Via Steve Benen.
DES MOINES — The long-standing coalition of social, economic and national security conservatives that elevated the Republican Party to political dominance has become so splintered by the presidential primary campaign that some party leaders fear a protracted nomination fight that could hobble the eventual nominee.
[…] The breach within the party was evident here Tuesday, two days before Iowa holds the first nominating contests of the presidential race, as Huckabee and Romney each sought to show he could reach across the conservative spectrum and unite Republicans, as did Reagan and George W. Bush in prior elections.
[…] The contrasts in their appeals — the businessman targeting the Christian right, the former preacher targeting the fiscal conservatives — starkly illustrated how the Republican Party’s core constituencies have scattered among rival camps. The net effect has been a fractured field with no clear front-runner.
[…] “None of our candidates seem to have caught on,” said GOP pollster Neil Newhouse. “You have the whack-a-mole Republican primary: As soon as one rises up, the others knock them down.”
This could all just be wanktastic reporting by political journalists who don’t know what to make to the weird nomination race any more than you or I do. It pains me to even think about what kind of crap their insider sources must be feeding them right now. Still, i’ve blogged before that this breakup is a non-trivial phenomenon which could get much, much worse if none of the major GOP factions accepts a turn in the religious right’s traditional chump seat.
In a just world the coalition that brought us torture, war, hurricane FEMA, domestic surveillance, neoconservatism and Terri Schiavo would fall apart, catch fire and fall off a cliff. But political irrelevance and a few public humiliations/convictions will have to do.
DrDave
If there was really a God, some of these bastards would have spontaneously combusted (beginning with Cheney). As it is, I will breath a sigh of relief when they leave town, in a little over a year, and we begin the [likely] decades-long task of fixing all the shit they completely f*cked up.
maxbaer (not the original)
Thanks Tim, I can never get enough of the crumbling GOP coalition. Schadenfreude be thy name.
myiq2xu
The elephants haven’t had a real contest for the nomination since Reagan v. Ford. Since Sir Ronnie, we’ve seen coronations rather than nominations.
Not once in the last 30 years has there been a GOP contest that really decided the direction of the party.
It’s been dumb vs dumber in each election, with the establishment candidate (dumber) winning.
Wilfred
Don’t get your hopes up. In the end, they’ll rally around the burning brown people banner; it’s the only real unifying thread they have. It’ll be McCain and Lieberman/Guiliani.
Zifnab
That assumes Mitt Romney doesn’t go down without a fight. I think Mittens has a great deal more invested in these primaries – in terms of stacked caucuses and rigged voting machines – than you give him credit for. This’ll go to the guy with the deepest pockets, because money is going to be the only thing driving Republicans to the polls. Romney will drop a few grand a district busing in every support who isn’t eight weeks dead and give big tips to whomever is in charge of doing the counting. I expect a lot of shinanigans culminating in a resounding win for the guy no one really liked.
Dreggas
This won’t help
lot’s of stuff in that article but here’s one Money Quote:
“This president would not use the (Strategic Petroleum Reserve) to manipulate (prices) unless there was a true emergency,” said White House press secretary Dana Perino.
Chris
This.
El Cid
If that awful Reaganite / New Right / New Dixiecrat coalition finally fell apart, the country would be so, so, so much better off.
At some point the moderate Republicans outside the South are going to get tired of being dominated by the nutbag wing of the party, especially when it causes them to lose and thought of as idiots by the rest of the nation.
Hopefully they’ll learn this lesson sooner, rather than later.
RSA
If this were happening on the Democratic side, I think someone might be saying, “Now would be a good time to work out some compromises between the various factions and settle on a candidate.” Republicans are in a bind at least partly because for the past couple of decades they (at least Republican politicians) have made a practice of compromising as little as possible. Slash-and-burn politics just doesn’t seem compatible in the end with coalition groups.
demimondian
Wait a second — why do you think that the moderate Republicans are being dominated by the lunatic fringe? On domestic policy, the CofC ‘publicans have been in charge throughout the Bush administration. Yeah, there’s been red meat thrown to the base, but that’s because the Supreme Court has protected the Congress and the President from the consequences of their decisions.
