THE REPUBLICAN CIVIL WAR HAS BEGUN!

February 6, 2013  By Jack Jodell.

It’s official: the Republican Civil War has begun. This week, Karl Rove began a new fundraising campaign aimed directly against the Tea Party, which has infested the GOP for too long and has cost them dearly at the ballot box in several relatively recent notable races. Any normal party with a wing as extremist, uncompromising, and ideologically rigid as the Tea Party would react as the Republicans are doing, and it is a good sign.

It has been a favorite ploy of the reactionary Tea Party to invade Republican primaries and oust sitting and/or moderate Republicans and replace them with unelectable crackpot extremist candidates. In Indiana, longtime sitting Senator Richard Lugar was ousted by Tea Party favorite Richard Mourdock . Lugar, who had overwhelmingly won in his previous general elections, would have triumphed this time, too, were it not for the Tea Party. This time, by endorsing Mourdoch instead, the Republicans lost the seat to  the much more moderate Democrat, Joe Donnelly. In Missouri, Democrat Claire McCaskill was polling very poorly and would have been defeated – had the Tea Party-infested Republicans  not chosen the ignorant reactionary Todd Akin to be her opponent. She, too, won an easy victory in the general election. Previously, in Nevada,  Senator Harry Reid had proven himself to be very vulnerable. But when the far, far right Republicans of that state chose crackpot Tea Partier Sharron Angle to be his opponent, voters naturally found Angle’s “second amendment solutions” to be a most undesirable way of settling political conflicts, so Reid sailed on to victory.  Are we beginning to see a pattern here? You bet we are, and not only the voting public, but growing numbers of Republicans are also coming to the realization that nominating extremist, reactionary candidates to run against moderate or even liberal Democrats in general elections is NOT the way to go! For most voters are fed-up with obstruction and justly blame the Tea Party for causing and aiding it. Voters are sick to death of shelling out $174,500 to each and every member of Congress only to see them engage in mere political grandstanding which inevitably ends in gridlock and nothing at all being accomplished.  Voters deservedly feel put-upon by their Congresspersons setting for themselves only a 2 or 3 day workweek, with huge breaks for vacation and fundraising, even as the voters themselves are forced to work 2 or more jobs, at stagnant wages, with decreasing benefits and vacation, just to make ends meet. They are coming to see unyielding reactionary Republicans (i.e. Tea Party candidates) as the root cause of this problem. Sensible Republicans (yes, Virginia, there are a few of these left) are starting to feel the heat and want to do something about it.

In recent weeks, we have seen some hopeful signs. For one, the power of that tax and government-hating trust-funder Grover Norquist has been sharply reduced and his threat of running primary challengers against any Republican voting for any kind of tax increase has been muted. This has made him and his movement largely irrelevant for the first time in decades. For another, Republicans are starting to abandon their wildly extremist and radical push to recalculate state-by-state how presidential electoral college votes will be counted.  They are dropping their ridiculous push to have these votes awarded by congressional districts won rather than by the current, longstanding winner-takes-all majority rule. For yet another, they are starting to effect bipartisanship once more on a few key issues, notably immigration-reform and taxation.

We have seen New Jersey Republican Governor Chris Christie lambasting the national party leadership, and Louisiana Republican Governor Bobby Jindal exhorting Republicans to “stop being the stupid party.” We have also seen Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio advocating a far more sensible immigration policy. These are call signs that the unyielding Tea Party-infested Republican Party is slowly starting to wake up a bit. The insane blabbermouths Sarah Palin and Christine O’Donnell are gone, as is the crackpot Jim DeMint. They will not be missed in the least.

Enter Karl Rove and his newly-proposed Conservative Victory Project PAC. Desperate to once more restore his credibility in the face of his dismal performance in the last presidential election, Rove is attempting to weed out  potentially unelectable Tea Party crackpots from the next round of Republican primaries. He is determined to get a conservative Republican-controlled Senate and win back the White House for the Republican Party. His announced effort has infuriated the far right and threatens to blow the GOP all apart. For, by focusing huge amounts of campaign funds against Tea Party Republicans rather than Democrats, he may spawn bitter recriminations which could last decades, thereby guaranteeing Democratic control over the government for years to come and destroying the Tea Party in the process.

The Republican Civil War has begun. Regardless of whomever emerges victorious, the GOP will still remain far to the right of where it was in the more moderate and sensible days of the latter 1950s – the mid-1070s. Thus, I will be perfectly content to sit back and watch as this warfare leads to that wretched party’s complete annihilation!