The GOP: Winning, then surrendering
‘Crazy’ candidates keep GOP from shedding label of Old White Guy Party
–– actual McClatchy news story headline
When I read the above headline, I was ready to pound out yet another diatribe against media bias. But I read into the story, and found that RNC chairman Reince Priebus and the gang are actually BUYING that. And the drive-bys are more than happy to help close the sale.
Let’s see. You’ve got the largest majority in the US House since the 40s and you control the US Senate. And YOU think YOUR PARTY needs to change ????
All credible polling points to GOP victories in 2010 and 2014 as a rejection of the statist agenda of Barry Obama and his allies. 2008 and 2012 were failures for the GOP because they ran ME-TOO tickets in those presidential races that failed to motivate and inspire the party’s voters. McCain would have lost WORST but for the efforts and mere presence of Sarah Palin.
And THESE guys are the ones concerned about an image as old white guys? THEY are the ones who helped THAD COCHRAN knock off a primary challenger in his 40s !!!
But Reince & co. appear to be letting BarryO and the media serve as their image consultants:
Changing the perception that the Republican Party is the party of older, wealthier, white guys is proving to be tough.
Since the 2012 election, when President Barack Obama crushed Mitt Romney among African-Americans, Hispanics and women, Republicans have been engaged in ambitious efforts to be more diverse and minority-friendly.
But it’s finding its past, or at least the perception of that past, hard to escape. In the last month, three separate controversies have reminded voters of an image party leaders want to bury.
“The party really wants to be diverse, but then one person says something stupid and it gets all the press and hurts the message,” said Steve Munisteri. chairman of the Texas Republican Party.
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus called progress incremental but significant.
He conceded, though, “We have a message- and candidate-crazy party, to the detriment of mechanics.”
Pssst. He means “Tea Party.” The people who actually buy into that stuff in the party platform. You know, those
folks that put these people in power in 2010 and 2014. MORE:
The party’s trying hard to stress those mechanics. When the Republican National Committee met this week at a Southern California resort, its leaders moved fast to douse the latest fire.
On the meeting’s first day, they formally censured Dave Agema, member of the national committee from Michigan, for what Priebus termed “harmful and offensive rhetoric.” Agema had posted critical comments about gays, African-Americans and Muslims on his Facebook page and recently linked to a racist article. He defended himself in a Facebook posting last week, saying he is not a racist and did not support the article’s views.
Okay. So, we’re going to censure this guy for “racism,” but we’re giving a pass to Patrick McHenry’s boss and best friend Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) — who seriously claimed he had NO IDEA who fellow Louisianan David Duke was? What did this guy from Michigan do on Facebook that so incensed Reince and the drivebys? Here, Dave Agema tells you in his own words:
Once again I find the same people making false statements concerning a repost of an article I got from Col West’s ( former congressman) news letter as my words and opinion. I make no accusation that I agree with the statements supporting the author he posted. I do support Col West’s commentary concerning the authors article and not the content of the article itself. I respect the former congressman and fellow military officer highly and regard his opinions since he grew up in the inner city as a black man who has personal experience. I think his observations are noteworthy and he is certainly not a racist nor am I for reposting his opinions.
In his news letter he makes it clear it is quite possibly the most racist article you will read. He states it is a disturbing piece that we need to comprehend. He also states some of the observations in this area are NOT shocking to him but are quite well known and that we should be having a real discussion, not one of victimhood and expansion of the welfare nanny state. He states we are not hearing about the real issues from Obama, Eric Holder, Al Sharpton and others. I suspect he posted this as a result of the recent riots in Ferguson and other cities.
Perception becomes reality in politics and when liberal writers write something often enough it becomes truth in the listeners ears. It’s sad that politically correctness has so taken over our society and is determined by those who desire to move our culture according to their agenda. Political correctness is dangerous and prevents freedom of speech. Without freedom of speech from men of courage like Col West, we will lose our freedom and our culture. To take a sentence out of an article that Col West calls a racist article and use it to call myself and Col West a racist is ridiculous and deceptive reporting.
To quote Col West from his news letter-” I’m quite sure the progressive socialist left will criticize me for sharing this article-that’s just who they are- they hate the truth . But if there is a war to be fought, it is for the soul of the inner city and the black community.”
And THAT is worth a censure ????
I am still scratching my head over this spin suggesting that the GOP needs to fix its reputation with millenials — when there is all kinds of evidence ot there that the millenial generation is trending conservative. A lot of young liberals in the 60s, 70s, 
and 80s turned conservative when they graduated college and found out they had to PAY for all of this stuff they had been demanding during those campus protests.
Recent findings from Gallup show that Americans — for the first time in ages — are identifying GOVERNMENT and POLITICIANS as the country’s biggest problems.
People don’t like government. There is a real opportunity out there to push the concept of freedom and individual choice. But Reince & co. have decided to buy into this crap being pushed by the drive-bys. Provide a real, serious alternative to the statist garbage that is threatening our country and people WILL flock to you.
I’m old enough to remember Reagan in 1980. (We’re basically in Jimmy Carter’s third term.) Today’s GOP should take a refresher course.
Reince Priebus is as big a liar as Barack Obama.
