GOP Draws Internal Battle Lines Around Sarah Palin

With the GOP looking more and more set to fracture as the possibility of electoral defeat looms, the cannibals' knives are out. Consider this quote, via Yglesias:

Jim Nuzzo, a White House aide to the first President Bush, dismissed Mrs Palin's critics as "cocktail party conservatives" who "give aid and comfort to the enemy".

He told The Sunday Telegraph: "There's going to be a bloodbath. A lot of people are going to be excommunicated. David Brooks and David Frum and Peggy Noonan are dead people in the Republican Party. The litmus test will be: where did you stand on Palin?"

Hold it now. They're serious about going all in with the Palin loyalty test? Uhm...apparently so! Nuzzo adds:

He said: "Win or lose, there is a ready made conservative candidate waiting in the wings. Sarah Palin is not the new Iain Duncan Smith, she is the new Ronald Reagan."

Yowee. So, for the sake of Sarah Palin -- who many conservatives correctly assessed as the candidate-born-yesterday -- a whole slew of Republicans-in-good-standing are going to be thrown under the bus? That's a serious civil war, or rather, a war betwixt the Serious and the Un-Serious. Keep in mind that Palin's critics are not marginal figures in the conservative movement. We're talking the aforementioned Brooks and Noonan and Frum, and we're adding Christopher Buckley, George Will, Kathleen Parker, Colin Powell, Charles Krauthammer, Matthew Dowd, and for the sake of argument, we'll throw in Chuck Hagel, Andrew Sullivan, and Christopher Hitchens, even though I hesitate to pin any of them to any sort of doctrinaire conservative group.

This is, indeed, a "bloodbath," and for what? A distinctly semi-pro Alaskan governor who's more or less made the charisma-free Tim Pawlenty look like What Could Have Been?

Additionally, this sort of line-in-the-sand drawing avoids another obvious truth -- come 2012, someone besides Palin is going to vie for the GOP nomination. Someone like, say, Mitt Romney, who famously earned the backing of the National Review, which called him a "full-spectrum conservative." What happens to Romney, now that he's on the wrong side of the Palin line? Because that's where he is:

Former Mitt Romney presidential campaign staffers, some of whom are currently working for Sen. John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin's bid for the White House, have been involved in spreading anti-Palin spin to reporters, seeking to diminish her standing after the election. "Sarah Palin is a lightweight, she won't be the first, not even the third, person people will think of when it comes to 2012," says one former Romney aide, now working for McCain-Palin. "The only serious candidate ready to challenge to lead the Republican Party is Mitt Romney. He's in charge on November 5th."

[...]

Some former Romney aides were behind the recent leaks to media, including CNN, that Governor Sarah Palin was a "diva" and was going off message intentionally. The former and current Romney supporters further are pushing Romney supporters for key Republican jobs, including head of the Republican National Committee.

If I read this right, the GOP is set splinter into a trio of factions: the Palin-philes, the Romney remainders, and those excommunicated from the movement for daring to make a lick of sense at one point. Fitting isn't it, that a McCain loss might precipitate his party coming to resemble the factionalism of the Iraqi misadventure they all cooked up in the first place. Maybe Joe Biden can help them reach some sort of triple-partition solution!

Comments

[FZliveson]

What a stupid and surely Anti-American concept...."Disagree and you are fired."
Disagreement is the heart and soul of our democratic republic's founding.
"If you're against Eva Braun, Hitler's mistress, you're dead."
The Republican Party is a bad counterfeit of a once dignified
political entity, which purported to stand for CONSERVatism.
Adding 5-Trillion to the national debt in 8 years and still climbing
is ANTI-CONSERVATIVE. This crew (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove and the Scooter)
deliberately ran the Titanic onto the rocks to collect the insurance and then bail out
the insurance company after the damages were more than they could handle.

[Plank]

Bloodbath, excommunication (Is this a party or a church?), give aid and comfort to the enemy?
The Religious wars are on in the Grand Ol' Party.

[aege8th]

Seems as if the GOP's paranoiac stance of "you're either with us or against us" has spiraled out of control. Isn't the GOP, theoretically at least, supposed to be comprised of citizens with varying viewpoints? Don't Frum and Brooks and Noonan, as past loyal party members, have a right to express their opinions especially when they see harm to the party they have been active in building? The GOP has collapsed upon the craziest, most right wing, most paranoid faction who still think they can gain control by bullying people into THEIR opinions. (Isn't that how they are running this presidential campaign?)

Did you ever have a dear friend or relative who was dating someone who you (and many others) KNOW is going to hurt her/him? You try to talk them out of this bad choice -- you can see where it's going to lead -- but they won't listen. The more you try to make your point, the angrier they get; the less they listen; the more they dig in their heels. At some point, you just walk away and let them learn the hard way. MAYBE you'll forgive and forget when it all blows over, or maybe the rift is too deep. This is what it must be like for Brooks, Frum, Noonan.

[peterg76]

But there's nothing wrong with any of this. Those won't don't want to vote for Palin can just vote for someone else. Democracy works!