On foreign policy, in fact, I could argue that the moderate wing of the party is in charge — Iraq was a broadly popular invasion, and, when Iran was broached by the real nutjobs, the middle of the party said “What on earth are you thinking about?”
Dreggas
That part of the country get’s left out far too often. The midwest bears just as much responsibility as the south. You think they’d get the message what with hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and other natural disasters and vote for the democrats, obviously they haven’t felt enough of the wrath of god and he may have to crank up the disaster machine to around 11 going straight past 10 and on to the hellfire and brimstone ala Yellowstone.
Face
Please elaborate. I’m curious to what you mean by this. Are you intoning that each candidate’s campaign team is telling them they’re ahead? Do you think they’re being fed bullshit about their chances, or are they genuinely worried about the Paultards?
BTW, I predict a second place finish for Ron Paul. This will rightly leave the Jesus Campers in a severe case of anaphylaxis.
Billy K
TAX CUTS! LIBERALS ARE WORSE! IT’S YOUR MONEY!
Sorry. That’s all it takes to get the “moderates” back into line.
Tim F.
Yes. But! Now you can measure the strength of each faction by the success of their respective candidates. The moderates have Mitt Romney, who may indeed win. But the religious right has Huckabee, the neocon extremists have 911-iani and the tax rebels have Ron Paul. True to their constituencies Huck has warm bodies, Paul has money and Giuliani has a noisy, hardcore islamophobic base that turns out to be much smaller than it first appeared.
My point here has always been that each of the factions have their own candidate in this nomination race, and none of them seem willing to sit in the chump seat any longer. The immigration fight is the perfect distillation – either social cons or the CoC has to come out the chump. Yet neither has backed down. We could end up with worse blood between business and the GOP base than either of them have with Dems.
Keith
On the plus side, they haven’t yet gone all-out on the flag-burning amendment this time around. As wedge issues go, that one was pretty lame.
Gus
Dreggas, depends on how you define Midwest. Minnesota is mostly blue, Wisconsin trends blue, Iowa is on the fence, Illinois is blue. Michigan can go either way, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see Ohio trend blue. I’ll give you the Dakotas, Missouri, Nebraska, Indiana, and Kansas, though.
Gus
Barring a third party, I’m not entirely convinced of the breakup. Are the tax cutters going to bolt for the Dems? Are the god botherers going to vote for Hitlery? The best a Democrat can hope for is mass apathy among some wing of the “crumbling coalition.”
Tim F.
What I mean is that the GOP operatives who reporters need for their their stories are panicking about elections, jail, sex scandals and fighting running battles inside and outside their party. I don’t doubt that some insiders will let a candid word slip through, but there has almost never been a situation when this many operatives were spinning this desperately out of so many different playbooks.
Pb
…and don’t forget the (three) morons left over at FredState…
Kirk Spencer
Gus:
Don’t know much about the rest, but Kansas has been … trending less red, might be the best way to speak of it. I use it as my example of why the GOP is having such a problem. As others have noted a large part is the ‘take no prisoners’ attitude — if you do not agree 100% with them, you are the enemy.
Add to this the bad human habit of having to repeat your plan a couple of times before you realize it’s not the execution, it’s the plan that’s flawed. “If we’d only had REAL Republican candidates (see previous paragraph), we’d have succeeded.” So they toss out those who weren’t pure and run again – failing to realize those they tossed end up as a self-fulfilling prophecy and voting against them.
I knew it was coming after the 2006 elections. What I don’t yet know is whether enough of them can figure this out before the 2010 elections. But for 2008, the RINOs – which will be all the ex-coalition members who did NOT get their party – will at best come to the polls in reduced numbers, and at worst vote for the “other side”. (Best and worst being from the GOP POV in this case.)
libarbarian
Come off it. Plenty of us “moderates” are clear eyed enough to see that Bushs tax cuts have given us much less than their other policies have cost us.
Zifnab
But without Bush, all our boys would be in madrassas, all our wives would be in burkas, and the Democrats would have elected Osama bin Hussien Hitler IV to office after banning the Flag, the Cross, and the word “Jesus”.
