....says a Democrat operative.....:
"The Republican electorate is angry," Democratic pollster and analyst Doug Schoen told Newsmax. "They are angry at the establishment. Eric Cantor represents inside Washington — and this is a repudiation of the Republican leadership strata.
"It's a warning sign for [Senate Minority Leader] Mitch McConnell," he said.
"There's just a sense that they want the establishment out," Schoen said. "It's a rejection of everything the Republicans stand for."
Brat, an economics professor with no political experience, was "basically running against Washington and against the establishment," Schoen added.
Specifically, he said, Brat's victory sends a chilling message to the GOP leadership.
"[I]t's also a shot across the bow at [House Speaker] John Boehner," Schoen said. "The Republican electorate wants change. It's certainly a warning sign in that direction."
It seems to me that Tea Partiers should be having chills sent up their spines that Democrats are so gleefully delighted at this result. I know that it freezes my spine that Tea Partiers are likely to misinterpret the actual reason(s) behind, and read too much into, Cantor's defeat and become emboldened to go on a fratricidal rampage that could leave the House once again in Democrat hands after November 4th.
Some non-Democrat/non-TPer analysts attempted to provide that perspective last night:
Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said Cantor's loss will have major implications for immigration reform, an issue that Cantor became linked to.
"Everybody agrees that if immigration reform was on life support before, they're pulling out the plugs" because no other House Republican will want to end up like Cantor, he said.
"The Republican electorate has become very conservative, and that was demonstrated in conventions like last year" and occasionally in primaries, he added. "What Republicans don't seem to want to come to terms with is that Virginia is a purple state." [emphasis added]
I don't often agree with Sabato on much, but here's he's spot on. First of all, as I said last night, Cantor's "shocking" defeat was about his pushing of amnesty in the House. Period, Exclamation point. If the "establishment" wishes to avoid the now-lame duck Majority Leader's fate, they will drop amnesty like any part of Hillary Clinton's anatomy. Second, while Dave Brat should be well positioned to hold Virginia-7 for the GOP in November due to systemic as well as endemic factors, TPers have to remember what they've failed to learn for several years now: namely, that grassroots "insurgencies" don't work everywhere across the fruitless plain. In "red" states/districts, yes; in "purple" ones, it's a variable risk; and in "blue" ones, it's electoral suicide.
Bottom line is, the point, the mission, the imperative is to defeat Democrats, not indulge in purity fetishism. The cost of squeezing out a few additional points in an ACU rating is not always worth the effort, and can have disastrously counterproductive results, as the 2006 midterms, the 2008 election, and the 2010 U.S. Senate races in Nevada, Colorado, and especially Delaware, amply demonstrated.
On the other side, it would behoove the GOP leadership to, shall we say, not go out of its way cultivate the Tea Party's hostility:
Fox News Senior Political Analyst Brit Hume, said the conventional GOP wisdom in Washington is that Brat's victory is bad news long-term for Republicans and good news for Democrats. It will kill immigration reform, the conventional wisdom goes, which will make it difficult for a Republican to be elected in 2016 as president.
Hume said he isn't sure he agrees with the conventional wisdom.
The vote shows the GOP cannot ignore the tea party, Hume said. The establishment wing will have to make peace with the tea party, he said, if it hopes to survive past November's midterm elections.
The "conventional wisdom" is codswallop. The Republican Party will never, EVER electorally benefit from leading the federal government in an act of effective national suicide. The Democrats, however, will. The "establishment's" infuriating stubbornness in refusing to grasp this is the napalm fueling this Tea Party "insurgency." The usual remedy for out-of-control wildfires is to put them out; the proactive remedy is to deprive them of the fuel they need to indiscriminately blacken the landscape in the first place. I mean, if the "establishment" thinks the Tea Party "dead," wouldn't it be better to not foolishly "resurrect" them?
Cantor took the former approach, and look where it got him:
South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham fared better in his own primary because he saw the tea party challenge coming and had a positive message, Stirewalt said. Graham decided to make peace with the tea party while Cantor decided to go on the attack.
Some of Cantor's attack ads aimed at Brat were of "questionable veracity," Stirewalt said.
In short, it's better to try and hornswaggle TPers than it is to piss straight in their faces. Besides which, when an incumbent is relying primarily on negative advertising, that's usually his/her electoral death knell.
But better still to actually "make peace" with the grassroots. Or, best of all, join them.
Especially if you can't beat 'em.
No comments:
Post a Comment