From Hip-Hop Republican.com:
Black folks are needed on both sides of the aisle in a predominately two-party system. Those in Republican ranks need to mobilize against the Sarah Palin coronation before it’s too late. Cynical strategists feel she demonstrates that any White person regardless of denseness equals the current president, Racial overtones are readily apparent and would be funny were stakes not so high. Read more »
I don’t read many of the more red-meat conservative bloggers. Very little of what they have to say is anything more than righteous anger about anything that isn’t “conservative.”
Rick Moran is one of the few conservative bloggers that stands apart. I might not always agree with him, but he always gives you something to think about. Read more »
It seems that the private sector doesn’t fare well in the Obama Administration. According to J.P. Morgan, less than 10 percent of the people filling cabinet positions is the Obama Administration have private sector experience.
So, is that a good thing or bad thing? Discuss.
This op-ed from the Raliegh News-Observer is talking about the North Carolina GOP, but it could be talking about the national GOP.
The N.C. Republican Party has been channeling its inner Jesse Helms lately, and not just because a portrait of the late conservative icon was unveiled last week.
At a GOP banquet Saturday night in North Raleigh, one of the main speakers was to have been Doug Hoffman, the New York conservative congressional candidate who was the favorite of Glenn Beck & Co. But he canceled because of an illness.
The state GOP is also considering a rule change that would bar unaffiliated voters from voting in state Republican primaries, in theory screening out some moderate voters.
In this age of polarization, it is politically incorrect to be a moderate.
The Republican Party likes to bill itself as the conservative voice of North Carolina and that is true enough, although the Libertarian Party might take exception.
But the state Republican Party has historically been far broader than the Helmsian party, with strong ties to the more moderate GOP brand of the mountains, the foothills, the board rooms and the suburbs.
Sometimes the Republican Party forgets that.
Twice in the last century, Republicans have won the governorship. In both cases they elected moderate conservatives, Jim Holshouser (1973-77) and Jim Martin (1985-1993).
Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory, another moderate conservative, probably would have been elected governor last November if Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama had not made a huge effort here.
It has only been in U.S. Senate races that the Republican Party traditionally has spoken with a pure conservative voice. That’s largely because Helms and his longtime political organization, the National Congressional Club, helped elevate to office a series of Helms-like conservatives.
But that was a club, not a political party.
Those calling for ideological purity have a short memory. Helms was repeatedly angry and frustrated at President Ronald Reagan, who would provide only lip service to such issues as abortion and school prayer. And it was Reagan who signed a nuclear arms reduction treaty with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.
This is actually an old debate. During the 1970s and 1980s, the state Republican Party was often torn by factional warfare between Helms-style conservatives and more traditional Republicans.
I was present in 1988 at a GOP convention in Franklin County in which a riot broke out, with multiple fistfights.
The Republican Party grew rapidly in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s in North Carolina by courting conservative Democrats.
But North Carolina has maintained the strongest Democratic Party in the South during the past decade by siphoning off moderate Starbucks Republicans.
As conservative British Prime Minister HaroldMcMillan (1957-63) once noted: “A successful party of the right must continue to recruit from the center and even from the left center. Once it begins to shrink into itself like a snail, it will be doomed.”
From the blog, General Lordisomo’s Apocalypse:
Let me preface this post by saying that I don’t really like talking or writing about politics simply because it seems that the subject always proves to be a touchy one for somebody. This isn’t to say that I don’t have political views or opinions myself, I certainly do, it is just that I tend to try and approach the subject with a lot of caution and consideration so as to avoid stepping on too many toes. So basically, I want to ensure any readers that I am not writing this post to really criticize anybody’s personal ideas and beliefs as I do believe we are all entitled to believe whatever we like (regardless of how those beliefs make us look in the eyes of others).
All that being said and got out-of-the-way, I bring us to the question of the posed in my posts title. Is the republican Party facing the risk of breaking apart? I know for a fact that I am not the first one to wonder this, especially since the Democrats major electoral success last year. And while I have seen the signs for a while now it was this article, in The New York Times, that has really made me want to raise the question about the future of the GOP.
The article considers the right-wing back lash against Florida’s Republican governor Charlie Crist for being too “moderate” or even crossing the threshold to being labeled as “liberal.” Crist is not the first Republican in recent times face these charges by the more conservative side of his party. Just a few weeks back the NY Times (amongst other news outlets) put focus on a vicious battleground for an upstate New York congressional seat. Basically the gist of that whole thing was that the more hardcore conservatives didn’t support the Republican party backed candidate (who ended up dropping out of the race and supporting the Democrat) and so supported a third-party candidate who met more with the stronger right-wing ideology. What was the conclusion?  The Democrat won the race in a region that had not seen a Democrat in over a hundred years.
