Who was ultimately responsible for the evil Mississippi primary campaign that smeared supporters of Chris McDaniel as racists?
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, that’s who.
The GOP Establishment Incumbent Protection Machine and the big-money donors who fund it have been determined to eradicate the Tea Party movement in the 2014 campaign cycle.
This is McConnell’s formula for Republican success: Destroy all primary challengers, whatever the cost, and ensure that only Establishment-approved candidates win primaries in open-seat races or against vulnerable Democrat incumbents. It’s a cautious, risk-averse strategy, and if Republicans capture the Senate majority in November, McConnell will be congratulated on his success.
On the other hand . . .
What if it all goes sideways? What if this political equivalent of the NFL “prevent defense” turns out to be a formula for GOP failure?
What if all the big money and all the shrewd consultants turn out to be less valuable to Republicans than the grassroots conservative supporters who have been alienated by McConnell’s strategy?
What if Mitch McConnell loses his own Senate seat?
Manu Raju and John Bresnahan of Politico examine that scenario at some length today, and it’s not as far-fetched as it may seem.
Look at the polls: McConnell leads Democrat challenger Alison Lundergan Grimes by 5 points in the Real Clear Politics average, but the race has only been polled four times in the past two months, so we don’t know how solid that lead really is. Most importantly, McConnell is consistently polling below 50% — as low as 42% in a May poll — and that’s always a troubling sign for an incumbent.
As the Politico article says, if McConnell can’t defeat Grimes, the prospects for a GOP Senate majority are pretty remote. And if Republicans can’t take over the Senate this year — when they have every possible advantage, by ordinary calculations — it’s possible to argue that Republicans can never win a Senate majority, that the GOP is doomed to permanent minority status.
This scenario, the de facto triumph of Democrats as uncontested rulers of America as a one-party centralized state, would be a complete reversal of the “permanent Republican majority” Karl Rove promised in the wake of George W. Bush’s re-election.
After all the evil deeds perpetrated by the Republican establishment in the Mississippi primary, some of my conservative friends respond to this possibility with calm: “Let it burn,” they say.
It’s becoming harder to argue that these friends of mine are wrong.
The distinction is vital in understanding what the role of government should be.
Look at it this way. The Constitution is a contract between the people and government. Government is given powers to protect rights, but no one gives rights.
Rights belong to individuals, Charlie has the same rights as Joan or Gotam. When someone has a “right” that isn’t shared by others, it’s a privilege.
The U.S. Constitution does an amazing job of defining (not granting) rights. But the Tenth Amendment doesn’t talk about state rights, it talks about the powers of the states.
The RINOs are enabling the Dems to run the country anyway. I understand the panic we all feel at the thought that we have lost all control, but we need to finally come to terms with the fact that we HAVE lost all control and RINOs represent a stumbling block to ever regaining it.
Better the opportunity to replace the democrat in 6 years than a RINO in 18 years.
Glad to see RSM blogging about politics again.
Once I moved to Ohio I started telling people that where I come from we have a name for Ohio Republicans. Back home we call them “Democrats.”
Are you so simpleminded that you are incapable of seeing this is about a pattern of behavior and not one stolen election? The GOPe is burning down what the founding fathers gave us, not the TEA party.
I didn’t take the wrong lesson, I just don’t think McConnell is persuadable. He consistently stabs conservatives in the back. If I’m going to be stabbed in the back I’d prefer it to be done by Reid, than by a nominal friend.
Thanks, QM. I think Evi is right about this clown being a phony. We’ve also had a flight of these supposed “conservatives” at Scoop’s. They come in with about a five-comment history and usually a blocked profile.
Then they wade in insulting people they have no clue about, all in some attempt to sow discord on the right.
(Although we do have a few, genuine “fringer” types who think Ted Cruz is the devil or something.)
I’m begging here for some moral and historical perspective.
Of course there is It’s called ”Let it burn” or ”burn it down”. Of course voting dem is just wrong there is always a non viable alternative to both wings of the DC party. Whatever nudges us closer to the beginning of a “frank exchange of views” is the ticket.
And yet not “wiping out the GOP” left us with Obama. Do you consider that win-win or lose-lose?
The ruble from a structure that has burned down to it’s foundation is easier to clear away and thus the rebuilding can commence sooner.
Look, I understand completely the anger of grassroots conservatives for the GOP establishment. I share it. But your view seems a recipe for a complete Dem hegemony at the federal level. I can’t imagine that’s what you want.
If you really think there is much difference between what a Dim progRat does and what a GOPe progRat does, then you are excruciatingly naive.
It’s not a matter of what I want. It’s a matter of what I’m going to get given the “choices.”
Begging won’t get you much here. It will, OTOH, get some perspective. The GOPe has a history reaching back to the 1850s as a statist party. It was so moral, that its first President kicked off a war on behalf of New England manufacturers that killed on the order of 2 million people, just so the Lincoln’s handlers could keep their economic colony in the south.
The GOPe, historically, and morally, has been the pits.
A constitution is a compact that establishes a government. The rest goes down hill after that.
Yes, but the U.S. Constitution established that a government’s limited powers exist to defend the rights of the people. It’s right there in the preamble.
You just don’t get it do you?
It won’t be the Tea Party handing Harry Reid the majority, it’ll be people like you who are willing to accept what they think is the lesser of two evils.
Myself and those like me want a change period. We’re tired of fatcat politicians whose #1 priority is looking out for themselves.
The lesser of two evils doesn’t cut it when your principles and beliefs are being betrayed by those whom you helped get into office.
Wake up shitbird. (or go fuck yourself , nobody cares)
What your narrow mind cannot comprehend is that there is very little difference between a RINO and Democrat anyway.
THIS!
(Howdy, are you paying attention?)
It doesn’t matter man.
You’re either a troll or clueless. Either way…you lose.
If only RSM could replace thw other McCain.
No RINOs represent the compromises necessary to win again. That’s why so many take the let it burn stance. If becoming Democrats is what it takes to win, then what’s the point.
Either way, you couldn’t address a single word I wrote in a substantive way. just going along with the bandwagon.
If you can’t see a difference between Harry Reid and your average Republican it’s going to take a bigger 2×4 upside the head to get your attention. Do you give a rats ass about the country? Can’t you see the damage they have caused?
Ummm, no, it will be the tea party insisting they get everything they want or deliberately hand power to the socialists to teach the GOP a lesson, it doesn’t work that way.
You want change, period? Shooting yourself in the head is change. Is that good change?
Go fuck yourself more, and take those stripes off your avatar, those represent service, not someone who wants to let the country burn. That’s a traitor.
Talking to them has worked for me, if not withholding money, threatening to move business, primarying them, running against them, calls, letters, e-mails, protests, shouting them down at town halls, on and on and on, Books have been written on the subject. Letting the country burn is just dumb.
Yes, it’s about a pattern of behavior, one that brought us Obama in ’08 when McCain wasn’t pure enough, one that lost us the Senate when we could have had it when we ran dolts like Christine O’Donnell because it’s better to lose than to win in your little world to get political power, one that could have ended this misery in 2012 but noooo Romney was a RINO and it’s somehow better to run our debt up to 22 trillion dollars, create a welfare state import millions of illegal immigrants, lose wars to islamist terrorists, fundamentally transform the USA into a moocher nation of man-children narcissists, decriminalize drugs and confiscate firearms than to elect someone who put a dog on a roof.
The GOPe did NONE of that, you have by helping the socialists get elected by staying on a perpetual temper tantrum because your guy lost in the primaries. Get over the butthurt and think about the country rather than yourself.
Because incumbents are so easy to get rid of.
Great rebuttal, how’s that playground insult thing working for you? It’s not addressing what I wrote but it is in keeping with someone who needs to ride along on the bandwagon.
By wanting to save the country from the likes of Obama and Reid. Are you a democrat?
Didn’t anyone ever tell to never go full retard? If not, let me be the first: Howdy, you should never go full retard.
Reid really, even more than Obama, has been a traitor to this country and an incredibly damaging actor. The way he has run the Senate, blocking action so effectively without any regard to the law he swore to defend and uphold, (It’s LAW that we have a budget! He doesn’t care.) That, the snatching of defeat out of the jaws of victory in Iraq, these things are treasonous. Literally, not using hyperbole: Treason.
Tell me what Mitch McConnell has done, lousy as he is, that is the equivalent of announcing that the Iraq war is lost when we have men engaged in hourly firefights against an enemy that he just threw a lifeline?
