Over the weekend, failed GOP consultant and searcher-for-a-paycheck, Steve Schmidt, was holding forth to MSNBC’s audience on what needed to be done to save the world (video is available at this link):
STEVE SCHMIDT: That’s not to mention the baby internment camps, the indecency, the cruelty, the meanness, the lying, the complicit nature of this Republican majority with an attack on the country that’s launched by the Russian Federation. So the Republican party of Teddy Roosevelt and John McCain and Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush is dead. It’s over. It doesn’t exist anymore. It has been taken over, lock, stock, and barrel. For there to be any redemption of a right of center conservative party in the United States of America means the party of Trump must be destroyed politically.
…
It’s like a fire. Fires are a part of the ecosystem, part of the natural progress. And when the forest burns, it’s purified. There can be new growth. For there to be new growth of a conservative movement, of a right center party, the one that I joined in 1988, it needs to burn to the ground.
Forgive me as I express puzzlement why anyone is sad that the GOP of John McCain has gone the way to the dodo bird.
If you put aside for a moment that Schmidt’s permanent loyalty is to his bank account and saying stuff like this guarantees him a gig on MSNBC, this sounds utterly bonkers. Here I’ll turn to Jay Cost who despite his dislike of all things Trump hasn’t totally succumbed to TDS.
This is the kind of argument you get from somebody with no skin in the game. https://t.co/qHEBVh8A18
— Jay Cost (@JayCostTWS) August 11, 2018
I criticized this “Burn It Down” ethos when the Tea Party types made it ca 2011. And I criticize it now.
— Jay Cost (@JayCostTWS) August 11, 2018
This is more than a little disingenuous. No one in the Tea Party ever associated “burn it down” with “gee, let’s elect Democrats.” We fought our fights in the primaries (see David Brat) and when we lost (Thad Cochran) we were good soldiers and fell in line. Where GOPe goofs like Schmidt have always been different from actual Republicans and actual conservatives of the non-Muh Principles variety, is that those people always take their ball and go home…or sometimes they actively support the other side to try to make the point that “irresponsible conservatives” chose the wrong guy and he lost.
If you “burn down” the GOP, you create a vacuum that the left will fill.
— Jay Cost (@JayCostTWS) August 11, 2018
The thing that is lost on a lot of pundits who are pushing the “vote Democrat to show Trump a lesson” is that their parents might not have even been married when Newt Gingrich broke a 40-year Democrat death grip on the House of Representatives. It is easy to be cavalier about losing the House to make a point. It is quite another thing to regain control of the House once it is lost.
And so the only people who argue “Burn it down” either don’t get that very rudimentary fact, or do not really care.
— Jay Cost (@JayCostTWS) August 11, 2018
Trump has injected a shockingly low tone into our politics, and it is deeply lamentable to see the GOP follow along with him, BUT …
— Jay Cost (@JayCostTWS) August 11, 2018
… the left is still the left. And “burning down” the GOP will only advance the progressive agenda. I cannot get behind that.
— Jay Cost (@JayCostTWS) August 11, 2018
This is a real quandary that conservatives who do not regularly appear on MSNBC or CNN recognize admits of no easy answers.
— Jay Cost (@JayCostTWS) August 11, 2018
And yes this is a subtweet. A massive one.
Between the NeverTrump dead-enders and the MAGA MAGA RAWR crowd, I've taken to calling myself a Madisonian because being a "conservative" is just too danged embarrassing these days. https://t.co/2yG0RpV9ZV
— Jay Cost (@JayCostTWS) August 11, 2018
And BTW the notion that the GOP must lose to change is historically inaccurate. The GOP changed from Gingrich to Dubya WITHOUT losing any power.
— Jay Cost (@JayCostTWS) August 11, 2018
Indeed it did. After the Gingrich Revolution we were beset GOPe drones, like Schmidt, that played parasite to our host. They hadn’t worked to win but they wanted a seat at the table when the spoils of victory were shared out. And once they’d been given that table they reverted to plantation house Republicans who were afraid of offending their Democrat masters. As much as I liked and respected George Bush, his administration allowed itself to be turned into a piñata by both the Democrats and the media. He started out a scrappy fighter and by 2006 he was a stump-broke happy loser.
If "conservative" TV pundits were serious about fixing the GOP, they'd be focusing on the presidential nomination rules that produced Trump in the first place, rather than encouraging voters to elect congressional Democrats.
— Jay Cost (@JayCostTWS) August 11, 2018
I think this is simply bullsh**, excuse-making and rationalization. There have been articles written on this, this is a good one and here’s a whiny one, and none of the rules convince me that Trump would have lost. In fact, Ted Cruz kicked Trump’s ass in corralling delegates he hadn’t won at the ballot box…hence the reason that Paul Manafort, a GOPe presidential campaign fixture since the Ford administration, was called to the rescue. Anyway you cut it, Trump got 45% of the GOP votes cast in a crowded field. Rules didn’t do that. Message and math did.
You fix the party by getting a better nominee. A necessary condition for a better nominee? REFORM OF THE PARTY RULES.
— Jay Cost (@JayCostTWS) August 11, 2018
Trump won the nomination with only 45% of the vote, and even that was inflated by the lack of contests in the final month.
There is an INSTITUTIONAL defect here—namely, a plurality candidate can remake an entire American political party in his image.https://t.co/5cfItl1pOD
— Jay Cost (@JayCostTWS) August 11, 2018
If the GOP had tried to manipulate the convention vote so that the candidate with the most votes did not win, then there would have been a rebellion by voters…even by non-Trump voters.
This problem admits of multiple solutions, but one of them is ASSUREDLY NOT "elect congressional Democrats."
— Jay Cost (@JayCostTWS) August 11, 2018
The other thing to keep in mind is that if there are a lot of GOP losses, leeches like Schmidt calculate that they will be in high demand. They will be the “adults in the room,” ensuring that only the very best candidates are selected. Never mind they wouldn’t know how to win if victory jumped out of the tall grass and bit them on the ass.
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