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“establishment Republican leaders are not merely incapable of stopping the progressive agenda but have been complicit in its expansion”

Yes, the GOP is controlled by the enemy.

I fear that Mr. Viguerie will prove more accurate as a historian of the Republican Party than as a futurist.

I see very little to encourage a conservative for our prospects against the establishment to bring the Republican Party into the service of our values. In support of his contention that conservatives are about to win over the soul of the Republican Party he cites against 100 years of only sporadically relieved Rino-ism only, "the election of young, principled constitutionalists to Congress and in state legislatures is a sign that this civil war for the soul of the Republican Party is about to turn."

Against these "young principled constitutionalists" (who I might say are indeed thin enough on the ground) we have a century of big government Republican control since Teddy Roosevelt, relieved only by Coolidge, Reagan, and Gingrich but reinforced by K St., Wall Street, and the whole system of crony capitalism that barnacles the federal system. Our victories in the reason primaries have been encouraging where they occur but we find ourselves frustrated by a tsunami of money and media in favor of the establishment Republicans in many key races to the degree which we are used to seeing in the general elections.

The rate of attrition to the dark side by tea party elected representatives to Congress in 2010 is not encouraging. A few, perhaps even a majority, have remained steadfast but enough have been suborned by the establishment once they arrived at the capital to take their offices that one must be discouraged. I am personally discouraged by the inability of Republicans in states like Kentucky, Tennessee, Alaska and Texas to support conservative Senate candidates.

The demographics of the country, with amnesty almost sure to come, means that conservatism will probably be beaten back to a redoubt somewhat smaller than the old Confederacy. Obama will leave office secure in the knowledge that he has irrevocably transformed America.

It began a little earlier, in 1900, when Mark Hanna successfully urged President McKinley to pick young Theodore Roosevelt as his running mate going into a second term, for the purpose of dead-ending the latter's meteoric political career.

Amen.

Lots of words that said very little. Sterile. What is a conservative? Gee, thanks for the vacuous history lesson.

Big government disburses goodies. Why should anyone be against big government? Invoking “big government” as boogie man is a bumper sticker.

Political Science has been reduced to a sporting event. Are you team pubbie or team rat? That is all that seems to matter.

How do we restore our freedoms?

It has been waged with conservative Republicans, such as Sens. Robert A. Taft, Barry Goldwater and Jesse Helms, on one side, and big-government Republicans, such as Presidents Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford and New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, on the other.

Somehow the author felt compelled to omit both Bushes, Dole, McCain, and Romney. Gosh, I wonder why?

Excellent essay.

Thanks for posting.

The fact that our leadership has completely stopped talking about ObamaCare for several months shows they have no serious intention to repeal it.

A few months back they also restored all the “Sequester” spending cuts, which means they have no serious intention to limit the size of government or reduce the deficits.

And, most depressing of all, our leadership clearly supports Amnesty, which would permanently destroy the Republican Party.

Conservatives have no realistic options.

We can commit exhausting, slow motion political suicide by staying in a Conservative/RINO coalition.

Or, we can commit sudden political suicide, and break away.

[Art.] The GOP’s civil war began in 1912 when Teddy Roosevelt made progressivism the governing philosophy of the Republican establishment.

No, he didn't, Viguerie. You're a world-class fundraiser but a lousy historian.

TR ran on a Progressive Party platform in 1912 -- Progressive as distinct from the "Progs" nowadays who are really concealed neo-Stalinists.

The ruling meme in the GOP then as now is crony-capitalist yacht-club Republicanism. They called themselves "stalwarts" back then and supported infamously corrupt candidates like James G. Blaine (mockingly called "the Tattoed Man of Maine" and portrayed with tattoos all over him in Puck magazine as "Phryne Before the Areopagus", a famously tattooed woman of Greek lore) and the even more infamous Sen. Roscoe Conkling of New York.

Blaine was so bad that New England Republicans and Main Street Republicans everywhere threw up on his presidential bid in 1884 and bolted the party to vote in droves for Democrat Grover Cleveland. The bolters were called "Mugwumps", and there were enough of them to hand New York, and the White House, to Cleveland.

Teddy Roosevelt was smart enough to sidestep the Mugwump impulse, hold his nose and support the malodorous Blaine ("Rum, Ruin, and Romanism!!") .... thus keeping alive TR's own political hopes within the GOP, and delaying for 15 years his own eventual clash with the clubby, greasy stalwarts.

“Make no mistake, the establishment GOP is not the political home of conservatives.”

Ding ding ding ding...Paging Captain Obvious, Captain Obvious to the white, errr, non-obligatory colored “courtesy” phone in the lobby...

As much as I believe the republican party will regain control of the Senate in November, and maintain control of the House as well...It makes me cringe...

Cringe at the thought that NOTHING will really change, be acted upon, no one will be going to prison for their political or criminal malfeasance on either side of the aisle...Bonehead from OHIO will still be Speaker, O’Connell will become Majority leader in the Senate and again, nothing will be done in any of those committees hearing testimony about all the nonsense the democrats, much less the administration has been doing in the last 6 years on Benghazi, Fast and Furious, IRS targeting, VA priority lists...

We will all be told to shut the hell up, and get in line with them and their victory...And those that do not will be vilified, ostracized and never given the time of day by these geezer throwbacks...

The separate Tea Parties around the country need to get organized and get a serious political force of a party going, and do it yesterday, and stop trying to be all you can be in your own little fiefdoms...It is the only way conservatism is going to gain back ANYTHING in this country...Sure it’ll have its growing pains, but I have a very good feeling that those people already elected, some may very well jump ship from the republicans, and some from the democrats (possibly) and we will have a faction to have to be dealt with right out of the starting blocks...

As Meekins’ alluded to, we are at a critical juncture in this country in many aspects of this countries future...In racial tensions, economic and social issues, domestic and international security, and what do we have in place maintaining what is left of that future???

Bunch of feckless wonders up there attacking and consuming this country from within...