Yet again, Jim Antle captures exactly how I feel. It isnt inconsistent to be equally frustrated with the Republican establishment and to recognize that conservative insurgents should carefully calculate and pick their battles wisely as to not diminish their impact on real policy debates. From the article: There is a significant element of the conservative base that is tired of the excuses. They watched Republicans control the presidency and both houses of Congress for part of the Bush years. When the GOPs unified control of the federal government was over, all conservatives had to show for it were a couple of Supreme Court justices — one of whom ended up voting to uphold ObamaCare — higher spending, and bigger deficits. So their patience for Republican instructions to wait another election for conservative policy results that never seem to come has worn thin. The problem is that many conservatives have responded not by demanding tangible results. They are satisfied with evidence of a fight. Republican politicians have been all too willing to answer this call. Thus you get a defund ObamaCare initiative that relied on a government shutdown and was very unlikely to succeed — even when there were plausible alternatives. You get a last-minute campaign for speaker instead of a carefully planned challenge, like Newt Gingrichs calculated rise. You wind up with the leading Boehner alternative, Florida Rep. Daniel Webster, having just a 56 percent rating from Heritage Action last year. That puts him to the left of Boehner.
Posted on: Fri, 09 Jan 2015 15:36:52 +0000
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