Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

The Rise of the Fusion Republicans
The Atlantic ^ | JUL 11 2014 | Molly Ball

Posted on 07/11/2014 12:20:38 PM PDT by nickcarraway

In primaries across the country, the war between the GOP establishment and the Tea Party ended not in a surrender but a truce. But are the candidates too conservative to win?

Primary season is almost over, and as you may have heard, the Republican establishment mostly won. Other than the shocking defeat of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, GOP incumbents largely survived primary challenges, and the candidates preferred by party strategists and moneymen in Washington won their nominations.

Plenty of factors account for this outcome, from dimming enthusiasm for the Tea Party nationally to the establishment’s newly aggressive tactics. But a big one is the candidates themselves. In many big races, the establishment and Tea Party weren’t really at odds. Republican voters coalesced around hybrid candidates who could appeal to the country-club crowd and the "Don’t Tread On Me" flag-waver alike. For these candidates, the Republican civil war ended not in a surrender but a truce.

Take Ben Sasse. A Harvard graduate and former Bush administration official, Sasse made his first run for office this year, seeking the Republican nomination for the open U.S. Senate seat in Nebraska. Sasse’s resume was that of a technocrat: It included helping craft the Medicare Part D program and giving a TEDx talk about higher education. Yet he ran as a full-throated Tea Partier, earning endorsements from the Tea Party Express, the Senate Conservatives Fund, FreedomWorks, and the Club for Growth—basically all the national groups that have so bedeviled the mainstream GOP in recent years. Two weeks before the election, he held a rally with Ted Cruz and Sarah Palin. The primary was expected to be close, but Sasse ended up winning by 27 points.

Or take Joni Ernst, the state senator seeking the nomination for Iowa’s open Senate seat. Described by the Des

(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...


TOPICS: Extended News; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS:

1 posted on 07/11/2014 12:20:38 PM PDT by nickcarraway
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: nickcarraway

The ‘concern columnist’.


2 posted on 07/11/2014 12:22:01 PM PDT by Balding_Eagle (If America falls, darkness will cover the face of the earth for a thousand years.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Balding_Eagle
There are ‘concerned Freepers’ too, who only care that R wins regardless of philosophy. If that means the death of the Tea Party, tough.
3 posted on 07/11/2014 12:27:40 PM PDT by deadrock (I am someone else.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: nickcarraway

Still waiting on the evidence that candidates with more conservativism lose, whereas moderates win. Crickets. The political class will point to the northeast where there are hardly any republicans in office at all. What an example to follow. Moderate and disappear. The only person who ran as a conservative in modern years was Scott brown and he won. Then he went into full left mode and got squashed.


4 posted on 07/11/2014 12:28:04 PM PDT by ilgipper
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: nickcarraway
But are the candidates too conservative to win?

You mean like Romney or McCain?

5 posted on 07/11/2014 12:33:51 PM PDT by LucianOfSamasota (Tanstaafl - its not just for breakfast anymore...)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: nickcarraway

“...the Republican establishment mostly won...”

I’d prefer to call it, “The Empire Sniveled Back”

Starring:

Mitch McConnell as Emperor Palpitate
John Boehner as Darth Weener
Lindsey Graham as Bar-Bar Jinks
Karl Rove as Bubba the Butt
Eric Cantor as Darth No-Longer-In-The-Picture


6 posted on 07/11/2014 1:38:58 PM PDT by yefragetuwrabrumuy ("Don't compare me to the almighty, compare me to the alternative." -Obama, 09-24-11)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: deadrock; Norm Lenhart; Finny; RitaOK; cripplecreek; Windflier
If Romney had won, the Republican Party would have signed its own death warrant. No matter whether Obozo or Romney won in 2012, our republic, our constitution, our people and civilization itself were in for an intolerable time.

Obozo had no ability to destroy the Republican Party. Only the elitist GOP Establishment of Wall Street and K Street hustlers can do that. The GOP-E can squander oceans of money, concentrating their spending behind one half vast establishment drone after another. What they CAN NOT do is get the votes of the conservative base in the general election to give them the keys to the federal piggy bank.

With each passing election, the Establishment trash get a lower and lower percentage of the Republican base vote. If that is the fate that the corruptican party bosses want to sell to primary voters (insofar as Reince Priebus and the corrupt consultant class and "Republican" National Committee do not cut the influence of primary voters down to insignificance), then the result will be a welcome end to the republican Party for the same reasons that its Whig and Federalist predecessors died. The common cause of death? Rampaging greed for the taxpayers' dollar by the ruling class types. Eventually, we peasants revolt against the Alexander Hamiltons, the Henry Clays and the Romneys, the McCains, the Doles (tax collector for the welfare state and his ultra-privileged final wife Giddy Dole), the Rockefellers, Scrantons, GHWBs, James Bakers, Sandra Day O'Bortions, etc.

