Conservative Groups Seek Control of GOP Agenda

[TomCADem]

Source: Associated Press

Virtually unknown outside Washington, a coalition of hard-line conservative groups is fighting to seize control of the Republican agenda.

Tea party allies like the Club for Growth, FreedomWorks and Heritage Action for America showed their might by insisting that the GOP embrace the government shutdown that hurt the nation's economy and the party's reputation.

Now emboldened, these groups are warning that their aggressive agenda-pushing tactics aren't over — and they're threatening retribution against Republicans who stand in their way.

"They refuse to learn," Chris Chocola, a former Indiana congressman who leads the Club for Growth, says of lawmakers who buck the will of right-leaning groups. His group is already seeking or supporting primary challengers for 10 congressional Republican incumbents seeking re-election next fall.


Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/conservative-groups-driving-gop-agenda-20754620

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I think the real story is that these hardline groups are often fronts for right wing billionaires to bully an entire political party into carrying out their bidding.

[gopiscrap]

1. crazy fuckers, hope they rip the party apart.

[TomCADem]

2. I Think The Real Fight In The GOP Is Not Conservatives...

...versus "moderates," since they all sing from the same talking points. I think the real fight is that there are certain billionaires (Koch and Adelson) who are willing to spend an obscene amount even for rich people to advance a very narrow agenda by controlling the party. It is one thing when the Chamber of Commerce and the NRA influence the Republican party, since they still represent a group of people. However, when you have Adelson spending $100 million to influence foreign policy in favor of Israel's far right and you have the Koch Brothers essentially using groups like the Club for Growth as their personal PAC, it makes even folks who agree with them on most issues uneasy.

Put another, lets say Soros actually started throwing about $100 million to hand pick Democrat candidates in a wide range of races. Even though we may agree with some of his stances, I think many Democrats would feel uneasy about such blatant control by just one person. Its one thing when the Sierra Club endorses a candidate. Its another thing when it looks like one person is using a political party as their personal play thing.

[gopiscrap]

4. yup, good analysis

[gopiscrap]

5. if Soros did that, right now with the way things stand

I wouldn't give a fuck as long as they are progressive Democrats. Until money is out of politics, we'll have to fight fire with fire.

[TomCADem]

12. But If You Are A Rich Donor, You Would Like To...

...Think your six figure donation gives you some clout. But if a Sheldon Adelson comes in and 9 figures at close to $100,000,000 in 2012 and the Koch Brothers are using a whole Club for Growth apparatus to threaten your preferred candidates with a primary challenge, then even the $100,000 guys feels relatively insignificant. The GOP has evolved to the point where a few billionaires can effectively control the party and are willing to spend obscene amounts of money to get their way.

[gopiscrap]

14. yeah I have to agree with you

when I was a candidate for US Congress one my major platform issues was public financing of all campaigns with strict spending limits.

[Turbineguy]

9. But since repubs

are authority freaks they love that "One guy, Autocrat of All the United States" idea.

You know, like Ivan the Terrible.

[Eleanors38]

3. No surprise at all. This brand of RW extremism has

developed from a culture which views its opposition as weak, immoral and easily rolled. Conversely, they view themselves as cold-steel hard and unmovable. These mythologies, based on considerable truth, are what brung 'em to the dance. The modern RW won't break; they won't even bend. They WILL confront and attack non-stop with every expectation they will win. But they can be beaten by a solid, Distinctive, meaningful and hard-hitting political party. The Democrats are not yet that kind of party, hence an ultra FR faction of a somewhat larger faction of the FR will continue to exert out-sized influence and true power in lieu of meaningful opposition.

Ask a bully: They know a handful of their kind can run the whole show; few want to confront them.

[mountain grammy]

15. Yes, well said..

I've been speaking out and speaking up and becoming more active for social causes lately. It's not in my nature to be confrontational; I always just expect the truth will win in the end. No more, and I don't really care if I'm obnoxious about it.

[Eleanors38]

22. Ha! People have thought me obnoxious for years.

[blkmusclmachine]

6. Change We Can Believe In

Finally.

[longship]

7. Theocrats all.

The GOP is the theocrat party.

