Posted on 03/31/2015 12:33:26 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The blood is in the water. The game is afoot. And the Republicans are brawling.
While Democrats are usually viewed as the undisciplined, fractious party, it is Republicans who sharpen their knives and slice each other up when the White House is at stake.
The struggle is between two groups within the GOP.
The establishment finally recognizes that the party must broaden its base. If the party appeals to only white, Christian conservatives, it will wind up as a regional party, capable of winning Senate and House seats but incapable of winning a national election.
We must nominate a presidential candidate who can reach across racial, religious, cultural and ideological lines, the establishment says, and so the moderate middle is the place to be.
The far right of the party, especially the religious right, hears this and goes crazy. It says we keep nominating moderates and we keep losing! We nominate Mitt Romney and we lose. We nominate John McCain and we lose.
It is time to wake up and coalesce around a true Christian conservative who is unafraid to endorse Christian values and talk about God and Jesus Christ, it says. This is where America is and that is where the Republican Party needs to be.
The establishment has almost always won this fight, by the way. The religious right of the Republican Party has not gotten the nominee it has wanted since Ronald Reagan. (And he wasn’t religious personally.)
But this time could be different, the right says. Hillary Clinton is going to be very, very vulnerable in the 2016 general election. Voters by then will have had eight years of a Democratic presidency and they are weary to the bone.
So this is the perfect time to pick a true conservative, a true Christian conservative, who will take this country back. This is no time to be muddling around in the middle, searching for moderate voters who will never vote Republican anyway.
And so the knives have come out.
As Trip Gabriel wrote in The New York Times on March 25: “Fearing that Republicans will ultimately nominate an establishment presidential candidate like Jeb Bush, leaders of the nation’s Christian right have mounted an ambitious effort to coalesce their support behind a single social-conservative contender months before the first primary votes are cast.”
So when Ted Cruz, a right-wing, Christian conservative announced for the presidency on March 23 (at a Christian university founded by Jerry Falwell, no less) the establishment instantly fought back.
The establishment isn’t called that for nothing. It is established. And the word went out on Cruz: bright, articulate and without any record of accomplishment. A loser, in other words.
Charles Krauthammer said on Fox News: “Cruz talks about you have to walk the walk, rather than talk the talk. You have to have done something, but that’s not his record in the Senate.”
And The Wall Street Journal editorial page, which is as Republican establishment as you can get, recoiled in horror at the idea of Cruz as nominee and dismissed him as another — you are reading this right — Barack Obama.
“Can a smart, articulate, 40-something first term Senator trained in constitutional law, who disdains his colleagues and lacks executive experience, make the leap to the White House?” the editorial began. “President Obama proved it was possible in 2008, and now Ted Cruz will try to show that a Republican can do it too …”
But while Obama got to the White House, the editorial strongly suggested that Cruz will not. And that’s because the religious right is hopelessly wrong in its assessment of what it takes to win a presidential election in this country.
The editorial said it is hopeless for a Republican to depend solely on the Republican base to win in 2016 and that a Republican nominee must reach beyond the base, be inclusive and appeal to minorities and the “working class.”
(I grant you that it is an open question as to how closely connected the editorial writers of the Journal are to the American “working class.”)
Cruz’s “hard-edged message against immigration” may help him in the Republican primaries, the editorial said, but “it is a dream come true for Hillary Clinton.”
“Mr. Cruz’s challenge will be showing that his polarizing style is a better bet than the conservative governing success that many of the others [in the GOP presidential field] have already had.”
The religious right, however, does not care about sniffy editorials. This time, it believes, the party will finally wake up and smell the blood.
“Conservatives smell blood in the water,” Kellyanne Conway, a Republican pollster, told the Times. “They feel they’ve got the best shot to deny the establishment a place.”
The establishment, they believe, must be elbowed aside like the geezers that they are. It doesn’t matter how much money the establishment can raise or how many voters it can deliver. The Republican establishment does not understand religious America and the true power it has.
“Far too many Christians have ceded the public arena to people that aren’t believers,” Cruz told David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network.
