Tag Archives: republican establishment

Here’s How The Capitulation Is Working For The GOP

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Today seems like a good day to talk about GOP capitulation, because they’re being attacked on the austerity they’ve supposedly inflicted on us all.  Yes, all of that hellish austerity is slowing down the economy.  It’s all the GOP’s fault.  Except that they haven’t actually done all that much by the way of budget cuts.

Here’s the bottom line.  They managed a few hundred million in cuts in a continuing resolution, and received a complete thrashing in their wholesale capitulation on the debt ceiling.  I’ll grant this presumes it ends with a deadlocked Super Committee, which is a good bet.  Their base isn’t happy with them now because not only are the Republicans not doing anything budget-related correctly, but they attacked their base as ‘childish’ for actually wanting something real done.  Didn’t buy any goodwill from the left in the end, did it?  Now both sides are going to be mad at the GOP.

Typical Republican fail.

Now the establishment wants Romney to be the nominee, arguing for his electability.  If you stop to think about it, he’s too far to the left to be electable.  He’s not distinguishable from Obama in any meaningful way.  His argument and that of every other RINO can be boiled down to something along the lines of ‘I concede that the Democrat way of doing things is the right way, but I’m better because I’m going to do less of it more slowly.  Oh, and the conservatives have nowhere to go so they have to vote for me and they can suck it’ (this is not a direct quote from anyone).  If he’s nominated, I’m sure he’ll give a beautifully delivered and polished concession speech in November against an incumbent that could not have won without him.  As a mislabeled Democrat, he’ll have capitulated on all of the arguments before the election even begins in a futile attempt to attract independents and annoyed the base he thinks he can take for granted.

The moral of this story?  If you’re going to be attacked for being conservative no matter what, be conservative.  It works and will give anyone who uses it actual successes to tout come election time.  The media and Democrats will never love Republicans, but trying to appease them can cost those Republicans the support of their base.  At the very least, they may get votes but can forget the manpower they they need to win elections.

Being the Other Democrats never works.  The sooner they learn that, the more they’ll win in the future.  Heck, the RINOs might even buy themselves a little leeway once they rack up enough real wins to get the wiggle room.  The Gathering Of Pansies approach, however, won’t continue to do.

News link credit:  Hot Air

Wanting a Candidate With Fight Is Not Superficial

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Cantor wrote a great op-ed in the Washington Post about how Obama is destroying jobs.  It really hit the nail on the head.  In light of the debt ceiling capitulation however, it was totally meaningless.  Without the will and ability to fight for the principles the Republicans claim to uphold, it’s just words.  More pretty platitudes that will disappear the second any opposition from the Democrats materializes, and it always does.

Perry entered the race and now everyone is gunning for him.  Trial lawyers are going ballistic.  Karl Rove doesn’t like him.  Obama’s already mentioned him by name.   Mitt Romney may even stop being a silent windsock and pretend to be a leader now. Certainly, it’s because Perry’s electable and has a track record of winning and holding the offices he wishes to win or hold, but also that he won’t back down.  Should he become President with enough of a Congress to do something conservative, something conservative will actually get done because he has some fight to him.

No one ever has to worry about that with Republican moderates.  Moderates don’t get anything done unless they’re being Other Democrats and decimating their own ranks.  Anything resembling resistance from the left will cause them to fold.  Moderates are entirely willing to swallow hook, line, and sinker the ’need’ for comity, bipartisanship, and civility that is the spin designed to prevent action.  Throw in the puff press, and not only will moderates refuse to fix what is broken, but they can pretend to be wise and nuanced afterwards.  It’s why Democrats want them to be Republican candidates.  If they can’t push forward on their agenda, they can just tread water knowing nothing of worth will happen with a moderate in charge.

Therefore, fight in a candidate is a question of practicality.

Yes, candidates who will fight for conservative beliefs are inspiring, but our desire for them isn’t simply a superficial need for rhetorical red meat.  If a candidate will not fight for their stated principles then they may as well be Democrats.  If they just sit on their hands for fear of opposition it’s capitulation because Democrats and their policies are the status quo.  Nothing will get fixed without defeating the Democrats, and that won’t happen with standard issue Republican establishment milquetoast.

The establishment sorts have taken to defending their actions as ‘adult’ while those of us who want conservatism are ‘childish’.  They can’t exactly sell themselves on the merits so  what else were they going to do?  Their failures, cowardice, and ineptitude are as much to blame for our current mess as Democrat belief in action.  The snark is them running out of ways to sell yet another election cycle of marginal LOTE votes to an increasingly restive voting bloc growing more reluctant to support loser-as-usual.

