Scorched Earth Politics Isolates the Republican Establishment in Michigan
Anyone who watched or listened to Mitt Romney’s lame assault on Donald Trump yesterday had to wince at the Obamacare architect and gun control proponent questioning the bona fides of the current Republican front runner. Hypocrisy at its finest. A blatant violation of Reagan’s Eleventh Commandment. A testament to the abject desperation coursing through the Republican establishment today. Stark evidence of how few friends the Republican establishment actually owns has.
Just how did the Republican establishment get themselves into this predicament?
What does their predicament portend in Michigan politics?
This year’s Presidential nomination process demonstrates convincingly that money is no longer a substitute for actual human support in a political process where the great unwashed get to vote. Money – and the TV advertising it bought – had a 40 year run buying elections, but this elixir of modern American politics is no longer working. ¡Jeb! is very expensive history. The great unwashed are in open revolt.
Ace over at the Ace of Spades HQ blog offered the very best analysis of the national Republican establishment’s current predicament, which compelled Mitt’s embarrassing performance yesterday. You should read it in its entirety, but in a nutshell:
The Republican establishment has no one credible to make their case against Donald Trump. Absolutely no one who has even a shred of credibility with Trump supporters. They sent Mitt Romney out on yesterday’s kamikaze mission because they had nothing better to offer. Then they will have to spend a mountain of wealth with no real prospects of success. And engage in strong arm tactics. Making an embarrassing spectacle of themselves.
The Democratic establishment is experiencing the very same situation with Bernie Sanders, but they have enough banked goodwill in all their many party factions to adeptly spike his candidacy. Without resorting to kamikaze missions and brute force spectacles. They will come out of Philadelphia looking like they had a genuine internal political contest with very few sore losers. A great start on November 8th.
The desolation isolation of the Republican establishment is not just a national story. Since the 2012 elections, the Michigan Republican establishment has been relentlessly purging the Tea Party and every other faction not toeing their political line verbatim. Think Stalinist Russia, circa 1937.
The three most egregious examples of this ongoing purge are the 2014 Bentivolio reelection race in the 11th Congressional District, the quarantine and destruction of Gamrat and Courser in the State House, and the wholesale campaign to oust Tea Party precinct delegates across Michigan. They even refused to countenance a Tea Partier as Lieutenant Governor, an office “not worth a bucket of warm….. To cap it off, they passed a road funding package indistinguishable from Proposal 2015-01 after a complete disaster at the polls. The establishment certainly demonstrated the political potency of their money in each – very limited – case, but made no new friends. The scorched earth military tactic applied to politics. Now the crows have come home to roost.
Greg McNeilly
Greg McNeilly, Dick DeVos’ attack poodle, has been a pointman in the Republican establishment’s scorched earth politics. It is almost funny to read the angst he pours out to Nolan Finley in today’s Detroit News. Never once does he consider how the Republican establishment got themselves into this predicament. Mr. McNeilly does not appear to be capable of introspection, a useful personal trait in politics.
Mr. McNeilly is going to spend a lot of Dick DeVos’ money with no real prospects of success. If he succeeds in sinking Donald Trump, he will alienate Trump’s supporters. A win for Hillary. If he fails he will have created new enemies for Michigan’s Republican establishment, one of whom will be the President of the United States. Donald Trump does not seem to be an especially forgiving character. Yes, they will be able to hide behind SB 571, but that concealment is wearing thin. Money talks, in more than one way. Trump may be many things, but he is no one’s fool.
The Michigan Republican Party now faces an existential threat. The Flint water fiasco. Governor Snyder and the establishment Republicans did not instigate this mess, rather Flint’s Democratic politicians and bureaucrats did. But Governor Snyder blithely empowered those idiots through PA 436 of 2012, and then totally failed to provide adult supervision as the disaster unfolded. Perhaps he was unduly enjoying distracted by Courser’s and Gamrat’s coincidental travails?
