Clift on GOP Kamikazes

Eleanor Clift says House Republicans are pushing the GOP further right against the desires of many in the party for reform in The Daily Beast.

For a glimpse inside the workings of the GOP, I turned to Ohio Republican Steve LaTourette, who left Congress in January after serving 18 years in the House. He thought his party was on the right path when Republican Chairman Reince Priebus issued a soul-searching report after the 2012 election. “Then the last month something bad happened,” LaTourette said, blaming a flood of new data from Republican pollsters sketching out the stakes for 2014. In addition to being an historically challenging “six-year itch” midterm election for an incumbent president, the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, is more unpopular now than it’s ever been with close to half of Americans 49 percent believing it’s a bad idea according to an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll in early June. The message to Republicans, says LaTourette, “Now is not the time to be more moderate, to shift gears, to be welcoming—now’s the time to double down.”

 

He thinks it’s the wrong strategic choice. “I agree with Priebus. There are not enough 50-year-old white guys who are mad (at the world) to win elections.” Yet that’s the audience House Republicans are playing to in the way they craft legislation, and in the votes they hold. Thursday’s defeat of a farm bill that in ordinary times would easily pass with bipartisan support is the latest example of Republicans at war with themselves, and with much of the country.