In the end, loser-as-usual has no practical worth anyway.  It won’t fix the mess.  It won’t roll back Democrat damage inflicted since FDR.  It won’t repeal Obamacare and it won’t cut spending.  Only a fighter will do that, which is why come 2012 only a fighter will do.

News link credits:  Hot Air.

The Republican Two-Step

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November is coming, and if you’re not on board with getting Republicans elected, it may well be you need to approach the topic from a fresh direction.

As someone who stopped being a Republican loyalist in 2008 and will never be dumb enough to become so again, I can understand anyone with a third party point of view.  I don’t regret voting for Barr over the two Democrats running against one another in 2008.  However, I was missing a bit of perspective, and it’s simply this:  You don’t have to be a Republican loyalist to back Republican candidates.

There is a third way.  A strategy where independent and third-party conservatives might back Republicans without having to  acknowledge their useless establishment leadership has a point.  Think of the mindset as The Republican Two-Step.

Step One is where the bulk of the focus is now.  Support and vote for conservative Republicans, and no, the term is not redundant as anyone who’s ever cursed a RINO can tell you.  Get your kinds of candidates through the primaries and then win the general elections.  RedState is good at pointing people at those sorts of candidates, and any number of other conservative blogs are all over this now.  The Tea Parties are good with getting them through primaries, but this is all common knowledge.

That’s why I won’t spend much more time on this, and get to Step Two.

Step Two is the controversial part.  Establishment and RINO Republicans have to go, or at the very least, have their power base sufficiently short-circuited (example, the RNC) so they can’t do any real damage.  While initiatives like The Precinct Project have gone far in taking the Republican Party away from them and turning it into a real opposition party, it’s only going to get so far.  At some point, the issue with RINOs is going to have to be forced, and they’ll either be gone or stepping into line because their only alternative is unemployment.  That’s where not being a Republican loyalist and not backing all Republican candidates by rote comes into play.

Seriously, why do it?  Some may see RINOs as a lesser evil and it’s their call, but how are we going to work with them?  Do Maine’s Senate twits strike you as on-board with opposing Obama?  Is Lindsey Graham going to show some Republican team spirit and suddenly start treating conservatives like they’re on his side?  Will they ever attempt to work out their differences with us first?

Or are they going to continue what they’ve been doing?  Will they undermine any attempts to stop Obama because they have to Dooooooo Something, or they “know better” than us conservative rubes, or they want to be “historic” and “bipartisan” at America’s expense?  Will they cause the self-destruction of the Republican Party again if they’re ever put back in sufficient numbers?

The answer is demonstrated every time a RINO crosses the aisle and another power grab passes.  They aren’t worth our time and trouble, so don’t give them any.  In fact, some few need to be actively removed even if they lose to Democrats because they’re in a class of their own when it comes to impeding, undermining, or co-opting the kinds of candidates we do want from within.  The Mavericky John McCain falls into this category.

So, to those third party types who want to go a third way:  The Republican Two-Step is a third way.  It’s not a question of giving the Republican Party loyalty, which even I won’t do, because it is not a team.  It’s a convenient box in which we can place conservative, Constitutionalist candidates so the long, hard effort of constructing of a third party from scratch can be avoided.  Time is an issue, but that doesn’t mean we have to cooperate the Republican establishment’s way.

Perhaps We Should Have Named It “The Water Party”

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Granted, it wouldn’t have made much sense, but the t-shirt would have been a whole lot funnier.  Yes, the t-shirt.  Falling under the “now tell us how you really feel” category is the latest in anti-Tea Party gear:  f*ck tea. In convenient downer gray color.

I suppose if I was a liberal, I might not be happy either.  The Tea Party came along and started fighting back against them without the Republicans.  Keeping the Republican leadership as cowed as possible was supposed to eliminate the opposition.  Those pesky conservatives weren’t supposed to unite without a leader and do something about it on their own.

And then to get their sorts of candidates nominated in spite of the resistance from the squish RINO establishment?  The grassroots are driving the agenda?!  And all attempts to demonize them out of existence aren’t getting any traction?!  OH, THE HUMANITY!

It also makes you wonder if perhaps, had we gotten the liberals to hate something more practical, we could have just screwed with them all the more.  In retrospect, we could have named it “The Water Party” or “The Oxygen Party.”  They hate everything else, and it’s not like they act as if they get enough oxygen to the brain anyway.  Would it have been such a stretch for “f*ck oxygen.”  Would the Breathing Strikes by protesters dressed as Oxygen molecules have been fun to watch, albeit briefly?  Screw you O2<gasp><breathe><curse><hold breath again>!

On a less demented note, this also means the Tea Parties are a force.  If this election goes as expected, they will have had a lot to do with removing the Democrats from DC.  And this t-shirt is just a display of impending liberal defeat.