Regardless, Dick DeVos and our other Republican pashas do not have enough money to assuage the worldwide opprobrium now being heaped upon the Michigan Republican Party. They may not be thinking very clearly just now as a consequence, so let’s help them focus their thoughts.
There is more on the November 8th ballot than the Presidential race. Before Flint exploded in the news, only a few thought the Democrats had a serious chance of taking control of our State House of Representatives. After Flint, control of the Michigan House is very much up for grabs. Michigan’s Republican establishment desperately needs friends. Friends that money won’t buy. But friends can be won, through power sharing and a modicum of tact. This is the essence of politics in a free society. We are supposed to be a free society.
As Ace ended his post:
“Politics requires some politics, fellas. For God’s sake. For God’s sake. This is basic stuff.”
(16)Nuh Uh.
(1)
Ya, pretty much why the Wooden Shoe Mafia recently created their new Cuck outlet to hide behind:
http://www.thepunditpoll.com/thepolls/2016/1/23/introducing-the-pundit-poll
Second down:
http://www.reschstrategies.com/who-we-are/
#Amway/Windquest$$$
Betsy gots to haz her Common Core, don'tya know?
Schuette's grandstanding distraction with pissing away more monies on the trivial Courser/Gamrat circus isn't sitting well with folks on either side, either.
However, seeing that there are those who waste time attempting to salvage things, y'all might want to question why you allowed Willard's niece to chair your Party.
Trump's going to take Michigan.
Watch.
To pull another quote from that Ace of Spades post:
Right now, according to Nate Silver (the FiveThirtyEight blog), Trump is 14% ahead of pace to secure a first-ballot delegate majority, and has missed his mark only in Iowa, Minnesota, Oklahoma, and Texas. Trump also has 5 (SC, AL, GA, MA, & TN) of the 8 states that he needs to satisfy RNC Rule 40(b); Cruz has only Texas, and neither Rubio nor Kasich have delegation majorities as yet. Between eight states (KS, KY, LA, ME, HI, ID, MI, & MS) and the territory of Puerto Rico, 328 delegates are in play over the next four days (March 5th, 6th, and 8th). Trump is leading in the current polling in Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, and Mississippi. According to Nate Silver, Trump currently has a 51% chance of winning tomorrow's Kansas caucus, a 95% chance of winning tomorrow's Louisiana primary, and a 91% chance of winning Tuesday's Michigan primary.
According to Sundance over at The Last Refuge, Mitt saying what he said yesterday was the final intel tripwire, the open exposure of and admission to the RNC/GOPe master plan. Heretofore, Trump has finished worse-than-second in exactly one state (Minnesota), and I doubt that trend is going to be changing anytime soon, which is why the professional power brokers and deep pocket financiers are now going "scorched earth" in an effort to force a contested convention. A mulligan of the Romney / Ryan ticket may have been their failsafe the entire time (as documentation filed with the FEC back in October of 2015 would suggest). And don't think for one second that Trump isn't aware of this, didn't see it coming, and isn't prepared.
Anyone else who wants to get up to speed would be well advised to read John Yob's convention primer . . . it's quite the page turner.
One thing to note about MN, it was Somalis who gave that to Little Marco. Oklahoma? Well, Okies are just kinda weird like Iowans in their voting.
Texas? Much to Saul Anuzis chagrin, it was the lowest Texas vote turnout since 1913 for their booger eating Cruz. https://youtu.be/5vfGt801JGE
Speaking to the Yob thingie? Well, I suppose that's why li'l Johnny's daddy is pushing Kasich. There's a lot of $$$ in them thar consulting shills. Just ask Rove.
Anyhoo, I'd be surprise to see May 20, 1980 happen again...
http://rightmi.com/throwback-thursday-4/
There's ^ the Romney/Rakolta legacy. Bill f*cking Milliken and Bush/DeVos Common Core.
