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The Purity-for-Profit GOP Leading a Reign of Error
The French Revolution began with disaffected aristocrats wanting to reform their stodgy, inflexible political system. If only King Louis XVI would accept a more liberal Constitutional Monarchy, France could enter into a bright new future.
Once the revolution was underway, a group of the bourgeoisie decided these modest goals weren’t progressive enough, so they formed the Jacobin Club to steer the reforms further to the Left.
When the king was deposed, a group of Jacobins decided the club itself wasn’t progressive enough. They brought in the lower classes and formed the Montagnards to steer the movement even further to the Left.
The ascendant left empowered Maximilien Robespierre to launch the Reign of Terror, but a group of Montagnards decided he still wasn’t progressive enough. They formed the Hébertists to steer the nation further to the Left still.
In American politics, a similar dynamic is taking place, this time from the supposed right:
Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) has been able to count on his Facebook page for stalwart support during his long-running battle with the House Republican leadership, including a successful effort to oust House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio).
“Keep up the great work,” read a comment posted last week. “We the people thank you for ridding us of John Boehner!”
But in recent days, the tone of the comments on Meadows’s page, and those of the other members of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, have changed significantly.
“You truly should be ashamed,” one commenter wrote Thursday. “The people in the caucus will be held responsible come election day.”
“You should all be replaced,” a critic told Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.). Another called Rep. Raúl R. Labrador (R-Idaho), one of the most persistent thorns in Boehner’s side, “a RINO establishment lap dog” and “another go-along to get along phony who will GLADLY step on the throats of the Conservative electorate.”
I say “supposed right” because many voices attempting to enforce purity on the House GOP are flirting with a big government presidential candidate. While screams of “RINO” and “sell-out” rise from the angriest corners of the Internet and talk radio, Donald Trump is sticking it to the squishes by promoting campaign finance reform, defending Medicare and Social Security, praising burkas, attacking the Christianity of his rivals, and subtly walking back his stand on immigration.
Today, a leading pro-Trump website hit the House Freedom Caucus for being establishment stooges. The article specifically attacks Reps. Mulvaney, Labrador, Amash, Jorden and Meadows; those congressmen have Liberty Scores ranging from 93 to 96 percent.
And if my inbox full of donation pleas is any guide, several political groups and conservative personalities have learned that the more shrill their cries for the heads of party leaders, the more money they make. As the purity-for-profit tumbrels roll down Pennsylvania Avenue, remember that every stroke of the guillotine leads to a smaller and meaner party.
A political movement waging a continuous reign of terror against its most loyal members is a movement doomed. It appears that many “conservatives” are so used to being against things, they no longer know what they’re for.
Published in Politics
Part of the problem is the trust deficit between DC and the rest of the country. Created by DC, and fanned by commentators. People are tired of being lied to their faces and are generally suspicious because the political class (including professional operatives) of the Baby Boom and Generation X (with a few notable exceptions) has proven itself singularly incompetent with regard to the health of the Republic.
However, it seems likely that a significant number of the critiques mentioned are from perpetual malcontents (bomb-throwers, who just like to complain), Lefty activists trying to cause trouble, and political opportunists.
Of the first, they will never be happy, nor will they ever come up with a solution. They just like to complain and harangue. It is worth listening to their complaints to see if there is validity in them, but otherwise ignore.
Of the second, they point the direction in which to go, opposite.
Of the last, many are parasites. My political donations have dropped off dramatically over the past few cycles. They are solely concentrated upon individual politicians. This is because the metastasizing of political action groups filling up my in box has reached a ridiculous level (thank you SaneBox for helping me to address). There are a lot of political opportunists who are just into political fundraising for profit. They have to perpetually send out screeds to bring in money. Without the internet many of them would be cranks at a bar.
Republicans don’t have to vote to confirm Obama’s bad appointments. But they do. The problem is that they don’t want to reform government, or reduce its size and scope. But they want to keep lying about it.
Earlier this year the Senate voted 53-46 to confirm Loretta Lynch. That means there were plenty of Republicans who voted in favor. And what do we get for it? She refuses to bring charges against Lois Lerner.
Republicans have no stomach for reforming an abusive government, even when they have the power to do so, and they won’t have any more stomach for it under a Republican president.
Skipping ahead to the last page, because I’m too lazy to read all the other remarks . . . (just some of ’em) . . . but we’re also seeing this trend on the left.
It’s the reason the participants in the recent Dem debate bore so little resemblance to Democrat candidates from even 10 years ago. There is no room left in their party for a Jim Webb.
And I think it’s been happening on the left far longer, which explains why, even after the Obama triumph of 2008, the left never got less angry. They became even angrier, even more shrill in their cries against Republicans and Conservatives, and even more Marxist in their politics.
So look at what the Democratic Party has become — a group that is essentially at war with its own country — and take it as a warning.
The way the angry left has been for the last decade and a half (because really, it was the Bush 2000 election that turned them into feral beasts) is how the right will be in less than a decade if we don’t get it together.
They came out as feral beasts 13 years earlier than that — when Bork was nominated to the SC.
And even before that, some twenty years earlier, with the Port Huron Statement by the SDS.
Has everyone forgotten the 60s?
