Obama's prime target was the Tea Party (which had crushed him in the 2010 midterms), and the establishment Republicans were at odds with the Tea Party movement. I'm not saying I believe this, but sober reflection tells us we need to redraw the line between paranoia and vigilance. The theory is that establishment Republicans appreciated the suppression of the Tea Party.Plausible.
Friday, May 17, 2013
Quote of the Day - Stupid Party edition
Ann Althouse wonders why the GOP wasn't aggressive on the scandals during the election, back when it would have done them some good:
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4 comments:
I don't know that the GOP establishment really knew about the coordinated effort to suppress fund-raising of Tea Party groups by Democrats. However, more to your point, I don't know that they would have cared much under the assumption that a failed Tea Party would drive voters back to establishment candidates.
Even now, the GOP establishment is not happy about the Tea Party, but they acknowledge the Tea Party is better about choosing candidates and an often easy path to victory. Even so, the Establishment makes a good point that goofballs like Todd Akin defeated winnable candidates by simply saying they were Tea Partiers.
In short: the Tea Party needs to take itself seriously and show a little more self-discipline and not just jump on bandwagons. If they can do that, there's no way they won't dominate the GOP for the next generation.
The problem with the Tea Party is that it's just a meme, not an actual organization. There are groups that use the Tea Party tag, but there's no central authority that polices the brand. On one hand it's pretty effective against Alinsky tactics, it's hard to rule 12 a leaderless org. On the other hand you have a bunch of idiots claiming to be the Tea Party candidate and no endorsement mechanism to control that.
That was generally true in 2010-2012, but there are some pretty solid Tea leaders (I know a couple, for example) who will vet and verify. Still, you're right that an amorphous organization is harder to attack and that the informal nature of it is a political advantage most of the time.
Cryptical, that's a feature, not a bug. A few politcos have tried hijack the "Tea Party" moniker for themselves, but with limited success. MS Palin comes to mind. Then again maybe that was just the left trying to smear two conservative entities at once.
I think also that the Republicans didn't bring this out in the 2012 election because either the AP or IRS stories would have sounded like the paranoid rantings of the not very well tethered to reality crowd.
Which might be what the Obamaites counted on when they hatched these plans.
Might be a good time to revisit Fast and Furious too.
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