WP: Some Republicans Predict Upheaval Within the Party

Concerns Include Changing Electorate, Lack of Heir Apparent

NEW YORK, Sept. 3 -- Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), a man known for frank talk, offered a blunt description of the state of his party, which broke camp here Friday after nominating President Bush for a second term. "The Republican Party," he said, "has come loose of its moorings."

Hagel was not referring to Bush's leadership or his prospects for reelection but instead to the impact of a presidency that has seen the party embrace the largest deficits in U.S. history and a foreign policy that has put the United States at odds with many of its closest allies and heightened suspicion of institutions such as the United Nations.

Hagel expects recrimination and worse if Bush loses to John F. Kerry, but he predicts that, win or lose, the GOP faces a period of introspection and debate over its future. "I think you've got a party that is in a state of uncertainty," he said.

While many Republicans attending the convention dismissed Hagel's prediction as unduly pessimistic, there is likely to be a series of intraparty debates, starting after the election, over the size and role of government, the U.S. role in the world, and how Republicans can expand their coalition.

more…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60480-2004Sep3.html

Reap what ya' sow!

:evilfrown:

nt

who owned stock in a company that owns part of ES&S, which made the machines that voted him into office? :eyes:

the party of fiscal responsibility, and they have historically embraced an isolationist foreign policy. Bush and the neocons are practically unrecognizable as Republicans to people who value these traditions.

Republicans have gone bonkers! So, uh, why didn't you speak up a little louder before and during the crusade rally?

private crusade; pour it on about the religiousity of the Bush administration not the old Republicans, but the fundies; mention "the rapture" and tell people to look it up and see for themselves. I really believe this would scare some fencesitters.

by telling them that he is going to honestly look for Republicans such as Hagel for some appointments to his cabinet, and that he is going to actually work to TRULY unite the county. So many Americans are so hungry for an end to the bitterness and divisive behavior that has gone on so long now I believe if he honestly said he would seek to work with reasonable Republicans his pole numbers would shoot up 5 points overnight. Plus there is another reason to do it. This country needs it.

Maybe I will be flamed for saying we should "work with the enemy," but I want desperately badly to win. And I believe it is a message the middle is desperate to hear.

chance he gets. I even thought for awhile he might try to take him on. I would love to see him in a Kerry cabinet.

n/t

I just read a very good article by Garison Keilor (sp). If I can find a link for it, I'll put it up somewhere.

He talks about what republicans used to be and what "conservatism" used to be. About how republicans used to be honorable people, who actually loved their country and respected other people's opinions. They were people you could work with, argue with, and then go bolwing with. But no more. They have morphed into this snarling, dumbed-down, apocalyptic/rapture mess that is too dangerous to tolerate. I think that you may have a point about reaching out to "human" republicans - while there are still any left.

If not, this is a very good read, nevertheless:

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0831-02.htm

We're Not in Lake Wobegon Anymore

How did the Party of Lincoln and Liberty transmogrify into the Party of Newt Gingrich's Evil Spawn andtheir Etch-A-Sketch President, a Dull and Rigid Man, whose Philosophy is a Jumble of badly sutured BodyParts trying to Walk?

by Garrison Keillor

Something has gone seriously haywire with the Republican Party. Once, it was the party of pragmatic Main Street businessmen in steel-rimmed spectacles who decried profligacy and waste, were devoted to their communities and supported the sort of prosperity that raises all ships. They were good-hearted people who vanquished the gnarlier elements of their party, the paranoid Roosevelt-haters, the flat Earthers and Prohibitionists, the antipapist antiforeigner element. The genial Eisenhower was their man, a genuine American hero of D-Day, who made it OK for reasonable people to vote Republican. He brought the Korean War to a stalemate, produced the Interstate Highway System, declined to rescue the French colonial army in Vietnam, and gave us a period of peace and prosperity, in which (oddly) American arts and letters flourished and higher education burgeonedÑand there was a degree of plain decency in the country. Fifties Republicans were giants compared to todayÕs. Richard Nixon was the last Republican leader to feel a Christian obligation toward the poor.

