Well, I’ve been blogging about this for a while now – the Establishment Republicans are bound and determined to ‘take out” the insurgency known as the TEA Party and “take back” their Party (and apparently, continue to cozy up and just be the Jr. Partners in running the Welfare State). From Big Government (emphasis mine):
GOP Establishment Signals Primary Fight Against Tea Party Favorite Mike Lee
On Tuesday, 79-year old Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT), now serving his seventh term in the Senate, signaled that he and other members of the Republican establishment are likely to encourage a primary challenge to first term Senator Mike Lee (R-UT).
Lee upset former Senator Robert Bennett (R-UT) in the 2010 Utah Republican primary convention in the Tea Party’s first major primary win over a Republican establishment politician.
Hatch told the Deseret News and KSL NewsRadio that “[i]t’s time now… for Lee and other tea party Republicans to be ‘rehabilitated’ for refusing to pass a budget bill needed to keep the government operating unless money for the act better known as Obamacare was removed.”
I don’t care who are you – close proximity to power over time creates a craving to hold onto that power – nd 42 years (7 X 6) is an awful long time. Plenty of time to have been corrupted by that power and be transformed from a “young gun Republican” to an old “DCcrat”. Once lodged in the halls of that power for that long, it must be a case of “we must get rid of these apple cart tumblers” that, gosh, are not talking the typical Washington lingo but that of, we, Constitution? They are a direct affront and a real danger in knocking us and our cozy coffe klatch. Such ideas of limited government, of limited power, of having the Feds live with its bounds – great for the campaign trail but heaven forbid you actually want to act upon them! After all, we old white men (sorry, could not resist) can’t let our power dissolve – off with their heads!
I ask the question: “rehabilitated” – to what? Is this the same as the disgraced Congressman (turned lobbyist) Trent Lott’s call to “co-opt” the TEA Party winners? What IS the “proper groupthink” for Senate Republicans? How is that different than what the grassroot concervatives believe and want (as his words indicate that there IS a difference)? I note again – 42 years by Hatch. Certainly long enough to have been in the Senate to have had an effect – and as an erstwhile “conservative” Republicans, how successful has he and his posse been at reigning in the Welfare State and slowing what seems to the the inexorable move Leftwards. What is it about his willingness to FIGHT for base Principles is wrong? What is so wrong about taking that fight against the Democrats.
Or are they just mad that their exclusive Country Club views are being upset by younger upstarts who are willing to attack the status quo because what they see from these old (and worn out, intellectually) bulls is just the same o, same old? Have they become too cushy, too power addicted, too afflicted with the old ways, to wish to allow change? Are they too willing to continue to embrace failure (after all, Republicans may not be responsible for Obama’s $9 Trillion debt but they are part and parcel of the earlier debt and growth of the Federal Government into areas into which it should never have gone) rather than admit to complicity?
Is that why, up and down the line, why the Establishment is fighting harder against TEA Party Republicans than they are the Democrats?
Too many Establishment Republicans are seemingly happy concentrating on current Republican verbiage and not so much on actual concrete results achieved. The TEA Party isn’t. Ted Cruz has said that Washing DC is absolutely terrified of the grassroots – and that, I believe, includes the Republicans
Bring it.
