Over the weekend, Rasmussen posted the results of a poll showing GOP senator Ted Cruz trailing only Pope Francis and President Obama as \u201cthe most influential person in 2013.\u201d\u00a0 It has been a good year for Mr. Cruz, who was sworn in fewer than twelve months ago.\u00a0 Some would say that it has a less than good year for his party and blame Mr. Cruz and his allies in the Senate and House for what is now being called the Republican Civil War.<\/p>\n
Last month\u2019s cover stories in both\u00a0Commentary<\/i>\u00a0magazine and\u00a0The American Spectator<\/i>\u00a0featured this Cruz-led insurgency.<\/p>\n
Commentary<\/i>\u00a0was entirely disapproving. \u00a0It agreed with those who charged that the filibuster to defund Obamacare and the subsequent government shutdown never stood a chance of success and only alienated much of the country.\u00a0 Authors Michael Medved and John Podhoretz, both strong conservatives, blamed \u201cangry [political] entrepreneurs\u201d\u00a0 (FreedomWorks and Heritage Action especially).\u00a0 They concluded, \u201cRepublicans will win meaningful victories only when they lose their appetite for martyrdom and fratricide\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Spectator<\/i>\u00a0was far friendlier to the insurgents.\u00a0 Its profile of Cruz was balanced but on the whole warm and admiring.\u00a0 A companion piece on the California Republican Party warned that, \u201cAs the GOP goes wobbly, red states go purple, then blue.\u201d<\/p>\n
Count me in the middle.\u00a0 I know this makes me sound like the Southern politician of the old school who once said of Prohibition, \u201cSome of my friends are for it.\u00a0 Some are against it.\u00a0 I stand with my friends.\u201d\u00a0 But bear with me.<\/p>\n
For as I see it both the criticisms of the GOP Senate and House insurgents and the defenses are too Washington centered.\u00a0 Too much discussion focuses on this member of Congress and that, this Washington-based advocacy groups or that, and campaign money distributed from Washington.\u00a0 I believe something bigger is going on among the American people as a whole.\u00a0 It has created a dilemma that the GOP must solve if it is to start winning national elections again.<\/p>\n
On one side of this dilemma are Tea Party members and sympathizers.\u00a0 According to polls taken in the 2012 cycle, they make up half \u2013 exactly 50 percent \u2013 of Republican \u2013oriented voters.\u00a0 CNBC reporter Rick Santelli inadvertantly sparked the Tea Party movement with a 2009 on-air rant against the Obama Administration\u2019s enormous spending and its subverting of market forces.\u00a0 Within hours, it seemed, tens of thousands were organizing.\u00a0 No knowledgeable observer doubts that those who responded to Santelli\u2019s call acted spontaneously.\u00a0 But despite the shock and awe that accompanied it, that seemingly sudden uprising had been decades in coming.<\/p>\n
The success of Ross Perot\u2019s 1992 candidacy in splitting the GOP vote and giving the presidency to Bill Clinton was an early example of the same frustration with the tax-tax-tax, spend-spend-spend, elect-elect-elect formula that had been at the center of liberal politics since Franklin Roosevelt\u2019s administration.\u00a0 President George H.W. Bush\u2019s apparent run-up in domestic spending compared to his predecessor\u2019s restraint, capped off by breaking of his \u201cno new taxes\u201d pledge, left many center-right voters distrustful of Republican leadership.<\/p>\n
George W. Bush reassured this group enough to return many to the party fold.\u00a0 But then the Republican Congress and his administration ran up spending again \u2013 ending the balanced budgets of the late Clinton years \u2013 and reigniting the doubters\u2019 distrust and anger.<\/p>\n
These voters now demand assurances that Republicans are serious about cutting both government\u2019s spending and its power over daily life.\u00a0 In reaching them, the seemingly futile and counterproductive campaigns of so-called Tea Party senators and House Republicans serve a purpose.\u00a0 They tell this group that a different breed on Republican is knocking at the door of power \u2013 a breed that can be trusted to follow through when the party next holds the reins of government.<\/p>\n
The dilemma\u2019s other half is voters who also favor limits to government but are more oriented to the here and now.\u00a0 They want to know that candidates will not go on Quixotic crusades at the expense of the day to day operations of society.\u00a0 They want careful attention paid to the concrete reality of life on the ground and government\u2019s impact on it.\u00a0 Shutting down Federal operations is distasteful to them \u2014 threats of defaulting on the debt even more so.\u00a0 They don\u2019t like stand-offs in Congress, either.\u00a0 They back away from those who instigate them.<\/p>\n
The fiasco of Obamacare\u2019s launch \u2013 not just the website but the revelation of dissemblance after dissemblance in the selling of the plan \u2013 has given the GOP an opportunity to resolve this dilemma.<\/p>\n
But can it \u2013 and will it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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