As I was listening to Bloomberg on the way into work, a quote of Lex Green’s popped into my head.
The news came on and yesterday’s primary results were announced (the Tea Party did very well), and one in particular was the most interesting to me. Christine O’Donnell won in Delaware. After the Bloomberg announcer said this, he also said that the Republican Party wouldn’t support her in the general election.
Reflexively I said out loud “well, Republican Party, you can just get f*cked then”.
I haven’t had much use for the Republican Party for a long time now. That quote from Lex?
“This little episode is one shiny tile in a massive mosaic that we are building together.”
I don’t think the Republican establishment fully understands that it is likely to become a major focus of Tea Party pressure if Republicans make big gains in the coming elections. Business as usual seems decreasingly likely, going forward.
Looking at it all from this side of the Pond, I’d say it is insane for any party establishment to do anything but grit its teeth if a candidate is not the one they wanted. It is also insane for losing candidates to behave so badly. Creates a very bad impression. That’s true everywhere. You grin and bear it and promise that party and country will be more important to you than purely personal feelings.
Jonathan, I think that’s the only thing they understand.
For a long time, the voters have thought that the elevation of certain people to positions of power and prestige was incidental to the need to advance Republican ideals, while the Party has been run by people who think that occasional talk about Republican ideals is incidental to maintaining their own power and prestige.
What’s more, while we’re just now figuring out (some of us – me, anyway) that this particular incarnation of the Party is not just irrelevant but hostile to its intended purpose, I have a hard time seeing what future there is in political parties at all. Raising lots of money to put advertisements on the 6 O’Clock News? Or woo the endorsement of the local paper? May as well try to win over the Scrimshawers’ Union. I’m sure there are things the Party knows how to do well, but a large fraction of that knowledge is obsolete, and once the rest of it is figured out by the political novices and put online, goodbye, party.
I have felt that way about party politics for many years now. What we have happening now in the GOP is a revolution and they either adopt the conservative concept or they become irrelivent. The GOP should go back and study how they came about, they were the third, outsider, party.
Cheers!
The Corporatist establishment that is the political opponent is NOT the Democrats. It is an alliance of Democrat and Republican politicians who want to keep the current rent-seeking, incumbent-protecting game going. The corporatist GOP would rather lose to the Democrats, who will keep the same game going until they get back, than to have someone come in who might foul up the game.
Destroying the GOP establishment is probably the first order of business. It might mean losing some general elections.
The point here is not electing Republicans, it is about electing people who are serious about changing business as usual.
The GOP will go one of two ways. It will either become the institutional home for the current Insurgency, including the Tea Party, or it will prove itself to be a worthless obstacle to progress, and be challenged by a third party that will replace it.
This election is the test. The GOP establishment is failing the test.
They need to be gotten rid of.
Lex – I agree. A lot of my Dem friends are trying to rub the Delaware win in as a big loss because the Dems will probalby hold the Senate – I tell them that they don’t understand what is coming. The fact that they don’t understand I think bodes well for the future.
It is vital *not* to destroy the GOP establishment. Yes, you read it right.
It is important to woo the parts that are wooable and replace the parts that are not. There are Delaware GOP party rules. The tea party needs to get a copy. They will very likely find out that decisions are made by a state committee that is voted in by county committees that are voted in by town committees whose heads are elected by precinct leaders. And they are likely to be very surprised to find out how many precinct leader posts are just vacant. The institutional GOP could be taken care of simply by filing sufficient papers for election in precincts that are currently vacant and filled by appointment from people who are not in district.
This procedure of simply filing to run in vacant precincts is so easy, so cheap, that it would be a waste of the Tea Party’s strength to engage in bloody battle using other methods.
I am against waste.
TML — I meant replacing personnel, not destroying the apparatus, but repopulating it with new people with a different and superior vision.
Your comment is exactly right.
This is the kind of nuts and bolts activity that has to be done.
Thanks for the clarification.
They are already backpedaling:
Cornyn reverses, will give $42k to O’Donnell
By: David Freddoso
Online Opinion Editor
09/15/10 11:35 AM EDT
A statement from the NRSC chairman, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Tex.:
“Let there be no mistake: The National Republican Senatorial Committee – and I personally as the committee’s chairman – strongly stand by all of our Republican nominees, including Christine O’Donnell in Delaware.
“I reached out to Christine this morning, and as I have conveyed to all of our nominees, I offered her my personal congratulations and let her know that she has our support. This support includes a check for $42,000 – the maximum allowable donation that we have provided to all of our nominees – which the NRSC will send to her campaign today.
“We remain committed to holding Democrat nominee New Castle County Executive Chris Coons accountable this November, as we inform voters about his record of driving his county to the brink of bankruptcy and supporting his party’s reckless spending policies in Washington.
“In the weeks ahead, we will decide where to best allocate additional financial resources among the large number of competitive races at stake this November. While it’s not in Republicans’ interest to advertise our spending strategy to our opponents, it’s worth noting that just yesterday, the NRSC’s first independent expenditure ad aired in support of Dr. Rand Paul’s campaign in Kentucky, where we firmly believe that he will win in November.
The mention of the committee’s advertising for Rand Paul is key to the entire announcement. The message is that the NRSC has no problem backing anti-establishment conservatives, but it probably doesn’t want to spend millions backing O’Donnell, whose personal problems are just too great. The $42,000 donation is something, but the NRSC’s role in Senate races is usually much greater than donations to a candidate.
This should be viewed as an attempt to quell a rebellion among the base.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/cornyn-reverses-will-give-42k-to-odonnell-102960589.html
And they are likely to be very surprised to find out how many precinct leader posts are just vacant.
