Oh, you mean like they did in 92? That was successful, wasn't it? Clinton got in, fired all the federal prosecutors and replaced them with his own, allowed Al Qaeda to gain enough strength to take us down on 9-11, taught our kids what a BJ is. That worked out really well.
"Oh, you mean like they did in 92? That was successful, wasn't it? Clinton got in, fired all the federal prosecutors and replaced them with his own, allowed Al Qaeda to gain enough strength to take us down on 9-11, taught our kids what a BJ is. That worked out really well."
Actually, it WAS really successful in terms of Republican Party discipline.
Has ANY Republican since that searing defeat been willing to shift a "No new taxes" stance?
No.
The Republicans learned the hard way in 1992 that lying to the electorate and abandoning the principles on which they were elected is a quick route to losing power and being tossed in the dumpster.
They learned, and they never broke faith with the economic right again since. The closest they came was the steel tarriffs, and those came off in a hurry.
If the Republicans believe that lots of Christians who vote for them are primarily motivated by partisan calculations, they are wrong. There are millions of single issue voters: life. The issue barely comes up, but it is screaming off the headlines right now. A woman is dying, and two Republican Executives are sitting on their hands in the clutch. The nuclear option is falling apart in the Senate because of Republicans, not Democrats.
If the Republicans don't grow a spine in a hurry and change course, they are going to directly betray a core constituency on the issue most vital to that constituency.
The Christians have been SCREAMING this since the Republican leadership rammed through Specter in the Senate after his anti-life commentaries the day after Election Day. But the Christians have been patient. Wait and see has been the watchword. Now the nuclear option is failing, and two Bush boys are not provoking a crisis by intervening to save a woman's life. The Christians waited, and now they see. The Republicans have got to open their eyes and move here, or they are going to demoralize and demotivate a huge single issue constituency that they cannot win without. The Christians don't ask for much. All they have asked for is THIS.
NOW is the time for Republicans to step up to the plate and perform, and guarantee themselves the whole Christian bloc in 2006 and 2008.
If they blow this, which right now they are on course to do, it will be just like 1992 all over again. Christians observe how slavishly loyal the Republicans have become to the economic right since the 1992 debacle taught them that betraying that element meant no power for Republicans forever. I'm here to tell you that pro-life Republicans are no different.
The party needs to stop playing games and DO what those men were elected to do. The platform is pro-life and pro-strict construction. The Party has to crack heads and enforce discipline to carry out its platform, or the Christians are going to be demoralized in droves.
With Specter, they said "Wait and see."
They waited. Now they are seeing.
And what they are seeing is an unmitigated disaster.
TWO anti-life waffles by the Republicans in power in the same week.
It's whistling past the graveyard to think that this is not going to reap very bitter fruit.
The most frustrating thing about this is that it's just like George H W Bush's welching on his "No new taxes" pledge. There was absolutely no good REASON for him to betray his low-tax constituency like that. It was a catastrophic miscalculation, with no reward at the end of it. It was, simply, the mistake of arrogance: "Who are the low-taxers going to vote for?" In the end, the answer was Ross Perot or nobody. And whatever the wisdom of that, the point is that Bush lost and the Republicans were sent reeling, all completely unneccessarily. All the Republicans had to do was to continue to do WHAT THEY PROMISED TO DO. Bush didn't have to raise taxes. He had the power to not do it. He arrogantly did it anyway, and he lost power because he betrayed his constituency.
Did that "work out well"?
Not for him. Not for the Republicans.
In the end, it DID work out well for the low-tax economic Republicans, because their defection in 1992 taught the Republicans a lesson that they have not forgotten for 13 years.
The Republicans don't HAVE to inflict a similar disaster on themnselves with the Christians. But if they arrogantly plow ahead here and refuse to honor the pro-life part of their platform by doing what the Christians elected them to do, it will. I guarantee it.
There is still time for Jeb Bush and George Bush and the Senate Republican leadership to "get it" and uphold life. But the sand is running out of the hourglass more rapidly each hour.
I am still hopeful that tragedy and political disaster can be averted, but the Republicans have to stop talking - it doesn't work - and they have to ACT.