Trump's plane flew over my head and landed in Traverse City. He then got on a private puddle jumper and flew to Cadillac where about 30K showed up. Meanwhile, we were standing at Streeters which holds maybe 700 folks, but 3 to 4000 showed up--many from Detroit, Flint and Cadillac. We used the occasion to start the recall of Wayne Schmidt--the Bernie Sanders' supporters were anxious to sign--we ran out of township specific petitions. Be better prepared--Many asked if we had Snyder recall petitions--
But--10x25--thanks for writing my thoughts--you got a camera in my brain??? It's the trashing of those independent thinkers which they tried to clump into the Tea Party, which is the real reason Trump is being so successful. They thunked just because we weren't vocal or fighting back that they won--my kids did the same--they thought they were getting away with stuff because mom wasn't yelling--Ha! Donald Trump IS the Third party within the GOP and I suspect he's been planning this for about three or four years--You've been Donald!
Ya, just on big great coincidence that you had crap pulled like getting Baird, still resident of Illinois, elected a delegate and having Willard's pig-faced niece planted as chair of the state's Party apparatchik only to have uncle Magic Underpants pull his lame-ass speech about hating flip-floppers, by Mr. Romneycare, gay marriage, gun bans himself, the very day of the Detoilet debate with a stacked audience. Hell, it all might've worked with the two yapping Cubans but no, 'ol Manjaw Kelly joined in the buffoonery by Little Marco and Lying Cruz to make it look so contrived that it wasn't even funny. Talk about Rupert Murdoch shitting the bed? Amazing. No wonder he's lost half his viewers.
Doesn't matter. It didn't stump the Trump.
Not sure how Flint scares anybody (politically) given the lack of outrage expressed by conservatives to date save columns such as yours. The MIGOP knows full well that TP delegates have long had their chance to make hay out of this issue well before Snyder came clean not to mention scores of others over time and didn't. Trump is calling out the establishment enough to be actually attacked. Local TP delegates have done little (apologies to those that have) to tie their entire local GOP organizations (rightfully) to the largest single cover up in state history involving inexcusable maiming and death. Every single local GOP is claiming right now that they knew no more than Snyder did on the day that he said it weeks ago.
Loudly and publicly proclaiming anything else changes election results and results in Trump treatment locally.
This outrage never happened (never wil)...there are few if any House members who can't be bought..and the MIGOP majority will definitely stand whether seats are lost.
Like it or not, November's (big) business as usual cake walk and ensuing lame duck like no other will go down as the most publicized defeat of a conservative movement to date.
These guys aren't sweating anything but the governor's office and sure as heck aren't sweating a movement who kept their mouths (collectively) shut when timing was everything in every single GOP district statewide. They never wanted to share power or make friends with anybody and Mitt's speech coupled with this immedate historic aftermath should erase any doubt (here) forever.
Youse guys are all right and the less than speculation of the Mitt/Ryan brokered convention run is probably the scariest of all. But fear not--even with Hillary's super stealing coin-flopping delegates--with an indictment looming--we can expect a brokered convention on the ass side too. When Mitt and his buddies changed the rules mid-convention (2012) with his john at the helm--even the most seasoned elephants won't forget the failures of seating an entire state delegation, refusing to allow Ron Paul to speak--destining Willard to the forever loosing circle. Round 2: More elephants are sitting in tea cups then they care to admit and the Trump card will be played. Let the Royal Rumpus begin! P.S. If I were a thinking Mitt--preparing for a brokered convention--I think I'd at least chose Cruz as a running mate.
I suppose so, however, you have some extraordinarily thick skulls in Michigan, oh, like the kashub from Hawks who fellates The 'Grate' One on a daily basis in her idolater tweets and pretzel-logic blog.
https://twitter.com/JenKuznicki
Piety based delusion and desperation.
Ps. the booger eater is the insider - http://theconservativetreehouse.com/2016/03/05/video-why-senator-jeff-sessions-did-not-endorse-senator-ted-cruz/