Seen a number of articles in the last month, including a couple over at TPM, wherein the President and a number of other Beltway Dems, particularly in the Senate, keep claiming that after the election, if the President is re-elected, that the Republicans in Congress will be more reasonable and willing to work out solutions, and that the party as a whole will essentially become more moderate because of the defeat at the polls.
This is just fundamentally Wrong. And it's really not that complicated.
The latest version of this fairy tale comes from the HuffPo.
Democrats also agreed that keeping both the White House and the Senate in Democratic hands -- even without taking back the House -- would mark a turn in the nation's political makeup. But they argued it would be for the better, signaling what they predicted would be a return to a more bipartisan, compromising style of politics that became anathema to the Tea Party movement that swept the GOP to control of the House in 2010.
The article then goes on to quote Chuck Schumer, Dick Durbin and yes, Harry Reid, all saying that they believe that the defeat will cause Republicans to take a different tack. Reid even speculates that there will be a new Republican Leader in the Senate, not Mitch McConnell.
“There has always been a group of Republicans that want to compromise. But they have been outshouted, outflanked by tea party. They’re about equal,” Schumer said. “If we keep the Senate and the president wins, and even better if we take the House, though the mainstream — there are no moderates — the mainstream Republicans are going to be strengthened. They’ve told me that. And the leaders — both [House Speaker John] Boehner and [Senate Minority Leader Mitch] McConnell sort of have a foot in each camp. But they’re pulled and dragged by the tea party. They’re going to be strengthened to come and compromise with us.”Is there anybody who can talk to these guys, and get them to step outside the bubble for a minute, and think about what the hell they are saying?“This is not where Republicans thought they’d be with 50 days left before election,” he said. “So everything is moving in a direction of us coming together because the obstructionist tea party is losing out.”
Look, it's not that hard. Sure, the Republicans may lose the Presidency, may lose a few House Seats, may sacrifice their Senate pickup chances, chasing the Tea Party, i.e., the Republican BASE vote, but that doesn't mean that those Republicans who do win are going to have any incentive to moderate; indeed, the opposite seems to be clearly where the party' BASE is headed.
Just because the national demographics have changed, doesn't mean that the core of the party has changed. And the Tea Party crowd is the core of the party. Look at 2010, look at who the nominees of the party are this year; they are mostly Tea Party approved, even if the establishment "movement" Republicans don't want to admit it. Look at Todd Akin, and Jeff Flake, Christine O'Donnell, even Harry Reid's last opponent, Sue "Chickens for Checkups" Lowden. The ideological, irrational, whipped-into-a-frenzy-by-the-establishment-movement-conservatives-for-two-decades crowd is NOT moderating, and WILL NOT moderate, so long as they control the primaries. That's why Orrin Freaking Hatch had to kiss Tea Party ass to survive the primaries in freaking UTAH! Not that I would count Orrin Hatch as a moderate, but by Tea Party standards he was almost too moderate to win re-nomination. Arlen Specter, Richard Lugar, Olympia Snowe, they were Way Too Moderate. And they are gonesville.
Here in Hideho, as in many other places in the country, the extremist wing has done to their own party what their party is trying to do to in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and across the nation; purge the dissenter's right to vote. You can't cross party lines to participate in the Republican primary anymore, here and in a number of other states, because they've closed the primary. NO MORE RINO'S! has been the rallying cry.
And without RINO's, there's no real moderating force to keep the extremists in check. Indeed, the party is even more dependent on those voters now, more than ever. Here's another TPM article discussing that very point:
The Tea Party Express is the traditional politics wing of the movement, focused on using PAC dollars to support candidates. Over at the much more grassroots Tea Party Patriots, the sense of desperation extends not only to Romney but to the Republicans in Congress.The Tea Party Patriots has often been critical of the 112th Congress it helped elect in 2010, and with November looming that disappointment has become full-fledged depression. . . . .
The importance of tea partiers to Romney’s eventual success cannot be overstated. With his campaign increasingly reliant on the Republican base to win, the ultra-motivated voters in the tea party movement will help him run up his totals in swing states. Romney never really had the tea party’s full-throated support, but the selection of Paul Ryan and sticking to a hardline on issues like immigration (which observers say has cost him with Hispanic voters) was supposed to keep the tea party in line.
