Is Kicking People Out of the Club Really the Best Way to Rebuild the GOP?
It seems the phrase you’re either with us or against us applies to all things Republican. Actions speak louder than words, and for all Steele’s silly talk about hip hop and bling-bling it’s apparent that the GOP has no intention of widening its base. In fact, it appears they are intent on narrowing it further. If that’s even possible.
Could someone please explain how questioning Charlie Crist’s and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Republican credentials benefits the ever shrinking GOP who has already declared war on the three Senators who voted for the stimulus bill? Seriously, is this really the best way to grow the party? At a time when flexibility and compromise are all the rage why are Republicans giving the boot to politicians effective at winning the middle?
Do they have a political death wish? It appears they do, and if they keep on this path their wish is destined to become true. These knee-jerk reactions, rooted in the never ending ideology of good and evil, is well on its way to elevating the Republican Party to cult status. If they keep this up they’ll soon be vying for space with Hare Krishnas at the airport.
Tags: Republican Crazy
The Republican candidate in 2012 will most likely be a governor who is trumpteting the stimulus-driven success of his state while also claiming he was against the stimulus.
They are trying to receive the benefits of the stimulus while also getting credit from the base for being against it.
They just might pull it off. This is the same party who successfully convinced blue collar Democrats to vote for tax cuts for the rich financed by deficits.
The Republicans are providing a lesson in the impact of empowering your fringe. It creates an extremely loyal base, but not a broad one. In the Republican arena, however, they are not homogeneous, as there are fiscal conservatives, social conservatives, and libertarians, and they are demonstrating no skill at harnessing all three subgroups, let alone reaching out to the middle (to build a coalition).
They feel that being true to their roots, being 100% sincere in this, is the best approach to rebuild their party.
As a liberal, I say GO FOR IT, largely because I feel that it will continue to be spectacularly unsuccessful.
When I say that they are providing us with a lesson, I mean that there is a downside to ruling from the left. For instance, while we may feel good and correct to prosecute Cheney/Rumsfeld, etc, this could lead to the middle deserting us, and the Democratic Party becoming as irrelevant as the GOP is today.
I guess they’re trying to reach The Singularity….or be Hamas?
Now it appears that they are grabbing their own anvils and jumping into the water, all on their own.
I like it.
It reminds me of lemmings, except there are a lot of lemmings, but not that many ….
Syndicated columnist (former Oklahoma Congressman) Mickey Edwards last month at http://delawareonline.com/article/20090130/OPINION16/901300325/-1/archive provides his take on the misguided blinders that the GOP is using these days. His title “Conservatives, wake up: It’s not your Reagan’s GOP anymore.”
Well, in a way, I feel they’re following the Democrats’ playbook on how to win again. The Democratic Party returned to its core (Howard Dean lead the charge) after years of tacking right and triangulating. I guess they feel they are trying to do the same thing. I think their problem is that the Republican Party never was what the base thought it was (small government, fiscal conservative). Reaganism and its progeny was big government conservatism and corporatism. So the Republicans are trying to get to their “true” beliefs. Their problem is that they wrapped their small government ideology around corporatism, which has been a disaster.
Two words: JOE LIEBERMAN
There is no doubt that getting to message clarity was importnat for Dems – but that has never been a problem for the GOP.
What they are doing now is going beyond “branding” clarity to test for ideological purity.
…AND I LOVE IT!
You’re right Jason. They’re no longer concerned with keeping their coalition of corporatists, social conservatives, neoconservatives and libertarian-leaning conservatives together. They’re down to their core of social conservatives now.
Well, the corporatists and authoritarians are pretty good at getting what they want out of Democrats (I’m talking to you, Tom Carper). But the social conservatives are less adaptable . Thus the fracture.
The “framing” exercise that we all went through made us focus on our values again. While I could never discern between “framing” and “branding” the values exercise was at the core of the process for me. It made us think about why we were different from Republicans in more than just sound bites. There is a deep difference in our world views and we had to examine that difference before we could get grounded and come back to win.
Republicans have had so much success with branding and sound bites that they seem to be reluctant to go back to the core of their beliefs. Or, perhaps they have wandered so far off that they can’t. Perhaps corporatism has replaced traditional conservatism, or maybe at its core the party has always been corporatist but the American public only notices when things go completely kablooey like under W and Hover.
They are still very good at framing and branding even as their support is hollowing out. Think of the Santilli rant which was pretty successful at refocusing attention on the bogus scapegoat of deadbeat homeowners, thus distracting from myriad GOP failures. Demagoguery doesn’t really require a broad base to continue operating.
The chicken POT PIE….It’s gonna GETCHA!
The GOP has this entire re-branding thing backwards. Seems to me that an individual picks the party he/she identifies with, not that the party picks who it allows in.
These Republican litmus tests strike me as a fatal flaw. It’s one thing to have a party platform, quite another to demand complete compliance to that platform from its politicians and supporters.
You nailed it, pandora. They’re going about it backwards. They’re trying to brand the small tent.
If the wingnuts in Delaware are happy with a small but lunatic-like Republican Party, then I’m happy.
The GOP reminds me Underpants Gnomes from South Park.
Phase 1: Ideological Purges
Phase 2: ?
Phase 3: Votes!
The partisan in me says “Ha Ha! Throw them an anchor!” The pragmatist in me is concerned because we really want all the people in the government there to govern and help move America forward and hates the idea of a “party of no” for that reason.
We want ditto heads today, all day
Search for dittos heads, today
We won’t stop until we have ditto heads
Yum yum yummy yum yay
Time to go to work, work all day
Search for ditto heads today
We won’t stop until we have one opinion
Yum yum yummy yum yay
Wow, corporatism seems to be the word ‘o the day. I’m certainly no expert, but from the little I’ve read, it looks like corporatism (actually “neo-corporatism” seems like a better word for toady’s world) is the running of an economy through the negotiations between a highly organized labor force, business coalitions, and government. The Bush Administration’s dealings with the car companies certainly stunk of that, and now Obama is doing the same back and forth with business leaders.
And yes, we are battling over the direction of the Republican party. I’m a proud conservative and I’m glad some of these characters are finally standing up for themselves and their almost forgotten principles. A lot of them were wimps and let Bush get away with left-leaning big-government programs. And guys like Spector were more than happy to go along with that stuff. He was never one of us, never anywhere near Reagan, Gingrich, or even Jindal.
And to anon at the top, what if Lousiana does recover without the stimulus hand out? If that happens, I think Jindal emerges as the leader of a party that certainly doesn’t have one now.
Left-leaning? LOL!
If the $$$ goes to the DoD, it’s not really spending!
That deserves a Chris Matthews-like “HA!”.