates of the Republican Party. Former vice presidential nominee, former Gov. Sarah Palin, R-Alaska, has finally fallen from favor among Republican pundits and officials. They seem to have discovered a vacuousness they had somehow previously missed even though long ago Tina Fey developed an entire Palin comedy routine using Palin’s own words for the script.
These same influencers of GOP thought had already realized that selling candidates who claimed to be witches or who adhered to various other offbeat dogma was not playing well in Peoria. It has been an interesting metamorphosis. Initially, they thought to ignore the tea party, that is, before they embraced it. After all, the GOP is a “big tent” party. Next came the tea party’s influence on Republican primaries, that is until nominees started talking about “legitimate rape” and such.
After that, even the tea party wing of the Republican Party decided that electability might be a factor to consider. Enter Senators Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ted Cruz of Texas, two tea partiers who learned how to talk the talk of the barely acceptable while walking the walk of the far Right. Meanwhile, Palin remained the darling of the stump, drawing crowds and raising money, and the tea party kept rolling along, even ousting House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, a right wing conservative who wasn’t right enough.
Then something happened. GOP victories in the 2014 election catapulted two mainstream Republicans to the top of the congressional ladder: Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, was reelected Speaker of the House and Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., moved from Senate minority leader to majority leader. Their gain was the tea party’s loss, and in a blink all eyes were on the 2016 presidential contest.
Difficulties abound. As it currently stands, 24 Republican Senate seats will be up for election in 2016 vs. only 10 Democratic seats. Nationwide, Democrats outnumber Republicans, which means Independents will decide the presidential election, and Independents do not generally support the extremes of the Left or Right. In other words, they will not elect a tea party president.
So, how do mainstream Republican leaders get the party to coalesce around a winning candidate? They begin by purging. This is a top-down operation because the bottom-up zealots keep nominating and electing candidates to nowhere. The top-down approach is to discredit and eliminate the unacceptable options. It is no accident, therefore, that poor Sarah Palin is suddenly being pilloried by the same GOP operatives and pundits who have long supported her. It is no accident that the relatively moderate former Gov. Jeb Bush, R-Fla., and former Gov. Mitt Romney, R-Mass., are actually being touted as viable candidates, and that blue state Gov. Scott Walker, R-Wisc., is looking to join their ranks.
If this scenario continues to play out, the purge will continue until all realistic options from the far Right are eliminated. So watch out Rand Paul. Watch out Ted Cruz. Sarah Palin was only the beginning.
lets see the GOPe win without Conservatives.
Miss Ellie’s got the vapors again. I remember her Newsweek columns. You could actually smell them.
What made you think that vile skank ever had a soul?
I have come to realize that many of the Republican insiders are Third Way supporters. That is why they refuse to stop Obama’s immigration.
A common misconception, since even before she left Cleveland her scribbles showed no sign of actual brain activity.
she knows but assumes that her idiot readers will not.
And in the end even though he fought the labor unions, Scott Walker’s name should be among the moderates because he has not lifted a finger in opposition to the GOPe like Cruz and Palin and even Rand Paul have.
When I look for serious discourse on the current political scene I always seek out Tina Fey, Stephen Colbert, and Eleanor Clift. /s
You'd think so, shriveled old shrieking nag. I'm so disappointed to hear she hasn't eaten the big one yet. But that air hose John McLaughlin keeps throwing her on his show apparently gives her enough oxygen to go on spewing her bile.
Ever notice that liberals tell us they hate Palin's voice, but that Eleanor sounds a lot like her when she goes up a couple of octaves to shout down Pat Buchanan?
Odious old hag. A thousand pox-pustules be upon her.
I’m hearing Jane Curtin and Dan Aykroyd: “ELEANOR, YOU IGNORANT SLUT!”
Hey, go easy on us. I hate the Pocono Record as much as the next conservative, but I only live about 10 miles from the Pocono Record Headquarters. There’s some good conservatives in the area. We have the same problem that Colorado has. Colorado had a major influx of leftist Californians, and the Pocono’s has had a major influx of people from NYC.
I of course am native Pennsylvanian going back at least 4 generations.
These girls—today I can't remember their names—were on their way to the Mount Airy Lodge where they worked. They said if we wanted to stay there they could get us a discount on a room rate. The Lodge was interesting. It was run by a bunch of young Italian guys wearing gold crucifixes. The next morning the girls gave us a ride up to Scranton. It was a beautiful drive. From Scranton we headed west.
I lived in Colorado off and on for eight years. I still think of it as a Red state. In the mid 1970’s when I lived in Vermont it was still mostly conservative. I moved to Tennessee in 1990 and it has gotten even redder over the years. We still have some old die-hard Dixiecrats. They are fond of saying things like, “Obama may be a ni__er but he's our ni__er.”
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