Republican monsters duke it out: The coming “Plutocrats vs. Tea Party” cage match

[DonViejo]

Suddenly, suburban GOP donors are coming to a realization: Their party's base is the heartland. Where've they been?

HEATHER DIGBY PARTON

Stop the presses! Breaking news! The Republican Party is no longer the party of Nelson Rockefeller. This is a shocker, I know — if you’ve been asleep for the past 25 or 30 years. But according to the National Journal this comes as a surprise to many of the rich Republicans who are entering the electoral fray.

It took David Perdue about 20 seconds of speechifying to expose a tension roiling the Republican Party. Speaking in January, the former business executive turned Georgia candidate for U.S. Senate asked a group of local Republicans to parse the resumes of his primary foes.

“There’s a high school graduate in this race, OK?” said Perdue, referring to his opponent, former Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel. “I’m sorry, these issues are so much broader, so complex. There’s only one candidate in this race who’s ever lived outside the United States. How can you bring value to a debate about the economy unless you have any understanding about the free-enterprise system and what it takes to compete in the global economy?”

The two-pronged swipe elicited cries of condescension and elitism that eventually forced Perdue to apologize. And it revealed a vital reality about the state of the Republican Party as its members prepare to select a standard-bearer for the 2016 presidential primary: The GOP has long ago shed its stereotype of being the party catering to the wealthy.

Huh. So the past few decades of ostentatious pork rind munching and horseshoe throwing and brush clearing and deer shooting weren’t expressions of this “vital reality”? This is new to them? If this is so, they’re very slow learners.

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http://www.salon.com/2014/04/24/republican_monsters_duke_it_out_the_coming_plutocrats_vs_tea_party_cage_match/

[DetlefK]

1. "Breaking News: Steady stream of repub propaganda affects repub voters!"

[nxylas]

2. Cliven Bundy 2016!

Followed by lots of sulking about how he lost because he wasn't a real conservative.

[kairos12]

3. Cage match between some guy from Hee Haw

and the monocle dude from Monopoly.