Posted on 03/19/2006 9:21:33 AM PST by Cannoneer No. 4
The authority of the Bush Administration is falling apart - in its heartland.
With almost three years of George Bush's presidency to go, most Republicans in Congress have one political goal before the mid-term congressional elections in November: desert him as fast as they can.
The discipline of the first Bush Administration is gone. The Republican-dominated, rubber-stamp Congress is no more. Every day, another Republican member of Congress declares that Bush is a great guy, that they love him dearly, but that he has lost the plot.
Sack people they say. One day it's Donald Rumsfeld. The next day it's Dick Cheney. A day later it's the whole White House staff. Do something, Mr President, they say. And by the way, they say, we love you dearly, but most of your policies stink.
Come to think of it, it's all of them, from immigration where they reckon Bush wants to flood the country with illegal immigrants from Mexico, to the Medicare prescription drug plan for America's seniors that is out of control in terms of its cost and which is so complicated that elderly Americans can be seen weeping at pharmacy counters across the country.
No opportunity by Republicans to criticise Bush - with a heavy heart of course - is missed. When commercial radio shock-jocks suddenly discovered that the Bush Administration had approved the takeover of six American ports by a Dubai company - by Arabs! - the Republican leaders in Congress were in danger of causing each other injury as they made the dash for the TV cameras and microphones to say, in essence, that Bush had lost his marbles.
The Democrats, meanwhile, are more or less all over the place on more or less every issue, except the Arab takeover of those American ports where their outrage was outrageous and, frankly, racist. The Congress of the world's sole superpower appears to be an undisciplined rabble.
On the key issues that Americans are really worried about - and Iraq is overwhelmingly the most important one - neither Republicans nor Democrats in Congress have a clue what to do.
Neither does Bush, who increasingly looks and sounds as if he is weighed down by the relentless bad news from Iraq and the daily crises and political missteps that have plagued his second term.
It was in this political environment that the Republican Party's Southern Leadership Conference met last week in Memphis. The highlight of the two-day conference was a straw poll of the 2000 or so Republican Party activists and supporters of the leading candidates for the party's 2008 presidential nomination.
The one candidate who wasn't in Memphis and was not part of the poll was former New York City mayor Rudi Giuliani who, in poll after poll, is far and away the people's choice - that includes Republicans - for the Republican Party's 2008 nomination.
Most political analysts seem to agree that Giuliani represents the Republican Party's best hope of winning in 2008, but they also agree that he has a snowball's chance in hell of winning the nomination.
This is not because he is seen as wishy-washy on the war in Iraq, the war on terror or even on the need to cut government spending programs, including welfare.
He's not. Indeed, in some ways, he's a more orthodox conservative than Bush. But Giuliani is pro-choice on abortion, which for many conservative Republicans means he's in favour of murder and therefore unfit to be president. And he's "soft on gay marriage".
For the Republican Party's social conservative base, those people who turned out in great numbers in 2004 to give Bush a clear if narrow victory, "values issues" are those that energise them.
That's why at that Republican conference in Memphis, Iraq was hardly mentioned while abortion and the moral threats posed by Hollywood and gay marriage were discussed endlessly.
If no pro-abortion politician has any hope of winning the Republican Party's 2008 nomination, no anti-abortion politician, so the conventional political wisdom goes, has any hope of being the Democratic candidate. The liberal wing of the Democratic Party is the mirror image of the Republican Party's social conservatives.
The culture wars in America are real and alive and remain potent politically. The culture wars have pushed the Republicans to the right and the Democrats to the left, which means neither party has a substantial moderate wing.
On many issues, neither party has the support of the majority of Americans. On abortion for instance, a majority of Americans believe abortion should be legal in many - but not all - cases.
A number of conservative states are planning abortion laws that would make abortion illegal no matter what the circumstances, including rape and incest and a serious risk to the woman's health.
By next year, when the Supreme Court comes to consider constitutional challenges to these laws, abortion will be a major political issue. And not because it is a vote-decider for most Americans, but because it energises the bases of both parties. The party that gets the vote out is the party that wins.
