Recriminatathon begins!
After minutes upon minutes of soul-searching,
Republicans are now in recrimination mode. And the GOP’s various factions
all agree: This wouldn’t have happened if the party had listened to
us.
After minutes upon minutes of soul-searching, Republicans are now in recrimination mode. And the GOP’s various factions all agree: This wouldn’t have happened if the party had listened to us.
In the aftermath of the historic GOP losses Tuesday night, moderate Republicans quickly concluded that the party needs to be more moderate. Conservative Republicans declared that it should be more conservative. Main Street is angry at Wall Street, theo-cons are angry at neo-cons, and almost everyone is angry at President Bush and the GOP congressional leadership.
The party purges formally began yesterday, as Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert agreed to step down before they were pushed. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist had already decided to leave Congress, but GOP insiders said Tuesday’s debacle should eliminate him from presidential contention in 2008.
“We ought to just mend our wounds, bury our dead, learn from our mistakes and move on,” said GOP lobbyist Ed Rogers. “But first we’re going to have go through this. Look, bad policy and bad politics makes for bad elections.”
The common theme of the Recriminatathon is that the party lost its way after seizing control of Congress in 1994, focusing on power and perks instead of principles. But behind all the maneuvering, posturing and backstabbing lingered a serious debate over the party’s future, and what those principles should be. It’s a familiar argument between confrontation and compromise: appealing to base voters on the right or independents in the middle.
With the benefit of hindsight, most Republicans seemed to agree that their congressional leaders should have been more aggressive about ousting members engulfed in scandals. The RNC has sent e-mails for months accusing Democrats of a “culture of corruption,” but yesterday its surprisingly self-critical talking points vowed to ensure “that the leaders in our party have public service as their highest calling and not personal enrichment or power.”
Do you know someone who actually joined the Republican Party over broad political ideology in the past couple of years? The question isn’t about single-issue alliances; but, the broad neocon brush that smeared traditional conservatives as RINO’s.
Posted: Thu - November 9, 2006 at 11:26 AM