So, moderates need to keep that in mind.
myiq2xu
If you’re west of the Mighty Miss and east of the states that were formerly part of Mexico, and you’re not on any coast, then you’re in the Midwest.
Laertes
Any definition of the Midwest that omits Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin is broken.
Dreggas
The lake states are one thing, the Mtn west another portion. The midwest is now, literally, the middle of the country.
Zifnab
I wouldn’t say that. They’re all sharing the same playbook, which is what will make this such a fun mess.
demkat620
There is more than just bad candidates and an unpopular president at play here.
First, none of them want to say out loud that what they really want is another Goerge Bush(that’s why all you hear is Reagan, Reagan, and St. Ronnie of Reagan)
Second, not having a sitting Veep to be the expected successor is killing them. Dems fall in love, Reps fall in line. There are too many people telling them what to do. They need a single leader to follow and right now there isn’t one. The last thing they need is a brokered convention. No way that doesn’t turn into a bloodbath. So that’s what you should root for if schadenfreude is your bag, baby.
srv
A lot of people would go to a third party if McCain or Paul went there. McCain won’t have the money, but Paul will if he places high enough.
If I were him, I’d call Rupert and tell him to schedule a press conference about a third party announcement. That would get him in the debate lickety split.
jnfr
In Kansas, Republican state officials have been switching to the Democratic party specifically because the Republican attitude of “agree with us completely or die” has driven moderates out. The Republican party here in Colorado is suffering some of the same problems. Slash-and-burn politics doesn’t work forever.
jnfr
I grew up (partially) in Ohio, and I used to refer to it as the MidEast. Definitely those states are much more connected to the East Coast than they are to the Western states.
srv
I hereby declare this the Twister Republican Primaries ™.
Perhaps one of the many skilled Photoshop experts here could put our Mitt, John, Rudy in various poses and have Huck standing on a corner dot and preaching.
Robert Johnston
“Perhaps one of the many skilled Photoshop experts here could put our Mitt, John, Rudy” etc. into an appropriate Wile E. Coyote frame, thereby bringing about Tim’s dream that “the coalition that brought us torture, war, hurricane FEMA, domestic surveillance, neoconservatism and Terri Schiavo would fall apart, catch fire and fall off a cliff.“
myiq2xu
I believe thou speaketh of the former “Northwest Territories.”
Billy K
I used to believe that. I guess it’s a question of what you consider “plenty.” All I know is “plenty” has no real pull in the modern GOP.
LiberalTarian
I dunno, the GOP fig leaf in respectable society fell off some time ago when their moronic president showed up and acted like himself. Huge deficits, intrusive government, incompetent government when it is not being intrusive, and the 2007 costs of energy in January for normal people have got to be taking their toll on mom and pop Republicans. But, when did the GOP really start falling apart? When they started treating the Army and Marines like toilet paper. Hey, even dogs don’t generally shit where they live, yet the GOP has done its very best to screw over anyone who volunteered to serve in an infantry capacity.
The circular firing squad you see this year would be happening if these guys weren’t so desperate. They would be doing their usual bamboozle around Iowa with the occasional skuzzy pushpoll lying about each other’s families. I will be curious to see how many show up (and I imagine I will be amazed that some people still support these ass hats).
NYT
If it was the Democrats that were showing cracks in their coalition the Republicans would be dredging up every wedge issue they could think of to exacerbate the differences.
The Republicans must be very grateful for Pelosi and Reid who have worked out much much better for them in every single respect than Delay/Boehner/Frist/Lott etc
Laertes
I lived in Illinois, Indiana, and Missouri for 30 years. We all understood perfectly well that we were the Midwest.
Maybe you think the name doesn’t make a lot of sense, and you’ve got some oh-so-clever alternative, but be aware that when people say “Midwest,” they’re using a word that has a well-understood meaning and your precious neologisms are merely an impediment to understanding.
Asti
On that note, Mitt Romney today said he wouldn’t embarrass the country like the Clintons did. I wonder if he plans to embarrass the somewhat the same way Bush 43 did instead?
