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Thomas B. Edsall Gives Voice to Rare Breed: GOP Defectors
http://www.politicususa.com/2014/06/05/thomas-b-edsall-voice-rare-breed-gop-defectors.htmlThomas B. Edsall Gives Voice to Rare Breed: GOP Defectors
By: Becky Sarwate
Thursday, June, 5th, 2014, 8:01 pm
snip//
Every once in a while there’s a beacon of hope outside of the Comedy Central studios. And this week, the light comes courtesy of New York Times contributor and journalism legend, Thomas B. Edsall. Edsall addresses the deficiencies in both media accountability and dissenting Republican voice in a piece this week, entitled “The Republican Case Against Republican Economics.” In it, he writes:
“{T}he conservative coalition, already facing demographic challenges from the rise of minority voters, is likely to lose core white support if it maintains its dominant anti-government ideology.
Once fissures have appeared in the conservative belief system, it will become increasingly difficult to maintain hegemony – or, to mix metaphors, you cannot unscramble a scrambled egg.”
Once fissures have appeared in the conservative belief system, it will become increasingly difficult to maintain hegemony – or, to mix metaphors, you cannot unscramble a scrambled egg.”
By way of proof, Edsall offers a litany of testimony from radical lefties such as James Pethokoukis of the American Enterprise Institute, as well as three former speechwriters for President George W. Bush: Michael Gerson, Peter J. Wehner and David Frum. To Gerson and Wehner, he attributes the following description of modern Republican economic policy: “rhetorical zeal and indiscipline in which virtually every reference to government is negative, disparaging, and denigrating. It is justified by an apocalyptic narrative of American life: We are fast approaching a point of no return at which we stand to lose our basic liberties and our national character.”
The voices of GOP reason are out there and they’re not mincing words. When will those like them, who might also be palatable in a general election, decide to join the chorus? If and when they do, will it be too late for the party, and more importantly, our nation’s prospects of recovering middle class solvency?