And that is the secret weapon.
“God isn’t done with America yet,” Cruz said at his announcement.
And the religious right isn’t done with the Republican Party.
SUCCESS by GOP???? They have defined success DOWN....and now the WSJ is merely the mouthpiece of the one world corporatists. Let's CRUZ!!!!
“The blood is in the water. The game is afoot. And the Republicans are brawling.”
Politico’s Chief Political Columnist writes like a pulp hack from the 30’s.
bump
Tabasco, frankly, I don't give a good doodly squat about the Democrat party, what the media says about it, or who it nominates.
I care about ONE THING: The Republican party, because what it does in 2016 is going to determine whether or not a third party is going to be necessary. The Democrats and their party are a sideshow.
“as if Americans who want less government but who don’t identify as “Christian conservative,” don’t exist.”
All 13 of them.
Yes it has.
Last day of quarter, gonna make another contribution. I wish they would do money bombs.
Or did I misinterpret "All 13 of them."?
And how does a candidate apeal only to white, Christian conservatives? That's a dumb, self-serving statement. Any Republican candidate for president must address a broad range of issues, and then the voters who are open to either candidate will assess the overall positions of the two major party candidates.
The GOPe amd many commentators just can't get away from the idea that a candidate must appeal to narrow interest groups, a bone for this one and a bone for that one.
Yeppers!
And if GOP drives out its Christians, they won't win the election for dog-catcher. And won't deserve to, either.
Try and remember the last time a party drove out its Christians. Its happened twice. One became a ghost and the other a cancer.
Whigs, and Democrats.
To hear this guy tell it, the only conservatives in America are “the religious right”. They are an important part to be sure, but hardly all. There are plenty of people in this country who are not particularly religious but still hold conservative values.
I just listened again carefully to the announcement Cruz made at Liberty University. He mentioned raising a “grass-roots army” and said that he was running for “President of the United States”.
Cruz DID NOT say “the Republican nomination for President”.
Seems somehow important to me that he did not plug for support from the Republican Party, which of course, he will not be receiving.
I think I see in Reagan what many Christians saw in him, one of the most religious presidents that we have ever had.
I think that it is obvious that deep internal and private religious faith was the most powerful force in Reagan's' life.
When one starts trying to learn who Reagan really was, they start seeing a man who seems to have always been striving to hear God's voice as he tried to make his decisions about himself, and others, and in his work and careers.
Reagan is unlike many great figures, with him, the deeper you scratch into his personal and inner life, the more you come to admire and respect him.
Not so many, strong Christian faith is the main marker of someone being conservative.
The non-religious, atheist, non-Christian, and lightly Christian, make up the left/democrats, and the lightly Christian and the few non religious, atheists and non-Christian who are in the GOP, make up the liberal portion of that party.
Rience Priebus won’t even name Cruz publicly, being a fellow Wisconsinite and ally of Walker.
GOP chairman who won’t comment on the only declared Candidate, which happens to be an R. What does that tell you?
The Whigs didn't "drive out their Christians". They were torn apart internally on the issue of slavery. Christians during that era held a wide range of views on the morality of slavery, and were on both sides of that debate (just like there were Christians for and against prohibition). The Whig Party continued to run devout Christians until its dying day.
The DemonRats didn't "drive out their Christians" either. If that was the case, they would tell Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton to stop self-identifying as "the Reverend" in public. What they drove out were people who follow orthodox, traditional Christian beliefs. They're fine with people who claim to be "Christian" on paper but don't follow traditional Christian morality.
Well you should because it's the silence on the Dems and the focus on all the alleged in fighting within the Republican party.
As far as a third party, you're the DNC's wet dream my brother, Ross Perot put an end to that silly notion.........
You and I both have our choices in the Primary and we will vote for our candidate. But I'll be damned if I'm going to stay home in the general election simply because whomever I supported didn't get the nomination.........
Those are the fools who gave us Obama..........
The fools who gave us Obama was the RNC insisting on cadavers for candidates.
Cruz to victory or be Bushed.
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