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This weekend: NYT Magazine article will outline GOP establishment's war against Tea Party to "take back their party"

George Will’s declaration that a GOP establishment doesn’t even exist hardest hit.

Among those quoted, Bill Kristol, who calls the TEA Party an “infantile form of conservatism.” Along with GOP lobbyists who openly talk about how they hope to co-opt and control TEA Party rubes.

I’ve been saying it for a while now: it’s the permanent political ruling class vs. the rest of us — and for establishment Republicans, it’s clearly better to retain power than it is to affect the kind of change that would reduce that power by reducing the size and scope of government.

And they’ve joined the Democrats in trying to push back against conservatism / classical liberalism.

So. If third party isn’t the answer, what is?

(h/t Rush Limbaugh)

48 Replies to “This weekend: NYT Magazine article will outline GOP establishment's war against Tea Party to "take back their party"”

  1. proudvastrightwingconspirator says:

    Hey, NYT –
    Project much?

    You mad, bro?

  2. McGehee says:

    I guess NYTM doesn’t think Tea Party voters would ever read anything they publish. If I were Bill Kristol (who was funny in City Slickers but not so much since) I’d be a little bit unhappy at having this op publicized. Damn you Wikileaks!

  3. proudvastrightwingconspirator says:

    Of course, Bill Kristol is a true expert on “infantile conservatism”.

    Because he wouldn’t know a real, mature, honest-to-God conservative if he bumped into one at his next “Bridge Mixer” at the Harvard Club or while getting his white suede bucks polished.

    Fat chance that.

  4. Pablo says:

    So. If third party isn’t the answer, what is?

    Primaries in which we explain to them the necessity of kissing our collective ass, as well as their present and future irrelevancy. As the contenders fall to the wayside, to whom do you suppose their present support will go? The base is clearly looking for NotRomney.

  5. motionview says:

    The rules have changed. They are pretending they haven’t in order to inevitablize Romney. The old game was that if you win Iowa and New Hampshire it’s all over, all the big money flowed to you and then you won with organization and ads. That is just not the way it works anymore, if we choose to not let it happen. We have to take Washington, and the Republican Party. Something you never hear about from the 2010 elections: we crushed the Democrats without giving money to national Republican organizations. The TEA Party is out there and as strong and as determined as ever, we are just going about our lives until the next chance to remove the fools and tools from office.

    I think we go out there and vote for our TEA Party candidate in the earliest Republican primaries, and then in the next big round of primaries we coalesce around one. Any of these candidates are good to me: Cain, Gingrich, Bachmann, Perry (and Newt is back in for me in spite of his wandering dick and the Ryan attack because he seems to be the only candidate left who understands the MBM is the most powerful faction of the enemy).

  6. Pablo says:

    Bill Kristol is really a guy with his finger on the pulse of the world, no?

  7. SGT Ted says:

    Of course we were going to see inside opposition from those who the TP was seeking to replace. The answer is to continue to take over the Republicans Party from the Government Class.

  8. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Bill Kristol and his American Greatness Conservatism (which is nothing more than Theodore Roosevelt’s Progressivism v. 0.9 warmed over) represents the decadent, decrepit senescent form of conservatism.

  9. bh says:

    City Slickers, heh.

  10. LTC John says:

    I’m with Pablo – make the Establicans extinct via the ballot box. Hard to get their K street pals revolving door going if they don’t have any Congresscritters to turn ’em. And who would the Bill Kristol’s hold up as exmplars… Olympia Snowe?

  11. NoisyAndrew says:

    So. If third party isn’t the answer, what is?

    I dunno, not giving the NYT exactly what it hoped this story would create?

  12. Silver Whistle says:

    When great multitudes act together, under that discipline of Nature, I recognise the PEOPLE. I acknowledge something that perhaps equals, and ought always to guide, the sovereignty of convention. In all things the voice of this grand chorus of national harmony ought to have a mighty and decisive influence. But when you disturb this harmony—when you break up this beautiful order, this array of truth and Nature, as well as of habit and prejudice—when you separate the common sort of men from their proper chieftains, so as to form them into an adverse army—I no longer know that venerable object called the people in such a disbanded race of deserters and vagabonds.