So not only is Congress a rabble, not only are Republicans running away from Bush as fast as they can, not only do the Democrats seem a lot like the Labor Party, but it is a real possibility that both the November elections and the 2008 presidential election could be decided on "values issues" that don't matter a hill of beans to many Americans.
Michael Gawenda is United States correspondent.
and what effin peoples would these be?
I should just type this once and paste it in.
No gun control.
No gay marriage.
No unfettered access to abortion, or no vote. Period.
Rudy doesn't even come close in my book.
Not to worry .. Hillary will bring them all back and more..
Even a rat can't stand a skunk..
He dumped his wife? I didn't know that. What were the circumstances? Anyone know?
"Republican rats start to desert sinking ship"
Nooooo, no, no, no..... The Good Ship "Moderate Republican" isn't sinking.
It's simply being pragmatic and meeting the rising water halfway!
Rudy even leads with Southern repubs.
http://jacksonville.bizjournals.com/jacksonville/stories/2006/03/13/daily28.html
Believe me, I think W condones spending like the proverbial drunken sailors (no offence to our Navy heroes). W's domestic policies stink IMO.
Do a search--it's a pretty well-known story. Remember when he moved out and lived with a gay friend? This is all in the public record.
What? A poll of retired New Yorkers? What were the choices? Rudy and Mc Cain? Balderdash!
Florida hasn't been a real southern state since it was invaded by retirees from the Northeast in the '60s. Try running this in Alabama.
This survey is meaningless, except to say that they could beat Hillary. The average Republican dogcatcher would do better than Hillary among Republicans.
Let me clue you in on something. Gun Control will not play well in the red-state South. Period. Rudy and Hillary are so close on so many key issues (abortion, gays, gun control), there is little difference to those of us in flyover country.
At the core of all this, is the Democrats' pet MSM trying to tell the Republicans who they can or cannot run against their candidate of choice.
If Republicans fall for that ruse they are SUCKERS, pure and simple, and are are probably going to lose big.
Republicans need to set their own agenda, and go for it, not try to out Democrat the Democrats.
You must be joking....
No. I am not. What right wing? I don't see anyone of the "right wing" attempting this: "... the right wing of the party attempted to control the entire GOP..."
Please explain what you meant.
The main thing the Republican party has going for it is that the Democratic party is far worse.
Actually, like Newt, he dumped TWO wives.
Dear Mr. Gwenda...
In your DREAMS!!!
Believe me, I think W condones spending like the proverbial drunken sailors (no offence to our Navy heroes). W's domestic policies stink IMO.
Agreed. 48% increase in entitlement spending under Bush has me reeling.
Hypocrites? Yes. Doing & saying anything to get reelected? Absolutely.
Where have all the true conservatives gone?
It's more than that. The problem is the party itself.
The Republican Party has no principles. There are no nonnegotiable, unyielding, core philosophies on which the party and its candidates will stand or die. Anyone can call himself a Republican, and the party is happy to have them, no matter what they believe, no matter what they do, if it increases the number of "-R"s in Congress. A party of political whores, for whom gaining and holding power is the only value, the only goal.
I'll ask you what I've asked on FR dozens of times. Take your time in replying; I've never gotten an answer, so I'm used to waiting.
What are the core, nonnegotiable principles of the Republican Party? What can we assume from a Republican candidate and/or officeholder? What can we count on?
Smaller government? No. More liberty? No. Balanced budgets? Obviously not. Constitutionally-limited government power? Hell no. Elimination of wasteful spending? Laughable - the Republicans won't even take PBS off the taxpayer teat. How about a reduction in the absurd growth of spending? Of course not. And whatever happened to those promises to kill off the Dept. of Education? It doesn't educate anybody, and was promised to be shut down; instead, Republicans have created more Cabinet departments.
So, Republicans, how's that "limited government" thingie you've been promising us for decades coming along . . . . . . hmmmmmmm?
Go for it, Republicans. Defend these lying weasels.
The GOP '08 slogan: "We promise we won't piss away another 14 years. Really. Trust us!"
