Tag: GOP Base
How Ideological Purity Is Like the Ebola Virus
What happens is they’re like an Ebola virus that spreads. And if you can keep it contained with this bunch of people that really hate the government, OK, I respect their position. But when the virus spreads and they then have a bunch of people all nervous that if they vote the way they really think they should vote then bad things are going to happen, that messes up the process.— Former Rep. Steve LaTourette (R), quoted by the Wall Street Journal, on the conservative groups that demand ideological purity.
It’s All About the Base, Baby
No way it happens. I just don’t see it going anywhere. I think 2014 is a slam dunk to us otherwise and this would really piss off the base.
— A House Republican aide, quoted by Talking Points Memo, on the prospects for immigration reform.
Radical Republicans Thwart Revitalization of the Party
In my decades of polling, I recall only one moment when a party had been driven as far from the center as the Republican Party has been today. … The outsize influence of hard-line elements in the party base is doing to the GOP what supporters of Gene McCarthy and George McGovern did to the Democratic Party in the late 1960s and early 1970s — radicalizing its image and standing in the way of its revitalization.
— Pollster Andrew Kohut, writing in the Washington Post.
Tea Party Announces It Will Focus on Helping Republicans Win Senate
As you read through the Reuters story excerpted here, keep in mind that the two national tea party spokespeople quoted here are actually employees of Republican Party shadow groups:
WASHINGTON/CHICAGO (Reuters) – With their favored candidates for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination lagging or out of the race, many U.S. Tea Party activists are shifting focus to the struggle for control of the U.S. Senate.
The fizz has gone out of the presidential contest for some supporters of the fiscally conservative movement now that former Alaska governor Sarah Palin is not running and Texas Governor Rick Perry and congresswoman Michele Bachmann are slipping in polls.
“No one is going to get perfect in a general election candidate. That is why we think the Senate is a better place to focus,” said Matt Kibbe, president and chief executive of the libertarian FreedomWorks, a Tea Party group.
The Nut-Case Base
O, how our political process has been debased
By the spectacle of the birth certificate chase.
O, how GOP leaders’ hearts must slump
As they witness the rise of Donald Trump
And watch the lunatic fringe become their new base.
The Unappealing Truth
OK, I’m about to reveal
How, during the 2012 elections, pols can keep it real.
Although it sounds moronic,
I’m not being ironic
When I say what it takes is “base appeal.”