The fact is that this nation exists for purposes far more important than the care and feeding of Muffie's trust fund, or the collection of steady fees for New York bankers engineering the transfer of American assets to Arab oil dynasties via such as the International Monetary Fund and to the ultracorrupt on Wall Street whose wild imaginations concocted the complicated financial instruments and schemes that destroyed this nation's economy during the closing days of Bush the Younger.

The TARP scheme saw to it that, despite the financial collapse which the investment bankers bungled their way into, despite record losses at their firms, their economic party would continue. No mansions in the Hamptons would be foreclosed. No multi-million dollar bonus would go unpaid in spite of the manifest failure and incompetence of the payees. After all, they are all friends and college classmates of the political rulers of the nation: Yale, Harvard, Princeton, private dining clubs, polo for all, and protecting dad's status as a master of the universe while protecting Muffie's trust fund.

All over this country, there are people of essentially conservative bent who lie to themselves that there is some smidgeon of difference between a Romney and Obozo. Both are gun grabbers. Both are rampaging pro-aborts. Both are enthusiasts for the entire "gay" agenda. Both rate their socially respectable envirowhackoism as infinitely more important than the jobs of what they revile as the mere peasant class. Both despise the military and its vigorous use when needed. Both regard veterans not as honored citizens but as an expensive nuisance to be ignored until they just die and go away and stop bothering the rulers. The only difference is that Romney would make the world safe for stock warrants and for trust funds.

The middle class is taxed to death (a middle class that made the mistake of being where collectively most taxable money used to be and was not well organized enough to have an army of lobbyists like Boss Hogg Haley Barbour working Congress for them) with little visible benefit resulting for the middle class, and wealth beyond the dreams of avarice for the well-connected and for America's growth sector: the poor and dependent. After all, the votes have to come from somewhere whether you screw the middle class as a Demonrat or as GOP-Ruling Class elitist.

It is time for the conservative base to hold politicians' feet to the fire. Thad Cockroach stole a nomination? Make him a poster boy for defeated Ruling Class stooges. If possible, send him, Haley Barbour and their crew to the chain gang. Mitchie McConnell? Give him a lifetime achievement award. Send him packing. He is useless to us and a marionette of the Chambers of Crony Corruption. Lamar!!!! Alexander? What earthly use does he have for ordinary Americans, the ones who pay the bills. Politically, off with his head or at least his job.

There will be plenty of time to destroy Demonrats when our job of using primaries is over. GOP won't take over the Senate if we defect? They wouldn't do anything worthwhile in any event if they took the Senate. The GOP "leader" whether Mitchie McTurtle or John Cornyn and the Weeper of the House or whoever will take up the new whine of excusing their absolute refusal to even TRY to fight the Demonrats on the GOP not also controlling the White House.

In the unlikely event that they get House, Senate and White House simultaneously, then they will go back to an orgy of elitist serving legislation, lining their pockets as ever before, cutting the taxes of the uberwealthy at the expense of the rest of us, knowing that the voters will vomit them out of majority status (or office entirely like Cantor) firmly and finally at the first opportunity, that they can only abuse the public just so many times before the rulers are destroyed but, hey, if the $$$$ party is wild enough and efficient enough for its perps, they can offshore their riches and move to the Caymans. Helluva party, right, Biff?

Sometimes (most times?) I just can't avoid auto-rant.

7 posted on 07/11/2014 2:23:15 PM PDT by BlackElk (Dean of Discipline, Tomas de Torquemada Gentlemen's Society: Rack 'em Danno!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: BlackElk; KC_Lion; All
And an excellent auto rant.

In particular --

GOP won't take over the Senate if we defect? They wouldn't do anything worthwhile in any event if they took the Senate. The GOP "leader" whether Mitchie McTurtle or John Cornyn and the Weeper of the House or whoever will take up the new whine of excusing their absolute refusal to even TRY to fight the Demonrats on the GOP not also controlling the White House.

The Republican brand is literally Coke to the Democrat's Pepsi. A lot of us out here would rather vote for plain old water in government, or at least plain Ice Tea, but politically, the "serious" candidates are Coke, or Pepsi. Americans are saying, and will continue to say, "Screw that."

The time is ripe for a Second party, certainly in the presidential race if not other races. The worst it could do would be to push the Republican party right. The best it could do would be to electrify tens of millions of Americans looking, dreaming, hoping to vote FOR something for a change.

8 posted on 07/11/2014 4:56:10 PM PDT by Finny (Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path. -- Psalm 119:105)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies]

To: nickcarraway

What truce?

The establishment is on the warpath against the TEA Party. TEA Party candidates can expect to be stabbed in the back and sabotaged by their own party leadership.


9 posted on 07/11/2014 4:57:38 PM PDT by GeronL (Vote for Conservatives not for Republicans)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

bump


10 posted on 07/12/2014 5:07:36 AM PDT by foreverfree
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson