Tag Archives: RINO

That Tea Party Isn’t So Dead After All

Posted on by
Reply

Would you like a better topic than the President’s State Of The Union speech?  On the off chance you’re curious about it, it can likely be summed up as ‘blah blah blah fairness blah blah Republican obstructionism blah blah green jobs blah blah I’m awesome.’   Instead, how about a few signs that the Tea Party isn’t quite as dead as its detractors would hope?

  • Governor Walker has $2.6 million cash on hand for the recall elections as of the end after last quarter, and raised $12 million since January 2011.  A good start considering how rabid his opponents are.  That whole ‘everything in Wisconsin is improving now that they’re not as influential’ thing isn’t sitting well with them and they’re still at it.  Still, it seems we have Walker’s back for now.
  • The Republican Senatorial nomination of Ted Cruz, DeMint’s pick for the seat to replace Kay Bailey Hutchinson has tied the fundraising of Dewhurst, the RINO Lieutenant Governor currently in the lead.  Cruz is gaining on him and Dewhurst’s support is dropping, but Dewhurst can self-fund heavily.  Cruz’ spike still shows strong growth and it wouldn’t be happening without Tea Party activism.
  • The Gingrich surge is more an expression of displeasure than anything else.  He’s not actually conservative lately despite some very strong past performance in that regard.  He is however fighting back, which is what the Tea Party and activists want.  The measurement here is that an establishment pick like Romney is on the verge of being thrashed heavily.  This doesn’t happen with weak conservative opposition.  People like the Bushes, Dole, and McCain make it through without much trouble, and we might just avoid a repeat.

Now for a more fun thought.  Perhaps the Tea Party isn’t dead.  Perhaps they just shifted to more practical activism from protests.  The ‘making noise’ part didn’t work for them, which would make the tactical shift a simple question of good sense.  Politicians may ignore protests, but threaten their jobs by ending other RINO tenures with primaries and they at least pretend to fall into line.

More smart, less loud, and definitely not dead.  Looking forward to a Tea Party 2012.

News link credit:  Hot Air

Here’s How The Capitulation Is Working For The GOP

Posted on by
Reply

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

So What’s To Be Gained by an ‘Electable’ RINO?

Posted on by
Reply

It’s one of the latest defenses of establishment Republicans:  They’re ‘electable’.

Let’s say for a moment that’s true, though the only two establishment types that were elected since I was old enough to pay attention to Presidential politics were the Bushes.  H.W. Bush was elected because we all hoped he was another term of Reagan, and W. was elected because he wasn’t Al Gore or John Kerry.  So yes, establishment types are electable.  Sort of.  Under the right circumstances.

But if we get Romney, who we might nominate because he’s ‘electable’, what’s to be gained by electing him?

Maybe he will beat Obama, because after a hellish 2012 a concrete garden gnome could beat Obama.  He gets into office with his self-financing and impeccable hair, and then what?  If he follows the pattern of McConnell and Boehner, he does nothing.  He changes nothing.  On the off chance he actually tries to go right, the slightest Democrat resistance will dissuade him.  And just like Boehner after his latest FUBAR, the only people he’ll truly attack are his own conservative supporters.

That puts us back in the cycle of:

  • RINOs fail, ‘reach across the aisle’,  or do nothing
  • RINOs lose Congress (if they had it)
  • RINOs lose Presidency
  • Democrat President gets into power, makes massive agenda advancement.
  • Democrats overreach, Republicans get back into power.
  • Repeat from top.

This happened with Clinton and Obama (both following Bushes).  If the pattern holds with Romney, he’ll lead to the next Democrat President after decimating Republican gains in Congress come 2014.  But hey, he was electable.  A fact that won’t mean much when he squanders opportunities and razes his own party to irrelevance.

It makes no difference because the electability argument is just spin.  Obama was elected just fine, and he’s no moderate.  The entire Democrat party isn’t moderate in any way and hasn’t been for some time, and yet they win.  Could that be because electability has more to do with articulating ideas, motivating supporters to fight for you, and good campaigning instead of being indistinguishable from your opponent in any meaningful way?  I’m inclined to think so.

News link credit:  The Hill blog.

Republican Failure Control

Posted on by
Reply

Erick Erickson at RedState put up a post today regarding a message he and other conservative activist drafted and sent to Congress.  In short, it states that anyone who backs the McConnell plan to give the President near-unilateral authority to raise the debt ceiling doesn’t get their support.

McConnell is a RINO disaster and a failure of leadership.  Republican failure control has been long overdue, and a serious shortcoming for some time.  To that end, Erick’s approach takes advantage of a huge and immutable fact in Republican politics:  the conservative activists the RINOs so despise do all the heavy lifting.  Heavy lifting that can be selectively withheld now that we can organize without the party.

No, we don’t provide the bulk of the money, but the manpower, energy, and votes?  They can’t get along without us, and this can be put to use in getting rid of Republican failures like McConnell.  We can’t remove him until 2014, but we can isolate him from his allies with threats of not supporting officeholders that do back him.

As to the purpose?  Likely this will provoke more of the “perfect candidate” straw man nonsense, but the bottom line is simple.  The Republicans can’t be a real opposition party and reverse decades of liberal damage so long as the McConnells retain significant control within it.  We can fight the Democrats once the Republicans are actually ready, willing, and able to do so, hence this over attacking Obama.  For now.