Sen. Jon Kyl dishes on the AZ GOP, Ron Paul Revolution

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

An interesting report in The Hill today. Sen. Jon Kyl says Ron Paul supporters have taken over the Arizona Republican Party and totally effed it up. Republican leaders are worried about divided state party organizations:

Two Republican leaders are worried about the condition their state party structures are in, a concern mirrored in a number of key battlegrounds nationwide.

"I wish I could tell you we were doing well right now — we're not. Ron Paul has totally taken our [state] party over," Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) told an activist from his state.

"His folks have taken over half of our party, as a result of which we are split down the middle, totally ineffective, screwed up," chimed in former Rep. Vin Weber (R-Minn.), a foreign policy adviser to Mitt Romney's presidential campaign who remains active in Minnesota state politics. "We are almost better off that they totally took over our party because most of us now are not worried about the party, we've got two or three independent expenditure efforts going by business leaders and we were split down the middle and had constant civil war within the party nobody would be doing the basic get-out-the-vote. Instead it's being done by outsiders."

Those aren't top targets at the presidential level — but Arizona has a competitive Senate race and three tough House races, and Minnesota has a toss-up House race as well.

* * *

Kyl warned that in his experience, independent expenditure efforts aren't as effective as a united party.

"That's what we've done [in Arizona] the last six years," he said. "That's what's happened to us because the Arizona Republican Party has been divided — there have been different efforts by different groups. And it's never as effective as if you're united."

So the Republican Party is now Karl Rove's American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, funded by a handful of billionaire oil men. Just so we're clear. Welcome to plutocracy.

Comments

[Mitch Martinson]

Thanks for quoting much of the original article, ABM... and for your posting.

Kyl has now denied having made the "total" takeover remark, and The Hill has now retracted and apologized for getting Kyl's and Weber's quotes mixed up.

Instead, Kyl is only saying that "half" of the AZ GOP was taken over (I guess 50-plus-one may have been enough for a "total" takeover). His quote about the six years of IE's IS accurate.

I tried to sort through this and straighten it out over at www.bit.ly/AZp295