(Jeff Danziger’s website)
.
Remember “Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line”? Well, Jillian Rayfield at Salon reports that the new, improved GOP isn’t living up to that old saw:
Former Rep. Joe Walsh, R-Ill., announced Tuesday that he is forming a super PAC “to support freedom-loving conservative alternatives” and to fight back against a Karl Rove initiative to keep unelectable Tea Partyers from winning primaries…
Walsh was responding to the launch of the Conservative Victory Project, a new initiative by the Karl Rove-linked super PAC American Crossroads. The idea is to enlist GOP billionaires to crush efforts by the Tea Party to pick off establishment incumbents and/or field far-right conservatives in the primaries that have no hope of winning a general election…
Tea Party groups were not happy about it. Matt Kibbe, the head of Freedomworks, called the move “Orwellian” and rather dramatically said in a statement that “The Empire is striking back.”
“All events point to a fundamental clash between the old guard Republican establishment dictating outdated ideas from the top-down, versus a tech-savvy younger generation of activists driving their agenda from the bottom-up,” Kibbe wrote. “These blatant acts of hostility are typical behavior of an entrenched political establishment, circling the wagons around incumbents, regardless of job performance in office.”
“I dare say any candidate who gets this group’s support should be targeted for destruction by the conservative movement,” wrote Erick Erickson on RedState.com.
Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots, wrote in a statement that Rove is part of “the consultant class” that “has been on the wrong side of history.” And Amy Kremer, head of the Tea Party Express, warned: “If the establishment’s large donors want to see a complete electoral catastrophe, then all they need to do is push Tea Party conservatives into supporting alternative third candidates.”…
Steven Law, the American Crossroads president who had initially spoken with the Times, agreed on MSNBC’s “Daily Rundown”: “It’s not because we’re necessarily nominating candidates who are too conservative. We’re just nominating candidates who don’t have the discipline or the fundraising drive or a lot of other things that they need to be able to effectively compete against very good Democratic candidates.”
It can be hard for us outsiders to separate the pure grifters (like Kibbe) from the true believers (Martin, AFAICT) from those who actually believe that President Obama is the Antichrist and that they’re entitled to make bank off their fellows (Walsh, Erickson). But I will admit it’s fun to watch today’s Repubs act like the DLC-era Democrats.
What’s on the agenda for the day?
MikeJ
Funny that just a few weeks ago Erik, son of Erik was making noises like he was going to moderate, and taking shit from his readers for it. Then he got axed from CNN and he’s back to, “I dare say any candidate who gets this group’s support should be targeted for destruction by the conservative movement.”
Older_Wiser
Sorry, Establishment Republicans, you allowed those “conservative” freaks to take over your party, and you pandered to them to get the votes.
The stupid are getting more stupid, and the shit is getting deeper. “Discipline” for those types?
Like Sarah Palin, who was really the popular air-head Prom Queen who got a crack habit and created her own downfall. You can only fuck up for so long before you self-destruct from the lies, ignorance and hate.
amk
You know what’s the real problem of dems ? Lack of serious grifters.
Baud
I don’t know about the large donors, but I would love to see that.
Linda Featheringill
Love to see Republicans fighting with each other!
I do wonder though, if I were a major Rep donor, would I prefer Karl Rove as the steward of my money [he is greedy] or Walsh [who is greedy and not very bright].
Actually, if I had money to give to the Republican cause, I’m not sure what I would do.
MikeJ
@amk: You slept through the Mark Penn led Hillary campaign?
amk
@MikeJ: I said serious. One time failed campaign gig serious does not make.
Look at dick morris.
Patricia Kayden
I wish all this Repub infighting was closer to the next election. Unfortunately, I think by 2014/2016, they’ll have ironed all this out.
TheMightyTrowel
@amk: ew! do i have to?
c u n d gulag
As long as the Tea folks stayed in the bag for the party, they were fine.
Now, the Republicans don’t know what to do with all of their loose Tea.