Seems I wssn’t embarrassed by the Clintons. I thought it was cool that a President was doing what a lot of guys do, they love to flirt and play with younger women. It’s the past-time of many a man in a mid-life crisis… what is George’s excuse? How many men get a country into perpetual war for shits and giggles?
I admire Clinton’s libido compared to little
Asti
I admire Clinton’s libido compared to little GW’s war-mongering.
(Sorry for the broken post, my computer has a mind of it’s own.)
Dreggas
Viagra didn’t work?
Or maybe the pointy teethed shrew of a wife bit his off after they had Jenna and not Jenna…It may be some unknown mating ritual.
crayz
I think you mean Barbara and not Barbara
jcricket
South Dakota is fairly blue. Tim Johnson? Stephanie Herseth not ring a bell? Montana’s trending that way too.
We need to stop believing the media narrative. Not only do Dems control most of the costs, but we’re moving in all over the place. “Mountain West” (Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Dakotas, Montana) and most of the “Upper Midwest” already mentioned.
If Dems continue to recruit good local candidates and run them, it wouldn’t surprise me if Dems controlled (state legislatures, governor’s mansions) 35 out of 50 states in the next 10 years, along with Congress. If nothing else, an entire generation of would-be Republican candidates are switching parties as we speak due to GW and his merry idiots. Having a good candidate pool is like 1/3 of winning future elections (the other 1/3 are fundraising and local ground game).
jcricket
Just look at this URL (from 2006) for some examples of where Dems are making gains.
Already blue places are going totally blue (e.g. NY will never have a Republican governor or house/senate again), and marginally red places are becoming purple/leaning blue.
Sure, there’s the deep south and midwest, but even there the growing pockets, population wise, are at least mildly Democratic.
The Republican party isn’t dead, it has plenty of time to forge some new kind of coalition, but if it insists on using the playbook from the last 30 years, the wilderness is the least of their problems.
The Other Steve
Ohio, Indian and Michigan can be called the rustbelt, but not midwest.
The Other Steve
Well, we’ll see. I think they’re all going to bite their tongue and vote McCain.
Except for the three idiots at fredstate, who are going to hide out in their bunker under their parents house waiting for the Russian nukes.
Tsulagi
Pretty much.
The irony was rich in a RedState director’s (Thomas) GBCW swan song on that site. He said on paper, the GOP field was the strongest ever. Then went on to say how each was unfit to be president due to the way they had conducted themselves and their campaign.
Thing is, to a large extent each one of the major GOP candidates represents an element of the Bush/Cheney admin in the Party of Bush which the GOP has become.
Rudy? Corporate welfare and cronyism for the select to the extreme. Wants power for power.
Huckabee? Says he wants FMA and HLA to be law. Pavlovian religious nutters salivate for that and the hope of stacking the SCOTUS.
Romney? Say anything, do anything. SpongeBob is made of sterner stuff.
McCain? The brilliance of continuing a war that long ago had no remaining military objectives. Also crumbling at key times on principles.
Fred? Lazy and unmotivated. But unlike Bush doesn’t have a daddy to push him or bail him out.
They’re each a specialist in the Bush model. Goopers like Thomas crave a general practitioner like the one they voted for twice. Because those elements above blended together in the Party of Bush/Orwell equal honor and integrity. 9/11 changed everything.
Laertes
Don’t be silly. They’re both. You might just as well insist that Indiana is a Red State, not a Midwestern State.
And I agree about McCain, which worries me since he’s the only Republican I fear in the general election. He looks all kinds of dead right now, but they’ve got to pick ONE of these losers, and he seems like the only guy that everyone could hold their noses and live with. As deal-breakers go, the campaign finance thing isn’t nearly as bad as Giuliani’s corruption and serial philandering, Romney’s abortion history, or Huckabee’s…you know what? I know the money-cons hate Huck’s guts, but right off the cuff I couldn’t tell you why. What did he do, raise taxes to pay for some social programs or something?
Anyway, nobody likes McCain, but I think everyone’s got someone they hate more, and he could limp out of it with the nomination and go on to be a genuinely fearsome candidate in the general.
