Internal GOP poll results: 'we're f*cked'

It strikes me

that if McCain had chosen to let someone else be the post-Bush sacrificial lamb, instead of running and throwing away all his maverick creds to kiss fundie ass, he could right now be emerging as someone with a different but still credible voice and I think he actually could have salvaged the party and let them be a viable second party still.  I used to like what little I heard from him, for a Republican, before he was actually running for the presidency; then his principles folded like a house of cards and once he stepped on the slippery slope he couldn't sell out fast enough.  

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by: Rae @ Fri May 01, 2009 at 07:38:09 AM CDT

Wow

I used to like what little I heard from him, [...] before he was actually running for the presidency; then his principles folded like a house of cards and once he stepped on the slippery slope he couldn't sell out fast enough.

This so reminds me of someone else... The name is on the top of my tongue, I just can't....

Cause any fool knows, a dog needs a home; a shelter from pigs on the wing

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by: QueerInSoCal @ Fri May 01, 2009 at 08:13:29 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

LOL

It wouldn't happen to be anyone that this Chicagoian is familiar with, would it?

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by: kevinchi @ Fri May 01, 2009 at 08:22:35 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Yep, they have pandered to their base

At the expense of all other considerations. They have been distilled themselves down to the hard core of wingnutty voters who have a flag in every room and think that "Team America" and "24" are documentaries. Hey GOP! When your base becomes indistiguishable from your fringe, you've moved too far to the right. I'm one of those silly people who think we need at least two viable parties in this country though.

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by: Margaret @ Fri May 01, 2009 at 08:46:26 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Olympia Snowe nails it

In the NYT

Ideological purity is not the ticket back to the promised land of governing majorities - indeed, it was when we began to emphasize social issues to the detriment of some of our basic tenets as a party that we encountered an electoral backlash.

It is for this reason that we should heed the words of President Ronald Reagan, who urged, "We should emphasize the things that unite us and make these the only 'litmus test' of what constitutes a Republican: our belief in restraining government spending, pro-growth policies, tax reduction, sound national defense, and maximum individual liberty." He continued, "As to the other issues that draw on the deep springs of morality and emotion, let us decide that we can disagree among ourselves as Republicans and tolerate the disagreement."

Meanwhile, in Oklahoma...

Republicans voted down proposals to hold a convention next year and to ditch the party's 29-page platform for a simple one-page expression of national Republican Party principles.

   The party's platform approved Saturday opposes the promotion of homosexuality and supports placing the Ten Commandments in all public schools "as a means of moral guidance."

I'm still Right Wing. I'm still a neo-con, which means a "new" conservative, one who believes in equality and does something about that other than paying lip-service to it.

But I can no longer say I support the GOP. It has regressed. The things I liked about it have been eroded, while the lunatic element that was once as big an embarrassment to the GOP as KKK Kleagle Senator Byrd was to the Democrats, well, they've taken over.

From the Tulsa County Republican Platform:

   7. We believe that the scientific evidence supporting Biblical creation should be included in Oklahoma public schools curricula, and if any evolution theory is taught, that both should receive equal funding, class time, and material. Teachers should have the freedom to cover creation science without fear of intimidation, reprimand, or lack of professional respect.

Now if only the DNC weren't worse...

There is no situation so complex it can't get even worse

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by: ZoeB @ Fri May 01, 2009 at 08:26:17 AM CDT

How is the DNC worse than the example you cite?

Last time I looked, the DNC wasn't trying to deny whole groups of people their civil rights, nor are they demanding the "right" to teach their ridiculous superstitions as "fact" in public schools. I'm no fan of the DNC, far from it but I haven't noticed them trying to impose their ideology on public school children. Unless you count equal civil rights for all as ideology. That ideology is the reason for the American Revolution and the foundation of who we are as a country.

And if Reagan's memory is to fill the role of grand exalted icon and most reverand poobah, then the party is even less likely to re-emerge as viable.

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by: Margaret @ Fri May 01, 2009 at 08:58:14 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

The Republicans have the decency to stab you in the front

The Dems - they will "modify" rather than repeal DADT. maybe. One day. And they'll get around to addressing DOMA any year now, when they don't have more on their minds.

But they'll get through the Matthew Shephard act, something they could have done a year ago if they were serious about it. But it was traded away in an effort to do something really important. Like stopping the US extirpation of the Mahdi Army, the ones who are torturing and murdering gays in Iraq. It was important that they be allowed to continue, because it made the Republicans look bad.

Of course now they have the presidency, the situation in Iraq is completely different, isn't it. Big changes. NOT. It was all political theatre.

Don't look at words, look at deeds.

There is no situation so complex it can't get even worse

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by: ZoeB @ Fri May 01, 2009 at 12:01:01 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Did I mention

The vote in the NH senate to prevent granting Trans people the same rights as gays there?

You know, the 24-0 vote when the Dems had a majority?

Or ENDA, where 24 Republicans crossed the floor to vote for it, but 15 Democrats crossed the floor to vote against?

Should I go on?

