6/30/2014, "The Ruling Class Went Down to Mississippi," Angelo M. Codevilla, Liberty Law site
In the GOP Establishment's successful effort to defeat the insurgent Republican candidate in 2014, they recruited some forty thousand Democrats to vote for the GOP E candidate in June 2014 Mississippi open GOP primary runoff.
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The bipartisan Ruling Class seeks to disenfranchise Alabama Republican voters in 2017 as they disenfranchised Mississippi Republican voters in 2014:
11/21/2017, "As the Ruling Class reminds us, it’s a class war, you stupid people." Angelo M. Codevilla, American Spectator
"The argument has little to do with Roy Moore, and even less with what is acceptable behavior. It is about what Lenin succinctly called “who, whom?” — who can do what to whom or, as Amos ’n Andy used to say, who’s gonna be the “do-er” and who the “do-ee,” neither more nor less. The reason why the bipartisan ruling class of officials, corporate executives, educators, the media, entertainment, etc. demand Roy Moore’s political scalp is that it fell on Moore to be the focus of a pivotal effort to detach the Republican Party from that ruling class. It has nothing to do with what he may have done four decades ago, and everything with the threat that his election now poses to their power to run the country while de-legitimizing the rest of Americans and their culture. Had it been anyone else, the degree of hostility would have been the same, the charges possibly different but just as fiery and equally beside the point: which sector of the population shall have its power enhanced, and which diminished?
By precisely the same token, crediting the 2016 election’s outcome to Russia or/and “the resistance” thereto to concerns with Donald Trump’s personal proclivities bespeaks willful detachment from reality.
Focusing on the ruling class’s hypocrisy, its sordid history of approving behavior by its members far worse than that with which it charges Roy Moore, crying “tu qoque!” not only lends unwarranted credence to its charges on Moore. It diverts attention from the most important reason for that approval, namely the key function of partisan solidarity. Lenin explained partiinost, party spirit, most succinctly. Asked in the Duma whether one of his decrees was in accordance with justice, he answered: “Justice? For what class?”...
The reason why Republicans even more than Democrats try to destroy Roy Moore is that, for the moment, his campaign is the spear-point of a movement first to peel away Republicans from business as it is being done in Washington, and then to destroy that business model. How it got to be that is worth keeping in mind.
Franklin D. Roosevelt made the Democrats the party of big government. Naturally, Americans who disagreed with, felt burdened by growing government, gravitated to the Republicans, then led by Robert A. Taft. But the Party was always anchored by officials and donors tied to big business, who disdained ordinary Americans as much or more than Democrats. Beginning with Barry Goldwater’s movement in 1960, and culminating in Ronald Reagan’s 1981-89 presidency, the Party became an advocate for liberty vis-à-vis government and a defender of American culture — at least rhetorically and at the local level. But in Washington, under the Bush dynasty, ever-bigger government tied Republican officials ever more tightly to Democrats and their agendas. Ever since 2006, Republican voters have been trying to take back the Party, or to find another political vehicle for their needs.
In 2016, voters chose Donald Trump because he presented himself as opposed to the Republican as well as the Democratic wings of the ruling class. But his election by no means dissolved the business relationships between Republicans and Democrats in Washington, of which Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is emblematic. When Alabama’s Republican leaders appointed Luther Strange, an ally of McConnell’s, to fill the seat vacated by Trump’s choice for U.S. Attorney General, voters rebelled. They nominated Roy Moore, defeating Strange by ten points despite the entire Republican establishment’s efforts on his behalf, the expenditure of over $30 million, and even Donald Trump’s appearance on his behalf.
Roy Moore’s victory over all that raised the prospect that candidates who appeal to the sentiments that had elected Trump in 2016 and nominated Moore in 2017 would sweep establishment Republicans out of their cushy places. To put this specter off a little while longer, the Washington Post published allegations — wholly unsubstantiated — that, some forty years ago, Moore had engaged in consensual sexual activity with minors.
The ruling class piled on. Perhaps enough conservative voters would view the accusations as defenses of youthful virginity. But such objections to Roy Moore, coming from such as Mitch McConnell and Hillary Clinton, recall voters to reality and might well count as reasons to vote for him."
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Added: How serious the Ruling Class was about disenfranchising Mississippi Republican voters in 2014, OpenSecrets.org:
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Added: Dr. Codevilla's recap of the 2014 Mississippi Republican primary and runoff including NY Times quote from a black Democrat paid by the Republican Establishment campaign as part of its effort to recruit some forty thousand Democrats to vote in the open GOP primary runoff for the Ruling Class Republican candidate, Thad Cochran:
6/30/2014, "The Ruling Class Went Down to Mississippi," Angelo M. Codevilla, Liberty Law site
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In the Mississippi primary, Republican establishmentarians from around the country solicited votes from Democrats to defeat the insurgent challenge to Senator Thad Cochran. Their arguments were the same ones used by the bipartisan ruling class that has ruled America for a generation:
The role of government is to generate benefits for its clients, and those who object are bad people.
