A victory.
By machiavel Posted in Republicans — Comments (13) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Trent Lott. Dan Rather. And now Roy Blunt.
Update [2006-2-3 0:9:15 by machiavel]: And before Blunt, Harriet Miers. A glaring omission in a thread about bloodless victory.
Conservative blogs cannot claim the ultimate prize, but today was something more than a Hackett-like moral victory. Without John Shadegg, Congressman Blunt would be Leader Blunt. Without conservative blogs pointing out the gaping chasm between public and private committments and political sanity, John Shadegg very possibly does not draw 40 votes -- enlarging the Not Blunt coalition to a majority, and taking at least seven from the Temporary Leader, blunting the possibility of a first ballot triumph (I couldn't resist). Without an outright Blunt victory, Members are exposed to the spectacle of a Whip -- for all intents and purposes this contest's incumbent -- who cannot round up a simple majority on his own behalf.
Now that the conservative blogosphere has emerged unbloodied from its first real political knife fight, what lessons can be drawn about our effectiveness versus theirs? Read on.
Optimistically, the balance sheet reads as follows:
Us 1-0
Them 0-16
But that doesn't fully capture the reality of the situation. In truth, the Left isn't winless. It won Howard Dean his lofty perch on South Capitol Street. And what came of that victory? The ravaging of the party's financial coffers, a civil war between the DNC and the other committees, an ongoing feud between a radioactive Dean and the enfeebled Minority Leader, and tendentious seminars on party building from the world's expert on winning elections, Kos.
All the traffic you get, all the money you claim to raise, all the "enthusiasm" you generate, all the elections you dabble in, all of that is the instrument of your demise if you're rocketing in the direction of nearest precipice. Because of liberal blogs, Democrats are going very, very fast in a very, very wrong direction.
When the time came to stand and be counted, conservatives stood with the candidate least likely to cause the party electoral heartburn in November. With John Shadegg, the way of principle was also the way of victory. Sometimes the bloggers lead the party to the right, and sometimes to the left. Idiosyncratic as righty bloggers are, their position on the right-left spectrum is very close to that of the average Republican, so they wield influence from somewhere near the balance of power, not its fringes.
And that makes all the difference between winning your first time out, and losing time after time.
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A victory. 13 Comments (0 topical, 13 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
...but the situation certainly turned out well after the conservative blogosphere's intervention.
So, chalk up another one up for the objectively pro-victory, pro-sanity forces of the blogosphere.
I would definately agree, Miers' withdrawal was from pressure from the loud and noisy Republican base - which was driven by the blogosphere.
Wasn't this site against Arlen Specter being chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee? Does that go on the balance sheet?
But, even though he did get the job, I would argue the pressure on Specter applied then resulted in the party-friendly behavior we've just seen. Not a sack, but he was run outside the pocket, so to speak.
Without all the grassroots pressure, Specter might not have behaved so admirably.
I guess that's another victory for Righty blogs:
- Stopping Blunt; even if we didn't get our guy
- Stopping the Meiers nomination
- Keeping Specter in line.
I guess the Right isn't perfect in helping our people win (i'd argue we're getting better), but I still think we get better results than the lefty blogs.
Redstate was officially promoting the campaigns of various Congressfolk when the Kos Krew lost it's first 15 of 16. If I recall, Redstate went 3-1 in that.
So we're still doing quite a bit better, just not completely undefeated.
It's important to note that Republicans can disagree without eating their own. It's moments like this (Boehner's victory) which will be remembered as the quiet turnaround which pre-empted the much-predicted Democratic Revolution of 2006. It is refreshing to see the leadership taking the quiet path forward, instead of shouting while standing in quicksand.
Comparing our victory to that of the kos crowd's "moral victory" with Hackett? Boehner I don't see as a victory. Had Shadegg won, I would consider this a victory. So we beat the whip ... and instead got Boehner. I'm losing confidence in the republican leadership to represent their CONSERVATIVE agenda. We need new leadership in total.
We have a post on the front page here which points out that we have a Congress and President that are turning our government into a large one. If our Republican leaders don't about-face this year, soon all we'll have left is the judiciary. Thankfully we've forced the president to keep his word on that matter, but even then we had to push him (eh hem, Harriet).
If we as a blog are serious about winning back the Republican leadership, perhaps its time to put some pressure on our leaders in more than just the judicial realm.
We've supported them, now its time they support us!
A lot of what I saw written here against Roy showed me that we are more than willing to eat our own to get our way - and that bothers me.
What bothers me more, though, is that instead of driving ideas forward - some of us are more interested in flexing what they would consider to be their power on what I would call irrelevant issues.
I hope I am wrong and we get things done.
From an interview with Leader Boehner by Stephen Spruiell;
"Boehner: I supported almost everything in the Sensenbrenner bill on immigration, including amendments to make it more difficult. My concern was over a policy in the bill that should have come to my [Education and Workforce] committee and didn't. It dealt with the employer verification of all existing employees. I didn't have a problem verification of new employees. But I thought the verification of existing employees was a huge unfunded mandate on employers. For that reason, I took the difficult position of voting against the bill even though I supported almost everything in it. In fact, I had an amendment with [Chris] Cannon and [Steve] Chabot which would have removed that part of the bill, and the House leaders wouldn't allow me to add the amendment."
Now that he IS the House leader I suppose that won't be a problem. Well, back to square one.
It would be wrong to blame the center-right blogs / newspapers / magazines and 'luminaries' for "eat[ing] our own to get our way," because Roy generated opposition through his own actions.
Roy's ambition kept him from recognizing the importance of spending control and moving a conservative agenda. Even the democrats understand that Roy was 'their' candidate. Here is a post from a staffer for a senior democratic congressman, in The New Republic Online - The Plank
Boehner gives the appearance of reform for GOP vulnerables to run on, provides a new face that can't be demonized by Dems (hard to demonize someone as the "Congressman from Sallie Mae", much easier when the Majority Leader is married to a tobacco lobbyist)
Howard Dean stopped baying at the moon long enough to make essentially the same point last Sunday.
Unfortunately, Roy's continued presence as Whip means that it is easier for democrats to run their demonization strategy through the "culture of 'corruption'" campaign. The honorable course for him to take was resignation, but again, personal ambition trumped party loyalty.
The point is that to "get things done" we need the leadership to focus on furthering conservative objectives, not on how much K-Street money the Whip can raise and distribute to obligate House Republicans to him personally. Unless there is a dramatic change, Blunt's focus will continue to be on the latter, not the former.
...that would be canibalism.
We SHOOT them. :)
If you're going to post here, you're going to have to learn the correct customs. ;)