Could the events with Charlie Crist produce a similar effect or will the more conservative faction prove itself to be the dominant majority? This is the question I really have. And if the stronger right-wing side cannot hold true against a more moderate voting population could this spar a schism that leads to a creation of a whole new party, maybe something called “The Conservative Republican Party of America.”
My personal guess . . . moderates will always win, even if they end up not being elected.
You may not all agree with this, but I think it makes the most logical sense (even considering the often illogical nature of politics). Basically, the way I can see it, the vast majority fo people tend to gravitate toward the center ground as opposed to the peripheries of strong right or left. Why? Probably because most of us tend to hold views that are a mixture of conservative and liberal. Certainly we may tend to stray one way or another (I fully admit that I tend to be a bit more liberal in my views, especially social. I’m much more moderate or almost libraterian in fiscal and economic politics) but ultimately this stray is often balanced with some other moderate views.
This is not to say that there are not people with very strong leaning conservative right-wing beliefs or liberal left-wing beliefs, there are (heck I know people on both sides, I grew up in Vermont and now I live in South Carolina. The difference is rather spectacular). But I think that the history of politics in this country demonstrate that the extreme end of either conservative or liberal view is usually incapable of maintaining steady voter support for long. People just tend to be more comfortable with moderation.
So what does this spell for the Republican Party, especially because it seems like in the news lately all we have been hearing about is the reenforcement of the conservative end of the GOP. Really I can see a number of possibilities.
1). The conservative end could prove to be the stronger majority of the party and see to it that more right-wing, as opposed to moderate, Republican’s get elected in coming races.
2). The moderate side of the GOP wins out in the long run over the conservative end and thus we see more center leaning Republicans take offices.
3). The fight splits the vote too much in the Republican Party and the Democrats end up winning out more so because of this. Split votes within a party can be a very damaging thing to the party as is evident in the recent upstate New York congress seat race.
I foresee that if any of these options prove true there is that continued risk of schism because they will demonstrate that the ideology that the Republican Party thinks it has is not really as adherent as they may like it to be.
My next question is, would a schism be a bad thing for this nation?
Personally I think not, solely based on my feeling that having a government system in which two parties pretty much dominate the political landscape is not a good thing for democracy. While there are quite a number of political parties in the U.S.A., the Republicans and the Democrats have for the longest time held pretty much all the power. Other parties tend to be just a bit too fringe to gain any significant voter majority. But if one of the two major parties, such at the Republicans, were to break into two distinct parties, there could be a legitimate reason to see a powerful three party contention for votes. In fact if the GOP were to break into a more conservative faction and a more moderate faction I would not be surprised to see some more right-leaning Democrats move over to the more central ideology side.
Basically, of personal opinion, I think that Jim DeMint (a SC senator and strong conservative) is mistaken when he says, “What’s going to happen, the voters are going to weed out these Republicans who no longer share the core principles that make our country great.” I agree that the more conservative GOP followers will be reluctant to vote for more moderate candidates, but if people like DeMint want to keep the party intact then really they are going to need those people who hold more moderate views and are willing to participate in bi-partisan politics. If not then the party cannot sustain as it currently is and changes will be imminent.
I am fascinated to see how it turns out.
I invite people to weigh in on this. I am always interested to hear what others think about politics. All I ask is that if you choose to comment please try and keep it respectful. I have made a serious effort in this post to reserve my personal judgement on certain political beliefs within and hope I have not offended anybody with any judgements that did slip through (I apologize if I did, it was not really intended as such). I like honest respectful discussion on these things, and if it can occur I am all for it.
Thanks,
Nathaniel
I read E.D. Kain’s interview with blogger John Cole yesterday with interest. If you have not read the interview, I’d suggest you do post haste. What is so interesting about the interview with Cole is that he used to be a die-hard Republican back when he started in 2002. Read more »
Maybe I’m crazy, but does it sound like Tom Bevan is being a bit sexist in this blog post? Read more »
Note: I originally published this post about 6 months ago and hoped that perhaps as time passed it would become outdated. I don’t mean to suggest that anyone in the GOP or conservative movement leadership was going to listen to lil ol me, but that perhaps they’d change their minds after failures.
With a decent chance for the GOP to lose two key races in NY and NJ next week I thought it was worth reposting, even though I wish it wasn’t.
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Ever since the election last fall we have seen an ongoing debate in the Republican party over which direction it should take in the future. Hard liners in the party have stated that they need to swing hard to the right to become as ideologically pure as possible. Web sites like Redstate.com and Polipundit.com regularly rail against so called RINO’s for being insufficiently pure.
In recent weeks however another voice has emerged as leading Republicans call for the party to be more of a big tent organization. Calls for the party to tone down social issues like gay marriage and abortion have been met with contempt by the web sites above.
