Words.
"Members of the Tea Party insisted they were turning the GOP into a populist, anti-establishment bastion. Social conservatives have long argued that values and morals matter more than money. Yet in the end, the corporate and economically conservative wing of the Republican Party always seems to win.
...What’s remarkable is that Romney seems to be closing in on a victory at the very moment when he is painting himself as the anti-populist and a tone-deaf economic elitist. Not only did he suggest Tuesday that he pays a low 15 percent tax rate (because most of his income derives from investments); he also dismissed the money he made from speaking fees as “not very much.”
...Think about Romney’s rise in light of the overheated political analysis of 2010 that saw a Republican Party as being transformed by the Tea Party legions who, in alliance with an overlapping group of social and religious conservatives, would take the party away from the establishmentarians. If I had a dollar for every time the new GOP was described in those days as “populist,” I suspect I’d have more than Romney made from his lectures.
...“Romney is as establishment as they come,” said McAlister. For many conservatives, he added, a fall campaign between Romney and President Obama could thus be a choice between “which of the two establishments do you hate most.”
That’s not where the Tea Party’s promoters said we were headed."
THE WASHINGTON POST: Where are the Republican populists?
No comments:
Post a Comment