Excuse the indirect link, National Review seems to be down at the moment.
National Review, via Democratic Underground:
Former Mississippi governor Haley Barbour, one of the most influential players in the Republican party, is privately battling the Club for Growth.
Last week, at a closed-door retreat in northern Virginia, Barbour told a large gathering of congressional staffers, including several leadership aides, that party officials should discourage donors from funding the high-profile conservative group.
Insiders say Barbour’s comments came during a question-and-answer session at the Ripon Society’s annual symposium, which was held at Mount Vernon, the home of former president George Washington.
Sources say Barbour was asked about the group’s growing influence, and then he urged the aides and strategists to fight back. Many in the audience applauded Barbour for his remarks, according to two sources in the room.
That would be the same Grover Norquist who had previously so terrified the entire GOP with an idiotic pledge never to raise taxes that they spoke his name only in whispers, lest he appear and drag them down to hell or something. Now, he’s a scapegoat.
One of the really entertaining aspects of the GOP civil war is watching each of the factions (and there are many) blame the others for their problems. They’re all pointing fingers at everyone else and they’re all right. The anti-immigrant kooks can blame the anti-choice rape theorists. But the anti-choice rape theorists can just as easily blame the anti-immigration kooks. Barbour, an old-style southern strategy type, can legitimately blame economic flatearthers and like Norquist. But Norquist could just as legitimately claim that people who chase only the white voter — like Barbour — are a fatal flaw in the Republican Party.
In short, they’re all right that those other frootloops scare off voters, but they fail to see that they’re frootloops themselves. It’s a battle for the soul of the party and, no matter who wins, the GOP as a whole will lose.
