[Off Topic & Political To Boot] State GOP Establishments Attack Their Base

All this week I’ve steadily posted articles about the “Republican establishment” which can be roughly defined as those Republicans who are all for a corpulent State, with central planning galore, only for the projects that they like.  They’re fine with a big-government—as long as they are the ones getting to manage the big government.  To this end, they are waging a two-front battle.  One front is against the Mean Democrats who took their power back in 2008.  The other front is against the Mean Conservatives who will also take their power, since the Mean Conservatives want small government, little to no central planning, and a return to individual liberty.  You can tell an establishment Republican when he talks about “special incentives” and “tax breaks” [as opposed to holistic tax reform], usually for their favored sets of demographics [retirees, or married couples with children, for instance] or industries [manufacturing or transportation or logistics] or big businesses [Amazon and BMW and Cabelas, yes, the corner hardware store or outdoor shop, not so much].  In fact, switch the rhetoric to “the poor” or “the homeless” or “green energy” and you have your average Democrat.  Both Democrats and establishment Republicans have the same foundational worldview—they’re opposed to individual liberty, free enterprise, the Constitution, and private property rights when it comes to their pet projects]; they’re for a capacious, controlling Federal government.  If you want some names, try Brooks, Krauthammer, Boehner, DeLay, Armey, Lowry, McConnell, Dole . . . on a national level.  You can figure out which ones are establishment Republicans in your state—believe me they’re their.  The Club For Growth has helpfully listed the members of the House and Senate with handy little percentages—briefly anybody with an R by his name and a number somewhere in the 70s needs to be replaced.  And then, there is usually a state think tank for every state that details the state legislature’s voting records.  Mine is the South Carolina Policy Council.  Mississippi’s is the Mississippi Center for Public Policy.  The State Policy Network will help you find a think tank in your state focusing on individual liberty, free enterprise, the Constitution, and limited government.  Some of these feature scorecards on individual legislators.

The state-level Club For Growth also can help you with specific legislator scorecards.  You can see, for instance, when you gaze upon our state’s House and Senate scorecards, just why it is that we have fiscal policies high in collectivism and central planning when even the Republicans simply don’t value individual liberty, private property, or free enterprise.

All of the above is simply a precursor to this helpful article from Pajamas Media, where there is more:

Across America, state Republican parties and legislators are pursuing the opponents they most despise with renewed vigor.

You would think that the targets of these efforts are President Barack Obama and Democratic Party officeholders who are hell-bent on turning America into a financially broken, post-constitutional, Washington-controlled playground safe only for crony capitalists and regulators gone wild. You would be wrong.

In Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Utah, to name just four, state GOP establishments are laboring mightily to marginalize the millions of constitutional conservatives whose activist energy (but not their outlook) dates back to the beginnings of the Tea Party movement three years ago. By their behavior, it’s clear that those who run many state parties and quite a few incumbent moderate Republican lawmakers are more threatened than pleased at the results of the 2010 elections, when the GOP took back the U.S. House and significantly improved its representation in statehouses and state legislatures. Oh, they’re happy with the majorities they have, and want to pick up control of the U.S. Senate this time around. They just don’t like many of the people who won the races which gave them those majorities, would rather not see any more interlopers come in and try to upset the status quo, and are targeting several newbies for political extinction.