These damned Republicans just aren’t conservative enough
by digby
Conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly bashed on Saturday former — and failed — Republican presidential nominees Bob Dole, John McCain and Mitt Romney, calling them establishment candidates who moved to the center based on advice from consultants rather than embracing conservative values.
“We’ve had the establishment pick another loser for us,” she said of Romney, the 2012 Republican nominee, at CPAC. “The fight we have, and the fight I want you to engage in, is the establishment against the grassroots. The establishment has given us a whole series of losers. Bob Dole and John McCain. Mitt Romney.”
But don’t worry, there’s a silver lining. Here’s Richard Viguerie explaining the logic back in 2006:
Richard Viguerie, the direct-mail guru who helped fuel the Reagan revolution of 1980, asserts that Bush’s inconsistency as a conservative has alarmed many of the most active members of the party – the donors, fundraisers, and grass-roots activists who drive turnout on election day. A recent online poll by Mr. Viguerie of more than 1,000 conservative activists found that 67 percent say Bush is not governing as a conservative, and 64 percent give him a D or an F on government spending.
Even though Bush won’t be on the ballot, conservative disappointment in him could hurt the Republican Party in this November’s midterm elections, he says.
“The party has been hijacked by big-government Republicans,” says Viguerie, hinting that it might be good for the party to lose congressional power later this year. “The importance of losing elections is greatly underrated,” he adds. “There’s not any way Ronald Reagan would have been elected in 1980 if [Gerald] Ford had been elected in ’76.”
And no matter what,win or lose, there’s a money making opportunity for the professional right winger.
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