Unfortunately, it turns out the GOP doesn’t really have a soul, so the “fight” is more or less moot:
Big business and the Tea Party are at swords’ points once again, with GOP Senate primaries for the second straight election becoming proxy battles in the war over the soul of the Republican Party.
Conservative insurgents pose serious threats this year to establishment Republicans in at least three open-seat Senate races. In every case, political action committees and lobbyists have hugely favored the establishment pick with contributions. One reason: The GOP establishment rallies industry donors behind the Republican seen as stronger in November. A deeper reason: The revolving-door clique of K Street and Capitol Hill operatives needs Republicans elected to upper chamber who are likely to play ball.
“We don’t need a lot of Jim DeMint disciples,” former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott said last election cycle. “As soon as they get here, we need to co-opt them.” Lott is now a millionaire corporate lobbyist whose clients include bailout beneficiaries like Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, subsidy sucklers like General Electric and for-profit colleges and government contractors like Raytheon. He likes Republicans who don’t take their limited-government talk so darn seriously — team players who won’t rock the boat, in part because they are eying K Street jobs after retirement.
Where does South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint fit in? His Senate Conservatives Fund in 2010 helped insurgent conservatives beat establishment Republicans in Florida, Kentucky, Nevada, Colorado and Pennsylvania. Also bringing money to the Tea Party wing is the Club for Growth, which figured in all those races and also helped overthrow notorious Utah porker Sen. Bob Bennett in favor of conservative stalwart Mike Lee. Lee, Pat Toomey, Marco Rubio, and Rand Paul aren’t exactly “disciples” of DeMint, but they are decidedly not the products of K Street.
Trent Lott vs. Jim DeMint. K Street vs. the Tea Party. The Chamber of Commerce vs. the Club for Growth. The battle lines are the same this year.
[…]
In Texas, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst has raised $364,310 from PACs, according to his latest filing — more than five times the PAC haul by conservative insurgent Ted Cruz. Dewhurst donors include lobbying firms like K&L Gates and Greenberg Traurig, government contractors like Halliburton, Obamacare supporters like Pfizer, cap-and-trade supporters like Chesapeake Energy and bailout beneficiaries like Citigroup.
In Nebraska, the GOP establishment, K Street, and business PACs are backing Attorney General Jon Bruning, while DeMint and the Club for Growth are behind State Treasurer Don Stenberg. Bruning leads Stenberg in PAC donations $221,000 to $26,000 — more than 8-to-1. Bruning’s PAC backers include Citigroup, Pfizer, ethanol giant POET, K St. lobbying firm McGuireWoods, and tobacco-regulation champion Altria.
[…]
Much of the Left and the media may see no difference between libertarians and Tea Partiers on one hand, and K Street and the business lobby on the other. But the revolving-door players know the difference, and they’re willing to spend big to put their people in power.
You know what? Screw it. Let the Trent Lotts and the John McCains and the Mitch McConnells — and the big business interests they represent — have the damn thing.
We’re never going to remove the entrenched GOP leadership class intent on bullying and breaking conservatives. They have too much money and too much power and organization. And it should be clear by now that they are more willing to fight conservatives than to take on progressives — largely because they share the same big government sentiments as their putative political enemies, and because they have an equal interest in a liberal fascist state whereby politicians and big business collude to their mutual financial benefit.
As I’ve been saying for quite some time now, it is not Democrats vs GOP. It is the entrenched ruling class vs the rest of us — and to that class, Party affiliation is largely only a matter of preferential seating arrangements around the trough.
The establishment GOP is feckless and, in an important ideological sense, corrupt to its core. It’s time it went the way of the Whigs.
The progressives, because they are more committed to the ideology of fascism, will ultimately sink this country. The modern GOP establishment, for its part, will watch and try to profit around the edges until the last bit of graft gets gobbled up by the cynical scavengers who mouth conservative platitudes while working diligently to push a ruling class agenda.
Me, I’m preparing for the rebuild. The best part of which will be when I find Trent Lott, bitch slap him, and take back a good bit of our stuff.
(thanks to Ernst)
Just before the whip comes down on the ‘net, I’ll send you Trent’s home address. As you’d expect, it’s in a very fashionable DC zip code, so competition to loot it will be fierce.
Trent’s all for re-distribution these days so he’ll be totally cool with you helping yourself, and you won’t believe how much nice stuff he has for you to help yourself to!
