They weren’t able to kill the Tea Party movement with a false narrative, so they’re giving it a shot with the Republicans.
The contention by some that the GOP has an identity crisis is nonsense. It’s hard to remember any political organization in the last half century that had a clearer idea of itself. The party’s problem isn’t what it doesn’t know but what everyone else does know, which is that—as displayed in Congress on Tuesday night at the president’s State of the Union address, when Republicans could barely muster perfunctory support for the most benign positions favoring fair pay and opposing domestic violence—the party apparently despises women, gays, Latinos, African Americans, the poor, and the old. The more indelible this impression becomes, the more impossible it will be for even an estimable candidate, be it Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, or the now famously desiccated Marco Rubio, to transcend the party that nominates him. This isn’t to say that the argument for limited government will die with the party. It has been part of the American conversation since James Madison and Alexander Hamilton squared off over the Constitution in 1789, with Thomas Jefferson and John Adams each in their corners holding the coats of their respective protégés. The intent of the argument, however, has changed from an essential advocacy of freedom to retribution against the weak.
Yes, you hate poor people if you understand the useless, job-killing economics of raising the minimum wage.
On the contrary, the GOP desperately needs the conversation about coalescing around some more conservative principles that this article is claiming will be part of its ruin. One day soon, the GOP hierarchy will begin to understand that all it needs to do is pay attention to what the Left Media is saying it has to do, then do the opposite.
OK, maybe I’m being a little hopeful about the inevitability of that epiphany.
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