The GOP closes ranks; it always does

February 16, 2008

As recently as a few weeks ago, disgraced former congressman Tom DeLay clearly positioned himself in the “no McCain, no way” contingent of the Republican Party, alongside luminaries such as Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, James Dobson, and Rick Santorum.

Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) lambasted Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) Thursday for “betraying” the conservative movement.

During a private luncheon with Republican chiefs of staff on Capitol Hill, DeLay — who has criticized McCain for years — stepped up his attacks in the wake of the senator’s reemergence as a top presidential contender. DeLay said McCain has no principles and indicated he would not endorse the senator if he won the GOP primary.

“If McCain gets the nomination, I don’t know what I’ll do,” DeLay said at the Capitol Hill Club, according to a source in the room. “I might have to sit this one out.”

He added that a McCain triumph for the GOP nomination would destroy the Republican Party.

This came a few days after DeLay told Fox News, “There’s nothing redeeming about John McCain.”

That was last month. This week, DeLay was in Arizona dropped in on a McCain fundraiser and said he would support McCain once he secured the Republican nomination.

In the end, they come around. They always do.

DeLay is hardly the only one.

Before…

As late as last month, Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) asked former senator Phil Gramm (R-Tex.), an emissary of McCain’s, why he should not be physically ill at the prospect of McCain at the top of the GOP ticket.

…and after.

On Monday, McHenry — apparently feeling fine — joined the chorus of voices calling for conservatives to unify around McCain as the likely Republican nominee, and he accused former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee of waging a pointless nomination battle because he is “in there for himself.”

Before…

“The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine,” Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) said about McCain. “He is erratic. He is hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me.”

…and after.

“I am supporting John McCain for the Republican nomination for president,” Cochran, R-Miss., said in a statement released Thursday.

I don’t doubt the sincerity of some of the far-right anti-McCain sentiment. For some of the hard-core Republican activists, McCain’s conservative agenda isn’t quite unhinged enough. When they say they can’t vote for him, they probably mean it.

But it’s worth remembering that much of this contingent doesn’t, and the whole narrative has probably been exaggerated a bit. They were saber-rattling during the primaries, hoping to see the party nomination someone else. Now that McCain is poised to be the nominee, they’ll close ranks and disregard all of the comments they made before.

It was as predictable as the sunrise.

DeLay said McCain has no principles
LOL!

  • Quite frankly I’ve had it with the self proclaimed moral crowd who have not a scintilla of morality in their beings; nor standards other than greed.

    In other words I could care less what Delay has to say about anything.

    Let’s start talking about what Gore Vidal or other informed and insightful people have to say.

  • Honor among thieves. While Republican ego and mendacity know no bounds, they do know that their paycheck comes from retaining power and wielding it for the benefit of their sponsors. Rallying around McCain is their best hope of keeping the gravy train rolling.

  • I hate to say it, because I do like this site and all, but… wasn’t it suggested today that we Democrats should close ranks even if the candidate we don’t like Obama/Clinton?

  • BBB –

    The situation with Democrats is hardly the same. The vast, vast majority of Democrats I have heard opine about their preferences for the nomination almost always begin with some variation on the idea: “While I like both candidates, and believe either one would be a fine President, I really lean toward . . . ” etc. etc. etc.

    I have gone on record with many friends saying that — as much as I really would prefer that Obama get the nomination — if it ends up going to Clinton I’ll have no problem pulling the lever for her.

    This doesn’t even come close to the expressed Republican idea that “McCain has no redeeming qualities,” etc.

  • I bet a lot of people still associate Tom DeLay with the GOP corruption scandals of ’06.I hope DeLay pushes McCain on television a lot. A photo of McCain and DeLay with their arms raised together in a victory salute would be nice, too.

  • The GOP closes ranks; it always does

    Yep, and the closer they are the ranker they are. They probably call themselves good Republicans for uniting behind McCain, but, as is usual for Republicans leaders, all their motives are ulterior. Their principals have an expiration date. And their moral compasses always point toward the corporate pile of coins.

  • BBB has a point. Morbo made that exact point this morning. There is a lot of anti-Clinton sentiment expressed by Democrats, even on a blog like this.

    We Democrats could learn a thing or two from the Republicans, who always unite in the end to support one of their own. But let’s try to avoid picking up some of their worst characteristics. Look at a picture of Tom DeLay, and do the opposite.

  • well of course the politicians rally round, but what i think is not impossible this time is that the huckabee voters won’t rally round. huckabee has done democrats the great service of finally exposing the fraud the gop has been playing for years on its evangelical voters, and it might make a difference.

  • John Cole over at Balloon Juice use the following tag that seems good describe the administration and the current incarnation of the Republican party: Republican Crime Syndicate – aka the Bush Admin.

    Crime syndicate is right.

