Mark Levin: Obama Not Destroying GOP, Republican Establishment Is

realclearpolitics.com ^ | January 29, 2013

[ilovesarah2012]

MARK LEVIN: Is Obama destroying the Republican Party? No, the Republican establishment is destroying the Republican Party. The only reason they’re in the majority in the House is because of conservatives — conservatives across the country, the grassroots. They lost the Senate. They like to point to two races, one in Missouri and one in Indiana. I can point to ten races where there were liberal-to-moderate Republicans who lost, and of course they never mention that.

The fact of the matter is, from my opinion, I’m not trying to project it on to you. Until the Republican leadership that has brought us McCain and Romney, that has a feckless RNC, a preposterously incompetent get-out-the-vote operation, is removed and replaced, with fresh, smart, confident, knowledgeable people, until some of our backbenchers move to the front, some of the young Tea Party conservative candidates who can articulate our vision and our principles, this is going to continue.

Obama may want to destroy the Republican Party, but the Republican Party is imploding. And, you know what, it needs to be cleansed. It needs to be cleaned out. Not for purity reasons, not for absolutism, but because it needs to be a party that stands for something. Can you tell me what the Republican Party stands for today?

[Cringing Negativism Network]

“Buy American”.

:D

Sorry.

[Count of Monte Fisto]

Obama Not Destroying GOP, Republican Establishment Is

It ain't no accident, either. The GOPe would rather lose to Marxist Democrats than let real conservatives win. There was all kinds of shenanigans to ensure that McLame and Romney got the nomination and look how well that turned out. I don't know if anyone could tell the difference if they had dropped out and actively campaigned for Obama. These are not stupid men. They know exactly what they are doing.

[Jim Noble]

I think Mark is getting ready to bail.

We certainly need something very different if politics is going to have a chance to prevent the war that’s coming.

[DoughtyOne]

Both parties are destroying the GOP.  What we need is to look out for America.  America.  I agree.

That is not what we are doing. What is happening now, is we are selling out America so that we can make stuff cheaper, than the guy down the street.  The problem is, we are making stuff cheaper than the guy down the street, by buying the stuff from communist China.  China is now the largest exporter in the world.  I agree.  I've been talking about this since the mid 1990s.

We need to realize we have a serious competition on our hand, and it is here, right now.  No we don't.  We don't have a serious competitor.  We have a POTENTIAL competitor, and we have chosen to be on his side, not our own.  In essence, that means our POTENTIAL competitor isn't our competitor at all.  Our polices are such that it is clear we joined his team, and aren't competing at all.  Thus we have no real competitor.

But American.  When I can, I do buy U. S. products.

[Cringing Negativism Network]

Good post.

I don’t unfortunately agree with your third point, if I understood it correctly, though from the rest of your post I most likely am misunderstanding.

China now out-produces America.

Let me say that again, for all the patriotic Americans out there, ready to jump onto the “make it in China” juggernaut which has now cost us the lead, internationally:

China now out-produces America.

That is a serious challenge.

Both our parties seem aok with this. I do not see the wisdom in continuing this policy, when the result is an America which runs a huge trade deficit, and buys everything from foreigners.

I just don’t see it.

China is (rapidly) gaining power. Not just regionally. China is on its way to challenging is internationally.

There are not there yet, but all the trends are in their favor.

Why in the world, do we keep sending factories to China?

We need a huge reset.

We need Americans, working for America.

Wake up people.

[DoughtyOne]

What happens to China’s economy if we stop buying from it?

And if the West as a whole stopped, China would be dead in it’s tracks in days.

We have gifted China with a cash pipeline that has inflated it’s true worth beyond reason.

China is a pariah. You realize that. Why can’t our leaders? It boggles the mind.

I may have confused you by stating that it isn’t a real competitor. Think of it this way.

If a high school football team visits another high school, there’s only a competition of they line up on two sides opposing each other.

What we have here, is both teams lining up on the same side, with an open field for the team we’ve decided to work for. We’re certainly not working for our own.

Thus, no real competitor.

[Cringing Negativism Network]

Got it.

The thing is, China is (very) closed about their own economy.

And their own system.

They do not allow free imports. They do not allow free immigration.

We need to wake the heck up, and start to look out for America again.

Now.

Bring back American production.

Now.

[DoughtyOne]

They are a lot more open than they used to be, but I do think you’ve still got a point.

