National Party News

There can be seen now two schools of Republicans: Bush Republicans and Perry Republicans. This took form in Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s recent primary race when Dick Cheney, George H.W. Bush, Karl Rove and Karen Hughes (W’s proxy) lined up behind Kay Bailey Hutchison and Sarah Palin lined up behind Rick Perry. Perry won in a landslide. But the sides had already been drawn up for and against in Doug Hoffman’s Conservative Party challenge in NY-23. It was the moment of the significant turning. Palin and Perry were there, and Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty showed up after the brush was cut, while Newt Gingrich and the party regulars lined up behind the traditional Republican. But George Pataki, former governor of New York, was there first. The Bush clan is now sidling up to Tea Party types; Cheney to Rubio in Florida, Mitt Romney to Nikki Haley in South Carolina. But George Pataki was there first.

I know you are all on Crist-watch. He has one week, until next Friday, April 30, to drop out of the GOP primary and register as an Independent in the race for U.S. Senate in Florida — or hang in and likely lose.

Crist is the 2010 poster boy for the GOP family feud, or what I refer to as the DeMint Divide. If you haven't already, read up on how Sen. Jim "Waterloo" DeMint (R-S.C.), through his Senate Conservatives Fund, is backing candidates in races across the country in which the Republican establishment has chosen someone else. While in the past senators deferrred to their leaders, particularly someone like Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), whose responsibility is to win Senate seats this fall, DeMint has broken with tradition by backing insurgents — the outcome be damned.

Not only is the Tea Party Right, often far Right, it's also right. It is motivated largely by anger, and there's plenty to be angry about.

Unfortunately, it's also wrong.

The fury and desperation that fuel those who have rallied to this movement are misplaced. Their proper targets should be those in the corporate-finance power structure whose insatiable greed caused a near-collapse of the economy and a full collapse of the lives and well-being of the millions whose money they squandered.

With Tax Day behind us, and with it the Tea Party rallies across the country, the question is, What's next for the one-year-old Tea Party ?
 
Tea Party protesters in Washington made clear they weren't interested in establishment Republicans showing up, and no House or Senate GOP leaders were invited. The movement isn't really organized, and isn't coalescing around a substantial number of third-party candidates. Those who split off haven't done so well. Who represents the Tea Party, and what role will its supporters play in this fall's elections?

If the nascent Tea Party Movement can be hobbled because Barney Frank and John Lewis claim someone in an anonymous crowd called them a name, consider the American spirit spent.

Awakening always brings the dark with the light; it is the dual nature of Creation. People my age will recall the '60s, a moment of enlightenment in many ways unparalleled, in my opinion, but with scuds like Jerry Rubin, who later guided the Clinton generation to Wall Street, advising his peers to go home and kill their parents. Or Bill Ayers and his murderous colleagues. Or Jean Genet at the Chicago riots of 1968, advising the crowd of tens of thousands to find joy in life: Have sex with a goat. This was the common daily squalor that was the '60s.

Two things were cleared up this week at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans. First, there are now clearly two Republican parties: Big Government Republicans (George W. Bush and Karl Rove) and Small Government Republicans (Rick Perry, Sarah Palin, Bobby Jindal, Ron Paul). The second thing is that it is now clear what we mean by “small government.” We mean state government.

As you may recall, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele was swept into office directly after Barack Obama’s election.

As the Republican Party’s first black chairman, he fancied himself the right-wing version of Obama — a symbol of advancement that could drag the Republican Party into the 21st century. He seemed to encourage the comparisons, publishing a book titled, Right Now: A 12-Step Program for Defeating the Obama Agenda and hitting the TV circuit to promote himself at every turn. Read more...

As much as I hate to do it, here is a little advice for the Republicans. Get rid of Michael Steele. This guy is a migraine that won’t go away.

Let's bend over backward to be fair to Newt Gingrich. He contends his comments were misconstrued.

The Washington Post suggested that in warning Democrats they'd pay a huge political price for healthcare reform, he was saying it would be similar to the huge success the Republicans had achieved when they exploited the resentment of bigots and extremists after landmark civil rights legislation passed in the ’60s. Read more...

This is too good to be true. It now appears as though the Republican National Committee authorized spending of almost $2,000 for an establishment that featured bondage. Of course, there are endless permutations for Democrats to suggest what this latest episode tells us about Republicans, but since I always take the high road, here are some key points:

This scandal was unearthed by (or handed to) the Daily Caller, the site founded by Tucker Carlson, a respected journalist who landed a great scoop. Who knows what is next, after the bondage affair, which raises some serious issues: