Retooling the Grand Old Party ... But will it work?
Ditching Palin, Talking Nice Won’t Revive Republicans
By Ezra Klein - Feb 6, 2013, Bloomberg
Something very interesting is happening in the Republican Party. It’s just not entirely clear what it is, or how far it can go.
Dick Morris and Sarah Palin are out at Fox News. Representative Paul Ryan is helping House Speaker John Boehner talk his caucus down from the debt-ceiling ledge. Senator Marco Rubio is going from one conservative talk-radio host to another to sell them on bipartisan immigration reform. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal is telling Republicans to cease being “the stupid party.” Tea Party icon Jim DeMint left the Senate, while FreedomWorks, a Tea Party catalyst, went through a nasty, costly divorce with its figurehead, Dick Armey. Karl Rove’s super-PAC is turning its formidable financial artillery toward helping Republicans win primary elections against Tea Party insurgents.
The Republican establishment is reasserting control. It’s purging some of the hucksters who’d taken the party’s reins --or at least the airtime -- in recent years. It’s resisting much of the brinkmanship that marked the last Congress and trying to present a more fearsome, united front against counterproductive strategies favored by the right. All of the major 2016 presidential contenders have made the same political calculation: It’s better to build a reputation as one of the party’s adults than as one of its firebrands.
Normal Progression
“We’ve had a period of this movement at the grass-roots level, call it Tea Party or something else, and it seems to me we’re seeing the normal progression of a grass-roots populist movement,” said Vin Weber, a former Republican congressman from Minnesota. “It ran out of control for a few years -- that’s why we call it a movement rather than an organization. But it’s receding a bit now. That’s allowing natural leaders to reassert themselves, and institutional forces to reassert themselves.”
(More here.)
By Ezra Klein - Feb 6, 2013, Bloomberg
Something very interesting is happening in the Republican Party. It’s just not entirely clear what it is, or how far it can go.
Dick Morris and Sarah Palin are out at Fox News. Representative Paul Ryan is helping House Speaker John Boehner talk his caucus down from the debt-ceiling ledge. Senator Marco Rubio is going from one conservative talk-radio host to another to sell them on bipartisan immigration reform. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal is telling Republicans to cease being “the stupid party.” Tea Party icon Jim DeMint left the Senate, while FreedomWorks, a Tea Party catalyst, went through a nasty, costly divorce with its figurehead, Dick Armey. Karl Rove’s super-PAC is turning its formidable financial artillery toward helping Republicans win primary elections against Tea Party insurgents.
The Republican establishment is reasserting control. It’s purging some of the hucksters who’d taken the party’s reins --or at least the airtime -- in recent years. It’s resisting much of the brinkmanship that marked the last Congress and trying to present a more fearsome, united front against counterproductive strategies favored by the right. All of the major 2016 presidential contenders have made the same political calculation: It’s better to build a reputation as one of the party’s adults than as one of its firebrands.
Normal Progression
“We’ve had a period of this movement at the grass-roots level, call it Tea Party or something else, and it seems to me we’re seeing the normal progression of a grass-roots populist movement,” said Vin Weber, a former Republican congressman from Minnesota. “It ran out of control for a few years -- that’s why we call it a movement rather than an organization. But it’s receding a bit now. That’s allowing natural leaders to reassert themselves, and institutional forces to reassert themselves.”
(More here.)
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