The GOP Elite Puts Its Foot Down - Bill Scher - POLITICO Magazine

Shots have been fired. The GOP herd is beginning to be culled. In less than a week, the establishment hounded Mitt Romney out, and the conservative movement wrote Sarah Palin out. The message from Republican insiders is clear: We cannot let our primary become another clown show.

Meanwhile, the nascent Hillary Clinton campaign has signaled it wants to push back its planned entry from the spring to the summer. “If you have the luxury of time, you take it,” one Democratic insider told POLITICO. But these Republican moves indicate that she may not have that luxury. Here’s why.

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Priebus’ recent declaration that candidates will have to perform above a certain threshold in polls to warrant inclusion in debates, a threshold that will get stiffer later in the campaign, suggests he is aware that he needs to get as many fringe characters off the stage as possible. But he can’t be confident that the poll respondents will oblige and elevate only mature candidates above the bar.

However, if Republican insiders have the wherewithal to contain the support and attention given to their circus acts, then that could greatly aid Priebus’ project. The twin falls of Romney and Palin last week are solid evidence that the party wants to shape up and jettison any distractions. That’s a warning for Democrats to stop laughing at the prospect of another GOP clown show a la 2012 and start preparing to grapple with a more serious opposition._

What is glossed over, "Not only did conservative opinion leaders widely pan Palin’s ramblings, extinguishing whatever fire she may have had for a run, but they also saved the bulk of their praise for Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker—a governor with a record, not a grenade-throwing pundit or a grandstanding senator. Even Rush Limbaugh was effusive: “Scott Walker wowed them in Iowa. … Scott Walker has shown the Republican Party how to beat the left. Scott Walker has the blueprint for winning and winning consistently and winning big in a blue state with conservative principles that are offered with absolutely no excuses.”

Walker's apparent and sudden rise to prominence,

[H]e is completely and absolutely their servant,,, [h]e owes everything to the Koch brothers, and cannot even step a toe out of line, or else he will lose everything he has. A political slave to big money. He lacks independent wealth, a stock portfolio to fall back on, or even a military career to monetize for support. This means, to the Koch Brothers at least, that he cannot go off-script, and will be their absolute servant.

He is their ideal candidate, so it should be no surprise. Now they will be funneling their billions behind Governor Walker, without restriction, thanks to Citizens United. He will have the entire Koch Brother umbrella of think tanks, blogs, and media outlets all supporting him. And support them they have, with all major right wing outlets now calling him a ‘grassroots favorite.’ The joke of governors now is being pushed center stage and celebrated as some kind of conservative hero. Just last week it was reported that Walker was not a candidate at all.

In the wake of the appointment, Walker has now formed a committee, something his opponents did months ago. This out-of-left-field support for Walker is likely the death knell for the presidential hopes of dozens of Republicans. Without Koch money, they simply can no longer compete against the Democratic grassroots financing of campaigns.

So who holds the "real" power within the GOP/T?

The GOP Elite Puts Its Foot Down - Bill Scher - POLITICO Magazine