Your argument makes no sense. What this Scott Brown victory means is that country club Republican's are finished. Dead. Gone. Just look at David Frum and his recent rantings about Palin and now Brown - him and his ilk are scared shitless, and should be. Pawlenty is about as exciting a candidate as Walter Mondale. Romney's a country club Republican with a capitol C. Crist will be defeated by Mario Rubio later this year (mark my words) and Colin Powell just ain't got it. What will happen is this...The Republican party will morph with the Tea Party to become (at least on the surface) an anti-Government, Anti-Big Business, Anti-Wall Street "party of the people" - you'll be hearing the Palin's and the Brown's and those like them using the words "common sense" and "independent" more and more often. If the economy does not recover and there is no solution for health care then Obama will be the next Jimmy Carter. I'm hoping this doesn't come to pass but at this particular time all signs point to this. 2012 has all the potential to be 1980 all over again. Again, if the economy does not get better and especially if it gets worse what you'll see is a very serious possibility of a Palin/Brown ticket that will win in a landslide. Remember, there's 3 years to go for those two to soften their negatives and up their positives. As far as Palin goes I scoff at the people on the left and the right who seem to dismiss her impact, it's actually scary how stupid some people are. These are the same type of people who laughed and scoffed at Regan in the late 70's when there was talk of him running for President. It so closely mirrors that time that it spooks me. It really does.
Scott Brown ran as a country club Republican, at least if you want to define that as claiming to be fiscally conservative and socially moderate(Brown is pro choice, pro environment, pro health care in principal). Can another word be moderate? Romney, the ultimate Country club Republican with your capital "C" strongly supported and financed Brown, and his 3 top operatives ran his campaign and advertising. So no, the election of Brown is not a repudiation of the country club Republican, it shows that running on that message is still viable! Make no mistake, Brown did not run as any right wing radical tea bagger, they came in after the race got close about ten days ago. The majority of his supporters truly think they voted for Scott Brown the moderate and not Scott Brown the tea bagging patsy he is quickly becoming. There is no doubt about that. So we have the first hole in your theory that a Sarah Palin foam at the mouth right wing campaign would win in a landslide.
Romney has long since run away from the country club label, and Brown is well on his way to doing so. I did not say the country clubs were still a factor, far from it. Do not use something I did not say next to "your argument makes no sense" okay? What I did say, was that the Republicans need to move to the center(call it country club if you want, but that's not necessarily what centrist Republican means). So what you have are Republicans running as moderates while actually being tea baggers. The voters will catch onto this act, and throw them out. This is the only thing the election of Brown says about the internal workings of the GOP. They have calculated that it is a good idea to run for high profile seats as moderates, tack far right, run on that 4 years later and hope no one notices! Great, brilliant thinking. It really helped former moderates Romney and McCain in 2008, didn't it?
I was not trying to argue for the merits of Pawlenty, Powell or Crist, or for their electoral prospects(Crist) just pointing out that they need a moderate with similar views to these people. If not, then the Republicans will continue their slide into the party of the right wing extreme and the right wing extreme only. This will not get them a win in 2012. You will get more Arlen Specters who just do not recognize the party any more, and you will get the moderates who used to lean Republican voting against them. The destroy the government, don't do anything about the economy or health care, lets ban condoms and books extreme right philosophy does nothing for the suburban soccer moms and business types that the country club Republicans did well with.
Bottom line: Republicans stop letting the extreme right and the tea baggers control the party, or they pay for it big time at the polls. This is why the Dave Frum types are worried. They know Palin can not win. If they thought a candidate like her would win, they would not be trying desperately to pull the party away from her. They are sounding the clarion call to save the party before it disappears. You saying David Frum is afraid of her because she will win makes no sense. It is exactly the opposite.
McCain had shed any credibility he had as a centrist reformer and was running to the right long before he even picked Palin. We already know what will happen to a right wing ticket that can not offer anything but more of the same tax cuts for millionaires, deficits and open intentions to drown the government. Democrats, Independents and sane Republicans know we can't drown the government, that we need to fund education, that we need to do something about infrastructure, about health care costs, etc. They know that to do this and be fiscally responsible, the government needs some more revenue. They have no use for demagoguery in place of fact based solutions on terrorism and immigration. Mr and Mrs Businessman and Soccer mom have no use for the Republican Party as is, they told us in 2008!
2012 is starting to look like 1980? We just started 2010! Neither of us has any idea what 2012 is looking like! Alot can happen between now and then. The economy will be doing much better by then(mathematical certainty). The voter anger will not be there, and now that Brown has promised to stop everything, then sooner or later, the voters will be pissed at the obstructionist Republicans. The voters don't like gridlock, either! Remember, Republicans still have a much lower approval rating than Obama.