From a macro standpoint, the general public will take back the priceless gift they gave Republicans when they allowed us to control all three branches.
Why......????
Because we abused it in numerous ways.
The micro explanation is that when single issue advocacy is rammed down someones throat, it scares the hell out of them and this fear lies just under the surface of the choices in the voting booth, or whether a vote is made at all.
The true base, or the Republican silent majority is not well represented on this forum or any conservative forum, and if they participate, as many have done and left, they are run off or trashed as being Bu-shies or mindless bots.
Those bots vote, and are the basis of the party, contrary to belief's here, and they never miss a chance to show the rest of the party how dismayed they are because they always vote.
This election cycle is likely to break the back of the Republican party by the time the single issue purist's fail to vote because they are unhappy with the candidates, and the Bush Bots, as they are called, do some house cleaning on some Republican representatives who have misused their office by going against rock solid conservative ethics to play emotional chess with issues like Schiavo, Miers and the port controversy, all this while billions are sent to Louisiana to make political points and it disappears into a abyss. This was preceded by post 9/11 precedents that make the Federal government responsible for everyones problems in the future as the deficit skyrockets. Not to mention the Congressional money scandals that have erupted.
It all says we are at the high point now, and everything else will be down hill from here on. Had we all backed the president during the second term where he had promised to fix most of these concerns, we would not be talking about this today and that is as simple as I can make it.
As a result of infighting, there are going to be some seriously unhappy people in this party, most of whom are are just visiting anyway.
Frankly, I'll be relieved when it is all over with. This has been very painful to watch. This is not a crack down within the party as Rush likes to say. It is a crack up, and I think that he is beginning to see it too.
I disagree with you about Rudi not being tough enough to fight the war on terror. Most polls show that Americans see him as Mr. War on Terror.
McCain would be just fine in that particular area too. Where they stand on other matters is the cause of concern.
The real problem is that many politicians have joined the GOP without any sincere interest in what it stands for. The so-called "Right Wing" is merely acknowledging that if this trend is not changed, the GOP will just become another branch of the Democrats. As I've noted some time ago on my blog, the liberal and conservative positions are more rationally supportable than the "moderate" one. If a particular liberal proposal is a good idea, it should be supported fully. If it is a bad idea, it should be opposed fully. While there may occasionally be some merit in providing full "experimental" support [e.g. apply the policy fully in a limited area to evaluate results], there is no rational basis for the "compromise" measures that the moderate Republicans are always offering up.
Suppose Democrats propose a $10B program, and the Republicans think it's a bad idea but the Democrats have enough votes to force it through for $10B. If the Republicans have uniformly opposed the program and it turns out to be a disaster--even though funded for the full requested amount--they can bring this up next year and have a chance at possibly killing it.
Suppose instead that some "moderate" Republicans, fearing that the program might get pushed through for $10B, offer up a "compromise" $5B version which gets passed. As expected, the program is a disaster. What can the Republicans do about it? They can't say the program was simply a bad idea, because they supported it for $5B. And they can't respond effectively to Democrat charges that the program failed because of underfunding. So next year, the program will be $10B. When it fails again, funding will be increased to $15B, etc.
The problem with the Republicans isn't that there are too many "right wingers" in control, but rather that so few Republicans are actually willing to rhetorically justify conservative positions.
He was married to this broadway actress by whom he had two children. Can't recall her name but she appeared in the play, blush, (the Vagina Monologues) and was typical of the theater type. Anyways, their marriage broke down. It was broken down for years. She did not want a divorce so she said. At some point he and this Judith to whom he is now married became a romantic item. I don't think Judith is particularly young, but somebody can google and find her age, in comparison to the actress he divorced.
Anyway, it was very public and very messy. The wife continued to live in the Governor's mansion after the marriage was irretrievably broken. Eventually the divorce went through, and after a period of time he and Judith married. I have not a clue who was at fault for the breakdown of their marriage, but it could have been both.
I just don't see the "he dumped her for a younger woman" description. But hey, that might be referencing someone he once dumped in favor of the actress. I don't go back that far in my knowledge.
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