Today’s GOP Establishment: Real Reformers Need Not Apply

By Gary P Jackson

If you follow the news, in the last few months you’ve seen hundreds of articles talking about Sarah Palin and fretting over who Mitt Romney will choose as his running mate. These articles all talk about how Mitt must avoid the “Palin disaster.” or words to that effect.

Never mind that Sarah Palin was the only bright spot in the McCain campaign. And never mind that the only time McCain led in the polls was after he chose Sarah as his running mate.

McCain and his boy Steve Schmidt lost the election because of idiotic decisions like suspending the campaign during the financial meltdown, and allowing Obama to look like some kind of uniter, as well as failing to vet Obama, and stopping Sarah from doing so.

Thanks to Steve Schmidt, and Nicole Wallace, McCain had one of the most disastrous campaigns in history. And it didn’t help that McCain told voters they had “nothing to fear from Obama, even as Governor Palin correctly foresaw, and warned voters, exactly what Obama was, and what he would do to our country, if elected.

Stacy Drake gets to the real reason why the GOP Elites have always been cold, if not downright hostile to Governor Palin. Sarah’s record has been discussed often, and her work as a real reformer is legendary. She took on the entire Republican establishment in Alaska, including the state’s GOP party chairman, and the Attorney General. There were massive fines, resignations, and many GOP lawmakers found themselves as guests at federal gray-bar hotels.

Sarah Palin wasn’t playing around when she started reforming the Alaska state government. She made crony capitalism a crime and reformed Alaska’s ethics laws, making it almost impossible for lobbyists to buy off lawmakers. She even limited the amount a lobbyist could spend on buying a lawmaker’s lunch!

There has been an unprecedented effort by the Republican establishment to marginalize Sarah as well as the Tea Party. The GOP Elites want no part of Sarah or the Tea Party patriots. They know that she is quite capable of doing to corrupt Washington politicians what she did to corrupt Alaska lawmakers. It’s why these people worked so hard to discourage her from running for President. It’s why the GOP Elites have taken to using the same tired old talking points the far left loons use, when talking about Sarah.

Face it, turn Sarah Palin loose on Washington, and we’ll have to build more prisons. It’s that big of a corrupt mess up there.

Mitt Romney’s crew has been willing participants in this nastiness since 2008. At first it was because they knew if Sarah ran, their boy had no shot at winning. Unlike the other “not-Romneys” who came and went this election cycle, Sarah is the real deal, with solid support and solid organization. Plus she has a far better record as a governor than Romney.

The Romney campaign has never backed down though. Still doing all they can to discredit and marginalize Sarah.

Stacy Drake, writing for Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government speaks about the GOP’s attempts. She hammers crapweasel Steve Schmidt’s underhanded dealings as well as Karl Rove, a tool of Big Government type Republicans. Here’s a taste of what she has to say:

Past Is Prologue: Reformers Need Not Apply

With this cycle’s Republican primary race winding down, much of the media attention has shifted to who Mitt Romney will select to be his running mate.

Some press members are using the opportunity to take shots at Sarah Palin by repeating old memes. Axe-grinders like Steve Schmidt and Nicolle Wallace are using the discussion to push their ongoing agenda to escape any accountability for what happened during the 2008 election. All of this is sadly predictable. However, what was not expected were members of the GOP establishment joining in with the anti-Palin chorus.

The GOP establishment’s Palin-bashing is intended to pressure Romney to pick someone who they know will play by their rules. By denigrating Palin, claiming she wasn’t qualified — when an honest look at her record clearly states that she was — they are removing any possibility that a Beltway outsider like her has any chance to be on this year’s ticket.

That certainly wasn’t the perception of conservative voters in 2008, many of whom voted for John McCain primarily because Sarah Palin was on the ticket. Polls from the time also show that Palin provided the McCain campaign with a large lead in the polls against Obama after months of being behind.

Karl Rove attempted to re-write history with even this fact in a recent Wall Street Journal post, claiming, “John McCain’s camp felt that while they were ahead after a better-than-expected summer, they needed to shake things up with an out-of-the-box pick. This thinking produced Sarah Palin.”

This is easily disproven by reading the polling data from 2008, which indicates that John McCain didn’t take the lead until after he selected Sarah Palin to run on the ticket with him. He was in negative territory during that entire summer. In fact, Schmidt was hired by the McCain campaign during the summer of 2008 precisely because things were not going well. Someone with Rove’s vast knowledge of the American electoral process knows this.

Nonetheless, Costa’s NRO article goes on to describe the general feeling within the GOP establishment regarding Sarah Palin and her selection in ’08:

GOP strategists are quick to note that Palin’s rise and fall in public opinion was not a singularity but a clarifying moment following other problematic Republican vice-presidential picks from recent decades — from then-first-term Maryland governor Spiro Agnew in 1968 to youthful Indiana senator Dan Quayle in 1988.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney, speaking in Washington last week, summed up the emerging consensus among the GOP’s political class. “The single most important criteria has to be the capacity to be president,” Cheney said. “That’s why you pick them. Lots of times in the past that has not been the foremost criteria.”

Cheney did not cite Palin by name, but to many Republican operatives who read or heard the remarks, the message was clear: Romney should pick an anti-Palin. Instead of focusing on geography, gender, and biography during the search, Romney should ignore the “talking heads,” Cheney said, and search for “competence, not sizzle.”

Then, University of Virginia professor Larry Sabato weighed in, with Costa quoting him as saying:

[Sabato] suspects, however, that this is probably not an “organized conspiracy” against a Palin-type selection but rather a “generals-fighting-the-last-war mentality.”