The higher the profile of the tea party movement becomes(they are already a big factor in every race), the more they will be exposed as extreme nuts whose only issue is they hate Obama. That is all it is, period. Listen to these people when they are interviewed! Not a one of them can form a coherent sentence on any issue, all they can do is repeat talking points, hold up "socialism" signs, hope for Obama the "nazi" to fail and make claims that have already been proven wrong about his birth certificate. What a pathetic group of people! They don't hate deficits and spending, otherwise, they would have been formed when Reagan got elected, and peaked when Bush and Republicans spent us to a $1.3 trillion deficit.
A Palin/Brown ticket in 2012??!! Aren't you jumping the gun a little? The guy just got elected a Senator, and you are saying he is going to wind up on a GOP ticket with Sarah Palin and win in a landslide? This guy has not even arrived in Washington yet, and he did not care to explain any details of his platform, even on his signature issue, health care. All he promised was to join the "no" crowd, which does not exactly set him apart from other Republicans. The Republican party would be committing suicide by putting Palin and Brown together, neither of whom know the issues.
Mark my words: There is absolutely no way Sarah Palin or Scott Brown will, individually or together, win the White House in 2012. You may think the tea party movement is strong/represents a majority of Americans, but it is not nearly strong enough to get Sarah Palin to the top of the GOP ticket. This woman literally has no idea what she is talking about, has proven herself to be a complete nutjob who does not know the issues. No one in moderate, independent America is going to vote for this imbecile who does not even know who her own kid is fighting in Iraq, has no idea where major countries are, was exposed as a corrupt governor, tells kids to just say no to sex but ignores her own daughter, denies global warming, resigns as Governor and becomes a Fox News Commentator. The woman is flat out dangerous, and many Republicans and independents(the people who vote in GOP primaries) view her as a liability. Notice she went nowhere near the Scott Brown race! The only time you will ever hear of her again is in the tabloids.
Yes, on the surface, the tea party movement appears populist, anti big business, but these are the first people who would vote in lock step with the health industry lobby to kill the bill. Many big business lobbyists have actually financed these tea party movements! Republicans are very good at fake populism, remember Bush dressing up his high paid staffers to appear "as real working types" to defend his tax cuts?
You are right in claiming that Reagan was dismissed when he ran as the right wing populist against the Republican establishment. I did not like Reagan, thought he was just an actor talking a good game, was a front for big business(the 1981 tax bill mostly opened loopholes), and made deficit spending fashionable. That being said, I don't think you could ever make a case that Palin is in any way similar to Reagan! Reagan at least had somewhat of an idea on the issues and could talk about them when asked. She has no clue and no interest in getting one. He was also ultimately a pragmatist, working with Democrats and Republicans on Social Security, the 86 tax reform bill, Soviet negotiations, etc. Palin shows no appetite for doing anything but lie about the other side with "socialism" and "killing her baby with down syndrome" b.s. In other words, I disagreed with Reagan, but he possessed a modicum of intelligence, knowledge of the issues, common sense and class, none of which Sarah Palin has showed an ounce of.
Reagan in 1976 was a GOP primary against an incumbent President. Ford had the Republican money and establishment behind him, as all wanted to avoid a bruising primary. The country was moderate, country club Republicans were prevalent and even alot of Conservatives had no interest in taking a gamble on Reagan that year! Many business oriented Republicans saw Reagan's economic plan as reckless and unworkable. Reagan had no intention of winning, just raising his profile and the profile of the right wing of the GOP. He viewed the defeat as vital to his 1980 strategy, or so he said in later interviews. Reagan came out of that known to and liked by many more Americans!
Palin is a completely different story. She was picked as a VP in an open election and was one of the biggest reasons the ticket lost and was viewed as a complete joke. Her impact has already been tested in a GOP-Dem one on one match up and its an overwhelming negative! Unlike Reagan in 1976, Palin became known to America and quickly proved herself to be incompetent and dangerous beyond words(Reagan waited until he was in office to prove this!). 2010 Palin=damaged goods, 1978 Reagan=rising GOP superstar!
Long story short: Every factual development so far points against your assertion that the purging of the moderates will somehow lead to electoral success for Republicans. They admit it themselves, otherwise you would not have David Frums speaking out nor would you have Scott Brown running as a moderate. Their only hope is to try and paint Obama as far left and the tea party as the center, but that act will get exposed for what is in a more rational climate than today. Put another way, that tea bag will dry up and blow away! The Republicans will then have 2 options, just like I said originally: 1.)lose or 2.)Go to the center.
