…the true feelings of the Establishment towards conservative / TEA Party grassroots? I met Erick Erickson of Redstate just after GraniteGrok opened its doors – the Sam Adams folks (as they were constituted back then) decided that it would be a great idea to bring together top State Level bloggers who had shown a propensity for free market, constitutional, and individual Liberty & Freedom tendencies for a long weekend to meet each other, yak a lot, and make what turned out to be long-term friendships (at least for a handful of us). We drove stories out of the blogosphere, owned some search results, move the stories to where the MSM had to pay attention to them, and even got Rush Limbaugh to pick a couple of them up on his show. Several folks have “gone National”; Erick & RedState are one. So when he reports this interaction with the NRSC at the RedState Gathering, it seems to be a perfect example and metaphor for us vs the Establishment (reformatted, emphasis mine):
There was, however, one interesting moment with a guy from the National Republican Senatorial Committee worth sharing. Friday afternoon as I was trying to make my way to Governor Jindal’s reception, the guy from the NRSC stopped me and very derisively asked if I was going to support anyone other than challengers to incumbents. He went so far as to claim I must be making money to support challengers against incumbents and let me know RedState would be blamed if the GOP did not take back the majority.