They paid many Democrat voters (nearly all black) so called “walking around money” for their votes, and have refused in many counties to let McDaniel aides examine the voter roles to see whether these voters were eligible to cast ballots.
The retail corruption is much less remarkable than the acquiescence therein of the establishment’s leadership – such as Karl Rove and The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page. This is very remarkable. Rove’s super-PAC, “Conservative Victory Project,” which played a leading role in recruiting Democrats for Cochran, exists explicitly to defeat insurgent Republicans everywhere.
The Journal’s editorial page, whose editorials and featured columnists mobilized opinion against the Mississippi insurgency, had done the same throughout this and previous years’ primaries. Rove’s post election commentary glossed over the vote-buying as if it had not happened, while the Journal’s Jason Riley endorsed it cynically as “minority outreach.” To Republican and independent voters who are dissatisfied with the direction of the country, the conflict between the pretenses and the actions of such as Rove and of the Journal added insult to injury. The Journal, for example, never loses an opportunity to declare itself the mortal enemy of “crony capitalism” as it decries the direction in which America has been headed, while the word “conservative” as part of the title of Rove’s super-PAC intentionally evokes the complex of sentiments of voters angry at the ruling class’s characterization of them as, well, the litany: “racist, greedy, stupid,” etc.
Indeed, the Republican Party’s very identity, the one, sole, argument it makes to persuade voters to vote Republican rather than Democrat, is that it will take the country in a direction different from the one in which it has been going.
But, in the Mississippi primary, the Republican Establishment’s campaign was by and for crony capitalism, and employed the classic themes by which the ruling class has beaten down the rest of America.
To Mississippians white and black, the establishment’s message was: All this Tea Party talk about dangerous deficits and the need to cut spending is a threat to responsible officials’ capacity to bring you the jobs and federal assistance on which your prosperity
depends.
Orchestrating that message was Haley Barbour, former governor of Mississippi, former national chairman of the Republican Party, and arguably Washington’s biggest lobbyist.
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Day to day operations were run by Stuart Stevens, formerly chief strategist in Mitt Romney’s 2012 national campaign, along with Henry and Austin Barbour, Haley’s nephews. There could be few better personifications of crony capitalism.
To the blacks, who, according to The New York Times’ FiveThirtyEight.com provided some forty thousand votes, the message was:
"Don’t be intimidated by the Tea Party....Mississippi cannot and will not return to the bygone era of intimidating black Mississippians from voting. We must rise up on Tuesday and have our voices heard on who will represent Mississippi in the U.S. Senate. VOTE THAD COCHRAN."
The Times reported the effect: Roger Smith, a black Democrat who said he was being paid to organize for Mr. Cochran, said, ‘I don’t know too much about [Cochran’s opponent] McDaniel other than what McDaniel is saying:
that he’s Tea Party, he’s against Obama, he don’t like black people.”
In short, those who oppose the way things are done in America are racists. You ought to hate them as they hate you.
Why do such things? Cui bono? Clearly such behavior by the Republican establishment has nothing to do with the role it claims for itself of opposition to the direction on which America has been taken in recent decades, never mind with anything “conservative.”
It has everything to do with maintaining its status, and that of its clients, within the ruling class.
The Mississippi primary confirmed yet again that, if America is to go in a direction other than the one of which some three fourths of American disapprove, it is compelled to do so with a vehicle other than the Republican Party." Image above, Haley Barbour.
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"Angelo M. Codevilla professor emeritus of international relations at Boston University. He served as a U.S. Senate Staff member dealing with oversight of the intelligence services. His new book Peace Among Ourselves and With All Nations was published by Hoover Institution Press." Photo in article from Liberty Law site.
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Added: When all else fails, the Ruling Class plays the race card. To defeat the Mississippi Republican insurgent in 2014 the GOP E enticed black Democrats to vote in the open GOP primary by saying the insurgent was racist:
6/30/2014, "Yes, There Were Flyers and Robocalls [from the GOP E] That Accused the Tea Party of Racism," Patterico
"John Fund asked if this was the flyer that got Thad Cochran elected:"...
(image from Patterico)
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Added: From NY Times article linked in Codevilla piece, NY Ruling Class billionaire Mike Bloomberg gave as much as $500,000 to support the GOP Establishment candidate in 2014 Mississippi GOP primary:
6/24/2014, "Cochran Holds Off Tea Party Challenger in Mississippi," NY Times, Jonathan Weisman
"A center-right super PAC, Defending Main Street, which contributed over $150,000 to Mr. Cochran during the runoff, received $250,000 from Michael Bloomberg in the same period, according to a source close to the former New York City mayor.
