Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
12 Times the GOP Establishment Kicked the Conservative Base in the Teeth
1. The 2014 Mississippi Senate Primary: In order to stop Tea Party Conservative Chris McDaniel from unseating Thad Cochrane, a superannuated Washington lover of pork spending (who didn’t even want to run for re-election), the GOP establishment ran a ruthless campaign of attacks and dirty tricks, and when those failed, they openly courted Democrat voters to cross over into a Republican primary. (The GOP-E also intervened in Kentucky and Kansas to protect moderate establishment Republicans from conservative opponents.)
2. Funding Obamacare and Executive Amnesty: In 2015, the GOP Congress voted to fully fund Obamacare and Obama’s Executive Amnesty, despite campaigning in 2014 on a promise to defund both. Defunding them against an entrenched Democrat administration was always unlikely. However, the GOP-E went beyond failure by attacking conservative Congressmen and Senators who fought to defund them as extremists who were siding with terrorists.
3. Virginia Governor Election. In 2013, the moderate GOP Establishment undercut and refused to support Tea Party Conservative Ken Cuccinelli’s 2013 campaign for governor of Virginia, allowing deeply corrupt Clinton crony Terry MacAuliffe to win narrowly.
4. Gang of Eight: In 2013, Republican Senator Marco Rubio (along with John McCain and other DIABLOS) allied with far-left New York Democrat Charles Schumer to sponsor the “Gang of Eight” Immigration Reform Bill. The bill not only guaranteed amnesty for illegal immigrants, but its border security provisions were filled with loopholes and waivers, and the whole thing was stuffed with special interest spending.
5. Gang of 14: In 2005, moderate Republican John McCain leads the “Gang of 14” senators to make a compromise with Democrats, abandoning conservative judges nominated to the Federal Courts the Democrats had been filibustering. McCain considered the “nuclear option” of ending the partisan filibusters of Judicial Nominations unthinkable, and sponsored the Gang of 14 compromise to prevent it. Harry Reid, as Leader of a Democrat majority Congress, would later use the “nuclear option” to stuff the courts with Obama judicial appointments.
6. Undercutting Conservatives in Congressional and Senate Elections: In 2014, the GOP Establishment funded a primary campaign opponent to libertarian Congressman Justin Amash. Their tactics included a sleazy campaign ad suggesting the congressman (who is of Middle Eastern heritage) was sympathetic to Al Qaeda. (This is part of a longstanding GOP Establishment policy to backstab conservatives in House and Senate races when their preferred candidate is rejected by primary voters: See also Dede Scozzafava and Liza Murkowski)
7. Border Security: In 2006, the GOP Congress passed a law requiring over 900 miles of double layer fencing to be built on the Southwestern border. In 2007, Republican Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison sponsored a bill gutting the fence requirement. The fence was never built. (Yet the GOP still claims to support “border security.”)
8. TARP: In 2008, over the objections of Conservatives in Congress, the Bush Administration in its last days pushed through TARP, a massive taxpayer bailout of large, politically-connected banks and labor unions. Conservatives had offered a less expensive, less Government-empowering alternative to TARP, but were ignored by the leadership who cut a deal with Democrats instead.
9. Allen West: In 2012, The Florida GOP gerrymanders Tea Party conservative Allen West’s district to a Democrat majority.
10. Supreme Court Saves Obamacare: In 2012, Bush-appointed Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts saved Obamacare by pretending to find that its enforcement provisions were just a tax. In 2015, John Roberts saved Obamacare again by pretending that the Federal subsidies were supposed to flow regardless of the explicit language of the law and the expressed intent of those who passed it. John Roberts had previously voted to gut Arizona’s Immigration Enforcement laws on the basis that unwritten Federal policies carried more weight than written law.
11. George H.W. Bush Raises Taxes. In 1990, President George H.W. Bush cuts a backroom deal with Senate Democrats to raise taxes, violating a campaign pledge not to raise taxes during his administration.
12. Iran Deal: Passing the Corker Bill to cede treaty power to Democrat minority with regard to the Iran Nuclear Deal, the convoluted plan allowed the bill to pass while forcing Democrats to vote on an unpopular administration bill. But the Democrats just filibustered the bill and avoided the vote, notching up a big win for Obama. This is worth remembering any time the GOP Establishment tells you that that their differences with the conservatives are just about “tactics,” and they are the smart ones when it comes to “tactics.”
Published in General, Politics
I skimmed through the comments. A lot of entertaining discussion. While there has been disagreement about the individual points, what about the overall point of the post? Have there been times when the GOP Establishment kicked the base in the teeth? Expanding on this point, is there a disconnect between the goals of the base and the Establishment? Or does the base have unreasonable expectations and the Establishment is just doing the best it can within the limitations of politics?
Obama makes Pee Wee Herman look like Teddy Roosevelt.
Well, I’m one of the fans of this post. I think V the K has it about right. And I’m glad to have this list as it reminds me of why Trump and Carson and Fiorina have been doing so well against the establishment candidates (some of whom I really like). Trump et al are symptoms of a sea change in the Republican Party to get them out of there or get them to fight for us.
I simply don’t think the base has unreasonable expectations — but if you listen to the status quo people they just think things can’t get done any better than they are. We disagree on that point. We want someone to fight the Dems and the media. Also, major point is immigration and this is what started Trump off — it probably surprised him, too.
Here’s what a lot of us think: http://ricochet.com/steyn-on-murphys-flaw-and-jebs-hindenburg/ Mark Steyn nails it.
Obama should be locked in the Alamo’s basement.
Iran hasn’t yet risen to Hitlerian levels in achievement. If it successfully nukes Tel Aviv or a US city, it’ll be on to a very good start in that.
Saddam had less of an efficient state, and he crushed his people in somewhat different ways to Hitler, but in terms of direct impact (ie, as opposed to the damage inflicted by his enemies), he may have done more harm to his country. The figures on his murders are less clear than they are for Hitler’s, and even as a portion of the people in his territory they are lower, but it’s within an order of magnitude.
Hitler took his actions on the basis of a mistaken, hateful, belief that Jews and other minorities were making life worse for the German majority, and (separately) he worked to promote German welfare through mistaken policies. If Hitler’s beliefs had been correct, he would have been pursuing positive ends at murderously unacceptable barbaric costs. Even if Saddam had been correct, his focus was always explicitly on Saddam. He had a lot of prestige projects (the largest mosque in the world, the largest irrigation program, building a replica Babylon with each brick stamped with a message about the greatness of Saddam, etc. etc.), but many of his reforms, getting rid of the telephone network, getting rid of modern accounting, and such were not just irrelevant to the prosperity of Iraqis, but were actively intended to disempower even his preferred ethnic group. I think the degree to which ISIS is dominated by Baathists trained in Saddam’s Return to Faith Campaign is being overstated at the moment (people want a neat explanation for where ISIS came from), but it’s certainly true that it was a key input, and that Saddam’s massive efforts to theologically radicalize parts of the country in ways that were divorced from traditional Islam is likely to be one of his key legacies.
If you want to argue that Hitler was more evil, then, sure, maybe. You’ll find a lot of support, since Saddam has always had supporters. CNN actively covered for him. Soviet and later Russian sympathizing media in libertarian, isolationist, and leftist contexts supported him. It seems hard to identify a way in which they were in different leagues, though, other than Hitler’s power being greater. Also, some people believe that Hitler’s more hands off approach is more chilling than Saddam’s more visceral stuff.
Oh, and Hitler was much more successful, killing very large numbers of his enemies in war, including large numbers of Americans. That’s a pretty big deal in terms of American sympathies.
I don’t know if you feel like Pol Pot’s evils or Stalin’s were also non-Hitlerian, but part of the issue with Hitler is that some Americans and others shared Hitler’s views, which meant that Hitler’s anti-Semitism was and is important to condemn in a way that Pol Pot’s abuses just weren’t. And, again, there were a lot of sympathizers with Stalin.
