Listen to the coach, my friends. Both sides of this needless intraparty schism could learn from him.
Some of you might be surprised to learn that I am on a number of Tea Party email lists, and consequently I have my proverbial finger on the pulse of the Tea Party movement. Some of you also might be surprised to find out that just as I've gone on many a rant against Tea Party fratricide, purity fetishism, and their stubborn resistance to viable political strategy, so I have, in the past, taken haymaker shots at the GOP "establishment," as in the Strom Thurmond kerfuffle of 2002, the Bush Supreme Court nomination of Harriet "Mystery Meat" Miers, and the John McCain-led backstabbing of then-Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist on "nuking" the judicial filibuster Democrats were using to keep any and all constitutionalists off of the federal appellate courts (both in 2005).
For me, 2006 was the line of demarcation that showed a sour side in many of my heretofore staunchly conservative brethren. I was, frankly, appalled at how so many of what I came to call "tighty-righties" could take a walk on their Republican congressional majorities, as though power was something we could take off and put back on at will, like a garment. Endlessly did I hear the phrase "teaching the GOP a lesson" for their supposedly grievous departures from rightwing orthodoxy, which always seemed retardedly self-defeating to me, as the only possible outcome of such a mindset could be surrendering Congress to the tender mercies of Nancy Pelosi, Harry (G)Reid, and their slavering Donk minions. As I have always argued, if an elected Republican is good for nothing else, he/she at least occupies space that the Democrats do not. We may not be getting every one of our public policy heart's desires, but at least we can deny the Donks theirs as well.
Not after the 2006 midterms, we couldn't, and didn't. And what "lesson" did the GOP "establishment" learn? That they couldn't rely on the conservative grassroots. So they turned to that same backstabbing John McCain as their doomed presidential standardbearer in 2008, a move that ensured the ascension of Barack Hussein Obama to what he then transmogrified into the Imperial American Throne. And the rest is constitutional federal republic-killing history.
You could say, then, that the proto-Tea Party gave us the Obama Regime. How's that worked out for us?
This is what makes last night's midterm election blowout bittersweet in my eyes. Yes, we finally took back the Senate, and expanded our majority in the House to the highest level in eighty-six years; but it's like repossessing a condemned house. It reminds me of King Josiah ascending to the Judean throne after the disastrously wicked half-century reign of his grandfather Manasseh and the evil coda of his father Amon in II Kings 22. Josiah did what was right in the sight of the LORD, but Judah's fate was already sealed by the noisome excesses that preceded him. And as this site's proprietor pointed out last night and I have been saying for several months, losing the Senate is going to be liberating, not constraining, for The One's tyrannical instincts.
Yet throughout the midterm campaign all I heard from TPers was pro- (and quite evidently faux) GOP cheerleading. Last night's reactions were an amalgam of "WE DID IT!!!!" But what do I find in my inbox this morning but this missive talking about an anti-leadership coup de tat:
There's a soon upcoming Senate Majority Leader coup attempt that is the next stepping stone on the path to winning. Can we really call where we are at this point victory?
Actually, Mr. Eddy, yes, you can. Even Darla Dawald was calling it that twelve hours ago. How quickly does giddiness bring out the long knives, huh?
McConnell and Cornyn both have been demonstratively anti-TeaParty. The coup attempt must accomplish both removing McConnell and simultaneously prevailing over the deeply embedded NEXT-IN-LINE party protocol that would give it to Cornyn. Let's prepare for that coup attempt and effectively assist it being successful.
That would be the Mitch McConnell (ACU rating: 90) and John Cornyn (ACU rating: 93) classified as "conservatives" by the American Conservative Union, yes? So how, exactly, are they "anti-Tea Party"? It can't be ideologically. So what's left except political strategy? About which Senators McConnell and Cornyn know far more than any Tea Partier is willing to learn, or perhaps even capable of learning?
Here's another example that arrived in my inbox mere moments ago:
McConnell and Rand Paul will guarantee that there is no repeal of ObamaCare. They both believe there are too many things in ObamaCare that voters like, and taking those away from them is bad for the GOP in 2016.
Excerpted from BuzzFeed: A potential Republican-controlled Senate should focus more on legislation it will be able to pass instead of throwing all its energy into a wholesale repeal of Obamacare, both Senators Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell agreed on Monday.
