Posted on 05/09/2010 12:31:19 PM PDT by Sub-Driver
Bennett’s Loss in Utah a ‘Damn Outrage,’ ‘Non-Violent Coup,’ Part of Larger Intolerant GOP Narrative By Brent Baker Created 05/09/2010 - 14:41
“This is a damn outrage,” a disgusted David Brooks, the faux conservative columnist for the New York Times, declared on Sunday’s Meet the Press reacting to Republican Senator Bob Bennett’s loss Saturday at Utah’s Republican convention which chose two others to compete in a June primary for the seat. Brooks fretted he was punished for being “a good conservative who was trying to get things done” by “bravely” working with Democrats on health care and supporting TARP. “Now,” he repeated, “he's losing his career over that. And it's just a damn outrage.”
Sitting beside Brooks on NBC’s roundtable, liberal Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne Jr,. a former New York Times correspondent, saw “almost a non-violent coup because they denied the sitting Senator even a chance of getting on the primary ballot.”
Over on Fox News Sunday, NPR’s Juan Williams expressed exasperation: “This is evidence of how the American political center is losing, on the right wing of the party a guy like Bob Bennett, who is a right-wing conservative, is being driven out because he’s not sufficiently conservative?”
ABC’s Jake Tapper brought Rudy Giuliani aboard This Week to address the handling of the Times Square botched bomber, but wouldn’t let him go before bringing up Bennett’s defeat as proof of an intolerant GOP: “Are you worried at all that the Republican Party is not only growing more hostile to more liberal to moderate Republicans such as yourself, but also conservative Republicans who are shown to, at least shown an ability to work with Democrats?”
Later, during the roundtable, George Will answered the presumption Bennett was the victim of an ideological purity test:
This is an anti-Washington year. How do you get more Washington than a three-term Senator who occupies the seat once held by his father, a four-term Senator, who before that worked on the Senate staff and then as a lobbyist in Washington? He’s a wonderful man and a terrific Senator. But the fact is, he’s going against terrific head-winds this year and he cast three votes: TARP, stimulus and an individual mandate for health care. Now, you might like one, two or all three of those, but being opposed to them is not outside the mainstream of American political argument.
Brooks admired those very votes from Bennett, hailing the Wyden-Bennett health plan as “a substantive, serious bill, a bipartisan bill, with strong conservative and some liberal support. So he did something sort of brave by working with Democrats which more Senators should do and now they've been sent a message to him don’t do that.”
As if this would convince conservatives, Dionne pointed to how “you just had an election in Britain where David Cameron, the conservative, almost got a majority by saying we need to de-toxicfy, take the rough edges off conservatism, appeal to a broader constituency.” But he didn’t get a majority with that approach!
From the May 9 Meet the Press:
DAVID BROOKS: This is a damn outrage, to be honest. This is a guy who was a good Senator and he was a good Senator and a good conservative, but a good conservative who was trying to get things done. The Wyden-Bennett bill, which he co-sponsored -- if you took the health care economists in the country, they would probably be for that bill, ideally. It was a substantive, serious bill, a bipartisan bill, with strong conservative and some liberal support. So he did something sort of brave by working with Democrats which more Senators should do and now they've been sent a message to him don’t do that.
The second thing is the TARP. Nobody liked the TARP. But we were in a complete economic meltdown and sometimes you have to do terrible things. And we're in a much better economic place because of the TARP. So he bravely cast a vote that nobody wanted to really cast and now he's losing his career over that. And it's just a damn outrage.
E.J. DIONNE: I agree with David on this. And I think that something’s happening inside the Republican Party that I think in the long run won't be good for the Republican Party. You just had an election in Britain where David Cameron, the conservative, almost got a majority by saying we need to de-toxicfy, take the rough edges off conservatism, appeal to a broader constituency. And here you have a state party convention, by the way, not a primary. It's almost a non-violent coup because they denied the sitting Senator even a chance of getting on the primary ballot. And I think the party in the long run risks a backlash among voters who may not be liberal at all, but don't like this kind of politics.
And before people on the right crow too much about this, it is a party convention in Utah. I would imagine the left would win a party convention on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. So let's not, sort of, make this into a bigger thing than it is. But it is a big deal to dump somebody like Bob Bennett.
From Fox News Sunday:
JUAN WILLIAMS: This is evidence of how the American political center is losing, on the right wing of the party a guy like Bob Bennett, who is a right-wing conservative, is being driven out because he’s not sufficiently conservative?...If I lived in Utah, I’m going to give up Bob Bennett and his seniority and connections?
BILL KRISTOL: Why do you need the seniority? To bring the pork home?
WILLIAMS: To bring the pork home?
KRISTOL: That’s worked well over the last several years.
WILLIAMS: Oh, so you’d sit here and say, “oh TARP was terrible, bailouts were terrible,” even though we saved ourselves from depression? That’s rational? That’s good, inspired caring about America?
>> This is an anti-Washington year
Which ironically upsets major media personalities. Quite telling, isn’t it?
Exactly. If he was really a conservative, these liberal buffoons would be cheering about him being knocked out this early.
"Congress shall have the power to COIN money....
You and your Wall Street vampires are going to fall soon, and fall hard. I'm going to laugh my ass off when it happens.
It'll be fun watching the mobs tear your Brooks Brothers suits to pieces with your type still in them. I'm planning on Tivoing it for future enjoyment.