Does anybody really think that Michelle Bachmann, Ted Cruz, Rick Perry, Coochi, Phyllis Schlafly, Bryan Fischer, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell (rest in pieces), and all the rest are an accident?

They invoke God at the drop of a hat. They claim that the USA is a Christian nation. As I say, this is not an accident. It is deliberate because that's not what they believe, it's what they desperately desire.

We ignore this at all of our perils. It is our biggest challenge.

[Skittles]

8. f*** the conservative agenda

they want to regress, take America backwards - F*** THEM

[titaniumsalute]

10. Its not just about taking the US backward

It is about them OWNING the policy and law in this country. They billionaires realize if they control the legislature and the executive branch they can pass laws that favor their businesses with support of the Executive branch. All the money they spend...is an investment that they are looking at reaping the benefits. We must not let their investment come to fruition.

I think they played their hand too much during the Government shutdown. The US Chamber and hundreds of other groups rallied against the hard right. I think it also turned a lot of moderates (independents) off also. I'd be VERY surprised if any new Teabaggers were added to the House next year or the Senate. We really need to fight to remove some of the more far right in the House.

[Skittles]

20. agreed

they must be stopped

[bemildred]

11. People who say things like "They refuse to learn" need to learn. nt

[jsr]

13. More light needs to be shined on these cockroaches

[Dopers_Greed]

16. Good. We to get benefit by watching the carnage.

Pass the popcorn.

[MisterP]

17. precisely! the Pubs have $ and want people, the Dems people and want $

the Dems are structured sectorially--gays, unions, women's advocates, consumer-protection, Black, Hispanic at the bottom in a neat row, then a stratum of their leaders, then state reps, then national, then party and Presidential-tier

the GOP is made up of four interacting but basically autonomous units, which even have their own presses: right-libertarians and big business, and the Religious Right and the warmongers, each with their own billionaire and corporate backers and ideology-writing think tanks

one's a RW party now (getting less mixed since 1980--heck, Weicker is to the left of most top-tier Dems), the other's like Labour--socially populist and even rhetorically rabble-rousing, but economically solidly Reaganite: the social democrats of Europe and Latin America have also neoliberalized since the SINO Mitterrand, but their financial capitalism is of a different flavor than the US's (Merkel prefers to squeeze Southern Europe rather than outsource to China)

[Jack Rabbit]

18. I thought they had already siezed control of the Republican agenda

Here again, I will state my objection to using the word conservative where right wing is more appropriate.

Disenfranchising minority voters is not a conservative ideal. It is simply racist and therefore a monstrosity of the far right. Forcing women to get a vaginal ultrasound is not a conservative ideal. It is misogyny, again purely and simply based on the idea that men are so much more rational than women that they must assume the right to make decisions for them. That again is far right, not conservative.

Conservatives aren't to my personal taste in the ideals on which they base public policy, but that's what make me a Democrat and most of them Republicans. They tend to have too much respect for tradition, a trait that gives them too much tolerance for traditions that are bigoted as well as some that we really couldn't do without. This makes a typical conservative a little slow to come around treating those whom they have been traditionally oppressing as the equals that they in fact are and always have been.

The Tea Party, the Club for Growth, FreedomWorks and Heritage Action believe in a social hierarchy based on race, religion, gender and/or wealth, regardless of whether its earned or inherited. These groups give no quarter any notion of equality. Black people are poor because they are inherently lazy and stupid, not because they were brought to this country in chains to make other men wealthy and, instead of opportunities to better their and their children's position through earning wealth and passing on to their heirs, were instead the wealth that was passed on to other people's heirs. In short, a right wing partisan is one who believes in the same set of myths that justified morally indefensible crimes such as the enslavement of Africans, the mass murder of Native Americans or the beating of one's wife and the general subjugation of women. A conservative discarded such dysfunctional myths long ago, but to a right winger, these myths continue to be eternal truths.

[DeSwiss]

19. "They refuse to learn"

- Projection, much?

K&R

[center][/center]

[Zambero]

21. Primary each other, please

"They refuse to learn" says a teabagger, who unbeknown to himself is also in the process of refusing to learn.