MaxShimba
JF-Expert Member
- Apr 11, 2008
- 35,772
- 4,054
It's the establishment, Fox News, Heritage, Rush and the Koch Bros, versus a few moderates. That's a mercy killing
It's commonplace these days to suggest that a "civil war" has broken out in the Republican Party. The casus belli seems to consist mainly of two things: Mitt Romney's loss to Barack Obama in last year's presidential election, and the failure of Republicans over the last two electoral cycles to regain control of the United States Senate. It isn't surprising, perhaps, that many Democrats attribute these events to the Republican Party's increasingly shrill right-wing rejectionism, but apparently some Republicans believe the same thing.
About two months after Romney's loss, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, channeling John Stuart Mill, admonished Republicans to stop being "the stupid party." Karl Rove, whose bona fides as a political moderate had been fairly well hidden, announced that he would form a super-PAC dedicated to the proposition that only electable - that is, mainstream - candidates could emerge from Republican senatorial primaries. (No second amendment solutions, witches, or divinely ordained rapes need apply.) And John Huntsman, erstwhile Governor of Utah, Ambassador to China, and 2012 Republican Presidential candidate, went so far as to endorse the formation of a third party. "Someone's going to step up at some point and say we've had enough of this," he intoned. A third party might not win, but " can certainly influence the debate."
These assertions (and others like them) provoked the inevitable pushback from the party's right-wing firebrands, and the civil war was joined. We are now asked to believe that a great struggle rages within the GOP, a close-run contest to determine its future direction and electoral destiny. A party divided between Cruz and Christie cannot stand.
A version of this narrative was recently provided by Pat Brady, the former chairman of the Illinois Republican Party. Appearing on the June 1 broadcast of MSNBC's "Up With Steve Kornacki," Brady agreed with his host's claim that "the Republican base" was a problem for his party. He conjured a vision of "establishment people" girding their loins - or whatever it is moderate Republicans gird - in order to wrest control of the nominating process from that same problematic base. Control having been won, The Establishment would proceed to anoint "good candidates" such as Governor Christie and (inexplicably, at least for me) Scott Walker, the union-busting, Koch brothers-genuflecting governor of Wisconsin.
Full article
No, there isn't a GOP civil war - Salon.com
It's commonplace these days to suggest that a "civil war" has broken out in the Republican Party. The casus belli seems to consist mainly of two things: Mitt Romney's loss to Barack Obama in last year's presidential election, and the failure of Republicans over the last two electoral cycles to regain control of the United States Senate. It isn't surprising, perhaps, that many Democrats attribute these events to the Republican Party's increasingly shrill right-wing rejectionism, but apparently some Republicans believe the same thing.
About two months after Romney's loss, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, channeling John Stuart Mill, admonished Republicans to stop being "the stupid party." Karl Rove, whose bona fides as a political moderate had been fairly well hidden, announced that he would form a super-PAC dedicated to the proposition that only electable - that is, mainstream - candidates could emerge from Republican senatorial primaries. (No second amendment solutions, witches, or divinely ordained rapes need apply.) And John Huntsman, erstwhile Governor of Utah, Ambassador to China, and 2012 Republican Presidential candidate, went so far as to endorse the formation of a third party. "Someone's going to step up at some point and say we've had enough of this," he intoned. A third party might not win, but " can certainly influence the debate."
These assertions (and others like them) provoked the inevitable pushback from the party's right-wing firebrands, and the civil war was joined. We are now asked to believe that a great struggle rages within the GOP, a close-run contest to determine its future direction and electoral destiny. A party divided between Cruz and Christie cannot stand.
A version of this narrative was recently provided by Pat Brady, the former chairman of the Illinois Republican Party. Appearing on the June 1 broadcast of MSNBC's "Up With Steve Kornacki," Brady agreed with his host's claim that "the Republican base" was a problem for his party. He conjured a vision of "establishment people" girding their loins - or whatever it is moderate Republicans gird - in order to wrest control of the nominating process from that same problematic base. Control having been won, The Establishment would proceed to anoint "good candidates" such as Governor Christie and (inexplicably, at least for me) Scott Walker, the union-busting, Koch brothers-genuflecting governor of Wisconsin.
Full article
No, there isn't a GOP civil war - Salon.com