The Tea Party is the Republican base, whether the establishment "movement" conservatives want to admit it or not (and whether Chuck Schumer and our Democratic leadership want to admit it or not).
The Tea Party, in many places throughout the country, controls the primary process, and has purged moderating "RINO's" from the party ranks. Those Republicans who get elected will be beholden to these "ultra-motivated voters" who are responsible for getting them the nomination, and hence into office. It's basic -- you can't win the general election if you don't get the nomination. And one beating at the polls is NOT, I'll repeat that, one beating at the polls is most definitely NOT going to be sufficient. Not when the true believers believe that the reason they are losing is because those they are nominating aren't partisan enough.
What is it that is making these ultra-motivated, base voters "depressed?" Disappointment that those they've elected HAVEN'T BEEN PARTISAN ENOUGH! These are people who are true believers in Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Rand Paul, Scott Walker, Jan Brewer, and the like. They are the deliberately deceived and propagandized us-or-them with-us-or-against-us idealogical dupes that Newt Gingrich, Karl Rove, the Koch brothers, Dick Armey, Jack Abramoff, and the like have created over the course of the last two to three decades, and they aren't going to simply "Wake Up" and be okay with a moderate Republican Party. In fact, the reverse is the case. They have woken up, and they are not okay with a moderate Republican Party.
Again, from TPM (same as previous link):
“Over the last several weeks, I have received emails from some of our supporters who say they think the system is so broken it cannot be fixed and our efforts are futile,” Tea Party Patriots co-founder Jenny Beth Martin wrote in an email sent to supporters Tuesday. “They are angry at the Republican nominee who does not fight hard enough for our core values. They are angry at the Republican ‘leadership’ in the House who are spineless and unable to make any real spending cuts.”
Think that message is not getting through? HuffPo: Boehner: No Tax Increases Even If We Lose
At a press conference Friday morning, a reporter asked Boehner whether Republicans were "eventually going to have to raise taxes in some way" if the president wins in November."No," replied Boehner. "Raising taxes, according to Ernst and Young, would threaten our economy with a loss of 700,000 jobs. Now why would I ever be for something like that? I'm not."
Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) said that as long as Republicans retain control of the House, he'd be "really surprised if we capitulate on what’s essentially a core fundamental of conservative orthodoxy."
Look, just because Lindsey Graham, who now qualifies as a "moderate" in God's Own Party, wants to be relevant to the discussion again, doesn't mean that he has any influence, whatsoever at all, with what is going on with the millions and millions of the party base who have woken up to the fact that the establishment of the party cannot survive without them.
Newt Gingrich today predicted that national Republican leaders, including presidential nominee Mitt Romney, will reverse their blackball treatment of Todd Akin and open the financial spigots once they "adjust to (the) reality" that he's staying in Missouri's U.S. Senate race."I believe by mid-October all of them will be in," Gingrich told a crowd of about 50 supporters who gathered at the Kirkwood Amtrak station this morning in advance of Gingrich's attendance at a fundraiser for Akin, the Republican Senate nominee.
. . . . Once that door is closed, Gingrich predicted, the party leaders' vows of continued ostricization will disappear — especially after the "avalanche of money" that most assume will be coming McCaskill's way from Democratic sources.
Unseating McCaskill has long been viewed as linchpin in the GOP's Senate takeover strategy, so the Akin controversy has national ramifications.
"This is a winnable race," Gingrich said. "I don't see how any national Republicans . . . have a choice after tomorrow."
That's right. Even the Monied Interests, Establishment Republicans have no choice. The base picked this candidate, and he's staying in, and if the establishment wants to stay relevant to those in control, then the establishment needs to get on board. Newt gets it; he's one of the architects of this "revolution." And he knows that one measly little election is not going to change that dynamic.
The only way the Republican Party, as a whole, will be able to moderate, is if they lose enough elections, enough entire cycles, that the "ultra-motivated" base loses their motivation, and gives up and quits turning out to vote. Which in turn means that the Republican Party will have to shrink even more, before it can re-orient, and begin climbing out of the hole it's in.
That's not a one-cycle job. That's not a two-cycle job. That's a decade(s) long job. And until then, the Republican Party is not going to moderate. Period.
Somebody needs to get that message through to the out-of-touch bobbleheads in our own party.