Raven
@Older_Wiser: Paul Broun is going to announce for senate today.
OmerosPeanut
I would so love to hear the honest answer to the question implied in that comic.
“Justice Scalia, as an Originalist what would the founding fathers say about the constitutionality of a black man in the presidency?”
Schlemizel
@amk:
No they have grifters the real difference is the goopers con men have actually won elections in the last 20 years. We have losers like Mark Penn.
Also the size of their bank accounts I think.
Ben Cisco
All kabuki for the rubes.
Rove isn’t looking for better Republicans, he’s looking for Republicans that can stop flinging their own sh*t in public long enough to win an election.
And the FREEDUMB! brigade is having none of it.
Perhaps news of irony’s demise was premature.
MikeJ
@Ben Cisco: To the teabaggers, flinging shit in public is what it means to be conservative.
Older_Wiser
@Raven: I wouldn’t allow this “doctor” to touch me with a 10 ft pole, much less serve on a Congressional science committee. Of course, the Idiocracy in GA will vote for this theocratic “good man”, won’t they?
Schlemizel
@Raven:
I don’t think I had ever heard of him before & assume I am a better person for it
merrinc
@Patricia Kayden:
There was a time I would have agreed with this statement. Not so sure anymore, though. The Tea Party hasn’t approached peak wingnut yet.
Good morning, Anne Laurie and thanks for starting it off with this welcome news . It’s desperately needed here in NC where the GOP has solid control of both chambers of the legislature as well as the governor’s mansion and the state supreme court. Here’s just a sample of what’s in store for Tarheelians:
Yesterday the House voted to reduce the amount of maximum weekly benefits unemployed workers can receive, reduce the maximum number of state unemployment benefits from 26 weeks to between 12 and 20 weeks, and end federal emergency unemployment benefits that kick in when state benefits expire — that’s $25 million a week in federal money that will no longer be put back into the NC economy. Businesses are happy with the cuts — in exchange for selling out NC workers who have been unable to find jobs, businesses will now save a whopping $26 per year per employee. No other state has ever made such drastic cuts in unemployment benefits.
(Summary courtesy of Progress North Carolina)
Voter ID laws and reduction of tax rates for high wage earners and corporations to follow. Gonna be a long four years down here.
John Weiss
@Linda Featheringill: Let the games begin!
kay
@amk:
If you think of a politcal party as a kind of governing structure, which is how they were set up, county, state, federal leaders and then actual employees for operations, it becomes clear what Republicans are doing. They’re privatizing. They’re supplanting the existing “governmental” structure of that Party with privatized contractors.
Older_Wiser
@merrinc: McCrory (Duke Energy’s man in Raleigh) and the Rs are going to turn NC into MS. Yeah, I live in NC.
Raven
@Older_Wiser: Yep.
arguingwithsignposts
These people really are totally unaware of any internet traditions, aren’t they?
Raven
Brokaw and Jane Pauley are all over the boomer argument on Joe.
JGabriel
Salon:
Right. Because Tea Partiers are renowned for their youthful visages and forward-looking political instincts.
.
Raven
Athens Andover is a collaborative album between The Troggs and what was then three-quarters of R.E.M.
“In later years, Mr. Presley developed an obsession with alien abductions and crop circles and used his song royalties to pursue UFO research. In 2004, he published a book on the subject, “Wild Things They Don’t Tell Us.”
aimai
@kay:
Can you expand on that, Kay? Maybe a whole post? I have to run and shovel snow and take my kid to school but I’d love to continue that discussion.
jibeaux
Announcing that you’re going to form a huge, well-funded SuperPAC consisting of people who think the right way who are dedicated to making sure only the right people are nominated, is more or less guaranteed to raise a ginormous fuss from the tea party types. Paranoia is in their DNA and “don’t tread on me” is on their Buicks.
kay
@aimai:
Hi aimai!
Sure, I’ll try. Talking to the disgruntled Tea People here, I’m starting to think they’re LESS radical than the GOP.