Well I’ve got a message for those hard liners, being ideologically pure may be a nice idea but if you are in the minority it doesn’t do you very much good since you lose almost every vote. I certainly understand the desire to have people in office who you agree with on all of the issues, but the fact is that absent a situation where I become King of the World this isn’t going to happen very often. Read more »
Constructive thought from Armstrong Williams, a sane voice for conservative values.
Learn more about Armstrong Williams
The following is a blog post by Jim dePeso, Policy Director for Republicans for Environmental Protection.
No doubt, Lindsey Graham has already heard about his climate change op-ed from talk show reactionaries and their flunkies who think that climate change is a Bolshevik plot.
All the more reason to acknowledge Senator Graham as the true conservative among a crowd of poseurs who have forgotten the stewardship ethic that lies at the heart of traditional conservatism. Read more »
The Republican Party has been engaged in an image debate that has become increasingly more public since Barack Obama’s election. Should the party stick to its “core values†or potentially compromise to attract new voters? Paul Green, director of the Roosevelt University Institute for Politics, said in a profile of Chicago Young Republicans in the Chicago Tribune on Aug. 12, “Young people coming up aren’t going to be excited by a party that is against abortion, stem cell research and gay rights.â€Â
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The Republican Party has been engaged in an image debate that has become increasingly more public since Barack Obama’s election. Should the party stick to its “core values†or potentially compromise to attract new voters? Paul Green, director of the Roosevelt University Institute for Politics, said in a profile of Chicago Young Republicans in the Chicago Tribune on Aug. 12, “Young people coming up aren’t going to be excited by a party that is against abortion, stem cell research and gay rights.â€Â
This is absolutely true. The GOP can not and will not become the party of “No,†nor is it currently. But some members of the party seem not to mind the label. You know the ones I talk about  the ones who seemingly cheered Chicago’s Olympic loss and worsening unemployment figures on the same day, and the people who want Obama to fail so they can capitalize in 2010. This is not the way to curry favor with the electorate.
To avoid that detrimental label, the party needs to realize that people with moderate views regarding health care, abortion, etc., are still Republicans. These members should not be cast aside or labeled as not “real†Republicans  they should be embraced. These kinds of Republicans offer the best shot at growing the party and winning over independent America. And in a country where more people label themselves as independents then Republicans or Democrats, the independents hold the key to Congress and the White House.
This drama recently played out on our campus, in our own Republican Party, and the outcome saddened me. A chairman with moderate views in regard to abortion, the death penalty, gun control and gay marriage was forced out of office because his views didn’t represent those of the group. When elected members are removed from office because their views are not in accord with “the norm,†it is a cause for concern. I worry about the future of my party if this is the path we choose to take.
Matthew Schaible
Like a lot of people, I was very surprised at the news of President Obama getting the Nobel Peace Prize.
I was also a bit perplexed. Read more »
From Lou Zickar of the Ripon Society:
Lately, it’s become fashionable in Republican circles to argue that the party must move beyond Ronald Reagan if it wants to rebound in the mid-term elections and recapture its congressional majority next year. Reagan represents the past, the argument goes. The GOP needs to stand for the future. I made this same argument myself in the January 2008 edition of The Ripon Forum.
“As much as Republicans may hope, and as much as their candidates for President may try, Ronald Reagan cannot be replaced,” I wrote at the time. “He was the right man at the right time. But he is gone, and this is a different time.” Then, comparing Reagan to a draughtsman who designed the modern GOP, I concluded: “Republicans need to be looking for a new architect, a leader who will help them meet the challenges our nation faces ahead, not the road we have left behind.”
Over the past few months, though, I have come to a different conclusion: I was wrong. This period has seen a Republican resurgence of a sort in the polls. In April, Republicans trailed Democrats by 9 points in the generic ballot for Congress. By late September, the GOP had cut that margin to 3 percent. While any Republican has to be pleased so see that margin narrowed, I suspect that some in the party also have concerns about how that gain was achieved.
This summer will be remembered as a season of discontent among the American people. It was the season Senators and Congressman returned to their states and their districts and were met with anger and protests in return. Anger at the possibility our nation’s health care system might be taken over by the federal government. And protests about the rapidly growing deficit and the amount of new spending being proposed. As this anger grew, and as the shouts of protest grew louder, Democrats grew weaker in the polls, while Republicans grew stronger.
The result is that what seemed far-fetched less than six months ago is now something that is seriously being discussed — the GOP stands a chance of reclaiming control of Congress next year. This discontent has already paid dividends for the party in terms of more dollars; both the Republican National Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee out-raised their Democratic counterparts in August.