Fair is fair.
Bull Moose?
Where is the pointy end of the stick?
I still think the GOP is a viable vehicle to force conservative change via the Tea Party, if they can continue with electoral success.
Perhaps you missed the primary.
We have TEA Party leaders backing Romney. They’ve been coopted. The GOP has made it its goal to coopt and neuter these upstarts who are fucking with their power and livelihoods.
Trent Lott is just arrogant and stupid enough to say these things out loud so that even morons busy justifying their own cowardice and rationalizing their own timidity can hear them.
I’d hit the tip jar to see you whack Lott upside the head… of course, I’m partial to hurting him even more… pull out of the GOP and watch his influence wane and his status and funding dry up.
It’s getting harder and harder to remain a happy warrior. SIGH!
*throws shoes at computer screen*
Okay. Deep breaths.
“We don’t need a lot of Jim DeMint disciples,” former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott said last election cycle. “As soon as they get here, we need to co-opt them.”
Honestly, does Lott think no one will get wind of this? I suppose he’s right. Not only do Republicans fail to shrink government, they won’t even make the argument.
Why the hell do I even bother to vote? Especially in Clownifornia.
This brings up a question. Even at a place in the full flush of newly discovered pragmatism like Ace of Spades, I have read them edgy smart bloggin’ fellers say “If Obama wins reelection, we may not have a country!” This is no time to be a slave to ideology! We gotta win this game, folks! OR ELSE!
Beating Obama is all they want to hear. Now, haven’t we heard lectures about the puerility of sounding extreme, of going Chicken Little, of lighting our hair on fire? Yet when it comes to beating Obama, they talk as if the nation vanishes in 2013 if he wins again.
Guess what. The nation is still here after a term of Obama, and it will be if he wins again. When “pragmatic” Republicans howl about the Unmitigated Disaster of another term under Lord Unicorn, will they go into disaster mode and withdraw to the hills in camoflage if Barry is reelected? Of course not. If Barry wins, we’ll hear the same old lectures about avoiding extremist positions, about how the nation is greater than any one President, how Americans really are different and We’ll Triumph Next Time. The same thing we will hear if Romney wins.
What I personally resent is pragmatists bellowing at one time “Don’t be extremist!” and the next “We MUST defeat Obama or we’re finished!” Make up your minds, fellas. When do we conservatives get to defeat the play-nice big-government Republicans? Never, apparently. So spare us the outrage if Obama is reelected. We don’t live or die at the fortunes of a ruling class in DC. We’re out here living our lives and doing what we can to cheat and avoid government interference in our lives without being caught. Every pampered lifer in the ruling class club of Republicans in DC will prosper just fine if Barry is reelected, and that goes for the paid pundits as well.
I’m turning into Lysander Spooner. Government is always the enemy, always to be distrusted. Perhaps especially when it pretends, like the GOP, to be limited in aspirations.
Much of the Left and the media may see no difference between libertarians and Tea Partiers on one hand, and K Street and the business lobby on the other.
I think the Left knows. It’s the folks in the middle that don’t know, and the Left wants to make sure it stays that way. That low information voters see prominent Republicans like Mitt Romney and George Bush as conservatives is one of the most important assets the Left has going for it.
“It’s getting harder and harder to remain a happy warrior.”
Somehow I’m not thinking the pointy end of the stick resides merely in alienation, but then maybe I’m missing something. Besides, as I mentioned to somebody somewhere, it’s alienation by the likes of Obama at the lead — with the rest of the political-power types (or class, if we prefer) in train — that pitches up our disgust.
But we’re alienated by them from something, and it’s that “from something” that needs identification. The “from something”, I presume, is what we take as our political birthright as Americans. Obama in this portrait is the alien in every respect, a man in power who understands nothing of the glory of the United States save perhaps how to pretend to understand it. He doesn’t grasp that glory in his bones, as we do, and doesn’t even like it when he thinks he sees it at a distance: in fact, he hates it altogether at the same time as he knows nothing of it.
We move from disgust to action on behalf of that something missing. But this action should be what? And then . . .
. . . then, where’s the pointy end of the stick?
[…] as Hell sounds like it: You know what? Screw it. Let the Trent Lotts and the John McCains and the Mitch McConnells — […]
What I personally resent is pragmatists bellowing at one time “Don’t be extremist!” and the next “We MUST defeat Obama or we’re finished!”
