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15 CommentsThe press often talks about the Tea Party like they’re secularist movement that is interested mainly in promoting “fiscal conservatism”, a vague notion that never actually seems to make good on the promise to save taxpayer money. The reality is much different: The Tea Party is actually driven primarily by fundamentalist Christians whose penchant for magical thinking and belief that they’re being guided by divine forces makes it tough for them to see the real world as it is.
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37 CommentsIncensed that House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) are reportedly abandoning the effort to defund or delay the Affordable Care Act, RedState.com editor Erick Erickson predicted Thursday that Republican leadership is providing fertile ground for the rise of a "real third party movement" that will split the GOP.I'm torn on the idea of the Republican Party splitting in two - mainly because the Tea Party has already taken over, and deep down Republicans (95% of them) actually agree with the Tea Party agenda. Jason wrote a post the other day, in which he said, "I don’t use “Tea Party” any more because the fact is the Republican Party is staffed and run by members of what was once called the Tea Party." Jason's correct. Go ahead and try to put today's Republican politicians into column A (RINOs) and column B (Tea Partiers). You won't end up with a balanced list. Column A is pretty empty.
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14 CommentsThese tactics have long-term costs. If the U.S. defaults on its debt because a handful of Republican legislators don’t like a law vetted by all branches of government, the damage will go beyond a much lower credit rating. Something else -- a sense that the U.S. is, for all its differences, united -- will have been lost.
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6 CommentsBarack Obama was never likely to be popular with the Republican base. It’s not just that he’s black. He’s first president in 76 years with a foreign parent—and unlike Hulda Hoover, Barack Obama Sr. never even naturalized. While Obama is not the first president to hold two degrees from elite universities—Bill Clinton and George W. Bush did as well—his Ivy predecessors at least disguised their education with a down-home style of speech. Join this cultural inheritance to liberal politics, and of course you have a formula for conflict. But effective parties make conflict work for them. Hate leads to rage, and rage makes you stupid. Republicans have convinced themselves both that President Obama is a revolutionary radical hell-bent upon destroying America as we know it and that he’s so feckless and weak-willed that he’ll always yield to pressure. It’s that contradictory, angry assessment that has brought the GOP to a place where it must either abjectly surrender or force a national default. Calmer analysis would have achieved better results.The Frum piece is really a must read in its entirety.