They thought it was about reducing the size of government, but it isn’t. It’s about re-directing public funds OUT and then UP.
I think the GOP end up with several cirporate-type entities, huge salaries at the tippy-top and then 10 dollar an hour temps. I think caucuses and such, Party chairs, people who are ELECTED matter less and less.
They’re “hollowing out” that Party, as an entity.
Sayne
Please proceed, Republicans.
Bruce S
“acting like DLC era Democrats”
As much as I have always disliked the DLC, I think they went about their project more from a policy perspective than whatever the hell is going on among GOPers today. There was also more diverse group among the DLC-oriented wing. I don’t think the Dems ever acted this nutty and paranoid – the party has always been open to various wings and factions finding areas of common ground while they oppose each other on particular issues. This seems different – and much more like fratricide.
merrinc
@Older_Wiser:
McCrory actually wasn’t awful as mayor of Charlotte. (I’m in the suburbs of the Queen City.) But like Thom Tillis, his days as a moderate Republican are behind him. Mayor Pat has sold his soul to Art Pope and the Koch Brothers. I’m a transplant but I’ve been here most of my adult life and have grown to truly love this state. I shudder to think of what’s going to happen to it in the next 4 years.
Chyron HR
@Raven:
Research ’em? Hell, they abducted him! We are talking about Elvis, right?
Ash Can
Shhh…don’t anybody tell them the real reason they’re not winning elections. They’re so precious when they’re like this.
aimai
@kay:
I see. Yes. I agree with that.
On the our grifters vs. their grifters I don’t think I identified people from our own side like Mark Penn, Dick Morris, and the late unlamented guy who ran all those Democratic campaigns into the ground (he was a well known fundraiser and huge macher whose candidates never won anything and I think Kerry and Obama both rejected him) until after I started seeing the shift on the Republican side.
Politics before Obama seemed very distant and lacked a real grassroots component. It was all carried out at a very high level of cost and abstraction. You knew there was the “money primary” where “serious” candidates had to be offered money by serious donors before they even made it into your consciousness. And the handlers on all sides–handlers of money and handlers of campaigns, were always professionals. You knew they were hired guns. (Clinton’s campaign was where they also became rock stars with that movie The War Room.)
With the money sources on the right wing funnelling down to a few major millionaries and billionaires retail politicks and grubbing for money from millions of small donors looks less and less efficient as a grift. The sources for pocketing money during a campaign are smaller. They are just shifting back to the “set up a foundation and take your grift as a salary” model perfected by the AEI and Heritage foundations years ago. But now you don’t have to do it as a foundation at all, you can just have a free floating, unaccountable, PAC.
Cassidy
Yay! Injuries! Wooo! Go Team Republican!
Older_Wiser
@merrinc: McCrory wasn’t “awful” if you were into the Chamber of Commerce and/or a center city hipster. For the rest of the population, he was a disaster in sheep’s clothing. I lived most of my life in Charlotte, and it’s been evolving into a corporate shit-hole for the last 30 yrs. Moved away in 1999 because I could no longer afford it.
Ash Can
@kay: That makes a lot of sense in light of what happened in the last presidential election. I live in a traditionally Republican ward, yet I saw NO sign of any Romney campaigning whatsoever. Nobody came to my door, nobody left literature, no live person phoned us (even though my husband the libertarian gets included in many GOP call lists). However, OFA cells were everywhere, serving all the neighborhoods. Even though I was already volunteering myself, I got several calls, from real-live actual people, first asking me to help with phone banking and GOTV (I was), then, on and just before election day, urging me to vote (I of course did). When I realized from news accounts that the Romney campaign hadn’t even tried to put boots on the ground, I was gobsmacked. Then again, these were the people who were convinced they were going to win just because.
