G.O.P. Agenda in House Has Moderates Unhappy

[cal04]

Moderate Republicans say a planned summer push by the House leadership on conservative causes like gun rights and new abortion restrictions threatens the re-election prospects of embattled centrists, who are key to the party's drive to hold Congress.

Frustrated and angry, they say the leadership's new American Values Agenda, a list of initiatives heavy on ideological themes, seems short-sighted and ill-timed considering that few conservatives are at serious risk in November.

"It was stupid and gross," said Representative Christopher Shays, Republican of Connecticut. "They have this obsession to satisfy conservative Republicans who will probably be re-elected no matter what happens. They get job satisfaction, but they are making it more difficult for me to win my race."


(snip)
"It reminds people that the Republican Party is the party of Terri Schiavo," said Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, referring to Republican intercession this year in the case of the Florida woman whose husband wanted her removed from a feeding tube.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/08/washington/08elect.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

[Warpy]

1. Phooey on those "moderates."

They have reliably voted for every half assed piece of ideologically driven bullshit and attack on civil liberties their extremist brethren have come up with. If that's making it harder for them to get reelected, tough shit.

Yes, it's the party of trying to keep dead women alive and forcing live women to face death birthing babies they don't want.

Any pretense of being anything but a party of thieves at the top and religious hysterics at the bottom has been shed.

[Gloria]

2. Maybe it's the longer term strategy of the RW GOP to get those

moderates out of the party for once and for all....then steal back the seats...