No, they do not allow free imports. Mostly it’s their currency evaluation that costs us something like 40% to export to China, but our leaders find that acceptable.

Go figure...

Immigration, out sourcing, H1-B visas, and domestic manufacturing are areas I would address day one.

It has been all out war on our citizens who want to work, and today we have 40 million U. S. Citizens idle who should be working. Who is that helping?

[Jim Noble]

I don’t have data, but will share my highly subjective impression from 95% white New Hampshire.

Rand Paul came up here the other day urging us to be more diverse. Not sure what he meant. Most of us here like it here fine.

The New Hampshire GOP majority, which was once quite massive, has been destroyed by internicine warfare - not by Democrats, not by blacks and Hispanics (there are none) and not really by liberals - although at about 30%, they are an annoyance.

What’s happened here, IMO, is that the country club set has bought globalization, hook, line, and sinker, and the more-or-less conservative white working class majority feels abandoned by them. They would support candidates chosen by their “betters” as long as those candidates weren’t obviously screwing them and their families.

The GOPe is organized now around core principles that are detrimental to the white working class - diversity, globalization, open borders, and antifamily social liberalism. These voters formed the core of the Reagan revolution. They gave Nixon 61% of the vote and 520 electoral votes in 1972.

If they perceive, or can be convinced, that “conservatism, inc.” is a scam that sets out to hurt them, they are not going to be on board. And here, they’re not.

This is a state of small towns, small farms, “leave me alone” types, and no minorities to speak of. If the GOPe cannot win here, they cannot win anywhere.

Social and economic conditions for the white majority are deteriorating relentlessly. The GOPe has no answers. The commie answers, although false, are directed at them.

A strong rightward push is IMO the only answer. However, for it to happen the GOPe must surrender many of their most cherished illusions, above all the illusion that 30 million mestizos can be turned into productive and loyal American citizens, and the illusion that the tribal vote blocs of blacks, Hispanics, and now Asians can be subverted by more free stuff.

Even the white working class is not that stupid. To quote a famous Freeper, “all US politics is racial”.

Go white, go right, or go home.

[Cringing Negativism Network]

Right.

I am of a very pro-Chinese background. I am not lightly taking this position.

But we have badly, badly mishandled our trade relationship with China.

What we have done is to keep in place all of the negative aspects of China’s relationship with us, all for cheap stuff.

China is currently a closed, monopolistic system.

Closed. There is no free immigration to the nation. None. Immigration is allowed there, only for Chinese.

Americans are SOL.

American goods are likewise not welcome in China. What China does is it requires American companies to give up all their secrets, and then makes them produce (at 49% ownership) in China.

That is ok for a while, while we receive cheap goods. But now we continue to sell out to China.

We still have no opening on the bad parts, and frankly we still have no opening on the trade parts either.

We are completely being taken advantage of.

And our own people are selling us out, while our unemployment rate continues high, supporting Democrats.

What we are currently doing, is continuing an abusive trade relationship.

We need a reset.

What sort of reset, how, when, all of that stuff I look for feedback on.

But what we’ve got now, is sinking America.

That is unacceptable.

[DoughtyOne]

Rand Paul came up here the other day urging us to be more diverse.

Diversity... oui!

Talk about tone-deaf.

What we need is unity behind core principles. Not diversity of race, not diversity of ideas, but coalescence behind reason.

Rush talks about compromise and expanding our world view. He addresses it something like this.

If you have reasoned principles, what is the result of compromising? Doesn't that just move you off the mark? Doesn't it cause you to cave on some of your principles? Doesn't it ultimately lead to you moving Left?

And isn't that exactly what we have seen over the last 50 years?

Rand is a day late and a dollar short on this one...

[DoughtyOne]

Right.  Thank you.  I'm glad we agree.

I am of a very pro-Chinese background. I am not lightly taking this position.  So am I.  I like the Chinese people.  I wish them well.  It's just that I have an obligation to my fellow citizens too, and we are selling them out.  As for China's government, we both know the problems there. 

This is another issue where it sounds like you don't like a certain group of people, because you disagree stridently with policy.  When talking about illegal immigration it's easy for folks to lose sight of our concern for Mexican nationals inside Mexico.  I think they are mistreated.  I think the Chinese are as well.  Still, we have to advocate for sound policy, and that's what we do.

