Tuesday, September 21, 2010 2:40:42 PM
This is from someone I detest...... but, I have to give her credit ---- pegged this one "to a TEA" !! 
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Brazile: Tea party taking no prisoners
By Donna Brazile/Syndicated columnist
GHS
Posted Sep 18, 2010 @ 10:28 AM
Let me tell you an election-night true story.
Three days after the devastating Republican loss of 2008, Steve Schmidt, campaign manager and chief strategist to former GOP presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, offered this blunt assessment to the defeated Republican Party: "The party in the Northeast is all but extinct; the party on the West Coast is all but extinct; the party has lost the mid-South states (and) is in deep trouble in the Rocky Mountain West...there has to be a message and a vision that is compelling to people in order for them to come back..."
Deep in the winter of their loss, Republicans began to search for a message that would resonate with its disaffected base. With polls showing that the majority of voters rejected them at the polls, those still willing to call themselves Republican leaders began to search for a message and vision to get back into the game. They chose a simple path: Oppose the president at every turn and just wait.
Enter the tea party movement. Fueled in large part by what they saw as betrayals to core GOP principles of lower taxes and limited government spending, they saw in the Washington Republican establishment things that just sickened them: support for TARP, bailout of the bank and auto industries, the Bush-Cheney expansion of big government, reckless overspending and the creation of a huge federal deficit.
And then comes Obama with the continuation of the bailouts, an economic stimulus plan aimed at helping distressed states with modest infrastructure spending and tax relief, followed by the passage of a massive health care overhaul.
The tea party movement attracted an amalgam of Republicans with rage to spare and voters without a party they could truly call home. Early on, the Republican leadership, including Karl Rove, who is now under attack from leading figures like former Gov. Sarah Palin, decided to encourage these rebels to organize to "take back America."
And they are doing it - one state at a time.
But something has happened. The Republican Establishment, who initially gave the tea party movement their blessings, is now scratching their heads. The anger that has fueled a large enthusiasm gap between the GOP and Democrats is now threatening the GOP's plans to retake Congress from the Democrats.
Something has gone wrong.
Instead of being used by the establishment GOP leadership in Washington, tea partiers are now going rogue. Going out on their own in defeating mainstream establishment candidates in places like Colorado, Alaska, Nevada, Utah and Kentucky, and, this past week, Delaware. They are now running the narrative for November, but on the Republican side of the ledger. This has some of the Washington-based Republicans nervous.
They should be.
It turns out the tea party movement is a Republican rebellion. Today, hardcore conservative Republicans are poised to take over the Republican Party, hungering to oust the likes of Mitch McConnell, John Boehner and anyone else not "pure enough" to represent their world view.
There's no limit today to the surprises and unpredictability of this election cycle. Who would have predicted that the handpicked candidate of Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell wouldn't survive a primary - in McConnell's own state?
Or that two sitting GOP senators would be trounced? Or that Florida Republican Gov. Charlie Crist would be forced out of his party? There's so much volatility in this Republican rebellion. That's why we haven't seen the last of the election-night surprises.
Overconfidence can be fatal.
The only candidate who Democrats lost in a Democratic Senate primary this season was Sen. Arlen Specter, the man who spent 60 years as a Republican. Once the dust of the 2010 primary season settles, it will be clear: There is only one major national party that allows for a diversity of people, views and voices.
The Republican Party is now split, not necessarily 50-50. The rift is between a leadership who long ago abandoned principles to become a 24/7 media machine and the new Republicans, formerly known as tea partiers. These people are rigid ideologues who will now, if they can, purge their party, then America, of those who disagree with them.
Prepare yourselves. They plan to create a majority by exploiting our fears of immigrants, and Civil Rights advocates, and people of different faiths (not just Muslims). After all, who expected a major party to propose overthrowing a key provision of the Fourteenth Amendment, a basic protection of our liberties?
The party of Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower and William Howard Taft, Barry Goldwater and Nelson Rockefeller, Margaret Chase Smith and Elizabeth Dole, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush has gone into hiatus. It's an entirely different animal, my friends.
Democrats know this is going to be a tough electoral season, but it's also equally clear that the "pre tea party" GOP will surely suffer at the polls this November - as will America.
Can the GOP survive this internal purging of moderates in its ranks?
Donna Brazile is a political commentator on CNN, ABC and NPR, and a contributing columnist to Roll Call, the newspaper of Capitol Hill.