    Count me among the vagabonds. I have no proper chieftains. And the GOP can take a flying fuck at a rolling donut.

  13. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Hairy-footed Visigoths, the lot of us.

  14. Sarah Rolph says:

    I agree that we must keep working to take over the Republican Party from within, strengthening it with teapartiers. This is going to take a very long time. My understanding is that a lot of teapartiers are working at the local level right now, which I think makes sense.

    I’m discouraged to see the pushback from the establishment, but that doesn’t seem very rational. Why would they not push back? I was imagining that the party would be delighted to be shown the errors of its ways; that’s not usually the way things work…

    I’m also discouraged that Romney seems to be the only candidate who has a serious view of national security. Has Cain said anything sensible about foreign policy yet?

    Do you think Palin will be considered as a VP candidate, and if so would she accept?

    I don’t understand why anyone is still taking Bachmann seriously. The vaccine comment ended her candidacy, in my view.

  15. Crawford says:

    Sarah, the “error of their ways” brings them lots of cash, power, and access.

  16. Mueller says:

    “Gentlemen! We have to do something to keep our phonybalony jobs!”

    So. If third party isn’t the answer, what is?

    We keep stackin the deck in our favor. One candidate at a time

  17. Squid says:

    I might actually have to check out that article. Call it ‘competitive intelligence.’

    This is going to take a very long time. My understanding is that a lot of teapartiers are working at the local level right now, which I think makes sense.

    It’s been going on since the last election cycle, and it’s not going to take as long as you might think. I’m still not convinced that we have the mass needed to beat the Establicans in the Presidential campaign, but we’ll damn sure give ’em another crop of reformists in the Congress and the states.

    Kristol and Will and the rest of the Beltway insiders can call me whatever names they wish. As the great warrior once said: “I’m laughing at the superior intellect!”

  18. RomneeyRomney

    Oh Noes, it’s the GOPeeseburgler!

  19. Drumwaster says:

    So. If third party isn’t the answer, what is?

    “When In The Course of Human Events…”

  20. DarthLevin says:

    As the great warrior once said: “I’m laughing at the superior intellect!”

    CCCCCAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNNN!!!!!!!!!

  21. McGehee says:

    We have to take Washington, and the Republican Party. Something you never hear about from the 2010 elections: we crushed the Democrats without giving money to national Republican organizations.

    That part could probably stand to be re-emphasized: give to CANDIDATES, not party PACs.

    No money to RNC, no money to the party’s incumbent protection arms for House and Senate. After the nomination if you want to give to the Republican nominee do it directly (if that’s even still legal) and not through the Establishment.

  22. McGehee says:

    Hairy-footed Visigoths, the lot of us.

    And we will have fun storming the castle!

  23. serr8d says:

    “So. If third party isn’t the answer, what is?”

    Let’s scare the bastards. Tell ’em we’re hitching wagons with the OWS outfit, to provide certain…elements…they are lacking.

    Halfway, I’m not serious.

  24. Entropy says:

    I’ve got to say that those “American Greatness” neocons scare me. They represent the worst of leftist caricatures of right wing warmongers.

  25. sdferr says:

    Can proponents of American classical liberal republican-democracy do other than support their own tenets as universally valid for human beings as such? This isn’t to say these tenets are or aren’t universally valid for human beings as such, but merely to recognize that they claim to be so, and if so claiming, can’t consistently do other than commend themselves to other peoples. But of course, the devil — as we were reminded just two days ago — is in the details.

  26. mojo says:

    (small-L) libertarianism.

    We do not initiate violence, but we have absolutely no problem responding to violence with violence.
    So choose carefully who you try to intimidate.

  27. BBHunter says:

    – Bill Kristal could not intimidate a Q-tip.

  28. Spiny Norman says:

    The Establishment GOP: relentlessly finding a way to lose in 2012.

  29. Squid says:

    We do need to loudly and regularly remind people that these are the same geniuses who gave us McCain last time around (and ‘Compassionate Conservatism’ the time before that).

  30. cranky-d says:

    It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.

