And Pauline Kael says she doesn’t know anyone who voted for Nixon…
The expression that one can’t see the forest for all the trees perfectly describes Washington GOP establishment members George Will and Michael Barone, who say there’s no such thing as the “GOP Establishment”.
Please… they’re absolutely, insularly myopic, like the liberal elitist Pauline Kael, whose famous expression succinctly proved the point: “I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don’t know. They’re outside my ken. But sometimes when I’m in a theater I can feel them.”
There’s “them”, and then there’s the rest of us.
In a piece at today’s DC Caller, “In Search of the Republican Establishment”, Newt Gingrich reportedly said that Mitt Romney has the Republican establishment behind him.
No news there. The rest of us have known it since Romney abruptly ended his 2008 bid for the presidency in a speech that shocked CPAC attendees and the rest of America. It didn’t take a brain pilot to figure out that a backroom deal was made by the GOP power brokers: “Look Mitt, stand down this time, and we’ll throw our machine behind you in ’12.”
And they have. The GOP establishment reach extends to the establishment media which, I remind you, has yet to throw a punch at Romney as it destroys Herman Cain or anyone else whose poll numbers eclipsed the establishment’s candidate.
But those who are the “GOP Establishment” deny it. Of course. To admit its existence would be “game over”. Conservatives, including tea partiers, would be in full revolt. (Although I predict that’s not long from happening…)
“Some people claim the Republican Establishment does not exist,” Washington Times columnist Milton Wolf told TheDC. “We have a name for those people: Establishment Republicans.”
“The Establishment is a real thing with amorphous and mutable borders,” political strategist Mary Matalin said. “Ostensibly, it is the members of formal structures (party leaders, Congressional leadership, funders, top line strategists, ideological big thinkers and opiners, etc.).”
Conservative talk radio host Mark Levin scoffs at the notion that there is no such thing as the Republican establishment.
“It is interesting that no one wants to be characterized as part of the establishment, even when they run the instrumentalities of the GOP and have never endorsed a single tea party candidate out of the gate,” he said.
“Besides, if there was not an establishment, there would be no need for the tea party.”
In TheDC’s search for “the establishment,” one name kept popping up from those who ardently believe the so-called GOP establishment is alive and well: Angelo Codevilla.
A Boston University professor emeritus in international relations, Codevilla is the author of “The Ruling Class.” In a 2010 interview with TheDC about the book, Codevilla explained that America is split not between Democrats and Republicans, but between what he terms the “Ruling Class” and the “Country Class.”
[Note: I spent Monday night’s radio show discussing Codavilla’s remarkable thesis “America’s Ruling Class — And the Perils of Revolution“. It is a MUST read in order to understand there’s little that distinguishes the Democrat and Republican parties — they’re both of an established class: The “ruling” or “elite class. And their sole objective is to amass and retain greater amounts of power.]
“People define themselves as ‘the ruling class’ by tying their livelihoods and hopes to government, and above all by a certain attitude toward the rest of the country,” he said.
“Neither money nor even professional position defines a person as part of the ruling class or not. Rather, membership is all about drawing one’s livelihood from one’s connection with government power, from believing that this is proper, and above all from sensing that sharing a certain set of attitudes and tastes makes one superior to ordinary Americans.”
Rush Limbaugh has spent many hours showing example after example of the GOP establishment and its machinations. It wouldn’t surprise me if Rush talks today on his program about Will’s remarks. Yesterday he spoke of the supposedly “non-existent” GOP Establishment:
“Now, the fact that the Republican establishment cannot make that case and other arguments tells me that they may have already surrendered, and this is a big difference between us and the establishment. They’re in this defensive posture, I’ve told you, I said on Greta how many times, a lot of people inside the Republican establishment secretly don’t even believe Obama can be beaten. And that’s why they want Romney, ’cause they think at least Romney will help ’em take the Senate. He’ll lose less down the ballot than Gingrich or some conservative will.
But conservatives, you Tea Party activists, you don’t want to give up and you haven’t given up, and you don’t want to accept this propaganda from the left. We insist on challenging it, we insist on fighting it ’cause there’s no other way to save the country, and continually playing these games letting the Democrats rewrite the language, change the definition of things, get away with false accusations against us, never do anything about it, constantly stay on defense.”
For Will and Barone to question the existence of the GOP establishment is ludicrous. And proof that these supposed “savant observers” don’t know one part of their anatomy from another.
Some sherry, dear?
And one more thing. Ann Coulter? Quintessential GOP Establishmentarian.
“Pemmaraju pressed Coulter on Romney’s conservatism, adding that the Tea Party has resisted him strongly, an indication he may not be as conservative as she thinks. Coulter replied that the Tea Party was “wrong about this” because “they’re looking at who is going to go around bombastically demanding to see Obama’s birth certificate or calling him a Kenyan,” instead of substance. She added that “Rick Santorum and [Rick] Perry are very bad on illegal immigration” despite being considered more conservative.”