Or, “don’t be such a Debbie Downer, this is still America and we will get through this, we just need to get Obama out so we aren’t finished.”
“A mixed economy is rule by pressure groups. It is an amoral, institutionalized civil war of special interests and lobbies, all fighting to seize a momentary control of the legislative machinery, to extort some special privilege at one another’s expense by an act of government—i.e., by force. In the absence of individual rights, in the absence of any moral or legal principles, a mixed economy’s only hope to preserve its precarious semblance of order, to restrain the savage, desperately rapacious groups it itself has created, and to prevent the legalized plunder from running over into plain, unlegalized looting of all by all—is compromise” — Ayn Rand circa 1966
So, then, stop being so unhelpful.
a mixed economy’s only hope… to prevent the legalized plunder from running over into plain, unlegalized looting of all by all—is compromise
Trent Lott understands this. Why can’t the rest of you?
Yes, Trent does understand legalized plunder, GO – oh, wait…
You can’t blame Lott and his ilk for wanting to stay forever in DC. One of the finest perks of government sinecures is that the Praetorian Guard knows where to get great hookers and blow. It’s a pity Lott never asks anyone about the best hairdressers.
Anyone mind if I start referring to Warren Buffett as Orren Boyle?
But remember, THERE IS NO REPUBLICAN “ESTABLISHMENT”, HOBBITS!
Bitch slapping is too good for Trent Lott.
I say we break him on the wheel.
The Dewhurst commercials are about to drive me to distraction. Especially their pitch about how conservatives are about to be bombarded with special interest groups and false advertising to pull them away from Dewhurst’s severe conservatism — and it ends with a special endorsement from Mike Huckabee.
{face palm}
here is for dicentra’s amusement and/or others who contend with such patois
Way too many people are hung up on the idea of “changing the party (and the ‘system’) from within”.
Ain’t gonna happen . That ship sailed a long time ago.
[…] to sound like a broken record here of late, but: I’m with Jeff. You know what? Screw it. Let the Trent Lotts and the John McCains and the Mitch McConnells — […]
Heh, Happyfeet, that reads like a group that gets absolutely nothing accomplished.
Word, mc4ever59.
I meant, word on the thing about “changing” the “system” “from within.”
Teh second Tea Party Rally in Tulsa in 2009 had Rep. John “I {heart} TARP” Sullivan as the keynote speaker, with John “I also [heart} TARP” Gibson as the emcee. And no one batted an eye — because wasn’t it totally awesome that such big names were attending? That’s what gives a movement validity, right?
sunny-dee; it seems to me that no one factors in human nature, which in the long run decides all.
Why did are ‘leaders’ go off the reservation and betray us? Because power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Want to quell the masses and get them off your back and in line? A little sleight of hand, and yell “hey look everyone. Free candy over here!”
The ‘Tea Party’- or any other such entity- must realize it’s strengths, and fall back to influencing things on the local and state levels.
That is where the real power ultimately rests.
Just as the Founders intended.
” Especially in Clownifornia.”
Come to Texas! Lots of room. Similar in many ways. Sure our coast kind of sucks a little but third place ain’t THAT bad.
Way too many people are hung up on the idea of “changing the party (and the ‘system’) from within”.
Ain’t gonna happen . That ship sailed a long time ago.
I respectfully disagree. The national party, I concede, is probably beyond hope. Our local precinct, district, and state party organizations, on the other hand, are still very much redeemable, at least in my opinion. I realize that I harp on this as often as JHo goes off on fiat currency, but I still believe that we do ourselves and our republic a disservice by letting the futility of the national race color our perception of the progress we can make locally.
We can still deprogram our friends and co-workers and neighbors from the lies they’ve been fed their whole lives. We can still reform our local parties and promote our fellow hobbits to positions of local influence. Many of us can fill our Legislatures and Governor’s mansions with reformers who will work to shrink the State bureaucracies, and also to fight back against Federal over-reach. And finally, we can start putting some responsible adults in charge of our school districts.
It’s in these local and state contests where we have a fighting chance. It’s where we have our best shot at accumulating a bit of power. Maybe not enough to reverse several generations of bad policy, and maybe not enough to unravel the bureaucracies, but maybe — just maybe — enough to ensure that our voice is heard, and that our message gets out there into the mainstream, and that we’re not so easily dismissed or mocked. Maybe even enough to unlock the ratchet, and start swinging the balance back toward the middle.
