I don’t want to exaggerate Erick Erickson’s influence over the Republican base, but he does seem emblematic of their general view on many topics. And he’s trying to gin up a civil war within the GOP.
In today’s edition, Mr. Erickson is responding to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s prediction that the Republican Establishment will crush Tea Party challengers “everywhere.”
This is why I think, in truth, whether you as a conservative think you can sit this out or not, if conservatives do not beat McConnell, Thad Cochran, Pat Roberts, Shane Osborne, and others, the Republican establishment in Washington will finally conclude that conservatives are paper tigers who can be ignored…
…The Republican leaders prefer their billionaire donors with their cosmopolitan interests. These people just want carve outs for themselves. They are not asking for an actual shrinking of government like Main Street is. The GOP Leadership really needs an excuse to totally ignore Main Street and give Wall Street comprehensive immigration reform, tax breaks for big business, etc.
So all of you on the sidelines might as well write a check to Matt Bevin right now. And send some to the Senate Conservatives Fund, Madison Project, Club for Growth, and FreedomWorks. All four are under unyielding attacks from the Republican leadership. If the Republican leadership wins, they will view all of us — whether you engaged or sat on the sidelines — as unable to challenge them in either politics or policy.
Crush or be crushed — Mitch McConnell just clarified this election.
I’d say that the Establishment Republicans have been very obedient in seeking to downsize the government, but I don’t disagree with the rest of Erickson’s observations above. In fact, I agree with this next bit until the last sentence, which comes off like a needle raking across a record.
The Republican establishment they fight is the one that gave us the foundation for Common Core in No Child Left Behind, the welfare state expansion of Medicare Part D, the ballooning of the national debt for domestic programs while hiding behind war spending, and then collaborating with the Democrats for TARP, the General Motors bailout, and banning the incandescent light bulb.
Again, with the light bulbs?
Erickson has the makings of a solid populist indictment of Republican hypocrisy. But then he tops it off by complaining about a bipartisan conspiracy to do away with light bulbs.
In the short-term, this is why his movement is likely to be crushed.
In the long-term, his kind will just get overwhelmed by demographic change and a more progressive streak in younger generations.
The Republican establishment they fight is the one that gave us the foundation for Common Core in No Child Left Behind, the welfare state expansion of Medicare Part D, the ballooning of the national debt for domestic programs while hiding behind war spending, and then collaborating with the Democrats for TARP, the General Motors bailout, and banning the incandescent light bulb.
Didn’t Bloomin’ idiot(aka Erick, son of Erick) cheer on C- Augustus every step of the way?
It’s been coming down the road for a long time. They’ve always seemed to turn back before they implode but sooner or later it’s bound to happen. First the Republicans turned on the country. Now they’re turning on themselves. As their base gets smaller and smaller, they’ll be like the old joke about the bird that flies in smaller and smaller concentric circles until it disappears up its own asshole.
All your base are belong to the dust bin of history
You have no chance to survive make your time
Give us your money so we, too, can go to Washington and pretend to shrink government.
Erickson has a knack for taking the GOP bumper stickers and adding a 2nd bumper sticker explanation that translates well for the TParty looking for assurance that they are the superior form of Conservativism. He’s quite adept at it, giving his readers less fearmongering than Beck and more context than Limbaugh but he still leaves little to unpack in his arguments.
One key difference between the teanut’s relationship to the GOP establishment and the “left”‘s relationship to the Democratic establishment is money. A lot of billionaire money is being given to the Tea Party. One has to think that this is in a sense a proxy war between the extreme aristocratic/authoritarian conservative billionaires and the (by comparison) relatively rational conservative billionaires.
that plus the “left” can’t be counted on the vote in every election unlike the right who will vote for the Republican whether it’s their favorite candidate or not
It’s too bad these people hate liberals so much. If they really wanted to do something about tax breaks for big business, I can think of some people who would be willing to work with them.
I don’t know about a conspiracy but if you look at what actually happened–they’re right. If you look at how that was actually does the laws passed basically DID incandescent bulbs.
As to divided, K-Drum said this today:
Whew, that 2nd sentence is a mess.
“If you look at the actual laws and regs passed, they basically DID ban incandescent bulbs.”
I thought that second sentence was spot on and explains how the Democratic Party lost the white Suburbs.
If white suburbanites can not understand how they benefit from everyone having health care, education, and enough money to survive, they are idiots, and I am ashamed to be one of them. Fortunately, where I live, we are all terribly grateful for those programs.
The point is there are other problems these people are struggling with that Democrats are not helping with at all. Besides, do you think predatory banks and monopolies somehow don’t hurt the poor?
Of course they do, but not as much as hunger and illness. Survival needs always come first. I don’t believe suburbanites are really so stupid that they can’t see the benefits of having the kids at the park be healthy, or the young adults be educated. Maybe the Dems aren’t explaining these programs well enough, but to claim that they aren’t just as good for the middle class as for the poor is absurd. Plagues don’t give a damn about your economic status.
Yes, the White Middle Class benefits, but not enough for them to feel like they should vote for Democrats. For better or worse they tend to look at things like clean water, education, etc. as apolitical. Maybe it does mean they’re naive, or ignorant. Maybe that’s just the reality because the GOP obstructs, maybe it’s because Dems are too neoliberal.
But the fact remains, Democrats do things directly for the poor and the poor vote for them. Democrats do things that either harm the White Middle Class or only benefit them at the margins and the White Middle Class does not vote for them.
Maybe Democrats don’t need them, but it makes elections damn hard.
I don’t think there’s any reason the Democrats need to help the poor while ignoring relatively, the middle class in terms of DIRECT benefit. Expansive economic populism would help both.
Didn’t Beck just recently go on a rant about how horrible a person Thomas Edison was?
But incandescent light bulbs are super-wonderful?
I guess it all makes sense…if you have a brain the size of a walnut.
Republicans account for only about 35 % of the country. Any GOP that were reasonable and interested the party actually governing left the party long ago. Some others are too whacked out to the right for even the tea party. There is no civil war there.
With the left the challenge is to listen to and honor all perspectives and with as transparency as possible show how practical and balanced solutions are arrived at.
And within that the loonies have to be kept from any power at all and that requires a degree of solidarity
All you people fell for the misdirection.
This is the REAL POINT of the Erickson rant. Also, black helicopters, too.