1/30/15, "How Mitt Romney Made His Decision Not To Run," Bloomberg, Mark Halperin
"Romney also considers Bush the national Republican figure who was the least helpful to him during his last run for the White House, a position that has darkened Ann Romney’s view of Bush as well."...(parag. 10)
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Jeb's brother George W. Bush also sabotaged Romney's campaign:
“He (George Bush) gets a regular drip feed of political news from Karl Rove and others--he’s been critical of Romney’s campaign and skeptical of his chances.”...(p. 2)
10/14/12, “(Jeb) Bush in the Wilderness,” NY Magazine, Joe Hagen
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"Sabotaging conservatives is built into the DNA of the GOP Establishment. Unable to win themselves a considerable bit of the time — and then continuing to move the country left when they do win...they have never ever changed."
1/8/13, “The Sabotage Republicans,” by Jeffrey Lord, American Spectator
"When the 1964 convention was over, instead of uniting behind Goldwater as Goldwater had done with Nixon — and asked his supporters to do the same — the Establishment/Rockefeller wing of the GOP took a walk. They sat on their hands — or went out of their way to sabotage Goldwater.
Decades later, moderates were still at it. In 2010 Delaware, GOP moderate Congressman Mike Castle was filled with soothing calls for party unity — until he lost the GOP Senate nomination to the conservative Christine O’Donnell. And promptly sat on his hands along with the Delaware and Washington GOP Establishments. Which spent their time shorting her on funds and attacking her.
Now the same stunt has been pulled in Virginia with the GOP gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli. The moderates, led by moderate Lieutenant Governor Bolling and Eric Cantor’s ex-chief of staff, lost in a convention to the conservative Cuccinelli. So Bolling spends his time, like Nelson Rockefeller and liberal Republicans all the way back in 1964, and does the minimal. With Cantor’s friend Marcus simply going over to the other side, period.
What, pray tell, was going on with Reince Priebus and the Republican National Committee? With the Chamber of Commerce? Here’s this from Politico:
"McAuliffe outraised Cuccinelli by almost $15 million, and he used the cash advantage to pummel him on the airwaves. A lack of resources forced the Republican to go dark in the D.C. media market during the final two weeks.
The Republican National Committee spent about $3 million on Virginia this year, compared to $9 million in the 2009 governor’s race.
The Chamber of Commerce spent $1 million boosting McDonnell in 2009 and none this time.
“If the Republicans would have rallied around the nominee instead of refusing to support Cuccinelli, he would have won,” said a GOP source involved in the race.
Then there is Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal and the Republican Governors Association deciding to take their money and, instead of giving directly to Cuccinelli, going off on their own to do commercials talking about… China. That’s right…not Obamacare, but China.
Here’s Matt Lewis on this over at the Daily Caller:
"“Bobby Jindal’s presidential campaign is over,” said the Cuccinelli advisor. “He screwed this up so bad. And I don’t know why. The campaign knew it was moving numbers over ObamaCare. And the RGA was not very far from that information, they could have obtained it themselves,” the advisor continued. “They should have given the money to the campaign to spend as opposed to running these stupid China ads. They just blew it.”"
About the only thing one can say for Jindal is that this was political incompetence as opposed to political sabotage.
And who will forget Chris Christie? Last year, as the key moment of the presidential campaign arrived along with Hurricane Sandy, Christie went out of his way to put his arm around Romney opponent President Obama. This year….cruising to a 60% percent victory and asked to spare a few hours for Cuccinelli, Christie refused. Once again, it was all about Christie.
And this is the guy who is supposed to be the new leader of the party?
The fact here is that sabotaging conservatives is built into the DNA of the GOP Establishment. Unable to win themselves a considerable bit of the time — and then continuing to move the country left when they do win, just not as fast and so much better managed don’t you know — they have never ever changed.
Governor Christie is being touted as some sort of inevitable nominee in 2016. The next Tom Dewey, the next Gerald Ford, the next Bob Dole and John McCain and Mitt Romney.
And if by chance he flames out? With the conservative base in open rebellion in the 2016 primaries, awarding the nomination to, say, Texas Senator Ted Cruz? You can bet that America will be treated to yet another knee-jerk, reflexive response from the quarters of the GOP Establishment.
Sabotage.
The GOP Establishment will find a way — quietly or not so quietly — to sabotage the conservative nominee if there is a conservative nominee in 2016. This is what they do.
They did it to Barry Goldwater in 1964, they tried to do it to Ronald Reagan in 1980 with liberal GOP Congressman John Anderson. Anderson who lost in the primaries to Reagan, running as a third party candidate in a deliberate attempt to sabotage Reagan. Anderson failed — but it wasn’t for a lack of trying.
The Republican Party has two serious problems on its hands.
The first is with those like Eric Cantor’s ex-chief of staff who are invited into leadership positions in the party — when they in fact are not conservatives at all and quietly or openly seek to sabotage the party.
The second is with those Establishment Republicans who do manage to win — and then see their job as merely managing the leftist status quo.
This time around the target was Ken Cuccinelli.
But Ken Cuccinelli wasn’t the first — and he isn’t going to be the last.
That is the Republican Party’s real problem. And it’s a big one.”
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Added: In recent close races, a Libertarian candidate can become the spoiler. In 2013 Virginia Governor election, the conservative lost to the liberal democrat by 2%, but the Libertarian candidate walked away with 6.6%:
11/6/2013, "In a race where he was polling with a double-digit lead only last week, Democrat Terry McAuliffe won the Virginia governor’s race in a squeaker tonight, with a margin of victory of just over 2 percent, receiving 47.6 percent to Republican Ken Cuccinelli’s 45.42 percent. For libertarians the bigger news might be that Libertarian candidate Robert Sarvis pulled 6.6 percent, or more than 142,000 votes."...Reason.com
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Added: Hoping Republicans would lose ground in 2006 midterms, former GOP Senator from Missouri John Danforth said, "I'm counting on nausea." Maybe they all deserved to lose but that isn't the point in this case. The whole country loses by constant GOP insider sabotage. The US can't exist without two separate, healthy political parties representing opposing points of view. As it is now, we have only one functioning political party, the far left Democrats.
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Comment: The Bushes and Rupert Murdoch keep the left in charge. None of this would've happened if Ronald Reagan hadn't named George HW Bush his VP.
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