Nobody should think we don't care about a certain group of people, just because we stridently disagree with policies that are very detramental to the United States and it's citizens.

But we have badly, badly mishandled our trade relationship with China.  I couldn't agree more.

What we have done is to keep in place all of the negative aspects of China’s relationship with us, all for cheap stuff.  I agree.  I've read ahead here, and I like where you're headed.  You're exactly right.

China is currently a closed, monopolistic system.  Agreed.

Closed. There is no free immigration to the nation. None. Immigration is allowed there, only for Chinese.  Agreed.

Americans are SOL.  Agreed.

American goods are likewise not welcome in China. What China does is it requires American companies to give up all their secrets, and then makes them produce (at 49% ownership) in China.  Exactly.  All patents have to be provided to the government of China, for our businesses to do business there.  We have gifted China with 75 years worth of the fruits of Capitalism, without China having to adopt true Capitalism anywhere along the way.  We have unequal markets.  We have the Chinese not having to do R&D to obtain cutting edge information and techniques.  We also have Chinese policies that cause restraint of trade for items we wish to export to it.

That is ok for a while, while we receive cheap goods. But now we continue to sell out to China.  Yes we do.  And now Chinese concerns are well funded, and R&D is taking place in China, and they will bury us in short order, as R&D here wanes because there's no business driving it.

We still have no opening on the bad parts, and frankly we still have no opening on the trade parts either.  That's true.

We are completely being taken advantage of.  That's true.

And our own people are selling us out, while our unemployment rate continues high, supporting Democrats.  Agreed.

What we are currently doing, is continuing an abusive trade relationship.  Agreed.

We need a reset.  Agreed.

What sort of reset, how, when, all of that stuff I look for feedback on.  I just think we change our policies to encourage businesses to return to our shores.  We became a nation second to none with the very policies we both think we should return to.

But what we’ve got now, is sinking America.  It couldn't be more obvious.  If you look at the trends in off-shore practices, the trends in open boarders, and the corelating drop in jobs creation here, it quickly becomes crystal clear what went wrong.

That is unacceptable.  Couldn't agree more.

[Cringing Negativism Network]

Thanks for your nice post.

We really need a more balanced discussion of international trade.

One which includes the concerns of Americans.

We have for too long defined everything by one party or the other, domestically. Both of which, are currently working against the best interests, of Americans as a group.

China is now exporting more than America. A lot of the export, is by allegedly “American” companies.

We need a new approach to international trade.

What we need to do, I leave open to discussion. But currently, we are shafting America.

This is completely unacceptable.

Have a good one. Talk with you later.

[DoughtyOne]

Thank you Cringing Negativism Network. To tell the truth, I actually support an open and robust international trade. I just don’t support what we’re doing with China. It really bears no connection to Free Trade in the traditional sense.

Take care. Nice talking to you...

[nathanbedford]

… the country club set has bought globalization, hook, line, and sinker, and the more-or-less conservative white working class majority feels abandoned by them. They would support candidates chosen by their “betters” as long as those candidates weren’t obviously screwing them and their families.

The GOPe is organized now around core principles that are detrimental to the white working class - diversity, globalization, open borders, and antifamily social liberalism.

Social and economic conditions for the white majority are deteriorating relentlessly. The GOPe has no answers. The commie answers, although false, are directed at them.

Well, there we have in brief one of the clearest expositions of the current state of the Republican Party which applies even more to the country at large where conditions have deteriorated more than they have in New Hampshire.

So we have a disconnect between the policed and politics, between the voters and the elites, between the people and their institutions. These disconnects, judging from the results of the last election in which Republicans stayed home, are deeper on our side than on the Democrat side, or, the Democrats have digitized Ward healing and learned how to get out the vote. More, and you have alluded to this, the Democrats are far more adept at racial demagoguery and they have succeeded in utterly numbing 12% of the population, the African-American "community," to logic. Pivoting off this group, they need only pick off smaller percentages of other racial groups, ( 60% or better of Hispanics and a like percentage of Jews and Muslims together-ain't that a neat trick!) Gays and Single White Females and they will have accumulated an almost insurmountable lead by election eve.

Against this we have the eternal issue on the Republican side whether to move right and risk driving away the center or to move left and risk being abandoned by the right. We have chosen the latter course in every presidential election since Ronald Reagan and we have won a plurality of the votes only twice in seven tries since then. Because the Democrats carry such a daunting demographic head start into every election, we are obsessed with holding the squishy middle. Indeed, Gov. Romney bet his entire stake on winning the middle even to the point of failing to take on Barak Obama in the third debate over Obama's appalling, cowardly breach of duty on the evening of Benghazi.