Mr. Bloomberg also contributed $250,000 to Mr Cochran’s super PAC, Mississippi Conservatives, before the primary."...
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Added from Codevilla: The US has only one functioning political party, the UniParty:
"So long as the UniParty exists, mere voters will have no way of affecting what the government does."
12/15/2013, "Breaking The UniParty," Angelo Codevilla, libertylawsite.org
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More from Codevilla:
From 2010 Codevilla article: The US political class usually dismisses voter opposition to it "as mere 'anger and frustration'-an imputation of stupidity":
July-August 2010, "America’s Ruling Class--And the Perils of Revolution," Angelo M. Codevilla, American Spectator
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| US Ruling Class |
"The Country Class"...(9th subhead)
"Nothing has set the country class apart, defined it...so much as the ruling class's insistence that people other than themselves are intellectually and hence otherwise humanly inferior. Persons who were brought up to believe themselves as worthy as anyone, who manage their own lives to their own satisfaction, naturally resent politicians of both parties who say that the issues of modern life are too complex for any but themselves. Most are insulted by the ruling class's dismissal of opposition as mere "anger and frustration"--an imputation of stupidity--while others just scoff at the claim that the ruling class's bureaucratic language demonstrates superior intelligence. A few ask the fundamental question: Since when and by what right does intelligence trump human equality? Moreover, if the politicians are so smart, why have they made life worse?" (5th parag. of subhead)
"The Political Divide"... (first subhead)
"While Europeans are accustomed to being ruled by presumed betters whom they distrust,
the American people's realization of being ruled like Europeans shocked this country into well nigh revolutionary attitudes.
But only the realization was new. The ruling class had sunk deep roots in America over decades before 2008."...(begins 3rd parag. in subhead). Image of US Ruling Class from American Spectator
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Added: But in 2008, 'angry, anxious,' Americans seeking "change" were considered important and exciting as the premise of Obama's campaign-Boston Globe, 7/20/2008
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page 2, parag. 5: "Unerring faith in the premise of the Obama candidacy that many Americans are angry, anxious, and engaged as never before in the political process because they want change."...
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7/20/2008, "Obama's paid staff dwarfing McCain's," Boston Globe, Brian C. Moone
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More from Codevilla:
June 4, 2017, "Punishing The Real Russia Crime: Leaking," Angelo Codevilla, American Greatness
"These legal and pseudo-legal proceedings abstract from the patently obvious felonies that U.S intelligence officials have committed each and every time they have informed reporters of the Washington Post and New York Times about the...results of U.S communications intelligence....Since the number of those who possessed the information in question is small, ascertaining the identity of those who divulged it poses no problem to serious investigators. Since Messrs Schmidt and Entous could not help but know that communications intelligence is protected by a strict liability statute, they could also be held responsible for their participation in the crime....
Numerous intelligence officials have claimed to know who supplied the-mails to Wikileaks. No one has given evidence on the record. A minor defensive maneuver at the time, the “Russia interference in the elections” narrative grew into the Democratic Party’s main explanation for the massive electoral rejection at all levels it ended up suffering on November 8, 2016."...
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Added: From Rush Limbaugh on enduring the assaults:
"You’ve got to win the election and then you have to implement the agenda.... You have to withstand all of the assaults that are going to come your way in the process....Many on the right, the Republican Party…haven't wanted to endure the assaults....So they’ve been pragmatists or compromisers....Enter Trump into all of this, and now we've got action."
2/24/17, "What Is Conservatism in the Age of Trump?" RushLimbaugh.com
"Many people who thought that they were the modern-day leaders of conservatism, in fact found themselves in a new category called Never Trumpers. They were the group of people that thought no matter what, Trump should not win....
And many of those people are still there. And they are still active in what I call the academic or intellectual side of conservatism....
But I don't think it's had a leader in a long time. I don’t think there’s any one person that can tell you what it is and have other conservatives agree with it....Conservatism, largely, became an academic exercise. It became a movement that wasn’t really fraught with much action. It was a lot of philosophizing....
So enter Trump into all of this, and now we've got action....Whether by design or by accident where Trump is concerned, we have action against the left, and this is what it looks like. And it’s always going to be ugly and it’s always going to be upsetting — and it’s not going to get better....
Whether you claim to be politically conservative or not, we are in a mess that has been made by wanton liberalism — liberalism which has not been opposed much, and certainly not at all in the last eight years. It’s gotten its lip service. But the actual warrior aspect of conservatism? That’s what everybody’s wondering: “Where is that? Where is the warrior-conservative movement?” Yeah, we know we’ve got a lot of brainiacs that sit up there and they think and they write and they publish and all. But where are the warriors?"...
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