L
True. Entitlements are the fundamental problem. However, they are also the most complex (see Greece). We MUST work on getting rid of the welfare state. In the meantime, however, it sure would help a lot if our congresscritters stopped pork barrel spending. Not only does this increase federal government spending by billions and billions, it’s also the basis for the entire GAME of politics in Washington. Every politician who steps away from what he knows very well his constitutents want him to do, rationalizes — quite accurately, as it turns out — that all will be forgiven once he gets that $10 million for honeybee research and that $3 million for replica gas lamps for that 2-block “main street” in Nowheresville, His State.
IOW, stopping earmarks does a lot more than reduce spending. It actually reduces each congresscritter’s POWER. He has nothing to bargain with, horsetrade with, rationalize to himself or his constituents with, or goody-bags to campaign on. He actually would have to do his JOB in a way that got him re-elected on the merits.
Priceless!
Good points. We are definitely on the same page.
One of the reason they think no one back home can touch them is because they think no one back home WILL touch them, so long as they bring home the bacon!
IOW, PORK COVERS A MULTITUDE OF POLITICAL SINS.
These cretins do whatever they want, including cramming down Marxist garbage, and feel cool about it because they think, “I’ll just buy off my constituents by getting a $4 million earmark for a bridge over Coopers Creek and a $10 million earmark for a new library in Mayberry.”
If we took earmarks away from them, and they had no high-dollar goody-bags to wave around whenever their voters got antsy, that would reduce their ability to horsetrade on Capitol HIll and increase their accountability at home.
Better than term limits.
The modern world is not broken, it works, it doesn't need you stupid ideology to save it. The definition of conservatism is the desire to conserve the entirely legitimate institutions that got us all the wealth, justice, freedom and power we enjoy, and graditude and realism about those institutions. Its opposite is radicalism, the ideology that believes the entire world should be destroyed as beneath the vision of your stupid ideology.
Well reality stands is judgment of your ideas and not the other way around. Nobody needs your spiteful useless attacks on the great institutions of this country, any more than we needed communism or fascism or any of the other modern ideologies trying to condemn the entirely successful modern world.
Crawl back in your hole, worm.
Make up your mind, dude! I'm either a knuckle dragging anti-capitalist or a worm. Which one is it?
Damn right I'm going to attack what I think is the crony capitalism that exists between Wall Street and Washington DC. That isn't capitalism, that's corporate statism. Not broke? What in blazes do you call the government takeover of GM and Chrysler?
BTW, the rights we hold dear are kept thanks to the selfless sacrifice of our men and women in uniform. The pigs you hold in such high regard aren't fit to shine the boots of our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines.
Your problem is you can't see the forest for the trees. I'll bet you've got a portrait of Bernie Madoff hanging on your wall.
I might be willing to forgive Coburn, but I surely want Dahm to beat Rep. John Sullivan in the Republican primary in OK this summer. Sullivan is falling all over himself trying to convince folks that he really does have some principles.
"They", (mostly the Democrats, since they were in charge of CONgress, but the Pubbies were in on it too) "didn't put guns to anyone's head". No - "they" did the smart thing, and made it "cool" to be in debt up to your eyeballs (on the QT, of course - got to make your neighbor think he's not keeping up with the Joneses).
Peer pressure and the social dynamism of your local environment is a strange thing. If either half of the married couple gets convinced that A. you're not keeping up with the Joneses, and B. it's safe to keep 6 figures on your credit cards, & and have a 5/95 ARM hanging in the breeze, that married couple is behind the eight-ball.
"They" are STILL trying to convince people to go BACK into debt - even with the double-digit unemployment rate.
Why use a gun when you can con the rubes? They'll do all your work for you...
Thanks for the ping, Diogen.
I think some of this was to inject new blood in Washington. Go along to just get along is not working.
Don't we all agree that term limits are a good idea?If so then refusing to renominate a 3-term senatorto represent a solidly conservative state is a no-brainer if he has shown any significant RINO tendencies.A no-brainer for conservatives - and a cross shown to a vampire for a "liberal" like E.J. Dionne.
No, America and capitalism and finance are going to continue to grow and prosper in sovereign contempt for your idiocies.
Traitors, class warriors, radicals, splinter parties, ideologies, doom mongers, utopian fantasts, unemployed losers whose wealth consists of assorted manure piles, stinking in their pajamas and damning everything that created the wealth and freedom and justice all around them, through technical marvels they can scarcely comprehend, in seething impotent resentment - are just barely reworked commies waving a flag they painted a different color because they liked one set of soundbites better. If they'd grown up in the ideological climate of 100 years ago they'd be quoting Sorel instead of Ron Paul.
zot
None of which have anything to do with what you and your ilk have been up to for the last decade or so. Your Senior Management are Dem party whores paying for protection from mobster thugs who use them like the prison b****es they are.
And you? You're an errand boy they toss crumbs to.
Nothing more.
why on earth would you say that dear?
I sure don’t see Kristol in cahoots with Brooks Liz.
Kristol is the least offensive NeoCon...and at times doesn’t realy qualify ..he supported Palin when Krauthammer did not por ejemplo.
Because I believe TARP was necessary, and like everyone else, I’m angry that it was necessary.
It was the government’s way to avoid a collapse of the financial system.
The banks/financial institutions have paid back the TARP money with interest.
I care about jobs for my fellow Americans.
TARP may not have been handled in the best fashion, but it did work.
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