Republican establishment types will
celebrate. Conservatives won’t be joining them.
By ERICK ERICKSON, November 03, 2014
Republicans will probably take the
Senate as well as the House on Tuesday. But many of those GOP Senate candidates
about to squeak into office are, in my view, political philanderers – by which
I mean that while they pledge their troth to conservative principles, they
still carry on outrageous affairs with Big Government. And frankly it’s no
surprise that many voters would rather continue an unhappy marriage to Barack
Obama rather than indulge in a one-night stand with false-dealing Republicans.
So we might well see a Republican
Congress in name after Election Day, but its small-government rhetoric is
certainly not going to fool or win over the party base. In 2014, the American
public has shown that it hates Washington, D.C., and the Republican leaders in
Washington are demonstrating why. They have assembled a team of strategists,
consultants, and other political operatives who eat, breathe, and sleep
Washington, D.C. Instead of standing for something, they stand for anything
they think might get them back into power.
The message from Washington’s
Republican elite is no longer that government is the problem, but that
Democrats in charge of government are the problem. That might work in 2014, but
it’s not going to carry the day in the next presidential election. Republicans
cannot make the case that government is the problem when they covet the power
of controlling it to the extent they do.
This election cycle is only the
latest iteration of an old story by which Republican consultants and
establishment types have gotten rich and, in doing so, have impoverished the
conservative movement—all the while losing important elections that could
determine the future of our country. In 2008 the Democrats brought in a fresh
face not of Washington as their nominee, while the Republicans reached all the
way back to 2000, had a replay of the same old fights, then nominated their own
establishment candidate, John McCain, who happened to have been the loser in
the 2000 primary struggle. He lost again.
The events of
2012 amounted to a recycling of this story. The GOP refought the 2008 primary cycle
with the 2008 loser (Mitt Romney) becoming the 2012 winner. He lost the general
election and the consultants again got rich. In November of 2012, housed
together on the fifth floor of 66 Canal Center Plaza in Alexandria, Va., nine
separate Republican campaign organizations that had collaborated on the Romney
loss raked in cash: Crossroads Media, Black Rock Group, WWP Strategies, Restore
Our Future, Targeted Victory, DDC Advocacy/Blue Front Strategies, Target Point
Consulting, Digital Franking, and Americans for Job Security.
It doesn’t seem to matter much that
the political track record of this GOP consultancy-industrial complex is
execrable. Targeted Victory, LLC—which was co-founded by Michael Beach, the
“national victory director” for the Republican Party during the 2008
campaign—played a key role in the development of “Project ORCA,” the now
infamous Romney technology effort to win in 2012. It failed spectacularly. The
manager of that effort for Targeted Victory was Tony Feather, who is now the
“F” in FLS Connect, a powerhouse Republican consulting firm that handles much
of the GOP’s voter contact. The “L” in FLS is Jeff Larson, who had been chief
of staff for the Republican National Committee. FLS Connect also, at one time,
employed Rich Beeson, who also worked at the RNC and went on to become Mitt
Romney’s political director.
Understanding the incestuous ties
between Republican consultants—the unending referrals of business between these
friendly and insular consultant cliques—and the group think they promote is
vital to comprehending the Republican predicament in 2014. Many of the groups
that profited from Mitt Romney’s loss in 2012 are now helping Republicans in
2014. Ron Bonjean, who worked for former establishment Republican leaders like
Dennis Hastert and Trent Lott and is also a partner at a bipartisan firm,
Singer Bonjean Strategies, in September took up an independent position with
the NRSC. (The “Singer” in that firm, by the way, would be one Phil Singer, who
worked for Chuck Schumer and served as the Democratic Senatorial Campaign
Committee’s communications director in 2006.)
The coveting of power for the sake
of power and consultant-led group think have misdirected the GOP to strategic
blunder after blunder.
In North Carolina, the GOP hedged its
bets behind the candidate who most looked like the men already hanging out at
their Capitol Hill Club. Thom Tillis, speaker of the North Carolina House of
Representatives, might pull off a victory, but it will be in spite of himself
and more because of voter unhappiness with the incumbent. North Carolina voters
appear sold on Tillis only because he is not Sen. Kay Hagan. His campaign has
struggled, even after taking advice from the National Republican Senatorial
Committee.
In Kansas, instead of suggesting
that Pat Roberts retire, Republicans in Washington rallied to keep the old
establishment warhorse. The Washington Republicans’ treatment of Roberts stands
in stark contrast to what they did to conservative Sen. Jim Bunning, who was
quickly dispatched in 2010’s Kentucky race in favor of Trey Grayson. Grayson,
of course, went on to lose the primary to Rand Paul.
Roberts does not live in Kansas. He
has spent most of his time on the campaign trail touting his Washington
endorsements. Press reports note that he did not even have an internet
connection in his campaign office until a few weeks after the primary. But the
Republicans in Washington thought he was a safer pick than finding a fresh
face.
In numerous other states the
Republican Party has had a hard time rallying voters to its side on its issues.