Laertes
Speaking of Rust Belt: Take I-90 east from Chicago through to around I-65 or so. It’s like driving through the bones of a fallen giant. The ruins of long-dead steel mills and ports lie scattered like disused toys, ancient rusting cranes and smokestacks poking through a dark mist into the dull grey skies. The place is choking with that same fog you get in graveyards at dusk.
bobwire
Still, i’ve blogged before that this breakup is a non-trivial phenomenon which could get much, much worse if none of the major GOP factions accepts a turn in the religious right’s traditional chump seat.
Grammar point, I think that ‘none’ should have as its verb ‘accept’, not ‘accepts’.
Bloody English! Am I wrong about this?
Beej
Nebraska is certainly in the midwest and is about as Republican as you can get when it comes to presidential elections, but we have one Democratic senator (alright, Ben Nelson would be seen as a Republican anywhere else, but he is a member of the Democratic Party) and Chuck Hagel. We also have a non-partisan, unicameral state legislature and 100% public power. We tend to alternate Democratic and Republican governors. What we don’t have, at least not to the extent that so many of the southern states and our neighbor to the south do, is a wide streak of religious fundamentalism guiding our politics. Nebraskans are conservative because they are and always have been disdainful of government. Back in the ’70’s I had a landlady who came to western Nebraska in a covered wagon when she was a young girl. Her son and his family lived and worked the ranch her father had homesteaded. Nebraska has always had more in common with the self-reliance values of the mountain west than with the religious conservatives.
bob
Amazing inferiority complex among midwesterners, especially Ohioans. Let me tell you as someone who grew up on the East Coast, who has lived on the West Coast for decades and spent a year in Columbus, OH, Ohio IS NOT the East Coast. Period. No matter what you think. Ohio is the beginning of the Midwest. Nothing west of the Appalachian Mountains is the East Coast. You might look up the definition of “coast” and find that a large body of salt water is usually involved.
curtadams
US Census definition of Midwest is here: http://www.census.gov/epcd/www/g97geo2.htm
You don’t get more official than that. Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio are part of the Midwest.
myiq2xu
They want a smart and competent George Bush.
Boy, G-Dub really puts the “moron” in “oxymoron” doesn’t he?
Gus
Yeah, I looked at the Wikipedia entry to see if I was missing any states. The ones I listed are all considered Midwest there. jcricket, I’d say South Dakota might be purple. Yeah Tim Johnson rings a bell but so does John Thune and the abortion ban. I guess I’d have to say Minnesota is more purple than blue, since we have a Republican gov and Norm fucking Coleman (at least for now). I’m almost hoping McCain wins the nomination and picks Pawlenty as his VP candidate. Maybe we can get rid of him before the next election.
demimondian
You’re asking if the word “none” is singular or plural. The answer is clear and unequivocal: yes, “none” is singular or plural.
The number of the word none, when applied to people, is changing; historically, it was singular (“None is more beautiful than she.”), but, increasingly it’s plural (“None are more beautiful than she.”) Both usages are archaic, though; the best phrase is “No one is more beautiful than she” or perhaps “No cow is more beautiful than she.”
George Vreeland Hill
The Republican Party is a sick joke, and the people of this country are fed up with them.
From Nixon to Bush, and from Scooter to Larry “Toilet Stall” Craig, the Republicans have proven themselves to be a bunch of lying, corrupt, evil, perverted, over-spending crooks.
When you look at all the money Bill Clinton left this country, it makes us all cry to know that Bush spent it all.
When the money was gone, Bush went to China for help.
Just think, we owe money to China!
That is the Bush way.
Cheney is no better.
You can’t trust either of them.
No one does.
Why are we in Iraq?
The war should be on terror, not in Iraq.
Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, and yet Bush has spent all that money to fight “his” war.
Yes his, because many Republicans have backed off from the war.
By the way, the war in Iraq has cost the U.S. almost five hundred billion dollars.
Forget Rudy.
Rudy Giuliani is no hero.
While he is often called the hero of 9/11, the truth is that Rudy was a terrible leader during his years as mayor of New York City.
He made bad decisions and took a girlfriend while being married.
In fact, he even wanted his lover to live in the same house with his wife.
Most people would call this perverted.