The Tea Party had enough effect in 2010 that it scared these assholes to death, and so they’ve worked overtime to marginalize and/or co-opt us wherever possible. They’ve done a damn good job of it, too. But that doesn’t change the fact that we’re still out here, and we can still make 2012 very painful for our would-be masters. I think a 1% margin for Romney and a 10% margin for our reformers would send a message that not even MSNBC could ignore. (What? A guy can’t dream a little?)
On a personal note: I don’t have the energy to build a party from the ground up, and I doubt our republic has time enough for us to establish and mature a new national organization. If we can’t budge the Establishment in the coming election, I’ll spend my organizational time and talent working on my gulch.
Rubio says Mitt should pick Rob Portman?
Fuck. It is going to be Portman.
Actually Squid, we are in agreement. The fault is entirely mine, as I didn’t specify ‘national’. I absolutely agree with you on affecting change- and being able to do so- on the local level. We are the party locally.
By all means, continue to fight the good fight.
And who is it that makes it possible for the mainstream-media to conflate Republicans and conservatives in the minds of low information voters?
Why, the conservative media, of course!
Ya know, when I hear things like Mittens will select Portman for VP, I wonder if the whole thing isn’t as rigged as the Saturday morning wrestling shows I used to watch as a kid.
Portman?
PORTMAN?!?!
And who is it that swallows the whole thing whole, Ernst. Why , THE PEOPLE, of course.
Also, Squid. Being active and changing things on the local level is the last and best hope for the country.
And the last chance before civil war and revolution.
Yeah, it was the local Tea Party in Oklahoma that sold out for a photo-op with a third-tier talk host and a Congressman who is a drunk.
I am way less hopeful than you are, Squid. People believe a lie. That lie originates in national politics, but it affects everything touching politics. That lie is that government is the answer — that government is God. Why is fetishizing a local government any better than a national government? (I’m not saying you do — I’m saying that most “conservatives” on a local level do.)
Jeff, sdferr, pablo, et al. I just started Rethinking the American Union for the Twenty-First Century . I will be reporting.
I’m to the point where I think the only thing that’s going to wake people up is default, the pain that comes with it, and the staggering awareness that we only have ourselves to blame.
Dale, I’m getting to the point we’re I don’t think anything at all is going to wake people up, as long as they can get to keep their free stuff, x-boxes, and reality tv.
My first instinct was to ask, “the nomination or the election?” But no — it’s bigger than that.
“Elections have consequences,” my ass.
“We don’t need a lot of Jim DeMint disciples,” former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott said last election cycle. “As soon as they get here, we need to co-opt them.”
Dems fightin words right dere!
Mr DeMint carries a mighty big can of DeWhoop!
Conan survived many downsizings at Wheel of Pain Ltd. but eventually even he was laid off and was forced to look for work in the gladitorial industry.
Dale, I’m getting to the point we’re I don’t think anything at all is going to wake people up, as long as they can get to keep their free stuff, x-boxes, and reality tv.
Sadly, you may be right. I’m something of a cockeyed optimist these days.
Of course, by November the proggs will have convinced themselves that an Etch-A-Sketch victory will bring Chthulhu rising from the sea — which, for them, would have much the same effect.
It would be a few days’ consolation for the fact we’re all royally fucked. But only a few.
Dale, I’m getting to the point we’re I don’t think anything at all is going to wake people up, as long as they can get to keep their free stuff, x-boxes, and reality tv.
When the state has no money left for food stamps, they’ll wake up right quick. Playing GTA on your Xbox is no fun when the free Doritos and Mountain Dew run out.
As to the rest of Dale’s insight on default: …the pain that comes with it, and the staggering awareness that we only have ourselves to blame.
I think I can safely say that most of those to blame will have no such awareness. They’ll happily point fingers at whatever target presents itself. That goes double if the target has Doritos and Mountain Dew.
Squid, re-reading Tocqueville’s Democracy chapters [Vol. II, sec. 2, 8 and 9] on American Self-interest Rightly Understood can’t help but leave us scratching our heads, wondering where that
nobilitypracticality of character went, but that it is gone is beyond apparent doubt.http://evilbloggerlady.blogspot.com/2012/04/karl-rove-voters-need-reasons-to-like.html I tried to make the case for Romney and then the SOB floats a trial balloon (again) for Rob Portman. A Bush-Rovian, what could go wrong? I need a shower. I feel so…dirty.