The question facing the party is whether this anger will be the foundation of a new GOP, or simply the spark that helps fuel its drive toward a new majority.
Which brings me back to Reagan.
In 1978, a revolt took place in the California over the rapid rise of property taxes in that state. Known as Proposition 13, the revolt was led by a man named Howard Jarvis, who was famously featured on the cover of Time magazine shaking his fist in the air. Jarvis was the Glenn Beck of his day, riding a wave of discontent that was propelled by voter fear and populist anger. The revolt he led resulted in property taxes being slashed 57 percent in the Golden State. It also led to a nationwide anti-tax movement that culminated in Reagan’s election in 1980. Somewhere over the course of that two year period, the fear and anger that fueled Jarvis’s revolt was transformed into a different kind of emotion – a sense of optimism. That transformation didn’t just happen on its own. It was led by Ronald Reagan.
According to his biographer, the legendary political reporter Lou Cannon, the former California Governor not only tapped into the emotion that took root in his home state, but also turned it into a positive source of support. “Reagan mined these seams of fear beyond doubt,” Cannon recalled, when asked recently about Proposition 13 and the 1980 campaign.
[He] didn’t seem angry, however. He campaigned as a ‘happy warrior,’ ala FDR, his first political hero. You can’t do this unless you truly are optimistic, and Reagan’s optimism — his steadfast belief that America’s best days were ahead — was, again like FDR, ingrained and natural, not posed.
And therein lies the challenge for today’s GOP.
For all the talk about moving beyond Reagan and becoming a party of the future instead of the past, the fact is that the GOP would benefit greatly from a dose of Reagan-style optimism at this time. To their credit, Republican leaders like John Boehner and Eric Canton appear to recognize this and have taken steps to move the party away from some of the anger seen this year. Boehner, for instance, bent over backwards a few weeks ago trying to get Joe Wilson to apologize for his joint session outburst toward President Obama. And Cantor recently held a joint town hall with a Democrat in which he stressed the importance of bipartisanship and the need to cool the heated rhetoric down.
These steps are welcome if the GOP is going to move away from being seen as the party of “no.” But to become the party of “yes,” Republicans are going to need more than just rhetoric. They are going to need solutions. And here, too, they should look to Reagan. Indeed, it wasn’t just Reagan’s optimism that helped transform the tax debate in 1980. It was that he had a plan on the table as well — the Kemp-Roth tax cut package. Reagan’s support of this plan not only put him on record as supporting legislation that slashed taxes for the American people, but it also embodied what the tax revolt led by Howard Jarvis was all about.
Today, Republicans have no plan that embodies the anger and fear felt by millions of Americans over what is happening in Washington. Health care is a good example. Polls reveal that a majority of people are angry and clearly oppose a public option. But these same polls also reveal that a majority are fearful of rising health costs and support some kind of reform. Although various Republicans have proposed a number of different reforms, the perception of the party as a whole is that it stands for doing nothing. This might be good enough in the autumn before the mid-term elections. But when people step into the voting booth next year, they are going to want more. They are going to want to know what Republicans will do if they win back the majority. And for this, Republicans need to get behind a plan.
In his speech to Congress on September 9, President Obama provided the GOP with an opening to do just that. The President stated that Republicans and Democrats agree on “about 80 percent of what needs to be done” to reform the nation’s health care system. If this is true, and if consensus between the parties does in fact exist, Republicans should turn this consensus into a bill and introduce the measure as the “80 Percent Plan.” And what would be included in such a bill? Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal outlined several possible areas of agreement in an interview last week with Politico.
These areas include making sure a person could take their coverage from job to job, making sure no one is denied coverage because of a pre-existing condition, and reforming the nation’s malpractice laws to cut costs and reduce the number of frivolous lawsuits doctors are forced to deal with each year. What wouldn’t be included in such a bill? A public option, which people do not want, and raising taxes on middle income Americans, which Republicans would never support and the President pledged he would not do.
Ronald Reagan once wrote that, “If you got 75 or 80 percent of what you were asking for, I say, you take it and fight for the rest later. …” By putting forward a plan geared around the consensus that already exists, the GOP would not only be following his advice, they would be defining the terms of the debate.
In the process, they would also be defining the Republican Party as it was under his leadership — a party known not for its angry opposition, but for its optimistic solutions to the challenges we face.
Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lou-zickar/reagans-response-to-the-r_b_311304.html
Conor Friedersdorf wanted to know what local Republican officials thought about what tactics the GOP out to use in the 2010 elections. So, he sent questions to several leaders and posted their responses. Here are some samples:
2) What is the most worrisome part of Barack Obama’s presidency?The most worrisome part of Obma’s Presidency is that he either does not understand what made America great, or that he wants to totally change it to a socialistic nation, Read more »
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