So said Lawrence Hunter, here, of the debt-ceiling fiasco:
[T]he problem with the direction the country is headed is the Republican Establishment, which has made a long career out of snookering and hoodwinking conservatives into believing the Republican Party is the party of small government, low taxes, freedom and prosperity at home, and peace abroad. Republicans are, in fact, the very opposite. To paraphrase Pogo, “We Republicans have met the enemy and he is us.”
Republicans are the stern, conservative side of the Janus Faced welfare state at home and empire abroad. The GOP is Twiddle Dum to the Democratic Twiddle Dee. And dear Tea Partiers, they just took you to the cleaners the same way they have been taking the American people to the cleaners since FDR rolled around the Oval Office. Welcome to the Nation’s Capital. ...
Until the Republican Establishment is replaced to a man (there are no women) with serious people devoted to restoring America, rather than just getting themselves re-elected time and again, no progress will be made toward winning this epic struggle for freedom, peace and prosperity.
Compare Rush Limbaugh here on October 13th, who keeps maintaining that the Tea Party must take over the Republican Party, but who on issues running the gamut from bank bailouts to taxes and tariffs to George W. Bush to spending to free trade adopts the alloyed rhetoric of the very establishment he decries:
The Tea Party is under assault from the Democrats and the Republican elite, and now the battle has been brought full fore in the pages of the New York Times Magazine.
There's some quotes from various people in this story. Bill Kristol on the Tea Party: "It's an infantile form of conservatism." Scott Reed, veteran strategist and lobbyist: "I think it's waning now," talking to the reporter of the story about the Tea Party's influence. "Party leaders have managed to bleed some of the anti-establishment intensity out of the movement, Reed said, by slyly embracing Tea Party sympathizers in Congress, rather than treating them as 'those people.' Did he mean to say that the party was slowly co-opting the Tea Partiers? 'Trying to,' Reed said. 'And that’s the secret to politics: trying to control a segment of people without those people recognizing that you’re trying to control them.'" This is a Republican consultant talking about how to neutralize the Tea Party.
John Feehery, a lobbyist who was once a senior House aide I think to Denny Hastert, is also quoted. "The thing I get a kick out of is these Tea Party people calling me a RINO. No, guys, I've been a Republican all along. You go off on your own little world and then come back and say it's your party. Well, this ain't your party."
Rush should spend more time reading Forbes and less time The New York Times.
Compare Rush Limbaugh here on October 13th, who keeps maintaining that the Tea Party must take over the Republican Party, but who on issues running the gamut from bank bailouts to taxes and tariffs to George W. Bush to spending to free trade adopts the alloyed rhetoric of the very establishment he decries:
The Tea Party is under assault from the Democrats and the Republican elite, and now the battle has been brought full fore in the pages of the New York Times Magazine.
There's some quotes from various people in this story. Bill Kristol on the Tea Party: "It's an infantile form of conservatism." Scott Reed, veteran strategist and lobbyist: "I think it's waning now," talking to the reporter of the story about the Tea Party's influence. "Party leaders have managed to bleed some of the anti-establishment intensity out of the movement, Reed said, by slyly embracing Tea Party sympathizers in Congress, rather than treating them as 'those people.' Did he mean to say that the party was slowly co-opting the Tea Partiers? 'Trying to,' Reed said. 'And that’s the secret to politics: trying to control a segment of people without those people recognizing that you’re trying to control them.'" This is a Republican consultant talking about how to neutralize the Tea Party.
John Feehery, a lobbyist who was once a senior House aide I think to Denny Hastert, is also quoted. "The thing I get a kick out of is these Tea Party people calling me a RINO. No, guys, I've been a Republican all along. You go off on your own little world and then come back and say it's your party. Well, this ain't your party."
Rush should spend more time reading Forbes and less time The New York Times.