Senator Ted Cruz — a likely 2016 presidential candidate like Paul, and the ringleader of the aggressive House Republican caucus from his perch in the Senate — told the Washington Post on Sunday that if the Republicans win the Senate this Election Day, they should “pursue every means possible to repeal Obamacare,” including exploiting various parliamentary procedures to avoid a Democratic filibuster.
“We ought to concentrate just on winning” the election, Paul said when asked about Cruz’s comments on Monday after a stop on the campaign trail with McConnell in Kentucky. “There are a lot of things I want to do, and everybody has their own sort of agenda.”
Speaking after his campaign stop in Bowling Green, McConnell echoed Paul, saying that there is little chance that the president would sign a repeal bill, though his conference will try to take apart the Affordable Care Act piece by piece.
First of all, c'mon, guys and gals, do any of you seriously believe that Senators McConnell and Paul (who has also now apparently been excommunicated from TP ranks) don't support ObamaCare repeal on principle? Of course they do. But they're not wrong in their aforequoted comments, either. Let me put it to you this way: How many times has the "aggressively conservative" House voted to repeal ObamaCare over the past four years? Three dozen times, as I recall. Does ObamaCare still exist? Yes, it does. Why? Because Republicans haven't had the power to get rid of it. Will they have that power now that they've retaken the U.S. Senate? No, they will not, because Barack Obama and his veto pen are still at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, and he will never, EVER countenance the retrenchment of his policy crown jewel in the slightest degree. Ergo, Republicans cannot repeal ObamaCare, if ever, until 2017 at the very earliest. So why piss in Republican faces about their disinclination to pursue something that they lack the power to accomplish, and which may well imperil their chances of regaining the White House in 2016, without which full repeal is impossible? Sure, they can make the attempt, get it through both houses, but it wouldn't be any less an act of futile symbolism than any of the three dozen times the House has done it. Even "taking apart the [Una]ffordable Care[-Less] Act piece by piece" isn't going to go anywhere. And that won't be the GOP "establishment's" fault, either.
Remember the wisdom of Otto Von Bismarck: "Politics is the art of the possible". Or, if you prefer, "If wishes were horses, beggars would ride." Last year's "defundageddon" government shutdown fiasco should have illustrated for all time that the Tea Party cannot attain the unobtainable just by wanting it bad enough or trying hard enough. You have to have the numbers in Congress, and you have to have a president who will sign the ObamaCare repeal. That's the reality of power. And remember the lopsided numbers Democrats had to get to shove this atrocity down our throats in the first place. Getting rid of it will require the same level of power. And the GOP does not have it. At least, not yet. You want them to get that power? Stop undermining them the very day after they finally got back in position to attain it two years from now. Understand that this is a process, and you don't win everything in one election cycle, particularly when coming back from as far down as we were a few years ago.
Also, my Tea Party friends, if you wish to pursue a leadership coup, you need to have an alternative to Senators McConnell and Cornyn in mind. Who would that be? If you say Mike Lee, I will do you the courtesy of not laughing in your face, because Senator Lee has all of Ted Cruz's ideological bona fides and none of his abrasive, fratricidal obnoxiousness. Senator Lee may well rise to a leadership post someday. Though if and when he does, I think you all will, as with Rand Paul, grow disillusioned with him, as inherent to the job is representing more than just your own party wing. Something that Senators McConnell and Cornyn well understand, even if TPers puerilely refuse to accept it. And if you say Ted Cruz....well, let's just say that gadflyism and an unwillingness or inability to "play well with others" is the antithesis of leadership, and in any case, Senator Cruz burned all those bridges behind him with his ObamaCare defunding windmill-tilting.
On the whole, it's better to be on the inside, doing what you practically can, than to sit on the outside, throwing spitballs and patting yourself on the back for how "principled" you are, while actually accomplishing nothing except your own smug ego-stroking.
And, finally, there's yet another tiresome salvo, even more recent than the last:
The Establishment didn't do this..the people and the Tea Party did this! Don't let them take credit for it! Let's keep them on their toes!
Wrong, Darla. We ALL did this. People, Tea Party (energy, "footsoldiering", philosophy), AND "establishment" (quality, professional candidates who could, and did, actually win). "Keep them on their toes"? Absolutely. But kindly leave the irritating, foolish "cockroaches" rhetoric out of it.
Remember, whether TPers want to hear it or not, that we are, all of us, on the same team. Or, to quote Benjamin Franklin, "We must all hang together, or we shall surely all hang separately."
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