Republican Governors Meet, Glumly After Election Losses, Many See Bleak Future for Party

[onehandle]

Source: Washington Post

MIAMI, Nov. 12 -- Republican governors were the brightest spot in an otherwise dispiriting election last week for the GOP, but the chief executives gathered here Wednesday provided a gloomy assessment of their party's failures and a dark forecast for the future.

The Republican Party is ill situated to serve a changing America, they said. Members make excuses for corruption. The Bush administration and congressional leaders are fiscally irresponsible and have ceded the tax issue -- of all issues -- to the Democrats. Large swaths of the country are off limits to GOP candidates. Republicans have lost the technology advantage, and if they were part of a corporation, "heads would roll." It's going to be worse in 2010.

The Republican Governors Association, meeting at a sleek hotel on Biscayne Bay to survey the damage, itself is a thinned version of what it was in the heyday of GOP dominance of national politics. There will be 21 GOP governors come January, a loss of one, and only 16 of them made the trip.

They are convinced that their counterparts in Washington are incapable of finding a formula for resurgence and that the answer lies in the states.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/12/AR2008111203112.html

---

And one of the very reasons for their bleak future is of course, right in their midst.

Losers!

[wroberts189]

1. They need to ask rove for advice ....thats the ticket ...heheheh n/t

[Acadia Blue]

14. Sarah the great wolf killer will save the greedy ole party.

[liberal N proud]

2. But they have the life of the party there

Sarah Palin.

[annabanana]

4. Interesting that she attended none of the functions this first day. .

(too busy with the media, evidently)

I wonder if she was even invited to those strategery sessions. . .

[tanyev]

8. They used to say the most dangerous place to be in Washington was between

Phil Gramm and a television camera. I'm guessing Phil never had to try and shove Sarah Palin out of his way.

[SpiralHawk]

3. "We earned our bleakness the old fashioned way..." - Republicon Governators

"We republicon lies, corruption, and amorality."

- Republicon Governators

[jimshoes]

5. But they've got the effervescent and bubbly

and equally vacuous Sarah Palin to carry them forward with her vast knowledge of various stuff and such like.

[BR_Parkway]

6. But it's a Center-Right nation, and Obama needs to work from there

:sarcasm:

The real problem is their ideology - prior to Shrub, no one ever got to see all of it at work, so they could keep some mystery about it, and people would still believe that if they ever got to enact all of it, then it would be good.

But now that every bit of it's been tried and proven - everyone can see (or should be able to if they'd lift the partisan blinders off) that the ideology is bankrupt - it only "trickled down" to no where, but lifted a few boats into the QEII status.


*edited for there, their and they're - damn

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

7. May their numbers only dwindle.

And may they constantly remember the phrase "Sic Transit Gloria Mundi".

[pattmarty]

9. Hopefully the more intelligent and enlightened of the bunch.......

..........(if there actually are any people like that in the party) will wrest control from the 50's John Birch crazies that have been running and controlling the party since the revered saints Goldwater & Reagan (sounds like a comedy team) and just bring it up to 19th century standards, that alone would be a huge improvement.

[chat_noir]

10. Pawlenty: "Drill, baby, drill, by itself, is not an energy policy."

The best sign yet '08 is over...

...or at least that a crowd of governors, staff and lobbyists is different than an audience of GOP activists.

Said Tim Pawlenty just now in his RGA luncheon speech: "Drill, baby, drill, by itself, is not an energy policy."

Noting that wind, solar, biomass and geothermal must be part of the equation, Pawlenty drew applause from an otherwise sedate crowd.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/jonathanmartin/1108/The_best_sign_yet_08_is_over.html?showall

[david_vincent]

11. Their tendency toward ideological dogmatism is one of their probs

But the other huge problem they have is that they treat their party as a country club; if you're a "member" then you're accepted, regardless of how vile or even criminal your actions are. Of course, the underlying cause is that Republicans usually join the party not out of political conviction, but as a matter of identity. If you self-identify as a conservative, then you join the Republican party, and they all accept each other because they're all there as a result of the same motivation. This results in a situation in which they are unable to identify and reject those among them who are ethically unfit to be officeholders or even spokespeople. It also results in situations in which, time and time again, they leave themselves open to charges of hypocrisy because they condemn Democrats for things that they themselves are thoroughly guilty of as well -- except they cover up and excuse their own crimes. So, for instance, they posed as the party of family values and moral righteousness when condemning Clinton during the Lewinsky thing, even though many Republicans (including some of the most vociferous of Clinton's attackers) were themselves adulterers. To this day, they consistently refuse to reject their own members who have been accused and even convicted of everything from hypocrisy to malfeasance to crimes ranging from the petty to the felonious.
Republicans need to start distancing themselves from those who should not be publicly acknowledged as leaders among them. However, the fact that Palin is accorded such respect by them and appears likely to assume a presence on the national level shows that they are, in fact, heading in the opposite direction. This is good for us, since their party can only continue to fragment as long as they refuse to drop the "country club" perception of Republicanism.

