Dionne: The GOP's Vanishing Breed

[kskiska]

(snip)

The 74-year-old Specter's victory is thus a last hurrah, not the next new thing. Those conservatives gathered around the Club for Growth, a political action committee devoted to pushing moderate Republicans either to the right or out of office, can claim a tactical triumph for the nearly $2 million the group directed toward helping Toomey.

Stephen Moore, the Club for Growth's president, always saw the effort as having a double purpose: to replace Specter with a conservative if possible, but also to demonstrate how much anguish conservatives could create for Republican moderates who did not fall into line. "It serves notice to Chafee, Snowe, Voinovich and others who have been problem children that they will be next," Moore said before the primary, referring to Republican Sens. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, Olympia Snowe of Maine and George Voinovich of Ohio.

That it took such strenuous efforts by the White House to prop up Specter serves notice as to how conservative the Republican primary electorate has become. Even if the moderate incumbents hold on until retirement, their successors on the Republican ticket will be well to their right. "No moderates need apply" may become a rule in Republican primaries, even as many moderates drift away from politics.

(snip)

I mourn the decline of the moderate and liberal Republicans. Though not always coherent, progressive Republicanism did try to balance things out, to be socially generous, fiscally prudent and responsibly internationalist. But if conservatives keep trying to drive the moderates and liberals out of the party, the handful of survivors may decide to pack up and leave on their own, as Vermont's Sen. Jim Jeffords did. That's what the Club for Growth wants. Despite Specter's victory, it is slowly but inexorably getting its wish.

more…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54898-2004Apr29.html

[rumguy]

1. How far to the right can the repigs drift

before they either self-destruct or destroy the world first?

[Old and In the Way]

2. Good question. Since greed is their great motivator, I suspect

that the plan is to steal elections. I really do agree that as these radicals take over, they'll be moving their Party into obscurity.

[ixion]

4. and how far right do they move before

the label 'facist' is appropriate. Personally, I think that line has been crossed, but the mainstream don't seem to see it.

[Stuckinthebush]

3. That will just make the Democrats the majority party again

The GOP believes that the majority of Americans are as insanely right wing as they are - that is false. Most Americans fall either on the left or in the middle. If the GOP forces out traditional moderate Republicans, then they will have succeeded in making their party the "small tent" party.

Good for us, bad for them.