Tell this to masochistic conservatives at CPAC with battered wives syndrome who wildly cheered Romney last year after he had knifed them in the back and run a criminal fraud against them:
2/7/14, "Memo to Conservatives: Republicans Aren't Your Friends," American Thinker, by Matthew Vadum
"Too many Republicans think it's wrong to criticize other Republicans. This failure to be forthright has had consequences. It has allowed the Republican Party to take up political space it has no business occupying as it embraces left-wing statist tyranny. Much of the time, the GOP is merely Democrat-lite.
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) are so dangerously out of touch and out of control nowadays in part because other Republicans have allowed them to get that way. Boehner and McConnell regard conservatives as a nuisance to be overcome, co-opted, subverted, and if necessary, eliminated. A new way of thinking is required.
For a start, if you self-identify as a Republican and you are serious about restoring the Constitution, shrinking the government, and reducing government spending, it is wrong to think of other Republican Party members as necessarily being your friends.
A political party isn't a club or a sacred religious order. It isn't a brotherhood or fraternity. The other people in the party aren't necessarily your friends, or even people you'd feel comfortable lending your lawnmower.
Here is wisdom: if you, as a Republican, remain true to small-government principles, many of your worst enemies will be found in your own party, and they are likely to be much more vicious, petty, vindictive, and malicious than most of your adversaries on the left. Intra-party squabbles and in-fighting are among the most brutal of all political conflicts in America.
It is important to remember that a political party like the GOP is not a cause in and of itself. It is merely a means to an end. Although the Republican Party has a glorious history that should be celebrated, the modern party infrastructure and establishment are not something to get sentimental about....
And people shouldn't feel obligated to do what party leaders want them to do. GOP leaders are not infallible. They're no smarter or more honest than grassroots GOP activists -- and in many cases, they are less intelligent and less honest than rank-and-file party supporters.
You owe party leaders your loyalty no more than a rabbit owes its loyalty to a hungry snake.
Republicans should free themselves from irrational inhibitions preventing them from speaking their minds. They need to understand that Ronald Reagan's "Eleventh Commandment" doesn't call for obedience to party leaders....
The so-called commandment dates back to 1966 and was the brainchild of Gaylord Parkinson, chairman of California's Republican Party, according to (Craig) Shirley.
After the nasty 1964 presidential primary contest in California between Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater and New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, Parkinson was attempting to put the pieces of the wrecked state party apparatus back together....
Somehow, over time, this tactic of benevolent forbearance that was no doubt devised in the heat of battle has been elevated to something akin to a moral principle -- which is, of course, ridiculous. It has morphed into a quasi-religious directive that amounts to "always be nice" or that makes it taboo to dare question those who hold public office so long as they belong to the right political party.
The time has come for conservatives in the Republican Party to stop being nice. RINOs Karl Rove (who nearly lost George W. Bush the presidency twice), Boehner, McConnell, and the rest of the GOP congressional leadership have declared war on the Tea Party, the same movement to which the Republican Party owes its continuing existence. Boehner would not be speaker of the House if the Tea Party hadn't boosted the GOP in 2010 and 2012. And the Tea Party-dominated election of 2010, by the way, was arguably "the best Republican showing ever," according to psephologist Michael Barone.
As MoveOn essentially took over the Democratic Party in 2004 following presidential candidate John Kerry's unexpected defeat, MoveOn executive director Eli Pariser declared that the Democratic Party was "our party: we bought it, we own it, and we're going to take it back."
Today the Tea Party ought to own the Republican Party. The movement is going to have to learn to play rougher."
Matthew Vadum (website) is an investigative journalist in Washington, D.C. and author of the ACORN/Obama exposé, Subversion Inc." via Free Rep.
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The "National" Tea Party label has often done more harm than good. Tea Party Patriots' Jenny Beth Martin wrote an op-ed that was accepted by the NY Times in Dec. 2013. Instead of giving readers new insights into our corrupt political system, Ms. Martin whined about John Boehner. Ms. Martin's using Sarah Palin's name in the second sentence showed she had no understanding of her audience:
12/19/13, "John Boehner’s Betrayal," Op-Ed contributor, Jenny Beth Martin, Tea Party Patriots co-founder
"THERE’S a political axiom that says if nobody is upset with what you’re doing, you’re not doing your job. We’ve seen this proved time and again in the liberal attacks on conservatives like Sarah Palin and Dr. Benjamin Carson, who provide principled examples to women and minorities and are savaged by the left for doing that job so well."...
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Conservatives at CPAC wildly cheer Romney after his obviously fraudulent 2012 election effort:
3/15/13, "Romney, Yesterday's Man At CPAC, Gets A Winner's Reception" NPR, Frank James
"It was one of the most anticipated moments at this year's large gathering of conservative activists.
What would Mitt Romney say in his first major speech since he lost the presidential election and, even more importantly, how would the crowd treat him?
After all, many of the Republicans attending the Conservative Political Action Conference had long harbored suspicions about Romney's conservatism, wondering if it wasn't more a matter of convenience and political opportunity than conviction. Which explains why when Romney spoke to CPAC a year ago, he described himself, controversially, as "severely conservative."...
But if Romney entered the cavernous room at a hotel convention center in suburban Washington with any worries about how he would be received, the enthusiastic reception should have put them to rest.
The cheers, applause and hoots of approval for Romney on Friday were at least as loud and sustained as those that on Thursday had greeted , two of the party's newest rock stars and likely 2016 presidential contenders. It was the kind of heady reaction Romney drew from the party faithful in those days after he roundly beat President Obama in the first debate....
Romney said.... "I do have advice. Perhaps because I am a former governor, I would urge you to learn the lessons that come from some of our greatest success stories: the 30 Republican governors."
Among the governors he cited were two who were high-profile supporters of his presidential campaign, Bob McDonnell of Virginia and Chris Christie of New Jersey...
Romney's message to conservatives could be interpreted as a warning to stop devouring their own, especially governors in blue or purple states, "because their states are among those we must win to take the Senate and the White House," he said....
More than once, audience members shouted, "We love you, Mitt." After the speech, the warm feeling continued in the corridor outside the room where he spoke.
"He's an amazing man," said Jean Jordan of Virginia. "I'm saddened that he wasn't elected president...He's going to go forward, and, like he said, he's going to be there to help us and there for the good of the country."
Matthew Holdi, a 16-year-old who left school early to see the speech, and who could be accurately called a Romney superfan, also was impressed....
"I was impressed by the reception he received," said Holdi, who seemed quite politically savvy for his age. "I thought I would be the only person here not booing him. Politico reported that he was receiving , given the [midday] time period that he had. But when he got a standing ovation, and the beginning of his speech, at the end of his speech, it was inspirational.""
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"Mitt Romney was greeted like a hero" at CPAC, March 2013
3/15/13, "Why Mitt Romney Lost: Views From CPAC" The Atlantic, Garance Franke-Ruta
"Mitt Romney was greeted like a hero at the Conservative Political Action Conference Friday, drawing sustained applause and shouts of "We love you!" during a self-deprecating speech thanking the conservative activists for their early support for his candidacy and cautioning them against "pessimism" even in the face of electoral loss.
"We've lost races before, in the past, and those setbacks prepared us for larger victories," Romney said. "It is up to us to make sure that we learn from my mistakes, and from our mistakes....""...
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In 2007 Peggy Noonan said both George Bushes had kicked conservatives out of the GOP but conservatives didn't seem to realize it, were hanging around like "battered wives:"
6/2/2007, "Too bad," Wall St. Journal column by Peggy Noonan:
"What political conservatives and on-the-ground Republicans must understand at this point is that they are not breaking with the White House on immigration. They are not resisting, fighting and thereby setting down a historical marker -- "At this point the break became final." That's not what's happening. What conservatives and Republicans must recognize is that the White House has broken with them. What President Bush is doing, and has been doing for some time, is sundering a great political coalition. This is sad, and it holds implications not only for one political party but for the American future.
The White House doesn't need its traditional supporters anymore, because its problems are way beyond being solved by the base. And the people in the administration don't even much like the base. Desperate straits have left them liberated, and they are acting out their disdain. Leading Democrats often think their base is slightly mad but at least their heart is in the right place. This White House thinks its base is stupid and that its heart is in the wrong place.
For almost three years, arguably longer, conservative Bush supporters have felt like sufferers of battered wife syndrome. You don't like endless gushing spending, the kind that assumes a high and unstoppable affluence will always exist, and the tax receipts will always flow in? Too bad! You don't like expanding governmental authority and power? Too bad. You think the war was wrong or is wrong? Too bad.
But on immigration it has changed from "Too bad" to "You're bad."
The president has taken to suggesting that opponents of his immigration bill are unpatriotic -- they "don't want to do what's right for America." His ally Sen. Lindsey Graham has said, "We're gonna tell the bigots to shut up." On Fox last weekend he vowed to "push back."
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff suggested opponents would prefer illegal immigrants be killed; Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said those who oppose the bill want "mass deportation." Former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson said those who oppose the bill are "anti-immigrant" and suggested they suffer from "rage" and "national chauvinism."
Why would they speak so insultingly, with such hostility, of opponents who are concerned citizens? And often, though not exclusively, concerned conservatives? It is odd, but it is of a piece with, or a variation on, the "Too bad" governing style. And it is one that has, day by day for at least the past three years, been tearing apart the conservative movement.
