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. ...EJ Dionne, WaPo
No need to say more about the Republicans and what they'd like to (continue to) impose on America: a further diminution of people power. Romney is just another in a long line of candidates who'd hardly hesitate to hand America over to transnational corporate power and its political representatives.
Certainly some of the movement’s failures can be attributed to a flawed set of competitors and the split on the right, especially Paul’s ability to siphon off a significant share of the Tea Party vote. That has made a consolidation of its forces impossible. (Romney may owe Paul an appointment to the Federal Reserve.)
But there is another possibility: that the GOP never was and never can be a populist party, that the term was always being misapplied, and that enough Republicans are quite comfortable with a Harvard-educated private-equity specialist.
“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.” ...EJ Dionne
Even as Romney's nomination becomes a done deal, however, President Obama was the right thing, the decision that could cost him a second term. He rejected the effort to push through that destructive Canadian pipeline without adequate (and probably damning) review.
It's like that famous Jack Benny moment when a mugger demands "your money or your life." Benny, whose character is famous for being a stingy tightwad, hesitates, and then says, "Wait a minute! I'm thinking!"
Far too many Americans might choose short term gains over the life of the planet. "Wait a minute!," they'd say. "I'm thinking about it." After all, "environment" and "future" are such vague words and the political establishment has driven home its own version of the pipeline: "prosperity! energy! jobs!"
Thanks, Mr. President, for taking a political risk by choosing all of us over corporate and political greed!
Now the problem becomes how to hog-tie Romney and prevent the greed machine from becoming America's final ride to oblivion.
