Fort Worth Business Press, May 12, 2014 Vol. 26, No. 18 | Page 34

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opinion

34 May 12 - 18, 2014 | fwbusinesspress.com

GOP establishment fighting back against tea party …

W

ASHINGTON – The unfolding GOP primary
season is clarifying two points: The Republican establishment is back, and it is more
conservative than you’d think.
In the North Carolina Senate primary, the establishment winner, Thom Tillis, was the American Legislative
Exchange Council’s 2011 legislator of the year and was
endorsed by the National Rifle Association and National
Right to Life. Yet he was attacked by tea party groups as
a RINO – expanding that term to cover just about every
Republican who doesn’t own a tricorn hat.
Tillis’ main tea party opponent, Greg Brannon, possessed no apparent qualifications for public office, except
a sense of divine calling and a remarkable facility for
quoting the Constitution. For Glenn Beck, this was more
than enough. “I could tongue kiss you,” Beck told Brannon during an interview, “and I’m not a guy who does
that.” FreedomWorks added its wet embrace, boasting of
the number of phone calls it had made and lawn signs it
had raised. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flew in for a last-minute
smooch.
But the Republican establishment – after years of being
ambushed and accommodating its ambushers – was
ready this time. Groups such as the U.S. Chamber of
Commerce and American Crossroads spent millions
to avoid the emergence of another Sharron Angle or
Christine O’Donnell – candidates who motivate their
thousands and alienate their ten thousands. For the GOP,
North Carolina was a victory of sorts: an expensive victory,
consisting of avoiding disaster.
This struggle has taken a while to fully emerge. At
first, the GOP attempted assimilation. In 2012, Sen. Ted
Cruz, R-Texas, was made the vice president for grassroots
outreach at the National Republican Senatorial Committee, apparently on the theory that arsonists make the best
firefighters. Cruz did his party a vital but unintentional

n Michael Gerson

The GOP establishment
backlash has been successful for a particular reason: It
has been led by politically
rational conservatives, not
the RINO moderates of tea
party nightmares.

service – forcing a government shutdown over Obamacare
repeal, which then forced a GOP reassessment of tea party
intentions. The decisive break came when tea party groups
began attacking solid Senate conservatives such as Tom
Coburn, R-Okla., and Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., as quislings.
Tea party leaders managed to confuse petulant, childish,
counter-productive legislative tactics with constitutional
fidelity. And Republican leaders finally realized that some
tea party agendas – list building, fundraising, presidential
primary positioning – were inconsistent with their own.
The government shutdown may turn out to have been
the high-water mark – the Cemetery Ridge – of the tea
party movement. In the aftermath, House Speaker John
Boehner declared that tea party groups had “lost all credibility” and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell
promised that the party would “crush” outsiders targeting
incumbents. The next two months of primary battles will
determine the final tally of the squashed. But high-profile
tea party challenges in many places – including Kentucky
and South Carolina – have faded.
The GOP establishment backlash has been successful for a particular reason: It has been led by politically
rational conservatives, not the RINO moderates of tea
party nightmares. Rockefeller Republicans are as rare as giant pandas; both cause passersby to point and gawk. The

consensus among Republican legislative leaders and prospective presidential candidates is Reaganite (or right of
Reagan) in most respects. So the tea party revolt must not
only fight against RINO enemies, it must imagine them.
For some tea party groups and leaders, an ever-narrowing orthodoxy is the objective. Their approach resembles
the more extreme forms of Protestantism, in which a
passion for doctrinal purity divides and divides until there
is a true church of one. The Republican Party, constituted
to win majorities, has begun pushing back in primary
contests. Which is necessary, and not sufficient.
The main problem with the tea party movement is
not tactical or tonal but ideological. Its leaders quote the
Constitution to end political discussions: Where do you
find the Environmental Protection Agency or the National
Institutes of Health or Social Security in the language of
the document? Most of the Founders (particularly the
Federalist ones) saw the Constitution as the beginning
of a political discussion: How does a free nation employ
this remarkable structure to confront its problems and
achieve its greatness?
Some quote the Constitution as a substitute for a
policy agenda. It is easier, after all, to memorize than to
govern. But a majority political party will convincingly
address public needs: routine educational failure, increasing higher-education costs, gaps in health coverage and
the like. This is what self-government under the Constitution looks like.
Yes, the GOP needs electable candidates. It also needs
for those candidates to have something useful and hopeful to say. n
Michael Gerson’s column is distributed by The Washington Post Writers Group.

…and turning from Chris to Jeb as hope for 2016

P

olitics abhors a vacuum, and the “Bridgegate scandal” engulfing Chris Christie has severely compromised the New Jersey governor’s ability to launch
a campaign for president, opening a space that Jeb Bush,
the former Florida governor, seems likely to fill.
“The idea that he’s the prohibitive front-runner is over”
is how one Republican strategist described Christie’s
plight to the conservative National Review.
At stake is the future of the Republican Party,