Tea Party Dividing the Republican Party?

You may have seen an opinion piece posted on Foxnews by Bradley Blakeman, former deputy assistant to President Bush and now a professor at Georgetown University. It is linked here. Professor Blakeman is of the opinion that the "GOP has allowed the Tea Party and misfits like Donald Trump to hijack the party." He writes that the "Republican Party has let the Tea Party divide them and in the long term will do lasting damage to the party if they allow this divisiveness to continue." He is incorrect because his analysis is based on the wrong assumptions.

Now, I am not saying that every conclusion he has reached is wrong. He is correct in saying that "[a] lack of leadership and serious candidates has led to people like Donald Trump to make the Republican Party look like a sideshow." The GOP had the opportunity during Mr. Bush's presidency to groom contenders for the 2008 election, and simply blew it off. Obama, who appeared out of the shadows of obscurity and who has never released any substantive records about himself, is as close to the 'Manchurian Candidate' as anyone could be; he should never have been a serious contender for President. Yet he ran over McCain, because McCain simply couldn't excite the GOP base; they couldn't bring themselves to work for him, and most said they couldn't even hold their nose to vote for him.

So what did excite the GOP base in 2008? Sarah Palin. And what propelled conservative GOP candidates into office in 2010? The Tea Party. These are the people who are solidly in Quadrant I; main street, down-home conservative Americans. The Tea Party you deride as divisive and harmful IS THE CONSERVATIVE BASE OF THE GOP.

That is why so many of the conservative lawmakers have so much affinity for the "non-party Tea Party." They recognize what you do not. The Inside-the-Beltway Establishment GOP mentality has, to some extent, adopted the same attitudes as the liberals toward conservatism. In so doing, they have divided the party and left the conservatives without a real voice in the GOP; the Tea Party is the result. In short, the leaders of the GOP, thinking they are large and in charge, kick sand in the face of their own base- then they blame the base for being divisive when they don't take it.

You may have heard the saying, "With Democrats you get more of the same, with Republicans you get less of the same." Conservatives do not want more of the same- nor less of the same. Not hard-core socialism å la Obama, nor socialism-lite å la McCain or any of that bunch currently "exploring" their candidacy. That is what the Tea Party is telling the GOP; if the liberals running the Democrat party go hard left, as they did with Obama, the GOP needs to go hard right. Since the Sixties, American has been flirting with socialism; we are seeing the results and it's not pretty. American principles worked for hundreds of years and there is all kinds of historical documentation about what those principles are, and we want them back. The Republican base would get excited about a candidate who could seriously commit to this.

I do agree that the Republican Party needs to stop floundering. If the leaders of the GOP do not understand what the base wants, they need to figure it out. If the leaders don't agree with what the base wants, they are in the wrong job. The leadership needs to stop being divisive and get on board with the party base.