John McCain did the same but McCain was even worse for he was utterly intimidated by the color of Obama's skin. So we saw in both campaigns instructions to subordinates not to criticize Obama for fear of charges of racism. To give these candidates the benefits of all doubts, let us content ourselves to observe that they failed to wage a normal American presidential campaign because their opponent was black and they did this not out of cowardice but because they were determined to take a high road. No matter their state of mind, the result was the same. Not only did we install a Manchurian Marxist in the White House but we left our party without moral standing to attack him, his counterfeit provenance, his arrogance, or his tyrannical tendencies.

As far back as the beginning of the McCain campaign many of us were screaming that the new Black Messiah could not be defeated in the climate created by the media unless he were destroyed morally and this John McCain and even Mitt Romney declined to even attempt to do.

Romney, at least, can argue with some credibility that he actually thought right up to election eve that he was going to win the race and, therefore, his game plan of campaigning for the independents would prevail without losing him the conservative vote of the Republican right because conservatives were so pissed off at Obama that they would crawl over broken glass to save the country. We know that many conservatives failed to make it to the polling booth even though their path was quite free of broken glass. We are not sure why.

We also know that a surprising number of Democrats did make it to the polling booth, yes, fewer than had voted for Obama in 2008 but nevertheless enough to prevail. We don't know how that was accomplished but we have heard the Democrats themselves say that they digitized the campaign, retailed it, and worked a revolution in the technique of getting out the vote.

In comparison, we know that the Republican efforts to get out the vote can charitably be described as a fiasco.

In order to honestly grapple with our problem of understanding the election we have to put ourselves back into the mindset we held right up until the election. Candor requires us to admit that we thought that our side would in fact crawl over broken glass to save the Republic. In hindsight we conservatives come up with ideological explanations for our surprising loss that never occurred to us in the run-up to election eve. One read very few complaints about the Romney campaign or about his position on the issues especially after the first debate. All of these possible explanations that we get on FreeRepublic about our failure in the election occurred because we put up a Rino were seldom heard between the time of the first debate and election eve. If it was so obvious, why is it obvious only in hindsight?

Was the fiasco of the election eve get-out-the-vote failure purely attributable to the ineptitude of the Republican National Committee? Was it due to the cupidity of Romney's consultants? Was it that the entire message failed to resonate with Republicans? If it failed to resonate was that because of the message, or the messenger, or because we have entered a new digital age and we do not understand in which elections are going to be won on Google, Facebook, and Twitter?

There is another explanation, Jim, which is so clearly laid out for us in your reply, portions of which I have freely quoted above. The elitists have succeeded in disentangling the party from its base. Instead of looking at this from a right-left matrix let us consider the matter the way you have described it. We are descending toward scenes depicted in "The Grapes of Wrath," approaching a depression, at least for the beleaguered middle-class, which is being buffeted by forces such as globalism, unrestrained immigration, and Fed bank policies which these people little understand and, more importantly, had not been made to understand by their party elites who in decency owed them at least that much. But the elitists who run the party have no interest in these issues. They think they can move the hearts of the electorate by telling the electorate that they, if elected, will move taxes as a portion of the gross domestic product down a percentage point or two. This is hardly the stuff which impels the heart to crawl over broken glass.

If the Democrats cynically manipulate the African-American vote and seek to suborn the Hispanic vote, cannot the same charge be laid against establishment Republicans who know they must serve up some sort of issue which will appeal to their "base" but which, as they are fully aware, will not prevail in the election and, even if victorious, will not appreciably improve the lives of the people whose votes they solicit? Their message is not designed necessarily to win and certainly not to change the nation's course but only to keep these players in the game.

Enter the Tea Party. Here is a remarkable group of newcomers to the political process who have demonstrated a capacity to learn quickly, to organize, and to effectively change the political landscape. The IRS scandal is reinvigorating them and they will clearly make their presence felt in 2014. The question is, whether the Tea Party will be content in the future to continue to define itself not as a political party but as a "movement?" Heretofore, they have been content to work in the primaries and generally, with some obvious exceptions, to work in harness with the Republican Party. There is every reason to believe that that all has changed. The one man in the Republican establishment who can steer the history of the Republican Party and its interaction with The Tea Party is Speaker John Boehner. If Boehner continues to fail to defund Obamacare while contenting himself with sham votes to repeal, if he continues in his refusal to establish a special committee to investigate Benghazi, if he fails to capitalize on the IRS scandal, the tea party will see through him and will bolt.

