How the GOP Lost Its Way

[kurth]

Washington Post / April 22, 2006
How the GOP Lost Its Way
By Craig Shirley

The immigration reform debate has highlighted a long-standing fissure in the GOP between the elitist Rockefeller business wing and the party's conservative populist base. Whether the two groups can continue to coexist and preserve the Republican majority is increasingly doubtful as conservatives begin to consider -- and in some cases cheer -- the possibility that the GOP may lose control of Congress this fall.

The two camps are deeply divided. The business elites are interested in a large supply of cheap labor and support unfettered immigration and open borders. The populist base supports legal immigration but is concerned about lawlessness on our border, national sovereignty and the real security threat posed by porous borders....

The Republican Party is now unraveling. Sept. 11, 2001, and the war on terrorism stanched a lot of wounds inside the party, but resentment is growing over steel tariffs, prescription drug benefits, a League of Nations mentality, the growth of government and harebrained spending, the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, the increasing regulation of political speech in the United States and endemic corruption. On top of all the scandals, it has just come to light that the RNC paid millions in legal bills to defend operative James Tobin, who was convicted with associates in an illegal phone-jamming scheme aimed at preventing New Hampshire Democrats from voting. In doing so, the GOP appears to sanction and institutionalize corruption within the party....

It was the populists under Reagan, and later under Newt Gingrich, who energized the party, gave voice to a maturing conservative ideology and swept Republicans into power. We would be imprudent and forgetful to disregard this. But it may be too late, because conservatives don't want to be part of the looming train wreck. They know that this is no longer Ronald Reagan's party.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/21/AR2006042101593.html

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Cry me a fucking river.

[0007]

1. The Republican Party is now unraveling. And most everyone

who is anyone is being busted for being a crook or underhanded lying to control the government much like a dictator. Boo fucking hoo. They made there bed so now they can go shit in it.

[ananda]

2. Also..

I can tell you how the GOP lost its way...

... because it -had- to ally with hate groups to win elections..

... namely with the pseudo-xtian fundies and the southern
racists.

GeorgeBushI wasn't that bad until then.

GeorgeBushII has always been nuts.

Sue

[ClassWarrior]

3. It was never "Ronald Reagan's party." It's...

...Joe McCarthy's and Dick Nixon's. It's the party of Prescott Bush's Crime Family. And it has been for a long time.

NGU.

[unblock]

4. exactly.at best, reagan put a comfortable, senile grandfatherly face on it

the more respectable republicans had a semblance of control of the party for some time, but the cancer has been there for a loooooong time.

[ClassWarrior]

6. That's an excellent description of that fool Reagan...

..."a comfortable, senile grandfatherly face."

NGU.

[KyuzoGator]

5. They lost their way by ceasing to be conservative.

Neocons are interested in conserving nothing but their own power.

[Jade Fox]

7. Glamorizing Reagan is bullshit.....

He was no more of a populist than Bush is. Everything going on in the Bush administration has its roots in the Reagan years.

The chickens have come home to roost for the GOP because of their decades-long conning of working class folks and the Christian Right. The Christian Right has put the GOP on notice that if the Pubs don't start enacting their agenda, they will not longer get the Fundie vote. But doing so dooms the GOP to alienating most of the country (Terri Schaivo, anyone?).

The Republican Party figured out a long time ago that the can't win elections based solely on their true constituency: the wealthy. They need other voting blocks to win, and getting those has been the major GOP election challenge for nearly a century now.

[KyuzoGator]

8. It's not glamorizing...it's canonizing.

We're supposed to believe that Reagan single-handedly saved America.