Will Specter leave the GOP?

Great Debates
41

I don’t understand the logic of what the GOP is doing today? Are they truly as offbase as they seem, or is it some kind of ploy? The further right they go the greater the probability of slipping into irrelevency. They have to realize it’s a numbers game and they don’t have the numbers, don’t they?

As David Frum wrote in the article linked by BrainGlutton, “Our party seems to be running to govern a country that no longer exists.” I’d amend that to “…a country that never existed,” but his point is taken. What this says to me is that Republicans are either oblvious to reality, ignoring it, or worse, simply don’t care as long as Obama fails, and if the country fails with Obama, so be it.

I can’t say I’ve ever felt bad for the GOP, but their self imolation does make me a bit uncomfortable as their stubbornness negatively impacts everything Obama is trying to accomplish. I keep hoping someone in the party will rise up and say “Hey! What the Hell are we doing?!” One of their latest casts off the port bow is “spending freeze.” What? This is their solution when the country is carreening toward a depression?

So now we have the GOP taking its marching orders from Rush Limbaugh in order to preserve a voter base who have no place else to go and who the GOP has no chance of losing. There’s logic for ya.

On the other side of insanity, I wouldn’t wish the incompetence and douche-chilling embarrassment personified by Michael Steele on my worst enemy. However, the GOP, in a cynical and soon to be proven disastrous move have, yet again, shown their ineptitude in gauging the pulse of even their own electorate by making a black man who’s failed at just about everything he’s ever done, except to proudly wear the moniker of Conservative Aberration, head of the RNC, simply because he’s black. If Alan Keyes weren’t so obviously batshit crazy, not to mention a little long in the tooth, he’d probably have gotten the nom/nod over Steele. The bottom line is the conservative wing of the party, including the remaining self-hating blacks (e.g., Clarence Thomas, Armstrong Little, Larry Elder, Roy innis, Shelby Steele, etc…), have long-standing negative attitudes and prejudices toward black people, so it was a doubly stupid move by the GOP to elevate Steele.

I know I’m a bit all over the place in this post, but it seems to me that elevating someone like Arlen Spector to a position of prominence in the party, maybe not RNC chair as he may have to give up his senate seat (??), rather than shunning, and possibly defeating, him in the primary, would go a way toward attempting to right an all-but capsized ship. If he leaves, and Snowe and Collins bolt as well I believe the Republican party, for all intents and purposes, will cease to have any influence whatsoever on national politics.

42

People are not always ruled by logic. Put them together in groups and that’s even more true.

For the last eight years, and maybe longer, the Republicans have placed a great premium on loyalty, steadfastness and dedication. (Would that they had put the same effort into their policies.) They were the brave defenders of the Alamo, holding out against an onslaught of liberal enemies (never mind that they had the presidency and Congress). And with every stumbling block along the way, they stressed those things even more. (When Scott McClellan writes a critical book, suddenly that’s not the Scott McClellan they knew; the content was irrelevant.) With every person or battle you lose, you dig the trenches a little deeper. Some people have eight years of their lives invested in that way of thinking, and the more adamant they were, the more it will hurt now to admit to themselves that they might have been wrong. So when they hit a real setback, like losing the elections, the remaining zealots start digging their way to China.

43

I opposed the Iraq War, but hoped that Bush would succeed there nonetheless. He was, you know, running the country at the time.

I want a conservative party that’s run in practice by moderates and policy wonks. Ditto for the liberal party.

The Republican Party of Nixon and Eisenhower has already died. During what might be the greatest recession since World War II, the Republican leadership is calling for a spending freeze, something that goes beyond even Herbert Hoover. In so many ways, national Republicans are intellectually bankrupt and morally corrupt: all they have left is bombast.

Moderate conservatives have their work cut out for them. I would suggest two indicators of renewal. When conservative activists show some interest in actual news reporting as opposed to lazy and effusive commentary, then they might deserve to be taken seriously. As it is, when a conservative TV host suggested that to the assembly at the latest CPAC conference, he was booed. Loudly. The denizens are that attached to their petty ideologies.

Secondly, in an increasingly open economy conservatives have to become more internationalist. It would be a good sign if they took some interest in conservative policies from other lands. They cringe from doing this, acting as if they have all the answers, a sure sign that they have none.

So we need not only GOP electoral losses but also some hard thinking by those with conservative temperaments, rather than ideologies. Unfortunately, voters tend to favor the opposition in off-year elections, as do weak economies. So I wouldn’t be surprised to see Republican gains in the House in 2010. A burst of conservative imagination seems less likely.

44

I think the one place where Frum goes wrong is his lack of recognition that the mainstream Republican party is now insane. Like someone with delusions, they cast all events into the frame of their madness, and are unwilling to compromise or admit failure except in the most superficial of ways. The California Republican party is exactly the same. There are exceptions, mostly a few governors who have to deal with reality, but not many.

We all laugh about the Dems arguing, but as the Founding Fathers knew free argument is the way to find the best solution. Republicans today are one small step from 1930s era Stalinist purges. No gulags, just cutting campaign funds.

And it is going to get worse. Steele’s problem isn’t shooting off his mouth. He has never been elected to anything on his own, and has never run a big organization. And he’s the guy who is supposed to get them back on track.

Some fun.

45

And if that happens they may have a chance. The conservative wing had its chance - I see it going back to pre-Goldwater days, composed of academics like Russel Kirk and little old ladies in tennis shoes.

