What (Andrew Thinks) “Save The GOP” Stands For –or– Notes From Over The Cliff
Written by Andrew on October 25th, 2006
Joseph T. McCarthy says:
I remember a time when Save The GOP stood for something better than “I hope Republicans lose so that we can get payback over the ‘04 primary.”
First of all, it all goes way beyond Pat Toomey in 2004. I can think of four other Senate races off-hand where the establishment actively worked to undermine reform oriented conservatives. Think about it this way, if the White House had its way in ‘04 then Tom Coburn would still be delivering babies in Tulsa. He’s a man of integrity, and would probably be even happier to be back at his day job, but our republic would be far worse for it. At least we can count on Sen. Bob Shaffer to take on the Department of Education the way he did in the House, right? Oh wait, the administration crammed Pete Coors down our throats and now Ken Salazar is going to be in the Senate for thirty years. The list just goes on and on, and I haven’t even touched on House or Gubernatorial races. Every year it’s the same thing: First step, movement conservatives work their asses off to get our agenda moving by electing strong, committed candidates. Second, the establishment freaks out because the natives are getting restless, so they turn the twin maxim guns of the NRSC and NRCC on us. Third, hacks within the conservative movement sell-out and take the Hugh Hewitt/Stockholm Syndrom approach of assuming that this time the administration has our best interests in mind. Finally, the establishment prevails and we all lose.
I don’t really want Republicans to lose. I’m probably too nice of a guy to actually want the Democrats to lose. I just think there are a lot of good reasons to not care if the GOP does lose. First of all, we can slough off the fat. The Lincoln Chafees that are just along to be members of the most exclusive country club on the face of the earth, and even the idiots like George Allen that might be conservative but end up doing irreperable harm to the movement. Secondly, people like Bob Corker won’t be in a position to do any harm to the conservative movement if they never get there in the first place. If he did win then it would be our moral obligation to primary him in 2012, so it’s better this way. Lastly, the movement is stalled. The Bush administration has been a failure in conservative terms, and anyone who believes otherwise had better be prepared to give a good reason, and to explain away (issue chosen almost at random) the President’s inability to find a pen and veto at least one spending bill.
I don’t really want the GOP to lose, but amputees don’t want to lose their limbs either, I don’t think, and it has to happen in order for actual healing and restoration to take place. The Republican Party and the conservative movement have become mere wraiths of their former selves, and something has to be done about it.
25
PM
“I can think of four other Senate races off-hand where the establishment actively worked to undermine reform oriented conservatives.”
As disgusted as I am with the NRSC and the RNC, that is an unfair characterization. Their policy is to support the incumbent. That’s a far cry from actively working to “undermind reform oriented conservatives.”
And if you want to make a statement, the time to do it is at the primaries, and not the general election.
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PM
Non-incumbent races: Toomey, Shaffer, Coburn, and Cain.
It isn’t a statement unless we make them feel it, and if they return to power then they’ll just keep on using us. Listen, I’m going to vote for my Republican congressman, the ones who are working hard to get Pelosi elected speaker are the hack politicians who want to screw their conservative base.
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PM
Hell, they also supported Corker over more conservative canidates in TN and there was no incumbent there. The primaries are not great vehicles for change simply because of the massive amount of $$ needed to get a guy’s name out there. If Bush mentions Corker even a few times it trumps the millions another guy could spend to get name recognition.
The GOP has an ugly history of leaning towards the more liberal politician, ceterus parebus. Why? Well because a liberal can be corrupted and influenced to follow the party line of pork and power, a conservative like Coburn gums up the works and makes the GOP look like a bunch of jackasses.
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PM
Conservatives are being hurt by John McCain’s campaign finance laws. It’s no surprise that McCain has millions to buy entire college republican state federations when he himself is an entrenched incumbent.
The left has left-wing labor unions. What do we have? Until we have ten groups like the Club for Growth, the liberals are still going to have millions more to flood in for their liberal base - while ours suffers. That’s the reality of the BCRA.
26
AM
Well Joe, the solution to this problem is one that you will not support: elect true Republicans, whom the RNC will not help, to clean out the mess that is the RNC. When you chose to support Chafee and Specter, when you chose to ignore the fact that Santorum and others have sold out their fellow (true) conservatives, when you chose party alliance over ideological purity, then you, sir, have contributed to the problem, not to the solution.
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AM
Santorum “selling out” as you would call it, it may well make the difference between us having a 3rd Supreme Court appointment during George W. Bush’s presidency and not having one. Arlen Specter’s vote may well determine the makeup of these committees. And we may not get another John Roberts out of a 50/50 Senate, but you sure won’t get one out of a 51/49 Democratic Senate.
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PM
I won’t ignore the fact that Specter has served as Chairman of the Judiciary Committee in the Senate in a manner far better than I expected of him. I’ll agree with you there, that Specter has been pretty solid (surprisingly) in getting two great Justices confirmed to SCOTUS. But the fact remains that in other areas Specter has fallen short of Republican principles (if there are any left). You just have to look at his quotes highlighted in the recent post on him.
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PM
Joe I think you make a good point. I would suggest then that Santorum, the RNC and Bush might want to rethink their actions in 2004 and remember that if only they had behaved with honor we might not be in this ugly situation now.