The Fix, WaPo — which in this instance reads almost like a GOP establishment press release / warning to conservatives that’s been strategically leaked:
“I’d personally enjoy all the ‘we can’t nominate another Republican In Name Only’ crowd getting a stomping by an incumbent with an 8.5 unemployment rate,” said one senior party strategist, granted anonymity to speak candidly, warning of nominating a strictly conservative candidate like former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum.
It’s happened before. In 1964, conservatives got their way when Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater beat out New York Gov. — and proud moderate — Nelson Rockefeller for the Republican nomination. Goldwater’s conservatism didn’t sit well with the country at large and Johnson won with 61 percent of the vote, the largest popular vote percentage in modern history.
Four years later, Republicans — showing their lesson learned — nominated establishment favorite and political pragmatist Richard Nixon. (Nixon had been defeated by John Kennedy in 1960 and declined to run in 1964.) Nixon ended eight years of Democratic control of the White House when he beat Vice President Hubert Humphrey in the 1968 election.
— as an aside here, if you’re expecting any discussion how Nixon governed, or how the Left reacted to “political pragmatist Richard Nixon,” you’re out of luck.
Too, if you expect a column on the problem the GOP has with conservatives to mention Ronald Reagan, you’d be out of luck on that front, too. As with Obama’s own personal history, significant parts of the history of American conservatism and electoral politics are simply airbrushed out of existence.
But I digress:
[…]
The GOP’s problem, according to party insiders, is most evident when it comes to the issue of immigration. All of the major Republican presidential candidates — with the exception of former House speaker Newt Gingrich — have largely rejected the idea of a path to citizenship for the 11 million people in the United States illegally.
That view has contributed to a broader sense among Hispanic voters that the Republican Party is not a friendly place for them. In the 2008 election, President Obama won the Hispanic vote nationwide with 67 percent of the vote. Given that more than half of the total growth in U.S. population over the past decade came in the Hispanic community, Republicans simply can’t afford to keep losing this largest minority group 65 percent to 35 percent and have a fighting chance of winning national elections in four or eight years’ time.
While some within the party have begun to believe that the only way for the GOP to truly heal is to first bottom out, most strategists don’t see 2012 shaping up that way — particularly if the establishment-friendly Romney winds up as the nominee.
“They won’t get it this year, as Romney is viewed as too moderate, so blame will go to moderates,” said former Virginia representative Tom Davis, himself a leading moderate voice within the GOP. “The narrative will be McCain and Mitt are too much like Obama.”
[…]
The question many Republican strategists are asking themselves at the moment is whether — in 2012, 2016 or even 2020 — it’s worth taking one step back in order to, hopefully, take two steps forward.
I say go for it.
But frankly, the GOP establishment may have no say in the matter. A Romney nomination and a significant loss to Obama may likely end the United States as we know it, anyway. At which point, I don’t see conservatives remaining as part of the Republican Party, because clearly something much more useful is necessary if we’re ever to return our country to its Constitutional moorings.
The establishment’s increasing “Romney or bust” message is being heard loud and clear. But this time, the conservative base hasn’t as yet capitulated.
Though looking around the blogosphere and on “conservative” opinion sites, it isn’t for a lack of prodding.
(h/t motionview)
Reagan didn’t win in 1980. Carter lost. That’s how terrible Carter was. When Reagan did win, in 1984, it’s because incumbents always win. Except when they lose. Because they’re terrible. And anyways, Democrats always win and Republicans (especially conservative Republicans) always lose —even on those rare occassions when through some quirk of the stupid voters, they fail to play their assigned roles.
That’s how our betters think.
That’s just sad. They think a RINO party is viable. They’ve already forgotten 2006 and 2008. They get punched when they cross the aisle so they think they must have crossed it wrong. The want a big tent with the middle part cut out. Do they really think the largest part of the base is a bunch of Colin Powells and David Brooks? Do they think they’ll even have a party left after trying to run out a bunch of people who are already extremely disgusted with them? Do they want to be 2nd fiddles in even red states?
That is beyond delusional. We need to primary the bastards out wherever we can until we control major regions and flip them off when they call foul and save our donations for when they behave like republicans instead of advocate sympathizers for the Democrats.
That’s a step back the country can ill-afford, and likely wouldn’t recover from for decades, if ever.
The inside-the-beltway Establishment GOP is once again telling their conservative base to shut the fuck up and vote for who we tell you to.
Pre-emptive spin for a Romney loss–“he’s too conservative!”
If only in rhetoric, and that selectively. Nevermind healthcare, cap and trade, ad Romnium.
No–the party was too conservative. Even should it nominate complete squish like Mitt, and thus lose accordingly. Despite following the pragmatic “electable,” don’t-scare-the-independents meme to an M-I-Double T.
Bookmark this beauty–it will become the Establishment narrative.
’06 was the Iraq War and the 6th year curse and the fact that the Democrats recruited moderates (see! Moderates win! We need to be more Moderate, like the Democracts) is what the establisment wing will tell you.
’08 was Sarah Palin’s fault, all her’s. Plus, who can compete with histroric and transformational and hopenchange?
The Tea Party rally’s in 2009 are the only reason the press even talks to Republicans today. In 2010 those democrat moderates got largely wiped out. Blue Dog is a joke now.
Rallies. I’m not at all sure why I went with the possessive. Sorry.
I think it may be past mattering…that the changes Obama has wrought are already so deeply entrenched as to be irreversible, especially given the menu of wafflers Reps have served up. This bunch isn’t going to cut it and by the time 2012 rolls around it will definitely be too late.
The Democrats only lost in ’10 because the stimulus hadn’t kicked in yet. And maybe because the idiot voters didn’t understand how good it was going to be under ObamaCare.
You don’t think the idiot hicktard joe-sixpack vote actually chose the tea-party, do you?
Well, do you?
Mitt Romney Suggested Three Times In 2009 That Obama Imitate Romneycare
link
” And maybe because the idiot voters didn’t understand how good it was going to be under ObamaCare.”
See, the GOP smarty heads can’t get away with saying THIS yet. Even Romney who is unsettlingly protective of Romneycare as a partially good thing is not willing to go this far. If he did, Newt and Santorum would scalp a handful of his voters and he’d have to backtrack mightily.
I threw that out there as an example of how the GOP establishment believes that the folks are’nt really opposed to big, intrusive, nannying government itself, just the jackwagons who happen to be running it at the moment. Which is why they think they can win with smarter big less intrusive, cool-babysitter government.
Which leaves us with what exactly? Besides Democrats winning and Republicans losing, as always.
Or it would, if our betters cared about anything so blasé as political parties.
Can we lure the Republican Party out onto a boat in the middle of Lake Superior and scuttle the damn thing?
Wreck of the Willard Fitzromney?
Can we lure the Republican Party out onto a boat in the middle of Lake Superior and scuttle the damn thing?
Scuttling the vessel would be overkill. All you really need to do is have the crew abandon ship, and tell all the GOP jeenyuses to make their own way back to shore. If they don’t manage to fill the bilge with fuel vapor and blow themselves to kingdom come, they’ll still manage to die from thirst (in the middle of the largest source of fresh water on Earth).
“. . . nominating a strictly conservative candidate like former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum.”
Oof, let his non-credible misunderstanding slip out a bit there, didn’t he [the “one senior party strategist”]?
Is that the GOP doesn’t have a clue what its problem is. And that we and the nation are hostages to their befuddlement.
Squid, I’ve watched a lot of adventure movies and every season of “The A-Team” and if there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s how to be a better evil mastermind: no plan is foolproof, because fools are so ingenious.