Posted on 04/28/2009 9:05:33 AM PDT by Al B.
To be relevant in politics, you need either formal power or a lot of people willing to follow your lead. The governing Republicans in the nation's capital have lost both on their continuing path to irrelevance.
The disconnect between D.C. Republicans and Republicans throughout the country has been growing for nearly 20 years, but it became more intense and noticeable during the waning years of the Bush administration.
Perhaps the final straw was the $700 billion bank bailout plan pushed through Congress last fall despite strong voter opposition. For all the furor unleashed this spring by congressional Republicans about President Obama's $787 billion stimulus plan, the Bush-era bailouts last fall were approved with virtually no advance notice and no guidelines as to how the money would be spent. Looking back, most voters and nearly eight-out-of-10 Republicans now believe the bailouts were a bad idea .
[...]
The disconnect between the Republican base and Beltway Republicans also can be seen in the recent history of presidential nominations. In the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama, the Democratic candidate, was seen by voters as more likely to deliver tax cuts than Republican nominee John McCain. By the way, Bill Clinton's victories in the 1990s also followed a belief that he was more likely to deliver tax cuts than his GOP opponent. It's hard to imagine how the party of Ronald Reagan could let that happen, but it did.
[...]
Look for the Republican Party to sink further into irrelevancy as long as its key players insist on hanging around Congress or K Street for their ideas. The future for the GOP is beyond the Beltway.
(Excerpt) Read more at rasmussenreports.getmobile.com ...
Washington DC should be treated like the swine flu (apologies to pigs).
“The future for the GOP is beyond the Beltway.”
I know of a certain governor in the far north who holds the future of the GOP of their hands....
I think there was a ‘disconnect’ from 2002 to 2008.
Now that most of the ‘leaders’ like Hastert, DeLay, Stevens in the Senate are now gone, a new era is upon us, led by pols in the GOP that actually ‘listen’ to those of us that don’t live inside the Beltway.
***CORRECTION*******
“Holds the future of the GOP IN their hands.” lol
Yes, the Beltway GOP is sad and irrelevant.
I know of another one in the South that is more electable.
“It’s hard to imagine how the party of Ronald Reagan could let that happen, but it did.”
A few of the culprits:
George HW Bush
Bob Dole
Goerge W Bush
John McCain
Lindsey Graham
....
Republicans got lost on their way to acceptance, as a minority of course, inside the Beltway. They are victims of their own cowardice and lack of principles. Their own excessive deficts(tax cuts without spending cuts) made them look like exactly what they are, spineless.
Michael Steele should do so as well.
And very destructive and dangerous to America and the Party.
Nothing news worthy about that!
However, we have been down this road before. In 1976 we lost to Carter. In 1978 we purged the Rino's. Think Cliff Case in NJ, et al. And in 1980, up from the grass roots came Reagan. Who incidentally, beat GHWB.
Clean out the stables and take back congress in 2010 and Sarah Palin in 2012.
Spector is a traitor and good riddance.
The party got a little better today.
Which is truly profound since he's primarily a pollster.
The author is right. Reminds me of the late seventies. All the GOP whores in DC are doomed but the retaking will require slogging through the primaries one state at a time in 2010. And then the big battle in 2012 for Sarah.
Palin remains skeptical of Republicans. "I would love to promote the party ideals if we're going to live out the ideals and maybe allow other American voters to understand what the principles of the party are," she says. "We've got to be assured we have enough people in the party who will live out those ideals and it's not just rhetoric. Otherwise, I'd be wasting my time. There are a lot of things I would and should be doing."She was right then and she's dead right to be distancing herself further from the mess that is the GOP establishment by moving SarahPAC to Alaska and not being part of that NRSC/NRCC fundraising stuff. She gets it.
BTW, that book I recently read by John O'Sullivan, "The President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister: Three Who Changed the World" draws some eerie parallels to the late '70s period that you mentioned. Very similar times. Check it out if you have the time.
Palin is Bush redux.
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