Cross-posted at Unified Patriots

In 1884, members of the Republican party’s independent wing rejected their party’s presidential candidate, James G. Blaine, to support the Democratic party nominee, Grover Cleveland. Republican loyalists called the insurgents “Mugwumps,” an Algonquian word for “great man,” used in this context to deride the bolters’ claim to moral superiority. Most Mugwumps were college-educated business and professional men from New York or New England. During the 1884 campaign, they were often portrayed as “fence-sitters,” with part of their body on the side of the Democrats and the other on the side of the Republicans. (Their “mug” on one side of the fence, and their “wump” [comic mispronunciation of “rump”] on the other.)

Flash forward to 2012, and ask yourself if the same mindset is not still in place. Look at the list of early Mitt Romney supporters, and tell me you don’t see a big collection of Mugwumps. For the most part, these are the ones who had fear and loathing about the spontaneous Tea Party development. They don’t like the local GOP filling in the vacant PC slots and working toward the elimination of the reforms that have weakened the local GOP political machine. They have no problem with tearing apart a Republican opponent, but they themselves prefer to speak in lukewarm mushy sound bites responding to questions regarding what they’re going to do about an issue.

Here are some pearls of wisdom from Rush on this subject:

Why does the Republican establishment want back in power? Everybody in Washington wants to be in charge of the money. Everybody wants to run the committees and be the chairman. Everybody wants to be in charge of the budget. Everybody wants to have power over it. Do not discount, ever, the money. Folks, another thing not to fall for: Do not think that however wealthy somebody is, they run around thinking they have enough, because nobody ever thinks they have enough. They don’t think that we are at a point of peril. The idea that the national debt is now greater than the economy? No big deal.

They’ve been hearing all their lives how the national debt’s too high, the national debt’s gonna cripple the country, but it never has. While they are hearing all of this horrible stuff about the debt, the deficits, all the tax rates, they look around and they see people doing just fine. They’re living high on the hog, and the national debt’s not hurting anybody.

I’ll tell you what really woke me up to this (and nobody is more cynical than I am when it comes to Congress, including Will Rogers). I don’t know about you, but when I learned along with the rest of you, when I learned that Congress made it legal for themselves to use insider trading, that’s all I needed to know. When they specifically exempted themselves by statute from the insider trading laws — when Congress passed a law saying, “We can use insider trading,” they have a totally different perception of themselves than we do. When it comes to morality, when it comes to ethics, when it comes to why they’re there. When I heard that? You know, you live and learn. Lights still go off, red flags still get raised, but that told me a lot.

Let me explain at the outset what is happening here within the sacred hollows of the establishment, the ruling class. Their objective, since this campaign began, was to make sure a conservative nominee did not get the Republican nomination. That has been the number one objective of the Republican establishment inside the Beltway, the whole Northeastern corridor, to make sure — not to beat Obama, not come up with somebody that can beat Obama despite all this electability talk. The main objective of the establishment has been to see to it that once again a conservative does not get the nomination.

It is one thing to predict who will win the GOP nomination, and it is quite a different thing to make an endorsement. If Mitt Romney is the nominee spare me the “I told you so.” I will never endorse Mitt Romney nor most of his early endorsers. I will just shrug. This mindset reminds me of a Bible passage.

Rev. 3:15-16.

I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.