Live from the Orange-Haired Baboon Cage: Matthew Yglesias: Establishment Republicans mystified by their base should look at Ed Gillespie’s campaign: "Gillespie and his campaign feel that a hysterical racialized scare campaign about gang rape with zero grounding in policy reality will sell better than some kind of tedious seminar about immigration’s impact on wages...
...Grassroots Republicans learned it from watching you: Establishment Republicans mystified by the party’s grassroots activists and rank-and-file members, in short, should consider taking a look at their own campaigns and policy rhetoric. Florida Man ran for president on the theory that tax cuts would generate 4 percent economic growth. Florida Man argued that Barack Obama was deliberately trying to damage the United States. Ed Gillespie claims that sanctuary cities that don’t even exist are responsible for the rise of a violent international criminal organization. The same congressional Republicans who swore for years that growing debt was the biggest threat to the country are lining up behind a budget that will authorize more than $1 trillion in new borrowing to finance tax cuts for the rich.
The difference between these guys and the new crop of kooks — between a respected colleague like Bob Corker and a feared soon-to-be-colleague like Marsha Blackburn — as I understand it, is that the establishment politicians are aware that they are lying...
