Yep. You can’t get more honest than that. American Conservative Union chairman Al Cardenas, by all accounts a very nice person, told reporters at the CPAC conference his vision of today’s Republican Party tent.
Essentially a pup tent.
Some could argue it wouldn’t fit New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, but Cardenas made it clear that a)Christie shouldn’t be invited all the way in because he doesn’t fit in due to flunking a litmus test and b)real Republicans are those who don’t let just ANYONE in the party. Why, to get into the party’s tent, aspiring entrants must be real conservatives (which would let out many of the centrist, center right and center left readers of TMV and by today’s definition Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush,and, most assuredly Teddy Roosevelt):
American Conservative Union chairman Al Cardenas spoke briefly with reporters ahead of the beginning of the CPAC conference — explaining why he didn’t invite New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and insisting that the GOP is “not a home for everybody.”
As the conference opens, the GOP’s identity crisis — expand the tent, or try to convince more people to crowd under what’s already built — is on sharp display.
“I’m a firm believer that if the Republican Party’s going to have success, it’s going to do so by being a conservative party and not a home for ah, for everybody,” Cardenas said.
You can’t get ANY MORE clear than that, can you?
“And that’s how you grow. I mean, look, you grow your tent by convincing others, and persuading others, that yours is the way, and you build your tent by reaching out to the new demographics of America not with a watered down version of who we ought to be but with a true, real, solid version of who we are.”
In other words, you grow the tent by keeping others out who might be interested in getting in.
And then, if they qualify — only if they qualify — and if they are truly deserving, then you call off that big, mean bouncer (I think his name is Rush Limbaugh) to let them in.
And Christie? Don’t make Cardenas LOL:
“This year, for better or for worse, we felt like, ah, like he didn’t deserve to be on the all-star selection, ah, and, for decisions that he made.
Yes. He’d only deserve being there, I assume, when he loses that crappy 74 percent approval rating in his state.
How can he be a real conservative with numbers like that?
Being a true conservative means you have to have poll numbers sort of like a golfer.
The lower the numbers are, the more authentic you are.
In fact, this makes Florida’s Gov. Rick Scott the most authentic conservative in the country.
So Christie needs to get working to lower those numbers.
And then, and only then, there’s hope for him:
“And so hopefully next year he’s back on the right track and being a conservative,” Cardenas said. “He’s a popular figure, but everyone needs to live by the parameters of the movement.”
Popularlity, shmopulatiry.
And until he realizes that pleasing a broad spectrum of your constituency so they vote for you and perhaps look favorably on your party isn’t what it’s all about, Christie can sit at home in his fleece jacket and listen to Bruce Springsteen CDs.
I mean, this was OH, SO 20th CENTURY:
Tent images from shutterstock.com
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.