National Party News

One of my more interesting life assignments was to once ride to the airport with William F. Buckley Jr. to keep him entertained. Conversation went from state sovereignty to whether Russia would be better off with a czar (Buckley said yes).

Soaring, fearless and graceful he was, and without his omniscient overview, some conservative voices today have become strident, orthodox and narrow. And there is stress now among older conservatives about the new energy that is the Tea Party, though there should not be. In terms ad man Don Draper might have used decades back, yes, the new Volkswagen Bug has arrived on the streets of America. Yes, it is disturbing. Yes, it will change America. The venerable elders like Bert Cooper might have a hard time coping or adjusting, like George H.W. Bush, who tells Larry King tonight, “I’m confused by it, frankly.” But the Republicans already have the account. This burgeoning, young conservative movement today has Old Temple vs. New Temple features virtually identical to those which Jack Kennedy, scorned by Eleanor Roosevelt and the liberal Protestant gentry, faced in 1960. His franchise ran for 50 years.

Maria Cino is a workhorse, not a show horse — and that's just what the GOP needs heading into 2012.
 
And before we get into her impressive list of qualifications, which include delivering actual results as opposed to merely managing to get hired or appointed to positions to list as "experience" on a résumé, I'll engage in a bit of gender bean counting: Wouldn't it be refreshing to have a woman leading the Republican National Committee for a change? I've long bristled at the RNC's rather patronizing practice of placating women by having an RNC "co-chair" who is required to be a woman. Enough of that. There are enough seriously qualified women available to fill top positions so that we no longer need to "create" special jobs for them.

Cino has a proven record working at nearly every level of politics and government, and it is virtually an impossible notion the GOP would find itself having to make excuses for gaffes, cover up ineptitude, find ways to compensate for incompetence and screw-ups or cringe when watching her on one of the Sunday morning talkfests. In fact, given what I know of Maria Cino, I think it would not be a stretch to predict she might be one of the strongest, most effective RNC chairs in a generation, right up there with the legendary Haley Barbour.
 
Maria Cino was a key player and enormously instrumental in the 1994 GOP takeover of the House as the executive director of the NRCC — she ran the nearly flawless 2008 convention, has been deputy director at the RNC, is known to operatives at all levels, is accessible and helpful and is widely respected in politics and government in Washington, D.C., and around the country. In short, a Chairwoman Maria Cino would undoubtedly hit the ground running, need virtually no "learning curve" and would be at full strength on day one.
 
There are several other impressive names on the list of GOPers thinking or planning on running for RNC chairman against current chair, Michael Steele. It is encouraging that we have such a deep bench in our party. Maria Cino is the right person to utilize all of their talents and contributions, rather than considering them enemies. If these folks can soon coalesce their support around Cino, the GOP will be better off, the Michael Steele debacle can begin the process of becoming a faded memory for the party and we will be off and running toward 2012.

Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski is the champion that establishment Republicans like Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, George H.W. Bush and Karen Hughes as a proxy for W. hoped for when they backed Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson as their champion against Rick Perry, who had only Sarah Palin’s support in the Texas governor’s primary. Why would they do such a thing when it was clear that Perry would win big? Because they saw Sarah Palin as an existential threat to their vision of America.

It was said here in the first hours of Palin’s appearance that she would find city vs. country bipartisan opposition exactly like that which Andrew Jackson found in 1831. One like that which sent such a shutter to the refined colonials of the East that Adams and Jefferson would forget their long contempt for one another. That moment has come today, as liberal columnist Gail Collins, the doyenne of eloi sensibility at our nation’s flagship newspaper, declares Murkowski to be the official Anti-Palin. As she writes today, “All of these developments make the Senate results in Alaska important for those Americans who find sunshine in any day that goes badly for the former Republican vice presidential candidate.” 

For the immediate term, the Tea Party affected politics in Washington dramatically.

The outcry forced many liberal candidates to run away from their records or actively campaign against the Obama administration platform, like Sen.-elect Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who sounds more Republican than Sen. Olympia Snowe.

Over the last four decades, there have been four huge classes of incoming freshmen members of the House that are historically notable.

The class of 1974 swooped in as Watergate caved in around Richard Nixon, and with it came a liberal sensibility that smashed the seniority system, opened up the political process, changed the campaign finance laws, reformed the budget process and put the intelligence community on notice that the Congress no longer had its back.

Weeks before Election Day, strategists in both parties knew the GOP would win back control of the House of Representatives on Nov. 2. Too many seats were gone, and the momentum was headed in one direction. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) knew it too, even as she continued to declare that Democrats would keep their majority. Rank-and-file Democrats had been led to believe that Pelosi would step down from leadership in the event of huge losses for her party, just as former Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) had done when Democrats won back the House in 2006. After all, Pelosi had been the target of $65 million in ads against Democrats and had become for the right what Dick Cheney had became to the left several years ago — the poster child for partisan liberal Democrats profoundly out of touch with most of America. Democrats lost throughout the South and Midwest, in districts Pelosi hasn't been able come near for the last three cycles.

Establishment Republicans are enjoying McCain-like treatment from the mainstream media as they rush to the microphones to excoriate Sarah Palin for costing them hypothetical control of the Senate.

It is this kind of backward thinking that cost Republicans control of the Senate in the first place. Read more...

Whether or not Lisa Murkowski manages to rage against reality as successfully as South Carolina segregationist Strom Thurmond, who last won a write-in contest, it is Joe Miller who has pointed the way to the millennium. He holds a lantern in the cold Alaskan twilight, but most of the rest of the Tea Party was co-opted the moment it started being called a Tea Party. The original ideas hatched and awakened simultaneously in 37 states after NH state rep Dan Itse proposed a Jeffersonian states-rights defense against federal overreach. But it might have been better had he never done that Glenn Beck interview. A maturing framework for this will, as Texas Gov. Rick Perry said recently, take governors, not Congress or a President. But it will take longer.

Gotta hand it to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) for breaking his major campaign promise to political independents within 24 hours of the polls closing. After promising to political independents to end the bickering in Washington and to work together to create jobs for Americans, the Senate Republican leader said jobs are not his major priority, his major priority is destroying President Obama in 2012.

Perhaps that is why senators who lead Democrats from Nevada, New York and Washington state were all returned to the Senate and their leadership posts and why the minority leader remains the minority leader.

My guess is that a lot of political independents who voted for Republicans might want refunds soon.

The hardest part for any successful political movement is the moment it succeeds; the Tea Party is at such a point. Complaining is easy, governing is hard. Tea Party organizations such as Dick Armey’s Freedom Works and the Tea Party Express promise to remain as a Sword of Damocles, ready to fall   on any wayward Tea Partiers or Elephants that fail to adhere to fiscal responsibility by cultivating and funding primary challengers against perceived traitors. Expectations must be tempered. The Tea Party augmented the GOP, but the GOP controls only the House. The Dems still control the Senate and White House.  

This means gridlock. ObamaCare can’t be repealed as they do not have enough votes to override, however they can craft a budget that splits the difference between Obama’s dreams and Tea Party idealism. It’s easy to be disappointed, but consider the following: Congress will have to decide whether or not to raise the debt ceiling in March.

The Tea Party is opposed to such action, yet a government shut down did not help the Republicans back in 1995 and could damage conservatives again. So what will it be, taking the brunt of criticism for unpopular policy or giving ground on idealism?
 
Armstrong Williams is on Sirius/XM Power 169, 7-8 p.m. and 4-5 a.m., Monday through Friday. Become a fan on Facebook- www.facebook.com/arightside, and follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/arightside.