to fix the image and he s angered a lot of republicans, especially far right conservatives by talking about his plans to go against the most extreme in the primary. mark levin, the talk show host, says conservatives are being stabbed in the back. erick erickson, the editor of redstate.com says the efforts will, quote, crush conservatives, destroy the tea party, and put a bunch of squishes in republican leadership positions. what s your response to that? i tend to think that s kind of alarmism. we haven t really proposed any policy changes or anything like that, at least from the crossroads group. whenever you come about this type of thing, you have to look at it in terms of policy. you have to look at it in terms of style and the rhetoric you re using. and then for a lot of communities, if you re trying to go after the african-american vote, the hispanic vote, or the asian vote, you have to be willing to show up and you have to be willing to do that consistently. there are three legs
package. i would hold my nose. what i m saying is i don t think there s a republican alive who can stop what s going to happen. we don t have the leverage, the power isn t there. talk about a decisive move. we got him in the realist category, it s a strange brew. then the ideologues. i thought rush was always there. but not this time. they say avoid tax increases at all costs. here is kentucky senator rand paul. let s listen. i think the president s got it exactly backwards. he s adamant about raising taxes, and he s dead wrong. what do you think of mr. boehner s idea, cap deductions and get $800 billion in revenues. does that make any sense? it s a tax increase. it s a bad idea. what kind of question was that to ask him? conservative blogger and editor of redstate.com erick erickson, he wrote a piece entitled why john boehner must not fold on tax rate increases. it s a shame that republicans are playing into mr. obama s
people. people what do you think about the question whether the people will we still see birthers, still see people in the congress saying this guy is not president? yeah, you know what? we have talked a lot about this. i think unfortunately, look, obviously the intellectuals in the republican party can parse it, and they accept it. the people like steve schmidt, the operatives who do it for a living, totally get it and really understand the party s problems. but i ve been scouring week le standard, redstate.com and looking it comments, the base reaction, and i do sense that they re not going to get on board. they are not going to accept this man is president. they re still out there with conspiracy theories, the new black panthers stole the election. i m still hearing that. the elected republicans, they don t respond to the intellectuals and the operatives. they respond to the same base.
but i ve been scouring week le standard, redstate.com and looking it comments, the base reaction, and i do sense that they re not going to get on board. they are not going to accept this man is president. they re still out there with conspiracy theories, the new black panthers stole the election. i m still hearing that. the elected republicans, they don t respond to the intellectuals and the operatives. they respond to the same base. they are hermetically sealed. where talk radio and fox news is telling them this is not legitimate, he is not legitimate. i fear that they are still going to hold sway over a lot of house republicans. that is so smart. i get that from other directions, too. john nichols, that impenetrable rejection front that you hear on the radio, you heard it from rush limbaugh, it could penetrate throughout most of the house republican caucus, talk about it. well, i think it s real, and i think we have to understand the republican party is divided between hacks an
they re going to tell you, it s not getting better. it s getting worse. and we re probably going to fall off a cliff. i was talking to a guy yesterday who is one of the top people on wall street. he said, i m scared to death. one of two things are going to happen. we re going to be japan for a decade, or we re going to fall off a cliff and we re going to be california. in 1992, everyone remembers the little rock war room had a sign in it that said it s the economy, stupid. but the sign said two other things. it said, it s the economy, stupid. change versus more of the same. and don t forget health care. and those are pretty much the same things mitt romney could run on if he had the discipline to run on those three things and not on media bashing and all the other things that they ve become distracted by. so he s frustrating the very people he might want to get the support of. conservative blogger eric erickson from redstate.com wrote this. there is time for mitt romney to clo