Even the GOP itself now realizes that it is a regional rather than a national political party:
Let's let the gloating subside and talk about the future. This certainly doesn't mean that everything the Democratic leadership wants will sail through and, in fact, may even embolden the "Blue Dog" Dems like Nebraska's Ben Nelson, Joe Lieberman (I-Dem), Evan Bayh of Indiana and others. However, this victory must also be chalked up to Obama's huge turning of the tide in this past Presidential election, hence a call from the Prez to Specter should help grease the wheels. I expect he'll use it rarely and with great care, and let's not forget the more conservative aspects of the President's own leanings. He's progressive and arguably "liberal", but he's proven himself more pragmatic than ideological.
Which brings us to the real problem with today's Republican Party: it has shown no recent ability to govern on a national level. It's policies have proven disastrous and its management capabilities have proven inept, i.e. in response to actual disasters, even those not of their own creation.
One of the diminishing GOP "moderates" in the Senate, Maine's Olympia Snowe, lays out what is on the face of it an appealing bare bones ideology for that party in response to the loss of Specter and increased GOP purity wars:
It is for this reason that we should heed the words of President Ronald Reagan, who urged, “We should emphasize the things that unite us and make these the only ‘litmus test’ of what constitutes a Republican: our belief in restraining government spending, pro-growth policies, tax reduction, sound national defense, and maximum individual liberty.” He continued, “As to the other issues that draw on the deep springs of morality and emotion, let us decide that we can disagree among ourselves as Republicans and tolerate the disagreement.”In practice, this will become the thinking of an arm of the Big Tent Democratic Party, which will require a strong, charismatic, focused and popular leader to keep herded; so as it was with Reagan it is with Obama.
As for the Republicans, it will take a generation of breeding out for them to return, accompanied by some eventual corruption within the Democratic Party (power tends to do this to any organization over time), and eventually there will be smart leaders running on the GOP side just because the Dem side has locked them out for the wrong reasons. Witness Mayor Bloomberg, who switch to GOP because he knew the NYC Dems would never give him the nomination. Witness Arlen Specter in 1966, who switched from Dem to Rep because he wouldn't have won the nom in Pennsylvania against a corrupt machine.
There is one other possibility. There's still the chance that, once the last of the GOP "moderates" bites the dust the party will fracture further. What do social conservatives, fiscal conservatives, Libertarians and hawks have in common?
Enough for another charismatic leader to emerge and unite them again?
1 comment:
Arlen of SPECTRE's defection is kinda like kissing your sister. I would've rather seen him run, lose, cost the Repubs a ton of $, and have that seat picked up by an actual progressive Dem. He's proven time and again that he is perhaps the most full of shit man in America -- always ready to talk the moderate talk and then vote with the maniac RWers. Nonetheless, the crying and wailing of Repubs today makes this all somewhat more tolerable.
I think the real losers today are Evan Bayh and his troupe of grandstanding corporatist DINOs. When the Dems were certain to lose cloture votes I don't think anyone really cared how these poseurs voted but now, when their self-serving posturing becomes the reason for losing such votes, I think a bright harsh light will be shined on them, and none too comfortably.
We'll see.
As for the Repub party having any future viability in attracting sane and educated voters, I would point out that Repubs senators are currently trying to capsize Dawn Johnsen's nomination to the position of the President's chief legal council.
Why?
Because she's in favor of abortion (ie, something that's legal) and against torture (ie, something that's illegal).
Read that last sentence again.
Maybe it's time for the Repubs to just go all the way and nominate Professor Backwards for President.
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