What is to Become of the GOP?

reply to post by justsomeboreddude

I said this during the campaign and I will say it again... the powers that be in this nation would have never let Barack Obama get past the primaries, much less win the nomination, much less win the election if they thought that he was a threat to their interests.

Trust me... I am far left of Obama and he is a left leaning moderate but that is all...

The powers that be will never let anyone... be them to the left or to the right... who is a legitimate threat to their interests get elected to the presidency.


[edit on 30-4-2009 by grover]

Originally posted by justsomeboreddude

If I were the GOP I would back off of some of the evangelical views a bit, but other than that I would stay the course and wait for every body to catch on to the idea that they are being conned and they are giving up their freedoms for a free handout which definitely wont be free.
a free lunch. There never has been, there never will be.

Back off the evangelical views? That's all the GOP needs is to alienate the only loyal base they have left.

www.politico.com...

Is there any further question that the GOP is in the process of rendering itself into something of a dinosaur and an obsolete one at that?

Faced with a high-profile defection and the prospect of political irrelevance in the Senate, Republicans took off the gloves Wednesday for a ferocious game of finger-pointing.

Republican Sens. Orrin Hatch and George Voinovich blamed the Club for Growth for imposing a right-wing litmus test that chased Arlen Specter out of the Republican Party. The Club for Growth blamed Specter — first for helping to ruin the GOP and then for leaving it. A leading Republican strategist blamed the party for turning its back on moderates. Sen. Lindsey Graham sniped at Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele. Specter’s pollster blamed the stimulus bill. Karl Rove blamed Specter himself.

And the National Republican Senatorial Committee set about trying to taint Specter among Pennsylvania Democrats by reminding them that he was once aligned with Republican President George W. Bush.

In the nasty game of Who Lost Specter, only Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell seemed to go unscathed — although his pain will come as he tries to lead a caucus that is likely to be too small to stand in the way of anything the Democrats want to do.

www.politico.com...

Yeah the Democrats indulged in the blame game after 2000 and 04 but nothing like this... this is going to get a lot uglier and hinder their ability to win anything.

Originally posted by grover
what is to become of the GOP and will it fall or return to some form of relevance?

I have a dream ... in my dream the GOP and the Democratic Party will both be seen for what they are .. and Americans will wake up and vote them all out.

That's what I hope becomes of the GOP AND the Dems.

As for reality .. both the GOP and the Democratic party will probably continue to flip flop in a power struggle. I see no reason why this won't continue. The dems hold power for a while. Then the republicans. Then the dems again. There is no reason to believe this will change anytime soon.

Originally posted by grover

Originally posted by Uphill
Once the extreme right wingers go to the wall and fail, then and only then will the GOP have a chance to redefine itself. And I think that they will more successfully redefine themselves. We sure could use a political party that would accept a politician like Abraham Lincoln once again.

An excellent post and a star for you.

The GOP should no more defined by its right wing branches than the Democrats should by their most left wing ones... both are the poles and polarizing and most people fall somewhere in the middle.

I do not consider myself a Democrat... I have said that I have no faith in the Democrats but I have less faith in the Republicans... however I am an unabashed liberal.

Like most people while I lean towards one party over the other, in my case Democratic, I have voted Republican, especially on the local level and will probably do so again...

If the right wing continues its stranglehold on the GOP we will see it either fracture or fade away like the Whigs, Know Nothing party and other once powerful parties.

[edit on 29-4-2009 by grover]

Both very accurate observations. They (the very vocal and ignorant face of the Republican party), doesn’t get it. The “average” republican is a sane, reasonable person, that I believe just wants to be left alone by the Gov’t and not taxed into poverty. That is something that EVERY reasonable American wants. However they are NOT represented by what is left of the GOP. Their refusal to confront the extremely intrusive beliefs of their religious core has led them down the path to blind extremism and ignorance. Fiscal conservatism only applies to social programs. As can be seen quite clearly by the last 8 years, money is no object.
Afghanistan was an extreme response to extreme conditions but Iraq is a questionable project. Yet that is where all the focus has been.
I have always said they are both (Dems and Pubs) tax and spend. It’s just a matter of who they tax and what they spend it on. Personally I’d rather see it spent at home. And though they speak to the common sense of the people, they pander to the richest 5%. And while they try and hide behind the shield of alleged morality, it is nothing more than the intrusion of religious extremism into everyone’s personal rights. Yes, you are free to believe whatever you want, as long as it’s the same as them.
The republican party has disgraced itself and deserves to go down in flames.
Anybody who believes in true conservatism should consider another party like Libertarians (though I still have a few issues with them). I vote Lib on locals when I can just to help keep their numbers up, and I will occasionally vote for a Pub (rarely) but when it comes to presidential I am almost always voting AGAINST a Republican rather than for a Democrat. I am not a Dem. I am a little bit of all 3. That IS America.
The right is always screaming about the liberal news media but what they don’t get is that the news is just exposing their ignorance to the light.
You’re right. They don’t get it. Just like they don’t get Stephen Colbert.