Someone like Sen. Ted Cruz or Sen. Rand Paul will tear the base away from the elites using the vehicle of The Tea Party. His cry will be a combination of conservatism and populism, not a socialist populism, but a populism of liberty and equality under the law, equality of opportunity, an end to elitist cronyism. Issues such as a fair tax will be used as tools to restore the middle-class. The message will be structured around fairness and liberty but an urgency will be let to it as the leader of this revolt warns us, as both McCain and Romney failed to do, that the American dream for us and our kids is disintegrating under our feet. If the traditional conservative values of America, if the values of our heritage are not restored, the country will disintegrate. We are slouching toward financial ruin and societal breakdown. The conservative campaign must be predicated on the insistence that the country is hurtling toward destruction and it is not just the political policies of the Democrats which are causing our decline but it is their race baiting, class warfare, and dependency culture which are causing our social decline. Against the destruction of the American dream, the Democrats offer us nothing but racism and we must not shrink from saying so.

Such a revolt is a crusade not just to upgrade the bank statements of the middle-class but to wage war against Democrat tyranny. Ted Cruz has demonstrated, as has Ron Paul, that he will label the Democrats the tyrants they are. Either one of these two men is (morally) capable of recasting the traditional equation of our elections to make them a crusade to save the nation, a movement for the Constitution and to restore the rule law, a cause to save our heritage for our kids and our grandchildren, a striving to save America for the whole world. Both men show evidence as of this writing that they will not shrink from making the election a contest of good over evil. Obama and the Democrats must be called evil because the election must be waged on a moral level.

Such a campaign will liberate the Republican Party from its four-year Hobson's choice of forsaking the left for the right, or the right for the left. We do not need data to understand that we have got to change the rules of the game, but once we do, we will win because we will not be playing the Democrats' game-or the Rino's game either.

[Jim Noble]

Candor requires us to admit that we thought that our side would in fact crawl over broken glass to save the Republic.

And candor further requires us to admit that we have not understood "our side", who is on it, who can be brought to it, who is irrevocably against us and must be crushed.

In every small town in New Hampshire, Bush's pointless military operations after December 2003 cost an irreplaceable hero - a father, a brother, a police chief, a high school coach, a volunteer fireman, and on, and on, and on. All these losses, and no plan for victory. No concept of victory, and no sense of shame.

In every small town in New Hampshire, 30, 40, and 50 year old businesses have closed and thrown proud, experienced, and faithful employees out of work. Families devastated, more stuff arriving in containers from COSCO. As our students leave high school and look for work, Rand Paul comes around to tell them, sorry, but you can't have a job because "we" need more diversity. Look, here comes another planeload from Somalia!

"Our side" has lost its cohesion. Sooner or later, when Rove sounds the trumpet and looks around, he gets the ancient response: "What do you mean, we?"

[nathanbedford]

Sorry, I was so caught up with the implications of your reply that I missed the significance of your comments about Rand Paul and his speech in new Hampshire extolling the virtue of "diversity."

I was careful to qualify my endorsement of both Paul and Ted Cruz mindful of the genetic disposition of politicians to betray. Indeed, this business of mindlessly genuflecting on the mere mention of the word "diversity" is an evil which must be opposed.

I live in an area in Germany where there is precious little diversity although the country as a whole is condemning itself to a diversity nightmare. Was diversity the strength of the Habsburg Empire in 1914? Was diversity its strength on the breakup of Yugoslavia? Is diversity a source of strength for Los Angeles? Was diversity our strength on 9/11? Was diversity the strength of the Soviet Union in 1991? How has diversity worked out for the Armenians? The Kulaks? The Cherokees?

Diversity is a very grave but little considered threat to civilization.

[Jim Noble]

Yes, “diversity” is by no means “our strength”.

[FreedomPoster]

At the GA GOP convention a couple weeks ago, there were a *lot* of people wearing buttons like this:

Did I mention that Rove was the keynote speaker on the main day?

The grassroots of the party is starting to push back, hard.