Its hilarious in the thought that the Republican party moveing further to the right will bring it back from the wilderness. Voting record aside, this is a humiliation for the GOP, which have descending into a bickering pile of social conservatives. Their agenda while in power was to lean further and further to the right, alienating everyone except the "base". Now that tactic has come back to bite them in the ass.
Even when a GOPer with 30 years of experience leaves, they don't have the courtesy to at least acknowledge the shift in beliefs, preferring to tar and feather him like some kind of traitor and put out yet more pointless talking points about it being bad for the country. All I hear is 'Good riddance, and take John McCain and his daughter with you.' Possibly with a 'haw haw haw'. I'm seeing a lot of that. 'He was a RINO, we're better off without him', as Steele said. I hope they keep up that thinking. The sooner they self destruct, the sooner we get a good viable party back.
The GOP has lost the same 18 states in five straight presidential elections, and John McCain wasn't within 10 points in any of them. Those states and the District of Columbia account for 248 electoral votes - not a bad start to the 270 needed to win the White House. With the loss of Specter, the Senate delegations from those states are 34 Democrats and 2 Republicans.
I guess this all depends on how you define good for the GOP. If you think becoming smaller and purer is good, and given that more GOP Senate seats will be open in 2010 than Democratic seats, its caucus has the chance to get even smaller and purer.
The GOP strategy appears based on three faulty assumptions...
1. That the nation is center-right and that the center longs to be governed by the right.
2. A 1994 strategy of obstruction that worked against a President elected with 43 percent will be as popular when employed against a President elected with 54 percent.
3. That the youth of America would be more socially conservative than their parents.
The party's response to the electorate's increased concern over the GOP's rightward trajectory is to lean further right. I wonder by what logic the GOP believes it can remain relevent and actually win elections with the 21 percent they still have, many of whom are single issue, social conservatives first and party loyalists second.
They believe that once the nation discovers the true horrors of Barack Obama?s left-wing socialist extremism and the destruction of the American way of life, voters will come back in droves to the Republican Party. And voters will only do that if the party has itself purged its wayward souls whose moderation is, of course, the only reason for Republican losses in 2006 and 2008.
Yes, it seems, they really believe that?!
Even when a GOPer with 30 years of experience leaves, they don't have the courtesy to at least acknowledge the shift in beliefs, preferring to tar and feather him like some kind of traitor and put out yet more pointless talking points about it being bad for the country. All I hear is 'Good riddance, and take John McCain and his daughter with you.' Possibly with a 'haw haw haw'. I'm seeing a lot of that. 'He was a RINO, we're better off without him', as Steele said. I hope they keep up that thinking. The sooner they self destruct, the sooner we get a good viable party back.
The GOP has lost the same 18 states in five straight presidential elections, and John McCain wasn't within 10 points in any of them. Those states and the District of Columbia account for 248 electoral votes - not a bad start to the 270 needed to win the White House. With the loss of Specter, the Senate delegations from those states are 34 Democrats and 2 Republicans.
I guess this all depends on how you define good for the GOP. If you think becoming smaller and purer is good, and given that more GOP Senate seats will be open in 2010 than Democratic seats, its caucus has the chance to get even smaller and purer.
The GOP strategy appears based on three faulty assumptions...
1. That the nation is center-right and that the center longs to be governed by the right.
2. A 1994 strategy of obstruction that worked against a President elected with 43 percent will be as popular when employed against a President elected with 54 percent.
3. That the youth of America would be more socially conservative than their parents.
The party's response to the electorate's increased concern over the GOP's rightward trajectory is to lean further right. I wonder by what logic the GOP believes it can remain relevent and actually win elections with the 21 percent they still have, many of whom are single issue, social conservatives first and party loyalists second.
They believe that once the nation discovers the true horrors of Barack Obama?s left-wing socialist extremism and the destruction of the American way of life, voters will come back in droves to the Republican Party. And voters will only do that if the party has itself purged its wayward souls whose moderation is, of course, the only reason for Republican losses in 2006 and 2008.
Yes, it seems, they really believe that?!