I suspect the White House and its allies have turned to name calling because they're defensive, and they're defensive because they know they have produced a big and indecipherable mess of a bill -- one that is literally bigger than the Bible, though as someone noted last week, at least we actually had a few years to read the Bible. The White House and its supporters seem to be marshalling not facts but only sentiments, and self-aggrandizing ones at that. They make a call to emotions -- this is, always and on every issue, the administration's default position -- but not, I think, to seriously influence the debate....
If they'd really wanted to help, as opposed to braying about their own wonderfulness, they would have created not one big bill but a series of smaller bills, each of which would do one big clear thing, the first being to close the border. Once that was done -- actually and believably done -- the country could relax in the knowledge that the situation was finally not day by day getting worse. They could feel some confidence. And in that confidence real progress could begin.
The beginning of my own sense of separation from the Bush administration came in January 2005, when the president declared that it is now the policy of the United States to eradicate tyranny in the world, and that the survival of American liberty is dependent on the liberty of every other nation. This was at once so utopian and so aggressive that it shocked me. For others the beginning of distance might have been Katrina and the incompetence it revealed, or the depth of the mishandling and misjudgments of Iraq.
What I came in time to believe is that the great shortcoming of this White House, the great thing it is missing, is simple wisdom. Just wisdom -- a sense that they did not invent history, that this moment is not all there is, that man has lived a long time and there are things that are true of him, that maturity is not the same thing as cowardice, that personal loyalty is not a good enough reason to put anyone in charge of anything, that the way it works in politics is a friend becomes a loyalist becomes a hack, and actually at this point in history we don't need hacks.
One of the things I have come to think the past few years is that the Bushes, father and son, though different in many ways, are great wasters of political inheritance.
They throw it away as if they'd earned it and could do with it what they liked. Bush senior inherited a vibrant country and a party at peace with itself. He won the leadership of a party that had finally, at great cost, by 1980, fought itself through to unity and come together on shared principles. Mr. Bush won in 1988 by saying he would govern as Reagan had. Yet he did not understand he'd been elected to Reagan's third term. He thought he'd been elected because they liked him. And so he raised taxes, sundered a hard-won coalition, and found himself shocked to lose the presidency, and for eight long and consequential years. He had many virtues, but he wasted his inheritance.
Bush the younger came forward, presented himself as a conservative, garnered all the frustrated hopes of his party, turned them into victory, and not nine months later was handed a historical trauma that left his country rallied around him, lifting him, and his party bonded to him. He was disciplined and often daring, but in time he sundered the party that rallied to him, and broke his coalition into pieces. He threw away his inheritance. I do not understand such squandering.
Now conservatives and Republicans are going to have to win back their party. They are going to have to break from those who have already broken from them. This will require courage, serious thinking and an ability to do what psychologists used to call letting go. This will be painful, but it's time. It's more than time."
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3/14/13, "Caddell Unloads on 'Racketeering' GOP Consultants," Breitbart News, Leahy
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8/11/12, "Rep. Paul Ryan VP Choice Draws Criticism From Some Conservatives," Huffington Post, Howard Fineman
"It's important to remember that Romney's top campaign staff were Charlie Crist's political staff....It was no surprise when I read in the New Republic that Mitt's chief strategist told folks he voted for Obama in 2008."...
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9/25/12, “Why doesn’t Mitt Romney contribute to his own campaign?” Reuters, Mark Waldman
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"Obama had 123 offices in Ohio, compared with Romney’s 40....Ohio was the greatest surprise of all. Romney pollster Neil Newhouse calculated that 209,000 more African-Americans voted this year than in 2008 in Ohio, while 329,000 fewer whites had voted."...
12/22/12, “The story behind Mitt Romney’s loss in the presidential campaign to President Obama,” Boston Globe, Michael Kranish
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12/23/12, "Mitt's Son Says He Never Wanted to be President Anyway," Atlantic Wire, Connor Simpson
"If you thought the tale of how Mitt Romney lost the general election was already told, you would be wrong. Because there is so much left to tell, like how Mitt never wanted to be President anyway.
At least, that's what Tagg Romney says in this new Boston Globe report on what went wrong with Romney's campaign....
“He wanted to be president less than anyone I’ve met in my life. He had no desire to . . . run,” said Tagg, who worked with his mother, Ann, to persuade his father to seek the presidency. “If he could have found someone else to take his place. . .he would have been ecstatic to step aside."...
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Romney said he'd rather "not win" than appeal to the GOP conservative base:
2/28/12, “Romney, Acknowledging Mistakes, Says He Won’t Say ‘Outrageous’ Things to Win,” ABC News, The Note
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6/7/13, "Romney’s Utah summit urges post-partisan cooperation," Salt Lake Tribune, Thomas Burr
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11/28/12, "The Incestuous Bleeding of the Republican Party," Erick Erickson, RedState
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