Peter Wehner: ‘Conservatives in name only’

By Lynn R. Mitchell

An op-ed in the New York Times scratches its head at the battle within the Republican Party. Peter Wehner,  a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center who served in the last three Republican administrations, questions in his piece those Republican representatives who turned on House Speaker John Boehner after his clear-cut leadership led the party to a victory unseen since the 1920s (see Conservatives In Name Only):

Last week the Republican Party’s divisions were on display, when Speaker of the House John A. Boehner — who helped his party gain its largest majority since the Truman administration — faced an uprising. The revolt was led by conservatives against a man whose voting record is unquestionably conservative. It was another indication that the tension on the right these days is not about policy or ideology but tone and temperament.

Think about that. The largest Republican majority in the House of Representatives since the Great Depression. He continues:

WSJ: ‘Eric Cantor, Tea-Party Posturing, and the GOP’

By Lynn R. Mitchell

Dave Brat, challenging U.S. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, has criticized the Congressman for allowing an increase in the debt ceiling and voting for a budget that didn’t defund Obamacare even though the House has repeatedly tried to repeal it.

Peter Wehner, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and who served in the last three Republican administrations, responded to Brat’s criticisms of Cantor in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal with Eric Cantor, Tea-Party Posturing, and the GOP:

Eric Cantor is a conservative by any reasonable standard. But that’s not enough. Some on the right insist that conservatives also be aggressively stupid; that they embrace tactics that might make them and their cause more unpopular. In politics, there have always been people who thrive on relentless confrontations, who want to go over the cliff with all flags flying, and who seem oddly enamored with the auto-da-fe. Such people can be amusing in small doses, but in large doses they can harm a party and a movement. [emphasis added]