Posted on 03/24/2013 9:21:43 PM PDT by MinorityRepublican
The air has been full of 10th-anniversary Iraq war retrospectives. One that caught my eye was a smart piece by Tom Curry, national affairs writer for NBC News, who wrote of one element of the story, the war's impact on the Republican Party: "The conflict not only transformed" the GOP, "but all of American politics."
It has, but it's an unfinished transformation.
Did the Iraq war hurt the GOP? Yes. The war, and the crash of '08, half killed it. It's still digging out, and whether it can succeed is an open question.
Here, offered in a spirit of open debate, is what the war did to the GOP:
• It ruined the party's hard-earned reputation for foreign-affairs probity. They started a war and didn't win it. It was longer and costlier by every measure than the Bush administration said it would be. Before Iraq, the GOP's primary calling card was that it was the party you could trust in foreign affairs. For half a century, throughout the Cold War, they were serious about the Soviet Union, its moves, feints and threats. Republicans were not ambivalent about the need for and uses of American power, as the Democrats were in the 1970s and 1980s, but neither were they wild.
After Iraq it was the Republicans who seemed at best the party of historical romantics or, alternatively, the worst kind of cynic, which is an incompetent one. Iraq marked a departure in mood and tone from past conservatism.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Iraq is not the problem.
The leftward drift of the GOP is the problem.
If it does not correct course, it will not recover.
No, Miss Peggy....not being true to the CONSTITUTION and Bill of Rights has ruined the GOP
To be specific, it must drop the support of Gay Marriage, and the idea that if it softens it’s message on the social issues and gives in on Amnesty, that it will turn around it’s electoral chances.
If they don’t, you well know that the current leadership and those elected politicians taking part in this are traitors and are complicit in giving the Democrats, and their evil agenda, control, and in purposefully destroying the GOP.
(looking around)
So, how many Gov mansions have a GOP Gov? How many state legislatures have one, or both, chambers run by the GOP?
Last I heard the GOP had a majority in the House for 6 of those last 10 years, and indeed hold it now. The Senate is a different story, but hold enough power to stop almost anything that they don’t like there.
Yeah, the GOP has lost the last 2 Presidential elections — one candidate being a US Senator (never a good choice) and the other a guy from Massachusetts (always a loser). The GOP always does better when it nominates a former or current governor, and there is a nice stockpile of those now.
Ann Colter said it best — it’s a pendulum, and things aren’t nearly as bad for the GOP as they were in November, 2006.
Why does anyone want to take advice from an Obama voter?
Iraq was a success (until Obama screwed it up). Why should it hurt the GOP?
The insufferable ass appears on FR once again.
Glad to see so many here who think that all of this was and will be for the next 40 years money well spent. Even if you quibble with the number, the cost of the war far exceeds any possible benefit that the US or the world has derived from the Iraq War. I was in no way a detractor of the war at the time it was being waged, but there is no reasonable way that I can, in hindsight, rationalize it now. The cost, in lives, in dollars, in global politics, in any way you slice it, was too high. As I sat behind a young man in church this morning who had lost his legs, hips, and pelvis to an IED in Iraq, I thought that there was no reasonable justification I could give him for his noble sacrifice. Bush's War, more than anything else, soured countless Republicans and independents against the party and gave the White House to Obama.
Flame away.
hello, it’s name is Peggy... Miss Peggy
Irans continued weapon flights scream failure in Iraq. Letting the Shia control it could only serve iran. We can blame obummer for some but not all.
HA..They left their supporters. They are rotting at the root because they are not showing any fortitude nor conviction to much of anything that is even in the party’s platform. They are talking like democrats. Any democrat will tell you, between a Romney type and a real democrat, the dems vote for their guy. After what Karl Rove claims will happen in the next election, I’m done with them until they turn course. They think since Romney got all of those voters with his stand on gay issues, that those same voters/ people are ready to support this agenda. They don’t get it!! Many voted for Romney because they were frightened of Obama! More fall out from non understanding the base.
we should go in kill the baddies and leave
the “cost” is sticking around for “nation building” (lateky Muslim Nations)
Amen.
Civilizing savages never works.
You are right.
The voters don’t care about Iraq or anything else. It’s all about “gay marriage” now. “Gay marriage” is the #1 issue around the world. Just look anywhere in any government run “news” outlet. It’s a sick, sick world we’re living in these days.
More GOP voters will flee in droves over amnesty and homo-marriage than any discontent over Iraq. Vastly more.
I don’t like to take on the onus of speaking for anyone but myself when I make postings, as I don’t want to inadvertently impose my subjective views on others I’m talking about. But in my circle of 20 to 25 friends and relatives who are longtime GOP voters, the alienation they now feel towards the Republican Party is jarringly palpable. Something I’ve never, ever seen from them, going back as long as I’ve known them. And if I’m cognizant of anything, the topics of amnesty and homo marriage are 100% incendiary with them. The GOP caves on these things... they are so dead. They have ... no idea... how dead.
Iraq was a waste. Sorta like Vietnam.
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