[Bushies gotta go]

12. An ode to shrub....

and they deserve every single thing they don't get.

[HopeHoops]

13. Did Palin wear her Michael Jackson "Thriller" jacket? Wait, it was with the undies.

[onager]

15. Her undies, or Todd's silk boxers?

As someone commented about Todd on another board:

"She spent $40,000 on clothes for this guy, and he still looks like he got turned down for a job at Jiffy Lube."

:rofl:

[HopeHoops]

16. That's because he looks like he would test positive for Jiffy LUDES

[Idealism]

17. Republican Governors Meet, Glumly

Source: Washington Post

By Robert Barnes
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 13, 2008; Page A01

MIAMI, Nov. 12 -- Republican governors were the brightest spot in an otherwise dispiriting election last week for the GOP, but the chief executives gathered here Wednesday provided a gloomy assessment of their party's failures and a dark forecast for the future.

The Republican Party is ill situated to serve a changing America, they said. Members make excuses for corruption. The Bush administration and congressional leaders are fiscally irresponsible and have ceded the tax issue -- of all issues -- to the Democrats. Large swaths of the country are off limits to GOP candidates. Republicans have lost the technology advantage, and if they were part of a corporation, "heads would roll." It's going to be worse in 2010.


Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/12/AR2008111203112.html?nav=rss_email/components

---

They talk like pragmatists now, but after the next primaries it will revert back to galvanizing the base

[phantom power]

18. Where was all this sincere soul-searching over the last 8 years?

I don't recall anybody chastising BushCo for fiscal irresponsibility, while all that irresponsibility was actually being committed.

[Idealism]

19. Back then it was called compassionate conservatism if I recall

[LynnTheDem]

25. PARTY UBER ALLES.

That and the 3 Monkeys Syndrome; No See, No Hear, No Speak.

If they didn't mention the fact that their party -THEIR party- was driving the nation over a cliff, then nobody would notice THEIR party is driving the nation over a cliff.

Sorta like "It's not the TORTURE; it's the PHOTOS of the torture!"

Same way Palin' lies and lies and lies during campaigning about that "terrorist pal"...and then when he wins says she'd be HONORED to work with that "terrorist pal".

It's "JUST POLITICS". And fuck the destruction in lives, treasury and country.

[HopeHoops]

20. "Heh, heh - we told Sarah it would be at Denny's - HAR HAR HAR!"

They are either going to hide from her or ambush her at the door with a roll of duct tape.

[llmart]

21. Our local NPR station said......

"Sarah Palin was received less than warmly." Ha. Ha. Welcome to your new world. The GOP will treat her like they treat Bush - as a pariah.

[4lbs]

22. The Governor of Texas cut her off as she was taking questions from the press.

He gave some lame ass excuse of "we're running behind schedule".

[Blaze Diem]

24. Ya she pissed off a few of the other Gov.s' with her "its all about me, right?" speech

Felt they were used as props to stand behind Palin as she tried to steal the show.

Many of these Govs also have their sights on National offices in the coming years, so they were not happy with Palin trying to steal their spotlight.
Perry cut her off after only 4 questions with the press.

She's such a freakin idiot.
And now she's pissed off her own colleges..
lllllllllllooooollllllllll.

[4lbs]

27. They may have expected her to talk about the Alaskan oil pipeline, ANWR, and natural gas.

Instead, she talked about the same crap she did while on the campaign trail.

[tanyev]

28. Mooselini better watch her back.

[Heywood J]

23. They don't even realize what happened...

Criticism came from others as well. Former eBay chief executive Meg Whitman, a close McCain adviser, said, "Republicans are losing market share at an alarming rate,"

It's not market share, dumbass. It's people's futures. Maybe if they stopped hiring hacks like that, people would take them seriously.

[KamaAina]

26. Sarah didn't look glum in the least

She looked kind of... mavericky. :eyes:

[foxfeet]

29. Futile to try to save the brand

when the contents of the packaging are thoroughly rotten.

[opihimoimoi]

30. Lipstick on Shit ain't making it...changing shades of Red ain't doing it either

its still shit...

[NYC Liberal]

31. They don't care about actually helping...it's only about "finding a formula for resurgence"