Kay
@aimai:
I don’t think their big donors have any attachment to the GOP as a Party. The Koch’s don’t care about the organization that is the GOP. They want what they want. They want to end organized labor and environmental regs. The same is true of Adelson. Adelson has actually said as much. He wants to buy one issue, Israel. Whoever and whatever gets him there.
I heard complaints from local GOP’ers, “Party people”, at the county level about “Boston”. They said Romney’s corporate team had contempt for them.
I don’t have any sympathy for the Tea Party, but I see the objection. They thought they could change the GOP thru elections, both running for positions within the Party and getting people elected. I’m not sure the GOP believes in those anymore. Much easier to have a opaque and private appointed “board” model. Quiet rooms.
Kay
@aimai:
I think Kerry started the process of rejection, but his campaign had tons of grifter-groups. It was a mess, and it was a mess partly because he had all these outside groups, many of whom weren’t doing anything.
I think Obama really cleaned house. I actually think some of the bitching from “long term Party people” (like Rendell) has to do with the fact that Obama cut them out of the campaign.
Ash Can
@aimai:
I don’t think that component was always lacking completely, but I understand your idea, and I do believe that the real difference with Obama stems from his experience as a community organizer. He fought corporate interests and the Chicago Machine here in the neighborhoods from the ground up and saw firsthand that such an effort can be successful. He knew that winning campaigns are based on community organizing writ large, and the GOP scoffed at this at their own peril (and will continue to do so, hopefully, until they get some sense knocked back into them).
Suffern ACE
@Kay: which is why I don’t think Rove is a grifter. He’s actually trying to set up a machine with himself as the boss, or at least one of the bosses. If the democrats set up something like crossroads and put James Carville in charge, that would be a grift. Rove will eventually get the laws changed so that PACs can provide campaign support if he has to.
mai naem
There’s a couple who has lived a street over from me for years and years, who I drive by every day.. Every single election they have Republican signs up(federal/state/local offices.) My guess is that they’re in their sixties – not sure post or pre- SS age. I’ve been to their annual yard sales where there will be Limbaugh/Hannity/Malkin books for sale. Anyhow, this last year, they had no signs. None. I can’t decide it was an anti-Mormon, anti-black thing because we had Flake, Romney and Parker(black Repub) running or if it’s because they finally figured out that the Repubs were pulling one of them on Medicare/SS.
Ash Can
PS: Speaking of campaign fun, LGF is reporting that Fox News issued a brief statement last night announcing that they weren’t renewing Dick Morris’s contract. Sounds like someone’s feeling the bite of the declining ratings that ensued from Fox News fucking up everything it touched during the last election campaign.
Higgs Boson's Mate
The GOP has been a top down organization for as a long as I can remember. The 2012 election was the first one in my memory wherein the nominee for president wasn’t already known to a certainty well in advance of the contest.
The Tea Party’s true believers seem to be subject to the “Silent Majority” delusion, itself a creation of their top down forebears. The grifters, like Kibbe with his ludicrous (And nonexistent) “tech-savvy younger generation of activists driving their agenda from the bottom-up,” are just there to wring money out of the superannuated cranks who are the backbone of the outfit. For different reasons, neither the cranks nor the grifters will advance the TP beyond spoiler status. I wish them all the luck in the world.
gene108
@merrinc:
Do you think Republican overreach in NC will trigger a backlash? And/or are the state Dems still organized enough to capitalize on a backlash?
I know people, who switched from Dem to R because of the Easley era scandals and wanting to change government, because the entrenched Dem structure had gotten corrupt.
They aren’t true believers in what the Republicans are selling. They just want good government.
Frankensteinbeck
The GOP billionaires created the Tea Party. They’re still funding it. The GOP billionaires won’t save you, Rove, because they’re the people screwing you over.
gene108
@Older_Wiser:
Well, I’m hoping for a backlash.
Given North Carolinians native contempt for South Carolina, as being a backwards and less successful state, I don’t think people really want to become Mississippi-esque.