  • Will be interesting to see if teh Dems can unite like this, especially if Billary start playing hardball again.

  • BBB hit that one out of the park, as Okie substantiates. Republicans are successful far too often, when they deserve to fail from their dirty tricks – but that doesn’t mean they can’t teach the Democrats a thing or two about party discipline. The lesson from this is, don’t talk smack that it’ll be difficult to take back later if things didn’t work out the way you planned or hoped.

    Otherwise you might look….well….as stupid as Tom DeLay. Hopefully the lesson of “party before self” will not be lost on the candidates, if it begins to look like one of them cannot win the nomination in a manner the party and the voters can accept.

  • They never let a little thing like integrity stand in the way. They are after all the Party of Hypocrisy.

  • well, JRS jr., i’ll tell you the truth: part of why even though i support obama (because i oppose dynastic succession), when clowns like you talk about “if billary start playing hardball again,” i both reconsider my position and question whether the obama partisans have any interest in rallying round or whether they think that their man is such a precious piece of fine china that he can’t be sullied in everyday politics.

    just wait, sonny, until the gop gets its attack lines together, because the period of the beloved obama is going to come to an end sooner and not later.

    if you’re interested in bringing the dems together, then be a grownup: accept that they are both playing hardball because they both want to be president. that’s life. if you think, for instance, that obama’s claim that he would have prevented the loss of democratic seats in the ’90s unlike that awful bill clinton isn’t egregiously dishonest hardball, then you might want to think again. there are no saints in this race….

  • Swellsman- The message that I got from Morbo’s post in the morning was that even if you said vicious or nasty things about Clinton/Obama, it’s important to remember that the Democrat you dislike is much better than McCain. I don’t see what’s so wrong about the Republicans feeling the same when it comes to the opposite (even if you dislike McCain, he’s better than Obama or Clinton).
    There’s a lot of things I don’t like about the Republican party, but party loyalty is not one of them.

  • Wow, Howie, as many of you folks know, even though I consider myself a “moderate that leans right” so I have no real vested interest in seeing the dems get togther.

    Unlike the Obamists here (and for the record, I do like him better than Hils), I do believe they are playing some sort of hardball, although when the Clintons hit the race card, their ball seemed a bit harder.

    So who feels like a “clown” now?

  • Republicans don’t bother using a magnetic compass to find their way; their compass is what might be called an aurumic compass: one that always points at the biggest pile of gold/money/wealth.

  • It all brings to mind that scene in The Godfather where Don Corleone calls together the heads of the five families to make nice and get along so they can all make money. Didn’t last very long, though.

  • “well of course the politicians rally round, but what i think is not impossible this time is that the huckabee voters won’t rally round. huckabee has done democrats the great service of finally exposing the fraud the gop has been playing for years on its evangelical voters, and it might make a difference.”

    I agree. I think Washington state may have made a lot of hard-core Republicans question their commitment to McCain. Having all of the bigwigs rally around him while they still have his footprints on their back may make them follow suit, or it may drive home how spot on Huckabee was.

    It will be interesting to see how determined Huckabee is to stay in the race and how determined his supporters are to turn out for him the rest of the way.

  • At least the Dems have nothing but qualified candidates (even those that have already dropped from the race) and have been and will participate in a selection process driven by the voters rather than the horride mess that the Repubs have. Who wants to vote for four more years of Bush-like failure?

  • well, jrs, i have to admit: i’m not enough of a regular to know the political bios of other commenters, but truth be told, you could very easily have been one of the more devoted obama supporters with the precise same words, and that’s how i took you so sorry for shifting your political allegiance leftward.

    nonetheless, an invocation of “billary” marks you as a clown no matter what your political perspective, so at least i got that right.

    on the other hand, you appear to be a sane sort of clown, unlike stevel, who apparently is another regular here whom i don’t know in the slightest, but whose right-wing drivel drove me right off another thread earlier before i had to get on with life….

  • an invocation of “billary” marks you as a clown

    Why is that Howie? Isn’t William Clinton very active and extremely outspoken in Hillary’s campaign? Why can’t I refer to them as one team?

  • DeLay and others can try to unite the party behind McCain, but I think they really might have been a little too convincing in their rejection of him. I think it’s quite possible that many in the Limbaugh-Coulter-Ingrham-Hannity wing of the GOP might not really get behind McCain. If they do, they will do so reluctantly and without enthusiasm. That enthusiasm really matters when it comes to GOTV work. I think the Dems will solidify rather nicely behind either Obama or Hillary and will do so with A LOT of enthusiasm– a level that we haven’t seen in decades– because we have enthusiasm about the candidate as well as ending the Bush era.

  • I think an endorsement by the likes of Tom Delay would be the
    the kiss of death to any presidential candidate. Maybe
    Delay realized the best way to hurt McCain was to endorse
    him?

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