It is the conservatives who are making the party diverse as to candidate background, NOT Priebus’ establishment. Take the GOP’s two Indian-American governors, Nikki Haley in SC and Bobby Jindal in Louisiana. Both are staunch conservatives who had to fight the establishment wing of the party to get where they are. Or the party’s only black US Senator, Tim Scott of SC, a staunch conservative who had to fight and beat the GOP establishment to win his House seat, and then got to the Senate thanks to appointment by conservative SC Governor Nikki Haley.
Then there are the GOP’s two Hispanic US Senators, conservatives Marco Rubio of Florida and Ted Cruz of Texas, both of whom had tough fights against GOP establishment liberal white guys to win their primaries. The NRSC was openly involved against Rubio in his primary and involved in the background against Cruz.
And we might have elected more minority conservatives if it had not been for them being sandbagged by the GOP establishment. In 2014, Oklahoma State House Speaker T. W. Shannon, whose ancestry is a mix of black and Cherokee Indian, was the choice of national conservative groups for the US Senate, but the GOP establishment got behind an old white guy RINO congressman and beat Shannon in the primary. For Congress in New Hampshire, the conservative Club for Growth steered a young staunchly conservative Hispanic woman state legislator, Marilinda Garcia to victory in the GOP primary against the establishment’s old white RINO guy, and the polls started looking close for the general election. Then when asked who she would support for Speaker in the GOP caucus and Garcia declined to answer, the establishment’s National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) went very public in pulling out of the race and that halted her momentum. The NRCC deliberately stabbed Garcia in the back because she wanted to stay out of the Speaker’s race while she was still a candidate.
One could go on, but the RNC, NRSC, and NRCC, as well as their leaders are total hypocritical sleazeballs. And they don’t get it that policy is the most important thing in politics. If they want to start going wobbly on issues, they will end up like some of the traditional right of center parties in Europe that have gone wobbly on issues and found themselves successfully challenged by new parties on the right. Take the UK, where the Conservative Party last year was pushed into third place in a nationwide election for the first time in its history, in the UK elections for the EU parliament. Who did that to them? It was the new UK Independence Party (UKIP) which got the most votes and seats nationwide by running to the right of the Conservative Party, while Labour came in second.
Diversity is great when it comes to ethnic background, but when it comes to issues, too much diversity can destroy a party by obliterating any coherent message.
Conservatives should NEVER NEVER NEVER give to the RNC, NRSC or NRCC under their present leadership. Give directly to conservative candidates you can trust or to trusted conservative groups like the Senate Conservatives Fund or Club for Growth.
Oh, there is one I left out. Priebus ought to be thanking conservatives for 50% of the intake of new women in the GOP’s Senate contingent.
Joni Ernst was down in the polls in the primary, trailing a white liberal male who had been recruited by the NRSC and was backed by the GOP establishment. Then she was endorsed by the Senate Conservatives Fund and Sarah Palin, and ran a great ad that went viral on the internet, and her campaign began to surge. With conservative support, Ernst won by a landslide in the primary, while the NRSC’s favorite ran third (another conservative, Sam Clovis, was in second place). She went on to win the general election by a solid margin.
Joni Ernst is by far the most dynamic of the two new GOP women Senators, and has been chosen to give the GOP response to Obama’s State of the Union address. If the NRSC and the establishment had had their way, she would still be back in Iowa.
As to old white men, that is exactly who the NRSC and the establishment rallied around everywhere they could in the 2014 primaries. In Mississippi and Kansas, in particular, they backed senile old dinosaurs against younger, more dynamic candidates put forward by conservatives. In Kentucky, that was also the case although McConnell is not quite as far down the path to senility as Roberts and Cochran. In Kansas, the NRSC dinosaur came close to losing the seat in the general election due to being a poor candidate. And then there is Cochran in Mississippi, who started babbling about his ”many indecent relationships with farm animals in my youth” at a campaign stop. Fortunately, only a local newspaper quoted that. Big Media could have Akined him with it if they chose. Roberts foot in mouth comment about ”coming home to Kansas every time I get an opponent” was not in the same league as Cochran’s on farm animals.
The political (and maybe literal) suicide gene has surfaced in the Beltway and Raleigh GOP, and Karl Rove is its disciple. I wonder, in the long run, what is in it for Priebus, Rove, Rollins, etc.? A share in the spoils, until before long they too become expendable, and made ‘non-persons’ in the Stalin sense. The Beltway and Raleigh GOP are playing with fire, but it takes a toxic plutocrat mentality to un-see it.
If there is one member of the Republican National Committee who should be censured for racism, or race baiting, it is not this guy from Michigan, but instead Henry Barbour, the Republican National Committeeman from Mississippi, who was the man responsible for this:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2672565/The-worst-race-baiting-ads-Ive-seen-Radio-ads-Mississippi-senate-race-accused-tea-party-candidate-Ku-Klux-Klan-links-drove-black-Democrats-vote-against-REPUBLICAN-primary.html
That is an account from a major British newspaper, so Barbour’s race-baiting received international attention. Yet, because the victim of Barbour’s race baiting was a conservative US Senate candidate, the RNC does nothing to Barbour, even after the Missouri GOP state chairman demanded action from Priebus and the RNC on the matter.
We in North Carolina also need to remember that the race baiting described in that article was financed by seven US Senators led by Mitch McConnell, one of which was Tricky Dick Burr of NC, who provided the money to Barbour.