Suffern ACE
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: those tech savvy young activists are Breitbart’s goonies. That’s their future.
jibeaux
@gene108: There’s definitely something to that… I mean, the lt. gov race was down to the wire and the gov. race wasn’t particularly close. I can’t really come up with a compelling reason to vote R gov and D lt. gov unless you’re just trying to send a message about too many D governors who haven’t been very good.
And it’s a fair point, the governance lately has not been stellar. Unfortunately I think we’re going to find out how much further we can fall.
Kay
@Suffern ACE:
I heard Michael Steele yesterday on the radio, and he was saying that the GOP should send money down the chain to state Parties. I just think they’re way, way beyond that. Dealing with elected leaders of the Party (state and county chairs, etc.) is a pain in the ass, as all democratic instituions are, right?
Why not just set up an alternate Party governing structure with appointed/hired people and bypass the Party process completely? They have unlimited Citizens money to do it.
I think their approach within the GOP Party “government” fits perfectly with their approach to actual government. The conservative governors haven’t “shrunk” government. They’ve simply outsourced or sold governmental services and public assets to private entities. The quasi-government is as big or bigger than any elected government ever was, it’s just less accountable and transparent! I think some of the smarter Tea Party people here locally have figured that out.
Teejay
Not quite. Prof. Jonathan Turley testified before Congress last year that the recess appointments were unconstitutional. Not at all a partisan hack. It reminds me of that Bush era adage: ” Sometimes it’s true even if George Bush thinks so.” Much as I would like to believe the appointments were legal they weren’t.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Suffern ACE:
LOL. Their definition of “tech savvy” and mine are worlds apart.
geg6
Work. Which I really don’t feel like doing. I ran a FAFSA completion workshop last night at a local high school and didn’t get home from work until about 9pm. I’m tired and burned out.
What I’m looking forward to is this evening. John is out of town, so I have the house and Otis to myself. I recorded last night’s episode of Pioneers of Television on PBS and that will start my evening. Then I am definitely watching Mea Maxima Culpa on HBOWest. If Alex Gibney has made a film about the criminal conspiracy that is the Catholic Church that is half as powerful as his other films, especially Taxi to the Dark Side, it will be wonderful to watch him eviscerate the twisted man with the red Prada loafers who presumes to tell us all how we should be living our lives. And then Top Chef to end the evening.
Crazy that I am anticipating just a quiet evening watching tv. But it’s all quality, if eclectic, viewing. And I’m getting old. Shit.
piratedan
had to get away from the TV this morning, Chuckles the clown on TV telling me that Congress is blaming the President for debt crisis again and nary any word about who is actually telling the truth and whose responsibility it is to PASS legislation regarding a budget.
Hey Chuck, maybe even YOU can understand this…..
http://www.upworthy.com/how-congress-screws-the-president?g=2&c=ufb1
woozywinks
All this shows is that the Repubs suck at democracy because they don’t believe in it.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@woozywinks:
“If this were a dictatorship it would be a heck of a lot easier… as long as I’m the dictator. Hehehe.”
-George W. Bush. 2002
jrg
Wow. All this so that back in 2010, they could pretend Dubya didn’t exist.
What a bunch of clowns. If they took some *cough* personal responsibility *cough*, they wouldn’t have to pretend that “establishment republicans” are the problem. Anything to stop a little introspection, I suppose.
shortstop
@Kay: I think you’re absolutely right. It will be interesting to see how long the less engaged, habitual but not overly informed Repubs will blithely go along, convinced that smaller guv really is the common goal. (Here I’m thinking of some of my older relatives, who identify as Repubs but haven’t updated their internal description in 30 years.) We already know that the media is on board with perennially perpetuating the GOP = small government meme.
Kay
@shortstop:
I felt as if they saw glimmers during the media-Republican “we hate government employees” campaign of 2009 thru 2011,partly because in these conservative areas (like where I live) conservatives ARE government employees. I can’t swing a cat without a hitting a loyal Republican who is ALSO a government employee.
