A Grand Old Time At The ASSociated Press
Hey, if you were the Enemy Media, wouldn't you revel in giving wall-to-wall coverage to erupting Republican post-election recriminations?:
Oh, it goes on and on and on for paragraphs and paragraphs and paragraphs. The article is a laundry list of every prominent Republican who would gripe to them, and damn near every prominent Republican did.
I suppose some degree of embittered finger-pointing is inevitable after as spectacular an electoral collapse as the GOP suffered last month. But may I direct everybody's attention to the two most prominent reasons why Liddy Dole's National Republican Senatorial Committee got waxed in fundraising by Chucky Schumer's Donk counterpart by a whopping $30 million?
1) John McCain's "memo of understanding" betrayal that cut the legs out from under any attempt to ban judicial confirmation filibusters, one of the cornerstones of the 2002 and 2004 campaigns that gave Republicans a double-digit Senate majority;
2) The entire party's all-out, maddening, baffling, suicidal, balls-to-the-wall effort to get Lincoln Chafee (aka the ultimate RINO) re-elected in Rhode Island.
These two factors didn't exactly get ignored in the center-right blogosphere. Or can there possibly be any GOP poobah who didn't hear of the "Not One Dime" campaign? The McCain Mutiny started it, and the broad RINOization that stubbornly and complacently gripped the party thereafter only fueled the Nero-fiddling-while-Rome-burns flames.
In a lot of ways Mrs. Dole was almost a patsy, a fall-gal, a scapegoat for the results of events that were beyond her control. Makes it doubly bitter irony that it was her predecessor as NRSC chair, George Allen, that was one of the victims of Chafee's and the McCainiacs' perfidy.
The question arises once again: will Republicans learn the correct lessons from and about this defeat, or will they imbibe the Enemy Media's poisoned advice and dissolve into a conflagration of friendly fire and political civil war?
I fear that is a rhetorical question.
Narrowly defeated in his bid for a fourth term, Montana Senator Conrad Burns turned his anger on the National Republican Senatorial Committee and commercials it had run months before the election.
"The ads hurt me more than they helped. I wouldn't have spent the money," he said, his comments characteristic of the season of second-guessing now unfolding among Republicans.
President Bush's low approval ratings, the unpopular war on Iraq, voter concern about corruption and Democratic fundraising all figured in the GOP loss of Senate control in last month's elections. But among Republicans, long-hidden tensions are spilling into view, with numerous critics venting their anger at the GOP Senate campaign committee headed by North Carolina Senator Elizabeth Dole.
Oh, it goes on and on and on for paragraphs and paragraphs and paragraphs. The article is a laundry list of every prominent Republican who would gripe to them, and damn near every prominent Republican did.
I suppose some degree of embittered finger-pointing is inevitable after as spectacular an electoral collapse as the GOP suffered last month. But may I direct everybody's attention to the two most prominent reasons why Liddy Dole's National Republican Senatorial Committee got waxed in fundraising by Chucky Schumer's Donk counterpart by a whopping $30 million?
1) John McCain's "memo of understanding" betrayal that cut the legs out from under any attempt to ban judicial confirmation filibusters, one of the cornerstones of the 2002 and 2004 campaigns that gave Republicans a double-digit Senate majority;
2) The entire party's all-out, maddening, baffling, suicidal, balls-to-the-wall effort to get Lincoln Chafee (aka the ultimate RINO) re-elected in Rhode Island.
These two factors didn't exactly get ignored in the center-right blogosphere. Or can there possibly be any GOP poobah who didn't hear of the "Not One Dime" campaign? The McCain Mutiny started it, and the broad RINOization that stubbornly and complacently gripped the party thereafter only fueled the Nero-fiddling-while-Rome-burns flames.
In a lot of ways Mrs. Dole was almost a patsy, a fall-gal, a scapegoat for the results of events that were beyond her control. Makes it doubly bitter irony that it was her predecessor as NRSC chair, George Allen, that was one of the victims of Chafee's and the McCainiacs' perfidy.
The question arises once again: will Republicans learn the correct lessons from and about this defeat, or will they imbibe the Enemy Media's poisoned advice and dissolve into a conflagration of friendly fire and political civil war?
I fear that is a rhetorical question.
posted by JASmius at 5:15 PM
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