Look at it this way... bush minor got selected... and spent a good portion of his first months in office deliberately undoing a lot of Clinton era laws, executive rulings etc.

Next Barack Obama gets elected and proceeds to undo bush minor era laws, executive rulings etc.

Then in 4 or 8 years down the road another guy comes along and (assuming they are still a viable party) is Republican and proceeds to do the same.

What good does any of this do the nation? The answer can be summed up in one word:

NONE!!!

IF both parties take the extreme polar opposite stances on the issues and then waste a lot of their political capital undoing each others work upon getting elected all it does is to serve their bases, serve the party instead of the nation and in doing so weakens the fabric of the nation itself until you reach what we have found ourselves in for the most part of the past two decades... gridlock.

And in the long run this serves no one; not the parties nor the nation, but instead serves only those who benefit from the lack of action.

So much faces us as a nation... if not immediately (and there is plenty now) but within the next 20 years (the environment, global warming, social security/medicare etc.) that unless we put this hysterical bickering aside...

just based on the projections regarding social security and medicare alone...

Put simply, the nation itself is doomed...

It will not be able to sustain itself... and we all suffer.

BTW I would argue that with bush minor the hard right of the GOP was tried and found wanting already which is why they are in the mess that they are in.

With the election of Barack Obama the voting public soundly repudiated their ideology and policies... and regardless of the fact that many conservatives did not consider McCain conservative... the voters did not make that distinction and the choice of the far more right wing Palin as his running mate ultimately scared off more than it attracted.

Also I still maintain that if McCain had run with the grace he conceded with as opposed to constantly sounding like a shrill, hysterical old man... he could have beaten Obama.

[edit on 30-4-2009 by grover]

The GOP seems hell bent on devouring itself from the inside... I am almost embarrassed for them every time I read the news about their infighting... when the Democrats did their soul searching it was far more private.

This morning I watched C-SPAN for awhile, and one of the people being interviewed recommended a political blog:

www.politicalwire.com...

So I checked it out a few hours ago. It does look good, and at the bottom of its "page" there are endorsements from conservatives as well as liberals.

But they have updated the story on Arlen Spector losing his Senate Committee assignments that had been promised to him by Harry Reid. I don't like the current updated mini-story as well, unfortunately. The whole version is that Senator Reid had personally promised that Senator Spector would receive senior Democratic slots on Senate committees commensurate with Spector's previous committee positions on the Republican side. Then, however, after announcing his switch to the Democratic party, a reporter asked Senator Spector whose side Spector is on in the Senate seat battle in Minnesota, and as Spector later admitted, "I quipped that I'd like for Norm Coleman to win." That of course went down like a lead balloon with the Democratic caucus, which resulted in the caucus decision to leave Spector's seniority at the bottom of the heap through 2009. (Sounds like the Democratic caucus will be willing to revisit the question of Spector's seniority in January 2010.) As Senator Spector finally put it, "I can't complain about my committee reassignment because actualy I did it to myself."

reply to post by grover


Maybe the GOP will become the GNP.
Grand New Party!
Sean Hannity for VP
Sarah Palin for President!
We will be retaking the House and Senate in 2010.
Pelosi must go.

I think it is now possible for a third party to gain power, and I hope it happens.

And if the GOP dissappears, I say good riddence. Especially if the posters on this board are any indication.

I think it is now possible for a third party to gain power, and I hope it happens.

And if the GOP dissappears, I say good riddence. Especially if the posters on this board are any indication.