The GOP's Problem: The ‘Do It for Bob’ Republicans
Why are voters and even yours truly thinking of staying home? Here is why.
The American Spectator:
The very people who are needed to give the money and especially the votes to elect that Republican Senate are balking. But why?
There are two reasons.
First, for almost a year now in the lead-up to the 2014 election the GOP establishment has been hell-bent on eating its own. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has made attacking the Base of the GOP its mission in life. Senator Mitch McConnell boasted that he would “crush” the Tea Party. GOP consultants are running around assailing the very voters their candidates need to win, or making insipid, defensive and timid TV commercials like this one (“Republicans Are People Too!”) utterly devoid of ideology or sharp political elbows like this Reagan commercial run against Jimmy Carter in 1980.
It is always amazing that the idea of deliberately antagonizing and insulting the base of the GOP is seen by the establishment as a sure-fire way to win elections with help from the base of the party. But that’s just for starters.
Second? There is not the foggiest idea out there about a reason to elect a GOP Senate. Opposing Obama? Good. But what are these people for? You won’t have a clue if you watch that “Republicans are people too” commercial linked above. (And by the way, that slogan is recycled from a GOP campaign years ago.) What’s the Contract-for-America-style message on conservative principle? Would a GOP Senate block an Obama Supreme Court nominee? Defund Obamacare? Defund anything? Eliminate corporate taxes? Move to cut the income tax? Abolish the Department of Education or the Department of Energy? Why believe a Senate GOP majority would make any difference? A lot of these Senators went along with expanding the government in the Bush years — and wound up losing control in 2006 and haven’t gotten it back yet. Have they learned anything?
Apparently not.