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New Republic - "Business Donors Were For Tea Party Challengers Before They Were Against Them"
The MSM has been bending over backwards to portray establishment Republicans and their corporate supporters as "moderates" fighting against the radical Tea Party. However, the truth is that there really is no difference between them, since the corporate donors who are now supporting the "establishment" once heavily supported the so-called radical Tea Party. In other words, the change is entirely cosmetic.
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115465/tea-party-republican-business-establishments-alabama-showdown
The closest and most relevant election tomorrow may turn out not to be any of those on the Eastern Seaboard that have been soaking up the medias attentionfor governor in Virginia and New Jersey, and for mayor in New York and Bostonbut rather the special Republican primary for an open House seat in the deepest Deep South, in and around Mobile, Alabama. The primary has emerged as the first post-government shutdown battleground between Tea Party Republicans (represented here by wealthy businessman Dean Young) and establishment business-oriented Republicans (represented by Bradley Byrne, a former Democrat turned Republican officer-holder). Despite heavy spending by business groups, Young holds a slight edge in recent polls, which is causing grave disquiet for establishment Republicans who realize that the way back to the mainstream for their party is probably not continuing to elect people like Young, who declares that homosexuality always has been, and always will be wrong.
* * *
Some of these supporters rushing to Byrnes aid struck me as oddly familiar. Why? Maybe because Id seen them very high on the list of the biggest backers to Tea Party Republicans cut out of just the same cloth as Dean Young. Tom Graves of Georgia, who led the shutdown movement in the House, ranks among his top 20 donors Eric Cantors leadership PAC, the beer wholesalers, and AT&T, which hosted a fundraiser for him at Nationals Park the very night that he voted against the deal to end the first debt ceiling crisis, in 2011. Marlin Stutzman, the Indiana Republican who famously declared of the shutdown, "We have to get something out of this. And I don't know what that even is? His top source of funds is Cantors PAC; his fifth largest is Honeywell, the company led by David Cote, who has come to embody the sober business community elite that is seeking an end to brinkmanship. Randy Neugebauer, the Texan who berated a U.S. Park Service ranger over the closure of the World War II Memorial, counts among his top five donors both the homebuilders and beer wholesalers. John Culberson, the suburban Houston Republican who compared the shutdown caucus to the passengers seeking to overcome the terrorists on Flight 93, counts among his top 20 donors AT&T, the beer wholesalers, Honeywell and the homebuilders. As for Joe Ricketts, another one of the aforementioned Byrne saviorsyou may recall him as the oh-so-moderate fellow who had a short-lived $10 million plan to run ads against Barack Obama last year portraying him as a follower of "black liberation theology" who had lied to the country in 2008 by casting himself as a "metrosexual, black Abe Lincoln."
None of this is to say that the business community cant be undergoing a true change of heart as a result of last months government shutdown and credit default flirtation, though itll take more than one House special election to judge if thats the case. But it is to say that its awful late in the day for these corporations and business groups to be coming to the realization that having people like Dean Young in Washington is perhaps not in their best interests. The likes of Tom Graves have not exactly been making a secret of their intentions these past few years, and yet they were showered with business establishment support nonetheless. If Dean Young holds on to win Tuesday, it will be a gross oversimplification to declare that he did so despite the opposition of the business establishment. No, his victory would very much be yet another legacy of the close alliance between Tea Party and Chamber of Commerce Republicanism that is only now starting to show cracks, long after the horse broke out of the barn and headed for the Hill. The Republicans may be stuck inside of Mobile with the Tea Party blues again, for quite a while to come and deep inside their heart, Mama, they know they can't escape and this really may be the end.
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New Republic - "Business Donors Were For Tea Party Challengers Before They Were Against Them" (Original Post)
TomCADem
Nov 2013
OP
gopiscrap
(23,756 posts)1. as I've said before: FUCK ALL BUSINESS
nationalize them!!!