I say all this not to suggest that Hitler wasn’t unbelievably evil, but to say that some other genocidal dictators are also unbelievably evil; America has saved the world from Japanese and Communist awfulness, too. It’s true that not every question of foreign policy is Munich, but it’s also true that not every question of foreign policy is a matter of choosing between simple reason and sating bloodthirsty desires of the Jews/ arms industry/ freemasons/ lizard people. As Stephen Pinker ably demonstrated, and you sometimes cite, the world was gradually being made more peaceful, such that if the North Koreans collapse and the ISIS/ Putin/ Assad/ Iran chain falls we’ll see a world in which we really don’t have a problem with Hitlerian figures. Until then, moments like Putin’s support for the Molotov Ribbentrop Pact shouldn’t surprise us (I don’t know if you feel it’s okay to note Putin’s stated support for allying with Hitler, or is that within your notion of Godwinning?), because his support for Assad, ISIS, and Iran is not of a radically different kind.
Do you think that Carson’s suggestion that “the US is very much like Nazi Germany” is an insightful one? I tend to think of that as being the utility of the Godwin rule; the Holocaust is a meaningful data point in discussing genocidal dictators, but less so in discussions of the IRS. Carson is right that the three month audit he received is terrible, but wrong to suggest that it was that sort of thing that made the Nazi regime distinctive.
Have you followed anonymous’s posts on this stuff? I don’t know if you’re intending to disagree with him, and with most experts in the field, or if you’re just unaware of the way that the agreement works.
It’s true that the Iranians commit to not building nukes, but the problem is that they do not commit to verifiably not building nukes, which ends up being quite a similar concept to not committing to avoiding building nukes.
Right, but if you go to Dave’s link, and then you google the quote, you will be reminded about why you should never ever trust content from Conservative Review and similar rage mills. CR claims that the quote was about amnesty, but the quote was about the economy, and particularly about coal. In that very same press conference, McConnell explicitly promises not to engage in shutdowns.
As it happens, McConnell has actually been pretty effective in using the power of the purse to increase the effectiveness of border enforcement and e-verify, but that’s not so much what he’s promising there. After the question the quote comes from there’s a bit where he opposes shutdowns, and then there’s a question about executive amnesty to which he responds by criticizing it.
There’s a reason that Conservative Review had to lie to get their quote; their overarching message is fundamentally dishonest and hoodwinking you is their raison d’etre.
I agree that the Trump success reflects something important. I’m not so sure that Carson and Fiorina are particularly big. It’s often the case that people try to read their preferred narrative into primaries. I was just reading an article in The Week the other day that argued that the 2012 elections were won by Romney because Santorum and Newt split the vote; it argued this using math that assumed that 100% of Santorum voters would have voted Newt if Santorum had not been running, and vice versa. There was a lot of shouting at the time about the ABR vote, but if you look at the voting preferences for “ABR voters”, Romney was pretty consistently the plurality second choice.
We may like to claim that Fiorina (whose entry into politics was as a one of McCain’s core primary backers), Ben Carson, and Donald Trump are appealing to the same impulse in voters, and there are some voters who that describes, but it’s simply false for most of them. I do think that a lot of Trump supporters are the equivalent of the racist party supporters in Europe; wanting to have their votes upset the establishment (not the political party leadership, but people in power generally). I talk to a lot of Trump supporters, though, and for many of them there’s a belief that he’s persuasive, that he gets things done, and that he’ll win the general. The further you get from activist communities, the more often you see people whose first choice is Jeb, second choice Trump, or vice versa.
In other words, there is a message in there, but it’s not nearly as loud or clear a message as the rage mills portray.
Even to the extent that there is a message there, that seems interesting to me only on a political/ procedural level. Like the belief that homicide and abortions are up or that America doesn’t manufacture anything any more, there are perpetual myths that encourage people to be disaffected. It’s worth paying some attention to for political reasons, but that doesn’t mean that it’s anything other than simply false.
I read your hostile takeover story. I disagree in that hostile takeovers are efforts to more efficiently do what the structure is intended to do. The Republican Party is intended to promote conservative policies. I don’t believe that that’s Trump’s aim. Rather, I think that Trump’s aim is more like Alinsky’s shareholder proxy activism; an effort to use large institutions to empower himself, rather than an effort to improve the institutions.
I didn’t claim that all uses were appropriate. In fact, I stated the opposite.
I agree, BDB. I was wondering if you draw the line in essentially the same place that I do.