Copyright 2010 The MetroWest Daily News. Some rights reserved
http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/opinion/x1177408588/Brazile-Tea-party-taking-no-prisoners
===============================================================
Brazile: Tea party taking no prisoners
By Donna Brazile/Syndicated columnist
GHS
Posted Sep 18, 2010 @ 10:28 AM
Let me tell you an election-night true story.
Three days after the devastating Republican loss of 2008, Steve Schmidt, campaign manager and chief strategist to former GOP presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, offered this blunt assessment to the defeated Republican Party: "The party in the Northeast is all but extinct; the party on the West Coast is all but extinct; the party has lost the mid-South states (and) is in deep trouble in the Rocky Mountain West...there has to be a message and a vision that is compelling to people in order for them to come back..."
Deep in the winter of their loss, Republicans began to search for a message that would resonate with its disaffected base. With polls showing that the majority of voters rejected them at the polls, those still willing to call themselves Republican leaders began to search for a message and vision to get back into the game. They chose a simple path: Oppose the president at every turn and just wait.
Enter the tea party movement. Fueled in large part by what they saw as betrayals to core GOP principles of lower taxes and limited government spending, they saw in the Washington Republican establishment things that just sickened them: support for TARP, bailout of the bank and auto industries, the Bush-Cheney expansion of big government, reckless overspending and the creation of a huge federal deficit.
And then comes Obama with the continuation of the bailouts, an economic stimulus plan aimed at helping distressed states with modest infrastructure spending and tax relief, followed by the passage of a massive health care overhaul.
The tea party movement attracted an amalgam of Republicans with rage to spare and voters without a party they could truly call home. Early on, the Republican leadership, including Karl Rove, who is now under attack from leading figures like former Gov. Sarah Palin, decided to encourage these rebels to organize to "take back America."
And they are doing it - one state at a time.
But something has happened. The Republican Establishment, who initially gave the tea party movement their blessings, is now scratching their heads. The anger that has fueled a large enthusiasm gap between the GOP and Democrats is now threatening the GOP's plans to retake Congress from the Democrats.
Something has gone wrong.
Instead of being used by the establishment GOP leadership in Washington, tea partiers are now going rogue. Going out on their own in defeating mainstream establishment candidates in places like Colorado, Alaska, Nevada, Utah and Kentucky, and, this past week, Delaware. They are now running the narrative for November, but on the Republican side of the ledger. This has some of the Washington-based Republicans nervous.
They should be.
It turns out the tea party movement is a Republican rebellion. Today, hardcore conservative Republicans are poised to take over the Republican Party, hungering to oust the likes of Mitch McConnell, John Boehner and anyone else not "pure enough" to represent their world view.
There's no limit today to the surprises and unpredictability of this election cycle. Who would have predicted that the handpicked candidate of Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell wouldn't survive a primary - in McConnell's own state?
Or that two sitting GOP senators would be trounced? Or that Florida Republican Gov. Charlie Crist would be forced out of his party? There's so much volatility in this Republican rebellion. That's why we haven't seen the last of the election-night surprises.
Overconfidence can be fatal.
The only candidate who Democrats lost in a Democratic Senate primary this season was Sen. Arlen Specter, the man who spent 60 years as a Republican. Once the dust of the 2010 primary season settles, it will be clear: There is only one major national party that allows for a diversity of people, views and voices.
The Republican Party is now split, not necessarily 50-50. The rift is between a leadership who long ago abandoned principles to become a 24/7 media machine and the new Republicans, formerly known as tea partiers. These people are rigid ideologues who will now, if they can, purge their party, then America, of those who disagree with them.
Prepare yourselves. They plan to create a majority by exploiting our fears of immigrants, and Civil Rights advocates, and people of different faiths (not just Muslims). After all, who expected a major party to propose overthrowing a key provision of the Fourteenth Amendment, a basic protection of our liberties?
The party of Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower and William Howard Taft, Barry Goldwater and Nelson Rockefeller, Margaret Chase Smith and Elizabeth Dole, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush has gone into hiatus. It's an entirely different animal, my friends.
Democrats know this is going to be a tough electoral season, but it's also equally clear that the "pre tea party" GOP will surely suffer at the polls this November - as will America.
Can the GOP survive this internal purging of moderates in its ranks?
Donna Brazile is a political commentator on CNN, ABC and NPR, and a contributing columnist to Roll Call, the newspaper of Capitol Hill.
Copyright 2010 The MetroWest Daily News. Some rights reserved
http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/opinion/x1177408588/Brazile-Tea-party-taking-no-prisoners
“In the course of my life, I have often had to eat my words, and I must confess that I have always found it a wholesome diet.”
Winston Churchill
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