In the midst of an otherwise satisfying defenestration of the con-cons surrounding CPAC, Reason’s Nick Gillespie declares:
I’m no triumphalist but everything in the past 40 years suggests that the old-style left-wing command and control models have been thoroughly vanquished in theory if not practice…
Except, it occurs to me, for the rather large arena of Republican Party politics. There the top-down forces are arraying themselves to control the 2012 election cycle and the lucrative presidential field. Karl Rove is out in the wild — headed for Charlotte no less — as part of his local “party building” tour. The party leaders cheer Rove’s willingness to speak without a fee and any FOX News “contributor” absolutely ranks as a get for your basic GOP rubber chicken event.
However. Rove may be speaking for free, but he is surely getting paid. Paid in the goodwill and indebtedness that comes with helping other pols raise money — fundraising being the highest form of good in modern American politics. Rove is slowly turning the Republican Party into the Rovian Party. His 527s have and will suck money out of the political system that would otherwise go to the RNC and GOP candidates — the RNC now having been successfully neutered with the ouster of Michael Steele. Steele was seen as “uncontrollable” by GOP operatives like Rove — just about the lowest form of low in modern American politics. See Palin, Sarah.
By the end of this year it should be clear that if you want to play national politics right-of-center in 2012, Karl Rove will hold the rights of first refusal.
And top-down is alive and well at the state level in North Carolina. Gov. Bev Perdue is called one of the weakest incumbents in the country, has all but lawyered up over swirling campaign scandals, and faces a $2.8b. budget gap she cannot close without doing harm to her public sector allies. Yet we know — stone cold know — that it will be Pat McCrory that the Republicans put up against Bev in 2012 for a rematch of 2008. In fact, I doubt that the GOP even has a primary in the race.