46

When you look atthe situation now faced by the Republican Party, it is indeed a very tough road ahead for them. And if they lose folks like the three who are the focus of this thread, they really are even further out there on the limb. In fact, when you just take five minutes to jot down the elements of the current situation, the picture is really bleak.

A few things from the Frum article - others from election stats and recent developments:

Consider the Republicans have a real problem to deal with giving several very real events and trends
*** they have lost the popular vote in four out of the last five presidential elections
*** they lost significant numbers in both the Senate and the House races in the last two election cycles - over 65 seats combined
*** they are losing sections of the country and individual states that have been loyal to them in the past
*** they seem to lack any strong national figure for leadership
*** they seem to lack any coherent alternative program to counter the Obama administration
*** the numbers they face in the 2010 Senatorial elections are not very favorable to them making the usual off year gains a very remote if not impossible possibility for them
*** being out of power means no rewards or benefits for the usual party faithful
*** the current public opinion polls on the Republican Party are very negative and only getting worse
*** their most popular politician in some poll surveys - Alaska Governor Sarah Palin - is also one of the most unpopular figures among non-Republicans
*** the economic bailouts started by the Bush administration and continued by the Obama administration only serve to exacerbate the divisions between the Wall Street and Wal Mart wings of the party
*** census demographics project that the most favorable group to the Republicans - Whites - are shrinking in percentage of the population over the next three decades while Hispanics - now voting 2/3 for Democrats - are the fastest growing sector of the electorate
*** the age demographic is also charting against the Republicans as those under 30 went large for Obama. If the Dems can capture the Millenial generation again in the next election cycle, those patterns could be there for life as we found out with young voters in the Reagan era who started out and stayed as loyal Republicans.
*** for the first time in history, the Repubican candidate lost the vote among college graduates with Bachelors Degrees. Obama won that by eight percentage points. 20 years ago Bush won it by over twenty points.
*** one of their most visible spokespersons, Rush Limbaugh, is also a very divisive figure and has abysmal poll approval numbers among younger people - even the Rev. J. Wright polled higher in polularity than Limbaugh among younger voters.

If Snowe and Collins jump it will something that makes sense for them. I see Arlen Specter as doing more of the Lieberman thing - trying to win his Republican primary but then going Indenpendent if he loses and maybe winning the General in November.

47

That’s not an option for Specter. Pennsylvania law doesn’t allow it. That’s why he has to decide what he’s going to do, switch parties or not, now (or very soon) before the campaign starts.

According to the OP’s article,

48

Problem is, the extremists exist, and on the RW side they exist in very great numbers at the grassroots level (not nearly as great as they seem to assume, but great), and they will demand (and they arguably deserve) a party that represents their views. If they’re not satisfied they might exit and go third-party, or simply stop voting at all; either way, what kind of hopes would the GOP have for the future? They need those votes.

49

Starboard, please! :wink:

50

They may, but if they are losing two potential moderate votes for every extremist one they keep, they are in big trouble.
There are ways of defanging the extremists. If Republican primaries became open, moderate independents might vote and help get moderate Republican candidates nominated. Here in California the Democratic primary is open and the Republican one is closed. As moderate Republicans leave the party, the drift to extremism just gets worse, as only the extremists are left. Assuming the Republican powers that be are still rational, they might reverse course, but it is going to take some guts and cleverness.

51

As long as the perception is commonplace among the GOP base that the US is basically a right-leaning nation, and their problem is that they haven’t been socially-conservative enough, that ain’t gonna happen.

52

But, if Specter pulls a Lieberman (except running as an I from the start) does he still caucus with the Republicans or shore up support among the center and caucus with the Dems as a Blue Dog/Ind.-type?

53

Specter is not only old, but he’s been battling lymphoma for years. I would think he’ll just hang it up.

54

Okay, true enough…for now. But I’ll bet that’s what Lincoln Chafee said as well. He just didn’t see the handwriting on the wall. Maybe the ladies will fare better…but to what end? Risk getting booted out of office by the electorate for the privilege of being the freakshow moderates in a party that despises them and which is too far to the right to be reformed?

55

They really need to study the Pew Political Typology, particularly the percentage figures. “Social Conservatives” make up only 11% of the population. Add all the other Republican-leaning groups and you still have a minority.

56

:smack: how dense of me …and I call myself an oarsman.

57

See? This is what I don’t get. from where do they get this perception?

58

I think it partly has to do with their common conviction that they are the “Real Americans”, and all the people who disagree with them are freaks. If they are only a shrinking minority they can’t claim that.

I’ve also noticed that quite a few extremists ( and not just right wing Republicans ) have a conviction that most people actually agree with them or would if they knew the “real facts”, but are lying or deceived by the enemy. Like the anti-evolution nuts who claim that scientists are lying, or the right wingers who kept trying to prove to the country that Clinton slept around and couldn’t grasp that most people knew, but didn’t really care.

59

Another factor is that right-wingers mostly associate with other right-wingers. If all of the folks in your social circle have some particular quality, then it’s easy to jump to the conclusion that most folks, period, share that quality. This isn’t limited to right-wingers, either: For any personality trait or view or whatever you care to name, most people with that trait will tend to associate with others like themselves.

60

Or like the batshit insane wing of the Republican party who believe that President Obama is an illegal alien/communist/socialist/Marxist. They’re just so sure that it’ll all come to light and Obama will be impeached. Any day now.