'How did the GOP Ruling Class come to cut such pathetic figures?' Fernandez on Codevilla

.
2/22/13, "I am the Eggman, they are the Eggmen," Richard Fernandez, Belmont Club, PJ Media

"Angelo de Codevilla amplified his landmark essay on America’s new ruling class by explaining why the Republican Party could do nothing to stop its ascendance. In a new article Codevilla explained that much of the Republican party has become wannabee Democrat and therefore supine. They want the Democrat spoils also without bothering themselves with the distasteful mental contortions of the Democrat ideology.

The Democrats have been the party of income transfers for a long time. Their political genius has been to define the beneficiaries to include themselves and all their constituents. As Codevilla puts it, “it came to consist almost exclusively of constituencies that make up government itself or benefit from government. Big business, increasingly dependent on government contracts and regulation, became a virtual adjunct of the contracting agents and regulators … Republican leaders neither parry the insults nor vilify their Democratic counterparts in comparable terms because they do not want to beat the ruling class, but to join it in solving the nation’s problems.”

"How did they come to cut such pathetic figures?

The Republican Party never fully adapted itself to the fact that modern big government is an interest group in and of itself, inherently at odds with the rest of society, that it creates a demand for representation by those it alienates, and hence that politicians must choose whether to represent the rulers or the ruled. The Republican Party had been the party of government between the Civil War and 1932. But government then was smaller in size, scope, and pretense. …

In sum, the closer one gets to the Republican Party’s voters, the more the Party looks like Goldwater and Reagan. The closer one gets to its top, the more it looks like the ghost of Rockefeller. Consider 2012: the party chose for President someone preferred by only one fourth of its voters – Mitt Romney, whose first youthful venture in politics had been to take part in the political blackballing of Barry Goldwater."

They are the party of ‘me too’. Or more accurately, ‘me next’. The complete emptiness of what has come to be known as the “stupid party’s” opportunism was described by Newt Gingrich in his denunciation of Karl Rove recently. Gingrich argued that Republican political strategy simply amounted to ‘paying Rove do the lying while pretending to stand for anything’ — in other words, shut up and let Rove win it — then  take your turn at the swill trough and be generous. Gingrich wrote:

consultants have made an amazing amount of money asserting an expertise they clearly don’t have. They have existed in a system in which the candidate was supposed to focus on raising money and the smart consultant would design the strategy, spend the money and do the thinking…. First, Rove.
I am unalterably opposed to a bunch of billionaires financing a boss to pick candidates in 50 states. This is the opposite of the Republican tradition of freedom and grassroots small town conservatism.

After getting past the high-minded objections Newt zeroes on his core problem to content-less Republican politics. It ain’t working. It’s not even good for ‘me next’.

While Rove would like to argue his “national nomination machine” will protect Republicans from candidates like those who failed in Missouri and Indiana, that isn’t the bigger story.
Republicans lost winnable senate races in Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Florida. So in seven of the nine losing races, the Rove model has no candidate-based explanation for failure. Our problems are deeper and more complex than candidates.
Handing millions to Washington based consultants to destroy the candidates they dislike and nominate the candidates they do like is an invitation to cronyism, favoritism and corruption.

Gingrich is right, but he is in fact late to the party. The idea that fightback would have to begin with taking back the parties — was begun earlier. One of those who adopted this insurgent, attack from the primaries strategy is well known to the Belmont Club: Leo Linbeck III.  He is at least partially referenced in Codevilla’s new essay describing the revolt has been under way for a some time: “the groups that represent the country class’ pieces were mounting and winning more primary challenges to Establishment Republicans.”

Rove has predictably reacted by trying to crush the rebels while donning their mantle for advantage.

The establishment responded with its main asset: money. The New York Times reported a concerted effort by the Party’s biggest donors led by longtime Bush staffer Karl Rove (yes, the Rockefeller wing) to support Establishment candidates in the primary process. But establishment candidates are already better funded than dissidents, usually massively so. The establishment candidates who have survived dissident challenges have seldom done it through sheer cash, but rather by fuzzing the differences between themselves and the dissidents. Designating themselves formally as “establishment,” was almost sure to hurt them. Moreover to set up the Republican establishment as a separate caucus invites the dissidents to unite and present themselves united as an alternative. That is the natural path to the dissidents forming a new party while Republican leadership dissolves into the Democratic party. In sum, the value of the label “Republican” is problematic.

The upshot is that both the Democratic and Republican parties are in a state of crisis, which is logical given that, stripped of their outward differences they have largely become the same thing. The Democrats are embroiled in their own revolt as people wait for the payoff that never comes; the access that doesn’t quite materialize, the big slice from the disappearing pie....

Probably nothing illustrates the fine mess things have become more than the election for Jesse Jackson Jr’s old seat. The one he vacated by acting crazy so that he could plead down charges for stealing money. The Democrats nominated to run for his seat have quit the race or are being pushed to from scandals of their own. The leading candidate is astoundingly, a black Republican, who the Republican Party doesn’t want to support — why? Because they’re all part of the same system, exactly as Codevilla observed.

Maybe to be a real Republican these days you don’t have to look any part. All you really need to qualify is to Just Say No to the way things are." via Free Republic

================================

among comments at article
------------------------------------------------

(Ed. note: The GOP works to elect democrats, sabotages Republicans. Colorado, noted below,
is just one of many examples:) Richard Fernandez: I am posting on Subotai's behalf as he is having trouble. It maybe length, so I am posting in two parts:"
.
"Codavilla is probably going to wake up with a horse's head on a pillow next to him soon. And the fingerprints are going to those of the Institutional Republicans. His original essay reinforced my convictions on the difference between his Ruling Party [which I call Institutional Republicans] and what he refers to as the Country Party [which I have called the Conservative/TEA Party/Patriot Movement].

He has it right. I have seen the Institutionals in Colorado actively work to elect Democrats when the Conservative/TEA Party/Patriot Movement managed to follow the rules and duly nominate one of their own. We have two Democrat US Senators, and a Democrat Governor based on that; and they have tried to rig the game to remove a multiple term Conservative Congressman who sits on a key committee for the state and replace him with a candidate who literally said that he looked forward to reaching across the aisle and working with the [then] Democrat majority."...

http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2013/02/22/i-am-the-eggman-they-are-the-eggmen/?show-at-comment=106838#comment-106838