A Florida Republican Becomes a Right-Wing Target

(Eating their own! Couldn't be a more appropriate ending for the g.o.p.! - gd)

NEWBERRY, Fla. — In retrospect, even Charlie Crist admits that “the optics” of The Hug are not great.

It was in the glow of a new day in politics last February when Mr. Crist, this state’s popular Republican governor, took the stage with President Obama and declared that Republicans and Democrats had to rise above partisanship in support of an economic stimulus. And Mr. Obama embraced him.

Now, as a season of tea parties and fractious town hall meetings has energized the right wing, that embrace has endangered what once seemed like Mr. Crist’s surefire bid for a Senate seat and put Florida at the center of a debate about the future of the Republican Party.

Republican pragmatists argue that to take back its majority, the party has to appeal to a broader range of voters, even if it means running candidates who might stray from the party orthodoxy.

Conservatives counter that Republicans have become Democrats’ enablers in bigger deficits and bigger government, and that the way to win is to sharpen the distinctions between the parties.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/16/us/politics/16crist.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

..... and like rabid dogs, they need to be put down. (Figuratively, of course :evilgrin:)

I never heard them complain about the last president holding hands and making kissy-face with a terrorist-supporting non-democratically elected ruler from another country. You know, the same one they howled about when it appeared that the current President bowed in front of him.

orthodoxy" - or even the party "suggestions."

As for winning majorities - following the Dem strategy of abandoning principles for electoral victories may bring them wins.

As for actually enacting policies - will the new republican party give the decision-making over to the Dems like the Dems have given control of policy to them?

We don't want him.

And this is all good actually because he could be presidential material someday (2016?), and would complicate winning Florida for our nominee.

but they win elections it's not good for us. In PA, Toomey a rightwing wacko may beat Specter, so this is not entertaining to me.

they don't see it making any difference in their lives? If the national Dem party would return to its roots, these right wing baggers wouldn't have a chance at the polls.

It is ideologically coherent, well-funded, intelligent and supremely aggressive. And they don't let up.

They have found their warm place to shit in the GOP, and the GOP has to live with them. And they will.

The Democratic Party has given up the notion of a coherent philosophy and, hence, meaningful policies for which it can be judged. Instead, it has developed a mechanistic centrism that is extreme to a fault, and brooks no antagonism of corporate power. It sings out (sort of) in its wispy, diluted language: "Let's gather the stake-holders and develop consensus on a win-win so we can... move forward!"

Process has become policy.

Ideas are moment-to-moment.

MSM ignores them. I wonder why? ;-)