By joining the GOP's Old Guard, Romney is screwing the Old Guard

What fascinates about Mitt Romney's most recent tergiversation--those "47 percent" comments weren't just "[in]elegantly stated," no, no, they were "completely wrong"--isn't his abandonment of what seemed like a genuinely held position. That's just Mitt talking. Nothing to see here. No, what fascinates is the additional turmoil that his freshly uncovered, compassionate conservatism is destined to cause in his party.

Consider this. What remains of the besieged Republican Old Guard was prepared (I'm convinced) to argue in 2013: OK, we tried it the young-turk, new tea-partying way; we begged our nominee to go out there and howl the pseudoconservative gospel of right-wing radicalism. He did. And there's his head, over there on that platter. Now come on, we cannot do this again, or as a party we're doomed. Our past follies, from Reagan to Bush, are finally exposed and the new demographics are eating us alive. We've got to get back to the old-time religion--the defensible, the winning religion--of Eisenhower, Nixon and Ford.

But, oops, now Romney has pulled that comfortable rug out from under the Old Guard. The tea party crowd can, and will, with some justification, counterargue that Romney betrayed the pseudoconservatism of right-wing radicalism at the eleventh hour; he would have won, if only he'd stuck to his cold, extremist guns.

True, tea partiers would have argued anyway that Romney was never the proper candidate to put forward. But now they can argue a counterfactual history of this campaign: that even the wrong candidate with the right message would have won, had he persisted, purely and devoutly.

And that argument provides the tea party a wider opening, against the old-timers.

Meanwhile Mitt Romney will fade into the same, self-centered oblivion as George W. Bush. Neither of them has ever looked back to observe the abominable wreckage he's left in his wake.

Comments

[Robert Lipscomb]

You parse the party on the wrong metric. this is not about who is far enough to the right - especially the public presence of such.

The Tea Party was and is a group of pawns for the corporate wing. because they are joined at the hip to the culture warriors, they are expendable.

The primary isssue is for the corporate wing to take charge - even if they have to publicly denounce those principles.

[Peter G]

I have often wondered what is in the mind of the hard right conservative as regards the endgame. No rational person with a modest knowledge of economics could fail to see, if only by the study of history, where the economic policies of the Republicans must inevitably lead. The creation of an ever broader and permanent underclass is unavoidable under their policies. Education and health care become affordable only too a smaller and smaller class of people while wealth disparity and a tax code insulates a tiny minority from having any skin in the game beyond their own very narrow self interest.
The imbalance this creates in the interest of the electorate would, one imagines put a brake on all this and restore some sanity to politics. I do not think though that is their hope.
If you take a walk on the dark wild side of the right wing you will find many people who believe the franchise must be limited to keep what they view as moochers from the polls. We've seen this begin in what really are nascent attempts at voter suppression. I expect to see far worse before a rebirth of moderate conservatism can happen.

[DerFarm]

Sounds like a conspiracy to me.

damn, these leftists are good. Mitt Romney, Comrade Romney, Fellow Worker Romney. Join me in celebrating the national victory of Leftists everywhere for the next 8 years!!!!

One Big Union -- Sabo-Kitty

http://octobersurpriserevolution.tumblr.com/post/3760401477/comradeocean-black-and-red-illustration-of-a

[Turgidson]

If Obama and the Dems win comfortably and the Teabaggers manage to maintain their influence in the wake of the election, 2014's midterms will be very interesting.

They'll almost certainly go scorched earth for another 2 years and do all they can to blame Obama for the damage they deliberately caused. Will it work again? Will a bunch of braindead teabaggers get elected to the House?

If yes, we can expect another few years of stagnation where Obama's domestic agenda will mostly be limiting the havoc the Teabaggers can create. Then we'll have another GOP freakshow in the 2016 primaries and who the hell knows who would win that? On the bright side, if Hillary runs and the economy is at least OK, we should hold the White House. If the win is big enough, maybe then, finally, the GOP will have to reinvent itself for the better. Maybe.