Quote:
Originally Posted by bobman0330
From the perspective of a politician, especially an up-and-coming one, if a stance has a 95% chance of getting him some influence and a 5% chance of complete political armageddon, it's probably an excellent bet. The worst that can happen is he gets run out of political office.
I think that explains like some
flyover country sheriff or
some faceless Arizona state senators goin' for it with Bundy, fine.
Rand Paul, Rick Perry, Senator Heller from Nevada, most of FNC, etc., if I'm a big GOP donor hoping to takeover Congress this fall and see my agenda through, I'm probably kind of wary of
those cats putting their chips and taking the party brand equity with them, placing them on Bundy's number on the roulette table and hoping it doesn't land on green. I admit that some of the memes about FNC and the GOP and the symbiotic relationship between the two, and how much FNC is responsible for protecting the GOP image and how much GOP image-crafting is dependent on FNC -- all of that is worthy of some study. So I could maybe even buy an out for Hannity and the rest of FNC, maybe they're like not responsible for protecting the GOP's image, OK. But like Rand Paul and Rick Perry and Dean Heller almost certainly are by definition.
If you turn around and say Rand Paul and Dean Heller or whatever play by their own rules, they are out there to build their brand and their image with the Alex Jones crowd, GOP-interests-writ-large-be-damned, if it all goes bad and these Bundy guys go Wyatt Earp and shoot up the joint lol oops I'll just retire, I think you and I are having a
heated agreement here.
That's like kind of what happened, and it's precisely, like precisely what a good party apparatus and good party discipline exist to prevent. It's wreckless for Senators and governors and prospective Presidential candidates building up big PACS, consuming limited monetary resources and Fox News and Meet the Press mug time or whatever to behave like that, like well I take this risk of political Armageddon collecting every last nutjob bitcoin, if it all goes poor I fade into Bolivian with Mike Tyson -- a well-functioning political movement interested in winning power in a country with 350 million people within the confines of a two party system -- you're supposed to have party and movement leadership and discipline to make sure that isn't happening.
Last edited by DVaut1; 04-25-2014 at 12:56 PM.