There is no situation so complex it can't get even worse

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by: ZoeB @ Fri May 01, 2009 at 12:05:26 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

The most striking thing about the GOP response

It seems to me that the most striking aspect of the various GOP responses to this dismal polling is that they refuse to listen to the very people fleeing the party. I mean, so far the response to the public rejecting them is to become more wingnutty which involves everything from party purges to re-writing history so everything is Obama or Clinton's fault. This new response is equally telling in that they still refuse to accept any responsibility for the party's woes but have settled on the idea of re-packaging the GOP into a shiny, new box but without making any of the changes that need to be made. Do they think that people who tell them what they object to are part of  a Democratic plot to further marginalize them? Are they so terrified of Rush et al that they dare not speak the truth? I find it extremely ironic that the party who didn't push for a permanent majority status has come closer to acheiving it by far than the party whose plot it was to begin with.

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by: Margaret @ Fri May 01, 2009 at 08:41:33 AM CDT

This is always how the GOP responds

When the GOP screws up, they never think it's about what they did.  It's about how they did it.  They never talk about changing the product, they're just going to rebrand it.  Same crap, different packaging.

The GOP relies far too much on trying to convince people to fear otherness.  But the number people who qualify as "other" has been growing, while the population that makes up the GOP base has been shrinking.  Democrats don't have to push for a permanent majority.  They can just sit back and watch Republicans commit demographic suicide.

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by: SpecBear @ Fri May 01, 2009 at 14:18:56 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

I wonder

I used to love that great Marvel Comics series What If? that would present alternate universe scenarios of events in the Marvel Comics universe.

In that spirit, I have pondered this question.

What if Colin Powell had decided to pursue the presidency for the Republicans in 1996...

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by: kevinchi @ Fri May 01, 2009 at 08:44:51 AM CDT

When are the Blue Dogs going to get the message?

.
Maybe the Dems should rebrand. Kinda confusing to vote for "CHANGE," and get Evan & Arlen running the show for the banksters. Look who your Senator voted for: You, or the banksters?

Time to stop letting corporatist Repukelickin's in Dems clothing hide out on our side of the aisle. Let them sit with the Repuke's, so we can vote them all out together in 2010.

Send Obama that message, too. Oh, and Barney Frank for SCOTUS!

(Heads begin to burst all over the Red States.)
.

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by: cosanostradamus @ Fri May 01, 2009 at 08:56:53 AM CDT

If I have a complaint about Obama

It's that I have heard nothing from him in the way of twisting recalcitrant Democrats' arms to get his legislation through. Yesterday, mortgage cramdown, an essential part of economic recovery, failed in the Senate because too many Senators are taking money from banking PACs. That may have been different if Obama had called upon them publically over and over to pass it. With his approvals, I think he could have shamed some votes out of them. So far, whether it's mortgages, automoblies or workers, the banking and financial sectors have won every. Single. Time. Obama is popular now but look for that to change suddenly and dramatically if people keep suffering and there aren't even any bones thrown our way. I don't expect Democrats to always vote the way the president wishes like the Republicans did for Bush but I would like them to think of their voters, rather than their financiers once in a while.

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by: Margaret @ Fri May 01, 2009 at 09:06:52 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

agreed

.
It's bothersome, trying to figure out if he's just biding his time until he can get rid of these banksters & their pet politicians, or if he's actually one of them. But we really need to send a huge electoral message in 2010: Blue Dogs out!

If Obama doesn't get it, or take advantage of it, by then, then he can go in 2012, too. And we'd better start working on that, too. We voted for real change, not just style, or any one man. We have forty years of bad policy to reverse, and we don't have 40 years to do it.

They need to realize that the Right is dead in this country. Corporatism is unacceptible. We'll do whatever it takes to get them out of OUR government. The majority is with us.
.

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by: cosanostradamus @ Fri May 01, 2009 at 09:46:11 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Look at Lawrence Summers resume.

Look at Tim Geithner's resume. Specifically, look at the recent NYT article on Geithner.

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by: rfloh @ Fri May 01, 2009 at 10:11:18 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

believe me, i know

.
The question still is, is Obama just another corporate stooge, or is he setting them up to take the blame if the recession drags on, so he can turn left and ditch them?

If he doesn't, we have to ditch all of them, including Obama.
.

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by: cosanostradamus @ Fri May 01, 2009 at 10:18:30 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Obama is not a Progressive

Everyone who was paying attention knows that, though he is more progressive by far than Clinton. I'm all for giving him a chance but he is very close to the point at which he stop enjoying my support on the economy and Bush torture.

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by: Margaret @ Fri May 01, 2009 at 11:22:45 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

pragmatist? realist? collaborator? gutless go-along-to-get-along?

.
Or brilliant tactician with an agenda we might approve? Guess we'll find out. But we have to let them all know what we know: Progressives are the majority. And we're not going to let them keep pulling us to the right. That way just doesn't work, period.
.

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by: cosanostradamus @ Fri May 01, 2009 at 15:22:52 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

I don't see how he is setting them to take the blame

They were already set up to take the blame. The reputation of the banks, and wall street, has already been seriously damaged.

Furthermore, if the recession drags on, and he tries to lay the blame on them, ultimate, Barack Obama won the presidential election. Not Lawrence Summers, not Tim Geithner. Barack Obama appointed them.

So, if the recession drags on, I don't think it will be as easy laying the blame on someone else as you think it will be for Obama.

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by: rfloh @ Fri May 01, 2009 at 21:17:50 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

As someone of the female persuasion,

I always tend to look at the qualifications of the women on these types of panels.  I guess you just forgot to list the women's names, Pam?

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by: Pollyanna @ Fri May 01, 2009 at 19:37:02 PM CDT