  31. BBHunter says:

    – Hey, we got rid of the Botox Bitch, albeit we have to endure a Boner for a time, and Reid is reduced to clownish extremes to try to hang on, so there’s some good.

    – We just have to keep weeding the garden until the old guard is disposed.

  32. sdferr says:

    Who is Matt Bai? And has he accomplished his aim?

  33. happyfeet says:

    kinda melodramatic I think… if the establishment pansies wanna take back Team R all they have to do is vote for Romney

    done and done

    and then you can all get tasty pancakes on election day instead of voting plus you can stop and get some tasty Baskin Robbins ice cream cake bites for watching the returns later

  34. BBHunter says:

    – I sometimes wonder if the 56,000+ Americans that layed down their lives to stop the Axis in WWII would bother if they could see what we’ve come to.

    – All my family that fought and/or died would take one look at these OWS morons and there would be an ass kicking party that would go on until every little Comrad was either in jail or in the ground.

    – Olive garbage has blinked, a spokesman saying the manager was mistaken and says the company will personally apologize to each member of the Kiwanis club. According to him they have no such ban on flags at functions, and he added “We are all sincerely sorry this ever happened”. I bet they are, judging from the tone of comments after the original article.

    – This is the way you have to deal with PC gone wild.

    – Now lets see. Just who would be bothered by the sight of an American flag?

  35. newrouter says:

    “- Now lets see. Just who would be bothered by the sight of an American flag?”

    Pennsylvania: Muslim attacks atheist for insulting Muhammad

    He could object all he wanted. He could tell the “Zombie Muhammad” guy in no uncertain terms that he considered his costume offensive and insulting. But when he physically attacks him, he is crossing a line that we have not often seen crossed in America. Are we going to stand idly by while our traditions of tolerance are eroded away, for fear of incurring charges of “intolerance”? Can a tolerant society indefinitely tolerate the presence of adherents of a radically intolerant ideology?

    “Zombie Muhammad? Atheist attacked by Muslim during Halloween parade,” by Michael Stone for the Examiner, October 12

    Link

  36. Ernst Schreiber says:

    I might actually have to check out that article.

    Is it online anywhere yet?

  37. sdferr says:

    What article?

  38. sdferr says:

    This article?

  39. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Okay, found it (thanks Rush).

    I want to point out this bit:

    Like nearly every other establishment Republican I visited, [former Minnesota Congressman Vin] Weber went out of his way to tell me how much he admired these Tea Party lawmakers and shared in their essential cause. “One thing I do notice about them,” he added, “is that when I ask them, ‘So how are you enjoying it?’ almost none of them will say, ‘Oh, jeez, I’m really loving this.’ They all say some version of, ‘This is not what I’d want to be doing, but I’ve got to do it for the country.’ ” Weber seemed genuinely surprised that this aversion to Washington didn’t melt away once they arrived in town.
    “I can just tell you, when I came to Congress, we were rabble-rousers, but, boy, if you’d asked any of us six months into it how we were enjoying it, we’d have said this was the greatest opportunity of a lifetime,” Weber said. “It just struck me. And it’s part and parcel of this anti-government mind-set.”
    I wondered if maybe the Tea Partiers’ contempt for Washington was just a kind of outsider’s shtick.
    “I’d feel better about it if I thought it was,” Weber said glumly.
    [….]
    Sitting across from Weber, I found it possible to understand why most establishment Republicans are optimistic that they can ultimately co-opt the House freshmen, prevailing on them to accept the wisdom of compromise. After all, here he was, the aging insurgent, now managing partner at the lobbying firm of Clark & Weinstock. A lot of the stridently ideological Republicans who came to town in the Reagan and Gingrich years quickly flamed out and were never heard from again, but Washington has more than its share of Vin Webers and Grover Norquists and Karl Roves — Republican politicians and activists who arrived crusading against the city’s corrupt culture and subsequently became fixtures in its boardrooms and restaurants. “They’ll become the establishment,” Charlie Black, the longtime Republican strategist and lobbyist, confidently predicted when we talked about the more radical members of the freshmen class.[bold emphasis added]

    I grew up in Weber’s district (MN-2 at the time), and I can tell you, that fucker is the poster-boy for term limits. The guy went to D.C. to be part of the solution and instead he stayed there and became part of the problem. He was elected to the House in ’80 as part of the Reagan revolution, and was forced into retirement in ’92 because he was the worst Republican offender in the Congressional banking check-kiting scandle. The College Republicans that I was thick with, back in the day, chalked it up to Potomac Fever. That town is poison. And I’m glad that the Tea-Party GOPers aren’t enjoying themselves. I want ’em to do their civic duty, and then get the fuck out.

