"The Republican battle between mathematicians and priests"

The Republican battle between mathematicians and priests

by Chris Cillizza at the Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2013/10/22/the-republican-battle-between-mathematicians-and-priests/

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FIX: You recently tweeted out that the fight within the Republican party right now is between “mathematicians and priests”. Explain.

Mike Murphy: There seem to be two schools of thought in GOP. One group, the mathematicians, look at the GOP’s losing streak and the changing demography of the country and say the party needs to make real changes to attract voters beyond the old Republican base of white guys. Not just mechanics, but also policy. They want to modernize conservatism and change some of the old dogma on big issues like same sex marriage. I’m one of them. The other group, the Priests, say the problem is we don’t have enough ideological purity. We must have faith, be pure and nominate “real conservatives” (whatever that means; the Priests are a bit slippery about their definitions) who will fight without compromise against liberalism. The Priests are mostly focused on the sins we are against; they say our problem is a lack of intensity; if we are passionate and loud enough, we will alert and win over the rest of the country. The Mathematicians hear all this and think the Priests are totally in an 55 year old white guy echo chamber of their own creation and disconnected from the reality of today’s electorate. They are worry more about what the party should be for, and how we grow our numbers. They think the Priests fail to understand it is not 1980 anymore and votes are not there for the Old Pitch. The Priests hear the Mathematicians and think they are all sell-outs.

FIX: How does the fight between the mathematicians and the priests resolve itself? And when?

Mike: It’ll go on forever. Since the Priests’ dogma is about faith, they explain any loss or debacle the same way; we were not pure enough. Take for example the ridiculous House shutdown strategy; many of those voices say the failure was the Senate didn’t go as berserk as the House. The bottom line is that if the Priests dictate the tactics of the party, we will keep losing Presidential elections. The fight will be at the center of the 2016 nomination fight. The Priests will battle for a “real conservative” like the post-[Hubert H. Humphrey] Democrats battled in ’72 for a real Democrat. They got McGovern. We could get Ted Cruz. The Mathematicians will want a modernizer who can appeal beyond the base, like Clinton and DLC did in ’92. Who that GOPer is not yet known. Casting is now open…




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