"A group of people who have been lied to for 35 years, at every turn, just to get the next vote." [View all]

[seafan]

Former RNC Chairman Michael Steele last night on All In With Chris Hayes, just described with pinpoint accuracy, the conservatives' fury with the GOP:

(Beginning at 8:50)


Steele:

....It's about principle. It's about an ideal and a set of ideas that you fundamentally believe in and that you are prepared to go to the mat for. Yeah, we know charging up that hill, we are going to get slaughtered and we are going to get caught between the crossfires.... we GET that.

But the principle IS charging up that hill... to make the stand on the idea that what we believe has value... it has value not just politically to us, but to the country as a whole.

And I think that's a lot of the frustration that conservatives have. Look, you're talking about a group of people, who, over the last 35 years .... who have essentially been lied to at every turn, just to get the next vote. And they've decided, starting largely in 2006 and certainly in 2010 and onward, that they're not taking it any more. That, if you're going to be a principled conservative, then you need to prove to us that you are principally with us, regardless.

Michael Steele has just articulated the Republican Establishment's worst dread. Their base, now permanently alienated, has turned against them, and, this time, with torches and pitchforks. It is now they, who have become the hunted.


There is no turning back now.


And now, GOP Establishment, it is for keeps.