It’s no mystery that the GOP is the butt of the majority of political jokes lately, but they certainly aren’t making it any easier on themselves.
When a relevant voice in your party (Specter) leaves, that should be a sign that you need to be a bit more introspective. There might be something seriously wrong with your party when someone who embraces your party’s ideals leaves because of ideological differences…
What better way to respond than to say that maybe there is more fat in the party to shed.
From the NY Times:
A fundamental debate broke out among Republicans…over how to rebuild the party in the wake of Senator Arlen Specter’s departure: Should it purge moderate voices like Mr. Specter and embrace its conservative roots or seek to broaden its appeal to regain a competitive position against Democrats?
What I really enjoy are unsubstantiated generalities:
“We strayed from our principles of limited government, individual responsibility and economic freedom,” - Chris Chocola
Those are big words coming from a member of the party that has such strong feelings about abortion.
At least a few of them have some brains:
“We are not losing blue states and shrinking as a party because we are not conservative enough. If we pursue a party that has no place for someone who agrees with me 70 percent of the time, that is based on an ideological purity test rather than a coalition test, then we are going to keep losing.” - Senator Lindsay Graham
It would seem like the best of the worst (in my opinion) have their backs against the wall. They need to either sacrifice what they believe to be ideological pinnings that should not be compromised, or simply go down swinging, but certainly go down.
Either way, the floundering, squealing sound of marginalized Republicans will be fun to listen to for at least 3+ years.
Posted at 2:58pm and tagged with: marginalized, republican, relevant, pure, specter, GOP, democrat, fail, crist, arlen, nytimes,.
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