  40. McGehee says:

    They all say some version of, ‘This is not what I’d want to be doing, but I’ve got to do it for the country.’

    Hot damn, maybe there is hope.

    But let’s not get cocky. If they stayed there long enough, the Archangels that defeated Lucifer would become Beltway apparatchiks.

  41. Squid says:

    Longtime Republicans have been satisfied enough to have their candidates run down activist government as a campaign tactic, even as they themselves retained a more nuanced view of the federal government’s role (which is why a Republican Congress, working with a Republican president, managed to pass a Medicare prescription-drug bill in 2003). But when you talk to them now, these same Republicans seem positively baffled that anyone could have actually internalized, so literally, all the scorching resentment for government that has come to define the modern conservative campaign.

    Get used to the bafflement, guys. Your 2003 behavior made us stay home in droves, and your subsequent moves have made us mobilize against you. You’ve moved your own side from supporting you, to abandoning you, to working against and around you. Such political geniuses you are!

  42. Squid says:

    Soon enough, however, all heads will swivel to Iowa and New Hampshire, where a Republican nominee will emerge at last to put his or her stamp on the party’s image. And this is where, the establishment presumes, the long season of Tea Party zaniness will finally recede into the background, subsumed into some more enlightened, and more practical approach.

    The establishment isn’t presuming anything, you simpleton. They’re working overtime to make it happen. They’re desperate to preserve their cushy insider position. They’re looking at an existential fight before them. They’re not passively ‘presuming’ anything!

    This Bai kid ain’t the sharpest bulb in the picnic basket, is he?

  43. Squid says:

    At the same time, Romney, who’s supposed to be the establishment front-runner, incites no great passion on K Street and Capitol Hill, where he is regarded as a sort of well-designed political android.

    As well they should! Another plastic action figure mouthing empty platitudes; an empty vessel into which we can pour our hopes and dreams. That worked out so well the last time!

  44. Squid says:

    And while the Tea Partiers like to talk about trimming programs like Medicaid, they’ve not put much of their energy behind the kind of radical restructuring that Paul Ryan, the Republican congressman, has proposed. Instead, the loudest members of the Tea Party caucus tend to dwell almost exclusively on cuts to discretionary domestic spending, which accounts for less than a fifth of the federal budget.

    That’s a lie. How many Tea Partiers do you know who don’t support ‘fundamental transformation’ of Social Security & Medicare?

    Go suck a bag of dicks, Bai.

  45. Squid says:

    And finally, only 50-some paragraphs into the article, does Bai finally get away from the Presidential horse race and stumble into the important stuff:

    Even putting the presidential race aside, the friction between Republican insiders and outsiders will almost certainly manifest itself next year in other ways. Another wave of Tea Party-backed challengers for the Senate are already preparing to take on establishment candidates in states like Nebraska, Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida and Indiana…

    But there is another interpretation, too, which is that the movement is actually starting to alter the makeup of the party from the bottom up, and it only appears to be losing intensity because its leaders are no longer interested in shouting into bullhorns.

    I guess even a stopped clock is right sooner or later.

  46. Squid says:

    All in all, the article is far better at recording the reactions of insiders than it is at defining any of us puzzling knuckle-draggers from flyover land who keep causing such a ruckus.

    “Why are these unwashed rubes so uppity? Why can’t they just play by the old rules? Don’t they understand that they’re totally unreasonable and they’re just going to screw things up? Don’t they know that they’re born to lose and destined to fail?”

    These are the questions that remain unanswered.

  47. […] Goldstein comments: I’ve been saying it for a while now: it’s the permanent political ruling class vs. the rest of […]

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