Wednesday, May 8, 2013

In Ohio,Tea Partiers say they are ready to strike

Mid-week wash:

Interesting, don't you think?,  how a politician's self-serving decision  can come back to haunt him three years later. In 2010, Summit County Republican Chairman Alex Arshinkoff bucked the State GOP by endorsing Tea Party favorite and then-State Rep. Seth Morgan in the Republican primary for Ohio auditor.

The news broke something like this:

Arshinkoff: Morgan is a certified public accountant and has a fresh face and bold ideas. (Read: It was really a bowing concession to the Tea Party much like the ones that other Republicans are handing out these days.)

Morgan: "Alex is a longstanding, respected leader with the Republican establishment...and to gain his endorsement is truly  exciting for this campaign."

Short-term excitement, that is.  Morgan lost to the state party's choice, David Yost.

But his right-wing credentials were impeccable enough for the uber-rich Koch
brothers to take him on as the policy director of Americans for Prosperity, the outfit founded by the Kochs.

Joe Hallett of the Columbus Dispatch lately quoted Morgan as saying the Tea Partiers  now have several options to form a new party, create an "insurrection" within the GOP and "everything in between."

Connect the dots:  Arshinkoff, long an Establishment Republican, now finds the  party facing a serious threat from a guy that he endorsed more for personal political reasons than the  relative merits of the two primary candidates.

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Speaking of the Tea Party, how about this notion  from former State Republican Chairman Kevin DeWine when he spoke to the Akron Press Club in  April 2010:  The Republican Party and the Tea Party have much in common and he (DeWine) would welcome them into the party. At the time  Grumpy Abe  wrote: "It may be more accurate to wonder whether the Tea Partiers would ever welcome Republicans into their ranks"  The answer is clear enough.

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Now that former South  Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford has won a special election for a  congressional seat,  can we forever erase the idea of a superior moral compass in the hearts of southern Republicans?







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