[numi]

Dear Republicanites:

I agree. You're so right. (no pun intended) Palin definitely is the new Reagan and you definitely need to push her as such. Pleeeeeeez..

[solutionrong]

Poor McCain, lose control of his own backyard.

[Kindheart]

I hope the exiled repubs get together and rebuild the GOP from the ground up and get rid of the "wackos" like George, Dick, Sarah, and any other neo-cons. They will be much happier with a party that resembles the old GOP. There was a time when the wackos didn't rule the party. Let the neo-cons form their own party and hang out with like-minded people. I believe that would be the perfect 3 party system.

[TheAntiSheep]

Yep, and we'd see just how much real support the neo-cons have when true conservatives have an option they can vote for in clear conscience.

My guess is, not very much.

[SeeDaddy]

The Dems will gladly take these intelligent, ethical former members of the Repub party. They will help the Dems strengthen and grow into a healthier and dominant party, while the Repubs shrink into a party of irrational zealots.

Go ahead. Make our day. Kick those disloyal people out of the Repub party.

[tasukibeth1]

All of the repubs who have jumped ship (Noonan, Powell, Hitchens, Buckley, Smerconish) are the ones that I like!

It's time to split the GOP. Let the evangelicals, hillbillies, rednecks and racists have one side. Let the small-govermnent, fiscally conservative, right-to-privacy group have the other.

Talk about seperating the wheat from the chaff.

[Village]

Well put.

I would add, let them fight among themselves to infinity.

[aege8th]

If that happens -- and I believe you're correct -- certainly they would attract more voters than they now do. At this point, anyone who votes for one of those smaller parties knows their candidate has no hope of actually being elected. It's more just a political statement because undoubtedly the president (and probably most senators) will be a Dem or GOP. But if the candidates/voters are more equally distributed over say, 3-5 parties, we might actually have a democracy here!

[Tamalpais]

The winner may only getting 30 to 40% of the votes. It sounds good but most of the people are going to back someone who lost. And the more you split up the pie the greater effect the evagelicals or any other large group of voters will have.

[aege8th]

Good point. But this seems to be the system in other democracies.... multiple parties. Well, in any case, it'll be an interesting shake-up come 2012. Let's hope O gets in and does a great job, so he's a shoe-in for '12

[TheAntiSheep]

Not necessarily.

The evangelicals and rabid neo-cons aren't really a very big base. The rest of the current GOP base most likely votes that way because they always have done, or because they can't bring themselves to vote for a Democrat even when they disagree with where their own party is going.

Except this go around, some of them *are* voting for the Democrat. They've had enough of letting the lunatics run their asylum.

A 3 or more party system would be a good thing, even if, as in the UK, it's common for only one or two of them to be electable to the highest office at any given moment. The minority parties can usually still hold some sway in the running of the country.

[L double E]

when i was seeing what was on tv one night on tvguide.com, guess who was listed on their site at number five under celebrity searches: Sarah Palin. the new Ronnie Raygun indeed. Reagan pushed for Star Wars, she is the phantom menace.

[Reaganwater]

I know alot about Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan is a political Hero of Mine (hence the name REAGAN Ronald WATER Goldwater Barry).
And This Ignorant, lying, race-baiting ,corrupt, demogogic ,McCarthyite ,poorexcuse for a tanning queen isn't even a GWB and she sure the hell is no Ronald Wilson Reagan ! ! !

[Reaganwater]

Oh yeah , I was undecided until 90 minutes after Mac Picked her(research) .I have been for Obama since that time. Country First ? HARDLY !

[truthforme]

Country First . . . it's a laughable slogan, isn't it?

[MikeGuy]

You speak for many.

[Ron1951]

Maybe this will be the spin off from the republican party--social and religious conservatives in one, and political and fiscal conservatives in the other. Wouldn't that be interesting? It would certainly stop a lot of pandering by serious Goldwater/Buckley conservatives to the religious right.

[crazyv]

it would probably also result in a split in the Democratic Party- perhaps we will end up with three parties the extreme right, the extreme left and the middle. I personally find the idea of "small government progressives quite appealing.

[TheAntiSheep]

It would cure the current case of severe schitzophrenia the GOP is suffering from.

Right now they have the small government political/fiscal conservatives trying to co-exist with social/religious conservatives who want government to dictate all moral values to us and get involved with personal beginning-of-life and end-of-life decisions (i.e., not small government at all).

They make very odd allies indeed, perhaps a major defeat with associated finger-pointing will shatter that alliance.

[Manjoe]

This article reminds me of one of my fears of a Demoratic landslide that would include tipping over several Republican moderates in congress, like Gordon Smith for example. It may fuel an even more emphatic take over of the GOP by fundamentalist whackos. What Barack can give us right away quick is an opportunity to heal some of the splits that Bush and Co. have worked into our culture. For that we will need a GOP that is led by intelligent moderates. It the Democratic victory is too overwhelming that possibility could be lost.

[SecondBase]

I'd say Gingrich will be looking to take over the GOP.

[Karisma]

If you're "For Palin", you're Dead to America!