As with the
Pastor Jeffress’ remarks on Mormonism, the
“mainstream” media loves finding a news story with which to predict
or create a divide among Republicans.
Such was the angle in yesterday’s Politico
story breathlessly revealing that their reporters
had learned that David and Charles Koch are looking to spend at
least $200 million during the 2012 election cycle on efforts to
elect candidates they support — presumably pro-free market
Republicans.
From the article’s title, “Karl Rove vs. the Koch
brothers” to its text — “Republicans worry that the emerging
rivalry between the two deepest-pocketed camps in the conservative
movement could undercut their party’s chances of taking the Senate
and White House in 2012.” — Politico’s Ken Vogel, who has
been the target of
conservative criticism in the past for
“unprofessionalism and ideologically-driven writing,” can
practically be seen salivating over the prospect of division among
anti-Democrat ranks.
Specifically, he lays out what he hopes will be some sort
of internecine battle between the Crossroads group figure-headed by
Karl Rove and the newly-expanded Koch efforts.
More from the article:
• “The fault lines revealed themselves…”
• “Behind the competition are ideological and stylistic
differences that have bred suspicion among some in each
camp.”
• “The two sides have also mounted seemingly competing
initiatives to target Latino voters.”
You get the drift.
But despite such dissent within the GOP ranks being Mr.
Vogel’s fond wish, is there any reason to believe that adding more
fuel to a pro-conservative or perhaps more accurately pro-liberty
fire will be a negative for Republican electoral hopes? I simply
don’t see how that can be the case.
A healthy debate among Republicans, including perhaps the
spectacle of candidates for office at any level chiding other
Republicans for drifting from pro-free market principles would do
much to continue the return of the GOP, both in reality and in the
minds of voters, to being a party of fundamentally American values
and ideas.
Believe it or not, there are some Democratic
Party-supporting organizations that are not to the left of George
McGovern. Or at least there were, with the
Democratic Leadership Council folding earlier this
year. But in recent prior election cycles, did you ever
hear the “mainstream” media even mention any discord between
various Democrat groups?
Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist puts it
well in a speech I’ve heard him make a few times, as well as in his
quite-readable book,
Leave Us Alone. If I may paraphrase: The
liberty coalition, which would certainly include Rove’s and the
Koch’s organizations, can relatively harmoniously coexist because
they don’t want to divide up pieces of a particular resource pie.
The “takings coalition,” however, which represents the base of the
Democratic Party, includes groups from environmentalists to the
welfare industry to subsidizers of all sorts, each of which is
trying to grab a handful of the money — taxpayers’ money — in the
middle of the table. When the money flow dwindles, they are
competing for a more scarce resource and cannot easily coexist as
one group’s funding represents another group’s lost
funding.
In the long run, the conservative coalition is more
durable than the liberal coalition, particularly in a nation that
is moving, slowly but perhaps inexorably, toward reduced government
spending due both to necessity and a rebirth of some degree of
American self-reliance. For this we can thank the public’s reaction
to the disaster that has been the Obama administration; the frog is
no longer being boiled.
Despite what one might think from listening to Pastor
Jeffress (and the media reporting on him), Republicans are not
stupid. They will not, especially in 2012, cut their own throats
and hand control of any part of our federal government back to
Barack Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Eric Holder, or Lisa
Jackson.
Liberals like Vogel may wish that a deep-pocketed jump
into the political pool by the Koch Brothers will wreak havoc with
other pro-Republican efforts. But for this pool party, the more the
merrier.
