"The RedState contact email is now getting one anti-GOP email for every one anti-Democrat email. That has never happened before."
Erick Erickson's latest Redstate missive makes his feelings on the emerging Senate deal pretty clear. It's called
REJECT THIS. (You can click the link but it's nothing you couldn't write yourself -- Ted Cruz is the only conservative with balls, McConnell is a spineless K Street fuckwad, etc.)
But note the above line. This is how it begins, right? This is how the splintering is forced out into the open -- and Erickson is positively gleeful about it! Karl Rove is being openly attacked for spending money to protect McConnell from Matt Bevin. Republicans are evenly split in their opinions of their leaders, approving by 49-47%.
What if, instead of the usual "a pox on both their houses!" bullshit being applied to both parties, it is now applied to the "two houses" of the Republican party? And what if this no-win feeling -- amongst whites, conservatives, traditional Republicans -- suppresses voter turnout just as it traditionally does among the electorate as a whole? How can you message to independents when you have no message? How can you turn out exurban whites and Sam's Club conservatives when your party is in public disarray?
ThinkProgress gets specific (bolding mine):
Congressional Republicans got 60 percent of the white vote in the 2010 election, compared to just 37 percent for the Democrats. What if, as we move into 2014, the war among white people breaks out in earnest, with the Tea Party on one side, business and establishment Republicans on the other and white working class voters already suspicious about the party’s Paul Ryan-inspired drive to cut Medicare and Social Security watching from the sidelines? All this would make it prohibitively hard for the party to replicate its 60 percent showing among white voters in 2014. Say white support subsides to, say, 55 percent, with Democrats edging up to 42 percent. Assuming that the minority share of voters rises by a couple of points relative to 2010 and support for Democrats clocks in close to 80 percent, we are then in take-back-House territory, a popular vote margin of 6 points or so.
This is a key point. Polls show generic ballots having
moved 21 points towards Democrats. Kos is
right to point out that when our base shows up to vote in large numbers, we always win.
But of course this corollary is also true:
When their base fails to show up to vote in large numbers, they always lose.
Barack Obama won't be on the ballot in 2014. The acute anger of the shutdown will have faded. Individual races will matter -- speech presence, retail politics. But if the Republican house is divided against itself and troubled conservatives are left with a "pox on both Republicans houses" taste in their mouths, they won't show up to vote. If you're hearing one thing from Rush, but another from Fox, what to think? Karl Rove and RedState disagree? Who to believe? And all the while you keep hearing stories about Obamacare's rollout, people covered and receiving care? What's a frustrated teabagger to do?
History says: stay home.
An animated, enthusiastic, fired up progressive base is always the best way to win. But a demoralized, confused, infighting conservative base will get the job done. And it looks like that's what we'll have.
UPDATE: Top of the rec list? Thanks team. The Twitter machine tells me that the House is still running around in circles, confused and hung over after last night's Booze Cruz, but hope springs eternal that we'll find a way out of this. It'd be nice if we didn't have to deny basic governmental services to millions and careen towards a cliff of worldwide economic collapse in order to expose the far right wing as the nihilists they are, but you go to war against the moronic opposition party you have, not the moronic opposition party you may wish to have, you know?