Stopping Specter--Civil war within the Republican Party

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The Coming Storm

The battle over Sen. Specter is the GOP's first intramural engagement since President Bush’s victory last week, but it is only one of a long list of potential squabbles that may come to the fore in the coming months.

With a twinkle in his eye, and refusing to paper over vast differences within the right wing movement, Richards Viguerie—the man who helped usher in the conservative revolution 25 years ago by harnessing direct mail to right wing causes and candidates—recently told PBS’ Bill Moyers that a civil war within the Republican Party was inevitable. Regardless of which candidate wins the presidential election, Viguerie predicted that the battle for control of the GOP will begin the day after Election Day.

Using the same “civil war” metaphor, longtime conservative economist Bruce Bartlett expressed a similar view in an interview with reporter Ron Suskind. In Suskind’s Oct. 17 piece for the New York Times Magazine , Bartlett said that “If Bush wins, there will be a civil war in the Republican Party starting on Nov. 3.'' According to Suskind, it will be “essentially, the same as the one raging across much of the world: a battle between modernists and fundamentalists, pragmatists and true believers, reason and religion.”

And Judie Brown, the president of the anti-abortion group the American Life League, recently spelled out her organization’s concerns in a press release: “Many pro-life groups are gleefully declaring victory following George W. Bush's apparent re-election, but I cannot share in their enthusiasm. It is true that Mr. Bush defeated one of the most solidly pro-abortion candidates to ever seek the White House. However, the Bush administration's first term has been less than sterling in terms of total commitment to the pro-life effort.”

Brown pointed out that the “killing continued unabated” during Bush’s first term, “and indications are that abortion on demand will remain decriminalized during the coming years.”

(more) http://www.tompaine.com/print/stopping_specter.php

This fight is pointless to the Democrats.

War among Republicans provides opportunities for us. We can peel off some more of them to vote with us.

I disagree with you. We want this because it is the moderates that have to abandon the party and move to our party. We must focus on the west CO, NM, NEV, AZ. There are many fiscal conservatives and social liberals that we can move to our party. This has already happened in the NE. Remind every moderate that the christian right is nuts

Someone else is thinking along the same lines. I'm with NickofTime and gnofg. We can also add Ohio, West Virginia, Iowa, and possibly a few others. They are closely divided enough, and close enough to blue states, that in the next four years we can turn them solidly blue.

...it ain't happening, it was just a good story.

I hear Bornagins are after Arlin Specter - or at least Fallwell is.
I heard Pat Buchanan say the same thing about a GOP civil war on Fresh Air last month I can hope this is true - maybe it can be their own version of the night of the long knives. They need to go after the Christian Right the same way the SS went after the SA in 1934.

The moderates are not going to take on the Christian right. All this means is that there is going to be a purge of the repuke party to rid it of all moderate elements and to remake it into a monolithic entity.

They want to have the same kind of party discipline that the Leninists insisted on.

I wish that they would come over to our party, but I think they are too blind to see what's happening and their party loyalty will bring about their political death.

In the purge, where are those factions going to go? Upside, the moderates come hither. Downside, they're not helping out the repugs.

Don't worry, be happy!

opinion. Tom Paine is not exactly nonpartisan, however much I might agree with some of the pieces there.

The Pukes will OVERREACH (like they always do) and become the party of the Christian Right. I say, let 'em duke it out; bring it on, etc.

Then, we win.

Bake