This is exactly what they are doing. What we see on TV and in the newspapers is the crest of the wave. John Fund had an interesting observation on the Glenn Beck rally. Let’s see if I can still find it. Here it is.
In the past, more secular Tea Party types might not have showed up at a religiously-themed event like “Restoring Honor.” Similarly, many of the devoutly religious people I met at Saturday’s rally probably would in the past have shunned an explicitly political event such as Friday night’s Freedom Works meeting. But I kept bumping into the same people at both gatherings.
The Friday night meeting was a seminar on nuts and bolts of party organization, just as the sessions at the big Tennessee meeting last April that were not covered by the NY Times, etc. They were obsessed by Tancredo or by the crowd size Saturday. They do not realize that Armey and his group are conducting sessions on how to take over the GOP. At least I hope they are as I have not attended one. That is my understanding.
It has just been announced that the Palin and Tea Party backed candidate won the New Hampshire Republican primary for Senate. Perhaps another tile in the mosaic.
it’s kind of funny that the establishment types’ propensity for appeasement will help get them out of positions of power within the GOP.
the real revolution going on is the demise of political parties altogether. they are obsolete and unloved, and nothing they do can stop the changes raining down on them now.
nothing john cornyn or mitch mcconell ever do will change my opinion of them.
i think it’s important for GWB and his ilk to be repudiated, loudly, to signal to voters that the GOP has genuinely changed.
>>This should be viewed as an attempt to quell a rebellion among the base.
Too Late.
Trent Telenko: “Too Late”. It does appear that the train has left the station already, and that is a great thing.
Bush will always be remembered for sticking it out in Iraq just like FDR will be remembered for winning WWII. The rest will fade away.
“well, Republican Party, you can just get f*cked then”….one of the best lines to have come from the liberal isthmus (assume this is Madison Wi). Love it, brother.
maybe bush will be remembered for not declaring war after a devastating sneak attack, just unlike FDR.
Bush and republicans like him, are exactly the problem being resolved right now. history will not be kind to him because he doesn’t deserve any kindness. but you keep the candle burning…right next to a photo of obama, because like night following day, bush is the reason obama was so handily elected.
Repudiate GWB, for doing the PRUDENT thing re: Iraq, in the face of the conventional wisdom of the 20th Century that made what he did necessary and inevitable? As his dad would say, such a repudiation “wouldn’t be prudent” …
Repudiate him for his immigration policies? Already did that.
As we have repudiated the Dim Lite Congress of 2001-2007, given to you by a GOP establishment who we now are seeing as deserving of their own party … the Grumpy Other Party … as prudent people re-take the GOP infrastructure and institutions.
But let’s not throw the baby of liberty and prudence, out with the bathwater of poly-ticks.
CJM, you are on the right path—but technically, Congress declares war.
To his credit Bush kept us safe, but Bush sold out on the spending, and stimulus at the end. It is like they used to say when I was in the service: one awe s%^* erases an hundred atta-boys. I was good to see Rove’s true colors today w/respect to the Del race—for a pollster, he is as tone-deaf as his fellow deniers in the GOP.
Not to make this a thread about Bush, but I think the big question about him is the extent to which he thought he had to cut deals on domestic issues to gain political cooperation on national defense. If he had held the line on domestic spending but lost the war in Iraq, would that have been worth it? The answers to such questions may not be clear until much more time has passed.
Bush was a disaster.
Obama is merely the continuation of Bush by other means.
JB – I don’t live on the isthmus and am not a liberal, but I certainly mingle among them quite regularly.
Have to quite respectfully disagree, Lex. The Pelosi/Obama/Reid (POR) government’s performance was a significant departure from how things were going prior to January 2007 … which is the actual start point of that POR governance, because Congress has more effect upon our socio-economic condition than the White House.
http://www.agoyandhisblog.com/2010/03/26/every-picture-tells-a-story-dont-it/
I won’t take it farther here … if y’all want to take this up elsewhere, I’ll be glad to discuss the topic. I’ll just recommend that you look at the employment graph in Goy’s article above, in the light of when that POR government first attained any ability to carry out their threats to redistribute wealth and institute “change” … looks to me like business caught on to that, before the POR leadership redistributed their first dollar.
Dan-Same effect when I heard that statement. Dick Armey has stated that the Tea Party has a goal, take over the Republican party, one precinct at a time. No more donations to the establishment candidates and never a dime to the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
For a rather different take on the whole issue, see this post. (I don’t think “establishment” is a useful term in American politics, particularly for describing the Republican party.)
Jim Miller – that is an interesting post, but the author doesn’t take into account open primaries. For instance, here in Wisconsin I could have voted in any parties primary (but only one). I would guess a lot of fooling around goes on in these if the candidates are set for one certain party and a voter wants to vote against a certain candidate in the primary, even though that person may have no intention of ever voting for that cadidate in the general election. In the last presidential I knew I was voting for the R (whoever that might have been) so I decided to vote in the D primary – I can’t remember if I voted for Obama or Hillary.
Dan – You are actually strengthening my point. Not only do elected officials have to respond to voters in their own parties; they also have to respond to independents and voters in other parties. Not just to members of some “establishment”.
(Washington state’s parties wanted partisan primaries and sued to get rid of our blanket primaries. The voters, almost immediately, passed an initiative establishing “top-two” primaries, which both parties hate. So, in some races this year, we have two Democrats, or two Republicans facing each other in the general election.)
As for tactical voting, it does occur, but less often than many fear. One thing to remember is that most voters don’t follow politics that closely, and don’t know enough to vote tactically.
Thanks for the blog. A spiritual awakening must be a reality for the Tea Party’s influence to be lasting. It is not enough to change politicians, it is not enough to change our financial direction as a nation, we must return to the one who gave us the responsibility to experience freedom and that person is God.