Rolling Stone - On Christmas, Republicans Quietly Declare War on Themselves

[TomCADem]

The irony of this is that the Big Money helped invent the rabid Tea Party when CNBC's host started his rant about starting a new Tea Party, which Fox News then ran with. Of course, the silly Republican base thought they were the ones driving the agenda. The money was suddenly flowing toward the crazy Christine O'Donnell types that they knew and loved who appealed to their anti-government paranoia and anti-immigrant xenophobia.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/on-christmas-republicans-quietly-declare-war-on-themselves-20131230?google_editors_picks=true

Tom Borelli, senior fellow for Armey’s old FreedomWorks group, quite correctly complained that the Chamber and their Republican allies were trying to defy the conservative base by hijacking the party and keeping it in the pocket of big-money interests. "The tea party is about lowering costs," Borelli explained to Newsmax. "[The Chamber will] want regulations to favor big business."

There’s almost no end to the comedy of this story. First of all, there’s the sheer size of the endowment. Fifty million dollars is enough money to fund half a dozen or more Senate campaigns. That the big-business donors who traditionally have funded the Republican Party believe they need to make that kind of monster investment just to keep “fools” from getting on the ballot of a party they basically control is an incredible reflection of the state of things on that side of the political aisle.

Then, of course, there’s the irony. Men like Karl Rove and Dick Armey practically invented the politics of stupid. In fact, they practically invented the politics of winning millions of votes every time some oversexed cosmopolitan liberal of the Matt Damon/Sean Penn genus used words like “dumb” or “stupid” to describe the preoccupations of Middle America’s God-and-guns culture.

To see these same Beltway Svengalis trapped now in this crazy role reversal, denounced by the far right for being the same kind of condescending establishment snot-bags they themselves spent decades trying to find and campaign against – well, that’s just seriously funny.

[longship]

1. A great read from Taibbi R&K nt

[bemildred]

2. "condescending establishment snot-bags"