Read:
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/06/seeking-edge-dems-meddle-in-gop-races-107346.html
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/05/can-democrats-keep-messing-with-republican-primary-voters/361825/
That doesn’t make any sense,yipping dog, if you want the country to burn you owe it to yourself to leave. If you haven’t you are just a bitching little pu$$y.
It wont be answered because you are cowards.
Not a rebuttal or an answer, just a lame insult. Can’t keep up?
So traitors are people who try. DOn’t you think that’s a rationalization for being a lazy turd?
What have you “tried”?
Your all purpose scapegoat. Newsflash, there is no such thing as the GOPe, it;s a bogeyman sold to idiots by PR agencies to help elect socialists. The states control their primaries. Is your state open? If so, get off your lazy ass and close it.
That wasn’t a rebuttal, that didn’t address anything I wrote, it was a link to a lame movie that I wouldn’t watch on a plane if the earphones were free. Is that what you substitute for rational thought? No wonder we have had 2 terms of Obama.
Come on, give it your best or reflect on your opinion and understand that it may be self sabotaging.
Mobys are leftists who go on to conservative sites to suppress the vote on the right. That’s what he is advocating. That and he’s a douchebag,
What I advocate is voting for the most conservative electable candidate and then working to hold then accountable. That is different from what the right has been doing as we have been staying home until the perfect candidate comes along. Amazingly enough, perfect people don’t come along…
Lame, just lame.
Bull, you stay at home if you don’t get exactly what you want given to you by the efforts of better people.
Truth being told:
You are a tic on a dogs ass who has the audacity to think you deserve a say in where the dog sits. Want more of a say? Get in the game. Whining like a little bitch and letting it burn will just get you what you deserve: Irrelevance.
Givving power to the socialists, which is what you are doing, is burning the country, and you don’t have the slightest idea what I have done politically.
You are rationalizing being a traitor, keeping a republic is hard so “let it burn”.
There is no such thing as the GOPe. The even sadder truth is that they are not that organized.
You are now simply lying. Not one person here has written anything about suppressing the vote on the right.
No one believes a word you type.
Go find a site that loves your leftist outlook on things. We’re Americans, here.
So that’s it? If you don’t get who you want from the primaries (because that’s who choses your candidates, not some “establishment” then the whole country can go to hell… Yet I shouldn’t think you are a traitor for some reason… If that’s the case I’m not going to vote for Brat because I knew Cantor.. I’ll vote for the Democrat to teach you a lesson. Oh wait, I’m not a traitor and not stupid enough to cut my own throat.
That takes work and all you folks seem to be able to do is lose elections for the right.
Why should I waste my valuable time rebutting anything you say when you are DETERMINED NOT TO COMPREHEND IT. Everything for you is, “Fuck off, vote my way or I can’t hear you la la la!” I could list example after example of the RINO/GOPes stabbing conservatives in the back and heartily fucking over the country in the process, but all you can say is “But Obama is worse.” Pro tip: Obama can’t run again.
And you can shove O’Donnell right up your ass. For every bad TEA pick, I can give you a bad GOPe candidate. For example, the GOPes gave us incumbent Todd Akin while the TEA party elected Mike Lee. Who was that asswipe from, what? Rhode Island? who went independent and cost us the Senate? Then there’s Charlie Crist and Arlen Specter who would rather be Democrats than tolerate a conservative in office. I say this with all due respect, Howdy, (i.e. NONE AT FUCKING ALL) that it is simply not possible for me to give a shit about electing more of the fucktards who daily concede battlespace to the likes of Harry Reid and Obama and who have already made it clear that they have NO intention of ditching Obamacare even if we do give them a majority. So fuck you, Howdy, and all your bastard establishment buddies. I’m done with them and I’m done with you.
When have you tried it my way? (Vote for the most conservative, electable candidate and then work to hold them accountable?)
You haven’t. We have tried it YOUR way, we lost to Obama in ’08 because we were trying it YOUR WAY. We didn’t take back the senate because we were doing it YOUR WAY. We didn’t replace Obama in ’12 because we were ding it YOUR WAY. Now you want to lose the opportunity to take the senate back again? Your way = losing your way into power = stupid.