The Resignation of John Boehner

[mongers]

Hey Otto, welcome back.

[Berkut]

I think the coalition between establishment Republicans, small government conservatives, and the religious right has finally come undone. The Tea Party draws from the small c conservatives and the religious right and it's attractive to the least intelligent and most uncompromising of those groups. They don't have the numbers to win, say, a national election, or even a majority of GOP House Caucus (we're talking around 60 or roughly 1/3rd of the caucus), but since they are willing to primary any other GOP that doesn't do what they say they've leveraged themselves to the point that nothing is done they don't approve of--and since they don't approve of anything but shutting down the government until Obama leaves and then repealing every law he passed I foresee great political and electoral difficulty for the GOP in the future.

Part of me actually hopes we end up nominating one of the complete loon candidates for the Presidency, because it'll finally expose the lie that all we need to recapture the White House is a "true conservative." Instead it'll show that you win even fewer states in the Electoral College than Romney (basically you'll only win the Southeast and a few depopulated Western States like Wyoming) and hopefully implode the GOP to such a degree that it essentially has to reform.

I've been thinking for over a decade that "OK, *now* the Republicans are going to have to realize that they cannot win if they keep nominating the nutbars...".

It's not like Romney was a moderate.

[Valmy]

He was moderate enough to be governor of Massachusetts and was a competent administrator with a proven track record. He was a giant compared to to the clowns front running now.

[Berkut]

He was moderate enough to be governor of Massachusetts and was a competent administrator with a proven track record. He was a giant compared to to the clowns front running now.

But he didn't run as that moderate at all. He practically pretended that nothing he did as governor ever happened.

[PJL]

Part of me actually hopes we end up nominating one of the complete loon candidates for the Presidency, because it'll finally expose the lie that all we need to recapture the White House is a "true conservative." Instead it'll show that you win even fewer states in the Electoral College than Romney (basically you'll only win the Southeast and a few depopulated Western States like Wyoming) and hopefully implode the GOP to such a degree that it essentially has to reform.

No, what would happen is that they'll just say he/she wasn't conservative enough, and that an even more conservative candidate would have won it.

[Berkut]

Part of me actually hopes we end up nominating one of the complete loon candidates for the Presidency, because it'll finally expose the lie that all we need to recapture the White House is a "true conservative." Instead it'll show that you win even fewer states in the Electoral College than Romney (basically you'll only win the Southeast and a few depopulated Western States like Wyoming) and hopefully implode the GOP to such a degree that it essentially has to reform.

No, what would happen is that they'll just say he/she wasn't conservative enough, and that an even more conservative candidate would have won it.

Indeed - or he would moderate during the general, and they would all cry out how he abandoned their values, and that is why he lost.

[jimmy olsen]

He was moderate enough to be governor of Massachusetts and was a competent administrator with a proven track record. He was a giant compared to to the clowns front running now.

More qualified at the age of 10

Apparently Mitt Romeny was born a middle aged man. 

https://books.google.co.kr/books?id=PlYEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA69&dq=george+romney&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

Mitt has been hard to convince. He asks things like 'Daddy, if we're so good why do we only have three percent of the market?

[DGuller]

I wonder if that's how it happened in the 12th century in the Islamic world.

[DontSayBanana]

I think the coalition between establishment Republicans, small government conservatives, and the religious right has finally come undone. The Tea Party draws from the small c conservatives and the religious right and it's attractive to the least intelligent and most uncompromising of those groups. They don't have the numbers to win, say, a national election, or even a majority of GOP House Caucus (we're talking around 60 or roughly 1/3rd of the caucus), but since they are willing to primary any other GOP that doesn't do what they say they've leveraged themselves to the point that nothing is done they don't approve of--and since they don't approve of anything but shutting down the government until Obama leaves and then repealing every law he passed I foresee great political and electoral difficulty for the GOP in the future.

Part of me actually hopes we end up nominating one of the complete loon candidates for the Presidency, because it'll finally expose the lie that all we need to recapture the White House is a "true conservative." Instead it'll show that you win even fewer states in the Electoral College than Romney (basically you'll only win the Southeast and a few depopulated Western States like Wyoming) and hopefully implode the GOP to such a degree that it essentially has to reform.

That's a lot of text to say that the lie is that being Republican is synonymous with being conservative.  Republicans are the party of big money, not small government.