Maybe Mr. Sabato is merely repeating what he’s heard elsewhere, but it is doubtful that all of the others are. There is obviously a concerted effort by some bigwigs in the party to rewrite history and make Palin the scapegoat for their 2008 loss. Now, why would these Republican power players make this move at this juncture? Why would they risk alienating a large base of conservative and Tea Party voters before a big general election?

Stephen K. Bannon was also interviewed by Robert Costa, and may have provided some answers. The article reads:

For his part, Palin ally Stephen K. Bannon, the chairman of Breitbart News and director of The Undefeated, a documentary on Palin, is not surprised to see the “permanent political class” coalesce around a group of insider veep choices.

“This is their default position,” he sighs. “They can’t help themselves. Guys like Portman and McDonnell are right out of central casting. Those two, and candidates like them, are company men. They come up through the ranks. They’re not dangerous and innovative. They could easily become members of a country club.”

“The question Mitt Romney has to answer is whether he can win an election against Barack Obama by listening to the people who are just like him,” Bannon says. “To win, you’re going to have to galvanize the grass roots and the Tea Party. I know the establishment doesn’t want to hear it, but it may be the political reality.”

And the fact is, as Bannon noted, the GOP establishment often tears down reformers they do not like and feel uncomfortable around, and that is why Palin was the perfect scapegoat for them after the 2008 election. She is not one of them, she doesn’t hire them, and she has repeatedly informed them that she will never be for sale — to them or to their cronies.

Sarah Palin’s now entirely-vetted record reminds us that this isn’t the first time she has been at odds with party leaders. The Alaska GOP learned quickly that she wasn’t going to be a good teammate in corruption; she wouldn’t play their games and stuck to her principles instead. In 2003, Palin blew the whistle on fellow GOP Commissioner Randy Ruedrich for his unethical behavior. She was instrumental in tearing down the corruption-plagued GOP machine in her home state.

Read more of what Stacy has to say here.

As voters, we’re stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Obama must be defeated at all cost. America will not survive four more years of his destructive policies. On the other hand, Mitt Romney is no reformer. I want to believe he will do a much better job than Obama. I want to believe Mitt knows what it takes to get the economy rolling again. Mitt’s success as a businessman is well documented. Of course, so is his less than stellar record as Governor.

Still, Obama must go, and there is always 2016.

I have been daydreaming of a new, strong third party, or should I say a new party that would see the GOP go the way of the Whigs, replacing the dead-enders with bright, vibrant, hard working Conservative reformers.

Then I wake up!

I see what Sarah Palin is doing for America right now, as I write this, and you read it.

Sarah Palin is scouring the country looking for like minded Conservatives who will help lead America out of the wilderness. Her first shot across the bow of the old guard GOP was in Indiana, when she helped Richard Mourdock defeat 36 year veteran Dick Lugar in a landslide.

In Nebraska, Sarah tapped Deb Fischer. Deb is a solid reformer and has a great record as a state senator. She was a long-shot before Sarah’s endorsement. The latest reports have Fischer surging in the polls. As Tony Lee at Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government points out, one poll has her tied with Jon Bruning, making it now a two person race for the nomination. Another poll has Fischer leading 39% to 34%, that’s a huge change from last week, before Sarah’s endorsement, where Fischer was losing to Brunning 36% to 42%.

As I reported earlier, after Sarah endorsed Ted Cruz here in Texas, the state went wild! Phones at the Cruz campaign headquarters were ringing off the wall, and the cash was coming in at a rapid rate.

That’s what a Palin endorsement does for a candidate. .

You can bet Sarah will be making endorsements like this all across the nation, like she did in 2010.

The GOP may have worked hard to dissuade her from running for President this year, but Sarah will have the last laugh, as she will send many strong Conservative reformers to Washington to do battle not only with the socialist democrats, but the GOP Elites, who …. let’s face it …. are just as bad, if not worse.

As much as I enjoy my fantasy of a brand new, shiny party, minus any Establishment hacks, Sarah Palin knows what Ronald Reagan knew. The best way to go is to take over the Republican Party from within. The only problem with Reagan, who was quite successful, is after he left office, there was no one in office to carry on the Reagan legacy.

That isn’t the case today.

Today we have the Tea Party. Today we have Sarah Palin, the rightful heir to the Reagan legacy. Even without Sarah in office, she has the ability to fight like no other, and win. This is why the old guard Republicans, the corrupt and the lethargic, fear her so much, and work overtime spreading lies about her and her record.

We know the democrats fear her, but hatred from democrats is normal and expected. They hate and attack anyone who doesn’t believe as they do. They even attack their own if they fail to tow the party line. That will never change.

It’s the Republican Elites that must be defeated. Taking back the party of Reagan will be the way to save America, and restore the nation to greatness.

I know a lot of my fellow Conservatives join me in my disappointment that our presidential nominee is Mitt Romney. That said, we MUST defeat Obama, and there is always another election!

The real action is in Congress. If we are to save America, we must follow Sarah’s lead and work hard to elect real, solid Conservative reformers who will go to Washington and shake things up. Conservatives who won’t fall in line and allow the Elites to co-opt them.

Romney is the bitter pill we gotta swallow.

The Conservatives we can send to clean house in Congress is the delicious desert we can all enjoy.

Sarah has the right plan. The GOP Elite think they have her on the ropes, when in reality, it is the old guard GOP whose days are numbered.

Sarah Palin changed the political landscape in 2010. The strength of her endorsements helped fuel the largest political turnover since Reconstruction after the Civil War.

2010 was just the start though. As Rome wasn’t built in a day, neither will a new Conservative majority happen overnight. This is a generational fight that must be waged. We must never give up, never surrender.

We must back Sarah Palin, and Conservative reformers like her. We will prevail if we keep our focus where it belongs.

Reforming Congress is the important issue this election. Getting Obama out of office is a given, but controlling Congress with serious reformers is key. That is where we must focus our attention.