The Republicans who win on Tuesday will do so as anti-Barack Obama candidates,
not as Republicans with an agenda worth supporting. There are three reasons for
this failure, all of which directly derive from the mistakes made by the same
pool of GOP-commissioned consultants who win whether the party wins or loses.
First, in the Mississippi primary,
the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Chamber of Commerce, and other
affiliated groups made a decision to run a ruthless campaign against the
Republican base. Conservative activists were called racists and bigots.
Conservative organizations were accused of profiting off the races — something
psychologists would term “projection.” Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican
leader declared the tea party candidates challenging Washington’s picks would
be ruthlessly stamped out.
Republicans in Washington who
declared war on their very base are now shocked that conservative voters have
little interest or motivation in helping Pat Roberts, Thom Tillis, David
Perdue, or a host of other candidates. A Republican establishment that has
spent several years badmouthing Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and outside groups like
the Senate Conservatives Fund now find themselves openly begging the Senate
Conservatives Fund to engage in races while they fly Ted Cruz around the
country to motivate the base.
Second, the Washington Republicans
decided to stand behind insiders and creatures of Washington at a time when
Americans across the country, regardless of party, have come loathe Washington
and the insiders who feed off it. In September, a Washington Post/ABC poll
showed that 47 percent of voters “strongly disapprove” of the GOP, and 72 percent of
Americans generally disapprove of the congressional GOP. Despite these numbers
we see almost no new faces running. Ed Gillespie, a lobbyist and former RNC Chairman,
is the GOP’s struggling candidate in Virginia. Pat Roberts is their guy in
Kansas. Thom Tillis struggles in North Carolina as the Washington Republicans’
pick.
In Georgia, one of the few new faces
to manage to oust the establishment GOP in the primaries, David Perdue, is
struggling in a close race. The Georgia Republicans had consolidated behind
long-time congressman Jack Kingston, and Perdue used that to his advantage
running as an outsider. But, as Republicans have seen for more than a decade,
rich, self-funding candidates like Perdue do badly in elections. Perdue, who
lives in the gated community on a gated private island, is having trouble
connecting with voters while the Democrats have outspent him on Atlanta
airwaves attacking him for outsourcing jobs. Perdue’s best argument for himself
is that he is not a proxy for Barack Obama’s agenda. It’s just not enough.
And that brings us to the third
issue. Republican strategists entrenched in the beltway, covetous of power for
the sake of power, have no agenda other than “We are not Barack Obama.” It fell
to outside groups to carry most of the Republican water on the anti-Obamacare
campaign. Likewise, third-party groups have been most vocal on securing the
border, while the Republican establishment played it safe.
On Nov. 3, Alexander Burns wrote in
Politico that Republican leaders were preparing “with growing confidence … to
argue that broad GOP gains in the House and Senate would represent a
top-to-bottom validation of their party’s mainline wing.” But when 47 percent
of Americans “strongly disapprove” of the Republican Party, it’s hard to find
validation—especially when there’s no real Republican message to validate other
than we-are-not-Obama. The sole validation to be found there is that Americans
reject the president while still hating the same leaders of the GOP whom voters
punished in 2006.
When David Brat shocked the
political class by beating Rep. Eric Cantor earlier this year, Republicans
should have taken it as a warning sign that their candidates needed to campaign
against Washington instead of promising what Washington could do if only
Republicans were in charge. The Republican consultant class, in an act of
self-protection, quickly convinced everyone that Cantor had lost because of
Democratic cross-over votes. Now, while Democrats spend money on voter
mobilization, the very same Republican consultants who got rich off their
losses in 2006, 2008, and 2012 are making killer commissions on mail and media
buys.
Republicans will do well on Election
Day. The president’s job approval has cratered. The GOP outperforms the
President on a host of issues from the economy to handling terror threats. But
Washington’s Republican establishment made a conscious decision to find
candidates who looked and sounded more like them and less like the Americans
whose votes they need. They have provided no alternative and took far longer to
close the deal with voters than they should have. When the polls close on
Tuesday, Republicans will not so much have won as Democrats will have lost.
And so the message is plain: The GOP
celebration will be brief. When the new Republican Congress convenes next year,
tries to lead, and looks over its shoulder, there won’t be many conservatives
following.
Erick Erickson is editor-in-chief of
the conservative blog site RedState.com.
Source: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/11/midterms-hollow-victory-gop-112463_full.html#.VFkaYOktAqc
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/11/midterms-hollow-victory-gop-112463.html#ixzz3I7rRzhUi
Comments
Conservatives
are angry at the “establishment Republicans” for their failure to stop Obama
from wasting over a trillion dollars a year and running the debt up from $10
trillion to almost $18 trillion in 6 years. We are also angry about the Federal
Reserve’s 450% increase in the money supply. Unless it is all clawed back, it will
end the U.S. economy.
Conservatives
believe that we need to restore and preserve the U.S. Constitution (as written)
and we are waiting for the “establishment Republicans” to conclude that we are
right and join us dismantling harmful federal laws like Obamacare and excessive
immigration and harmful agencies like the EPA. Interior HUD, Education and a
host of others.
Conservatives
should get ready to take over their state GOPs, starting with the state
Republican Party convention cycle beginning in February 2015.
Norb
Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
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