In the years between Nixon and Newt Gingrich, the party migrated southward down the Twisting Trail of Rhetoric and sneered at the idea of public service and became the Scourge of Liberalism, the Great Crusade Against the Sixties, the Death Star of Government, a gang of pirates that diverted and fascinated the media by their sheer chutzpah, such as the misty-eyed flag-waving of Ronald Reagan who, while George McGovern flew bombers in World War II, took a pass and made training films in Long Beach. The Nixon moderate vanished like the passenger pigeon, purged by a legion of angry white men who rose to power on pure punk politics. ÒBipartisanship is another t the GOP. ÒI donÕt want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.Ó The boy has Oedipal problems and government is his daddy.

The party of Lincoln and Liberty was transmogrified into the party of hairy-backed swamp developers and corporate shills, faith-based economists, fundamentalist bullies with Bibles, Christians of convenience, freelance racists, misanthropic frat boys, shrieking midgets of AM radio, tax cheats, nihilists in golf pants, brownshirts in pinstripes, sweatshop tycoons, hacks, fakirs, aggressive dorks, Lamborghini libertarians, people who believe Neil ArmstrongÕs moonwalk was filmed in Roswell, New Mexico, little honkers out to diminish the rest of us, NewtÕs evil spawn and their Etch-A-Sketch president, a dull and rigid man suspicious of the free flow of information and of secular institutions, whose philosophy is a jumble of badly sutured body parts trying to walk. Republicans: The No.1 reason the rest of the world thinks weÕre deaf, dumb and dangerous

<more>

This is the one. A friend of mine emailed it to me at work and I haven't got it with me. Good find.

It's flying all over the place. I emailed it twice and received three myself.

Link: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2306985

:hi:

The winner will determine the direction of the party. The losers will be eliminated.

This is the party that worships the strong, and kills and eats the weak.

This is the Republican way.

of working people.

They show the same respect for "moderates" within the Republican Party as they do anyone else who disagrees with them

He's played this maverick role too many times. Hagel has been saying this kind of phony, McCain crap for years and, rather than really standing up, like Jim Jeffords, against his fellow religious fanatics, he always ends up going along as usual pretending there's still a moderate wing of the Republiban Party.

It's disheartening to see the wishy washy centrist Democratic crowd get weak knees every time a Republican announces the mildest demurrer from his party's goosestepping creed.

When are you timid concessionary folk going to realize that these people hate you, your values, and your way of life, and, gradually and inexorably, plan to crush you? McCain doesn't want to help you. Hagel doesn't want to help you. Stop celebrating these assholes every chance you get!

Bush has run up $2,000,000,000,000 in debt (two trillion dollars). That is about $7,000 for every person in the US. How do the conservatives like the borrow-and-spend wing of their party?

There are more.

I consider the Neo Fascists and Fundies as enemies but view Paleo-Conserves as adveseries. Big difference in my mind.

Bush is weak on environment and deficit.

I believe human conflict is systemic. That is to say it is encouraged, or discouraged by certain dynamics. Democrats must do what ever it takes to win, and then they must reach out. We don't want to become like the Palestinians and Israelis. Trust me, there were some Republicans in that convention hall that who were very uncomfortable with the hate that surrounded them.

This country desperately needs some real solutions and once the election is over if Kerry wins, he will have to either find a way to work with some Republicans and Democrats (he WILL have to build a coalition to get anything done) or he will fail to help the country (even if he does succeed in getting reelected).

Having said all that, Kerry must win because the Republican party has been hijacked by certain groups of people who don't feel like I do. They will use victory to crush the remaining people who dare to disagree. When I debate a conservative I tell him that conservatives are a lot like lawyers. I need mine because you have yours. Think about it, we're never afraid of a liberal in another country. No, we are always afraid of their conservatives. Conservatives all over the world play on each other to stay in power for their selfish needs. Thus reasonable people of all persuasions MUST recognize that our objective is to go around the people who hate and create alliances with those who carry different labels but do not hate.

This is the only hope for America's future. Hell, this is the only hope for humanity's future.