New Yorkers were so sick of his antics, that they wanted him out of office.
Then came 9/11.
The only reason people call Giuliani a hero today, is because he just happened to be NYC’s mayor during that bad time.
Any mayor would be looked at as a hero if they showed their face under those circumstances.
If there was no 9/11, Rudy would have become a joke.
This is not the kind of leader we want in the White House. In closing, the New York Post reported in their paper on April 23, that Giuliani spent more than $48,000 dollars of campaign money on posh hotels while claiming to have spent the least of all the Republican candidates.
Rudy is a good time leader, and does it with other people’s money.
Forget Mitt.
His ads look bad.
He can’t seem to get his facts right, and will say things to make himself look good.
Red flags go up around him.
I spoke with his son Tagg at the New Hampshire debates back in June (2007), and while he seemed like a nice man, Tagg could not get his facts right either.
The worst Republican as of late, though, is Larry Craig.
He is a lying pervert who wanted gay sex with a strange man on a dirty toilet seat.
He pled guilty, then said he was not guilty.
Say what?
He is another Republican moron.
Did you hear about Washington State Republican Rep. Richard Curtis?
He offered $1,000 to a young man for unprotected sex while dressed in women’s lingerie.
This sort of thing just goes on and on with them.
Remember Mark Foley?
Here is a letter I wrote that was in many newspapers and Web sites:
Once again, the Republicans have turned my stomach with shocking and repulsive behavior.
Mark Foley, a Republican member (now ex-member) of Congress, has sent many e-mails with perverted sexual content to a sixteen year old boy.
This is the same man who while in Congress, backed a bill that was meant to protect children from child predators.
Foley himself, is a man who preyed on a child with lust.
What is also incomprehensible, is the fact that some Republicans knew of Foley’s behavior, and yet, did not take a hard stand against this until it became public news. If I had a teenage son and/or daughter, I would not want them to go near any Republican leader for fear of either or both becoming a victim of a sick Republican pervert.
George Vreeland Hill
There were more than three hundred such letters in newspapers in 2007 alone.
Many of them in New Hampshire.
There are thousands on the Internet.
No lie.
THOUSANDS!
This does not even include articles, ads, radio, TV and other areas where the public takes notice.
In fact, one Republican in California wanted me stopped once, because I was hurting some Republicans in their elections.
I just want to do my part in helping to get rid of every Republican scumbag.
From phone scams to the Union Leader (NH) covering up for Republicans, the garbage never ends.
But the Republican Party will end.
Did you know that George W. Bush once made fun of the issue of Weapons of Mass Destruction?
He did, and in front of some shocked people during a black-tie event in 2004.
He said…. (While looking under a piece of furniture) “Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be here somewhere.”
Then, while pretending to look out of a window, Bush laughed as he said….. “Nope, no weapons over there.”
While he was laughing, there were men and women fighting and dying in Iraq because of WMD.
George W. Bush should be removed from office because of that alone.
Face it, Bill Clinton lied about having sex, and was impeached because of it.
George W. Bush however, did far worse, as he laughed at the very people who are fighting for the United States of America!
That about sums it all up!
(By the way, this Bush/WMD was part of an article and letter I wrote as well.)
This leads us to John McCain.
All he seems to do is attack other candidates.
His Woodstock ad against Hillary Clinton was boring and without the facts.
He tells of Hillary wanting to spend a million dollars on a museum while he (McCain) supports spending more on the war in Iraq.
He wants you to believe that the Democrats are the big spenders, while it is McCain’s Republican Party that has spent all the money Bill Clinton left us to a point where Bush had to borrow money from China.
Think about that again.
We owe to China.
That is the Republican way.
Also, it must be noted that McCain even laughed at war.
Remember when McCain changed the words of a Beach Boys song to Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Iran?
McCain even laughed when he was done.
He thought starting a war with Iran was a laughing matter.
That is the real John McCain.
He just can’t be trusted.
He is another George Bush, and you know what we got with him.
The Republican Party is a mess, and getting worse.
People do not trust any of them, and we are all tired of their act.
I am doing my best to make sure that no Republican wins an election.
Thank you for your time.
George Vreeland Hill