Here’s where I disagree with this sentiment. What is the Left angry about? And it isn’t Bush/2000 because they were still angry, as you said, after Obama in 2008.
Now, what are Conservatives angry about?
Honest answers to those questions will dispel this notion, I think.
Did I get the wrong decade? Sorry. I thought this was around 65.
No you got it right (it was ’62 btw), I was broadly agreeing with you. People seem to think that the left’s slide towards their current state started recently. It most certainly did not.
The current environment is all about ratings (Levin’s, Ingraham’s, Rush, Hannity, etc.) and fundraising. Period.
The people involved don’t suffer as much as we do when the republic goes down for the third time, in fact, they probably make more $.
I was called all those things. I’m a conservative. Just like members of the House Freedom Caucus who are now being called RINOs.
It’s one thing to say that the loss of these jobs is no big deal or that we’ve already overcome and adapted to to it; I’m not so sure I’d agree with either of these statements, but I won’t argue because I don’t have the figures and charts and I’m not certain that would be enough to convince my eyes that they’re liars anyway.
It’s quite another thing, though, to say that it’s not a loss or that we actively don’t want these jobs. It seems to me that the desirability of economic activity in your community as opposed to someone else’s community is self evident.
Robert, did you notice that McAuliffe won the group who answered “yes” by 19 points? And that Cuccinelli won those who answered “no” by only 7 points?
Also, 48% to 45% isn’t a “statistical tie.” How close was that election?
Okay then where was the Leftist media saying that the shutdown did it? CNN themselves pointed to abortion and didn’t even mention the shutdown in their post-game report. And, I’m sorry 45 to 48 is a statistical tie. It was a close election, but I reject the notion that without the shutdown Cuccinelli would have won because there were greater factors pointing elsewhere.
That conservatives still exist.
It is true that the left has always been angry. But the angry left has never held this much power before. And even with all this power, they’re still angry. That’s the weird part. How can you have such absolute control of the culture and still be perpetually pissed off?
In my initial statement I said this:
That should be clear enough.
As to RNC funding, your sources prove that Cuccinelli believes he was stiffed — I knew that — but don’t prove the truth of it. They spent more than they did on establishment favorite Chris Christie. They spent less than they did on McDonnell, because in McDonnell’s day they were spending like drunken sailors. This looks like a fair analysis of both sides of it.
Besides if they stiffed Cuccinelli they also stiffed Ed Gillespie last year. Gillespie ran a straightforwardly conservative race, but he is a former RNC chairman — probably as Establishment as it gets. Nonetheless he was dramatically underfunded. There was no ideological bias: the common thread was the race was not seen as competitive until too late. I’m not aware of Gillespie complaining about it.
(Incidentally, we may have a Gillespie vs. Cuccinelli gubernatorial race.)
Money played a role. So did the mess they made of social issues, Bill Bolling, the gas tax, McDonnell’s problems — and the shutdown.
A lot of the problem is that the anger is an end in itself. If you get high on self-righteousness, you are always going to need that buzz.
If everyone right of center left the country tomorrow, once their initial celebration was over, they would start tormenting each other.
I don’t have bookmarks stored, so this is from a quick Google search. So some of these sources are actually conservative.
This by Jim Geraghty pretty much rings true to me throughout. He takes a pretty detailed look at the shutdown.
Here’s Ken Cuccinelli running away from it:
Still more strongly:
Can we agree Cuccinelli (well known as a Cruz ally) is no Establishment RINO? So why isn’t he on board with Cruz here?
And further:
And here’s the insider view from both campaigns:
More from that strategist, via HotAir. He’s the one who blamed the RNC, too, so it’s not like he has an agenda to cover for the Establishment. A few interesting points in that one:
Emphasis mine, because that isn’t “surely,” it’s “definitely.”
Oh, and on the funding thing, thanks to a link from that article:
But, bizarrely, some Tea Party groups didn’t — groups who then proceeded to attack the RNC over it. Go figure? They have to choose their priorities — but so does the RNC.
So to tell the truth, this whole exercise actually leaves me thinking I was too hesitant in my initial analysis, and that it played probably a bigger role than I remembered. One thing I hadn’t realized was that McDonnell was still more popular than Cuccinelli in late 2013. He wasn’t dragging the party down.
Of course, that itself hardly proves the shutdown was wrong. I believe it’s pretty clear the GOP lost a special election due to Mediscare. That doesn’t mean Ryan was wrong. Though one House seat matters far less than Cuccinelli and Obenshain.
If the shutdown accomplished anything as a matter of governance, it would be right regardless of the political cost. But it didn’t and couldn’t. It couldn’t end Obamacare funding even if it went on forever. It served only as a political tool to try to force the Democrats to back down. And thus it can be measured only as a political tool — only by its cost and its effectiveness. It did not stop Obamacare. And it did affect Virginia.
Mark Obenshain lost by less than 1000 votes. All those other mistakes are equally to blame. But this one matters too.
The national Republicans have moved on. Ted Cruz is a presidential candidate with a shot. But Virginia has McAuliffe for two more years and Herring for at least that.
Fighting is important, but fighting wisely matters. Leadership requires both courage and wisdom.
Yeahbut, I’m referring to the general run of leftists – the establishment kind. There were always radicals, but the hardcore extremists were the mainliners in 1987.