What do people like Mitch Daniels and John Kasich do to shrink “government”? Nothing. They just replace government employees with private employees, and the private employees always make less, but there’s no net “savings”. The private companies then lobby for more public money directed their way.
It’s almost silly. They replaced public employee unions lobbying Democrats with private companies lobbying Republicans for privatized government contracts. That’s exactly what’s happening in Ohio with public education and it’s what will happen when they sell the turnpike and the state parks.
WTF? That’s a “win” for small government? Where’s the “smaller” part?
mir13
And people were wondering just exactly how we could take back State Governments and the House. Oh ye of little faith. Let’s see what happens after the Money BooBoos and their Teahadi Brown Shirts get done looting and pillaging everything that isn’t nailed down.
Mike in NC
We fled VA just before the NeoConfederates took over the state government. Now the same thing is happening in NC. Looks like its time to move again.
Woodrowfan
@Mike in NC: you can come back. Northern Va is pretty safe…
shortstop
@Woodrowfan: Your state legislature, on the other hand, is still insane. Don’t do it, Mike!
Chris
@Ben Cisco:
This. Which is why I have no dog in the fight – there is still no “moderate” Republican faction in any meaningful sense of the word. So let’s just sit back and watch them beat the tobacco juice out of each other.
@merrinc:
This.
It’ll be really interesting if Rove & co get enough big donors to support them and the teabaggers still refuse to fall into line.
Chris
@Kay:
I don’t think that’s completely true. Not sure if it’s cultural or institutional, but IMO, the Republican Party has essentially been the interface between big business and the government since the 1870s and it’s going to take a lot more than this to shake that up.
The especially revealing thing if you look at the party’s history is that this remained true all through the “liberal consensus” years of the fifties and sixties – as you can tell from the fact that the dominant moderate wing of the party was also the one supported by Wall Street (the term “Rockefeller Republicans” means more than just “liberal”). Their moderation wasn’t a sign that they were distancing themselves from the big donors but rather that the big donors had concluded the New Deal state was here to stay and they’d better learn to work with it. The GOP, good little poodle that it was, simply followed suit.
All that to say that, yeah, I think the big donors do prefer the GOP. Even if they colonize the Democratic Party, they never fully trust it. The GOP has been their preferred vehicle since forever and I don’t see that changing.
Chris
@Frankensteinbeck:
Billionaires aren’t monolithic, though. An American-style far right movement whose foundational principle is “rich people rock” will always be able to count on some big corporations and rich dynasties to finance it purely for ideological reasons. But there are also a lot of 1%ers out there who are more pragmatic and who’re in it to buy political influence, not shill for an ideology.
I’m betting there are a lot of people who financed the teabaggers in the hopes that it would protect them from a leftward shift in politics, but who, once they’re convinced that it’s a losing horse, will no longer want to back it.
(Which doesn’t necessarily mean these people would trust Karl Rove with their money. Or that they’re at the point where they’ve given up on the teabaggers yet).
Chris
@Kay:
Wait. Didn’t that stop applying, like, twenty years ago? I thought one of the hallmarks of the Gingrich Revolution was making the whole process less top-down, so that Republican candidates, instead of waiting for the campaign money to be funneled to them through the national party, started going directly to their local Chambers of Commerce and other corporate organs for the $$$.
At least I remember having that explained to me on this very website…
Chris
@Kay:
Well, I don’t think any of them actually believe in “small government” for its own sake, not when push comes to shove. And government employees blurting out libertarian shit have become such a cliche it’s not even ironic anymore. It’s always different when it’s them, it’s all these other useless departments that suck. Quite a few people covered in Romney’s 47% speech still cheered because they thought “he doesn’t mean me.”
Chris
Just realized almost all my responses were at Kay. Well, thanks for piquing my interest! Sorry I didn’t get to this thread until it was dead.
someofparts
How weird if something launched as a Koch-funded astroturf outfit actually grew legs, developed a pulse, and fought back. Alien v. Predator