My Kitchen Table

GOP members getting miffed with Limbaugh

It seems that the Republicans in Congress believe that Rush Limbaugh and his ilk are starting to sound too much like arm chair quarterbacks

“I mean, it’s easy if you’re Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh or even sometimes Newt Gingrich to stand back and throw bricks. You don’t have to try to do what’s best for your people and your party.You know you’re just on these talk shows and you’re living well and plus you stir up a bit of controversy and gin the base and that sort of thing. But when it comes to true leadership, not that these people couldn’t be or wouldn’t be good leaders, they’re not in that position of John Boehner or Mitch McConnell.”

Limbaugh responded that the GOP members in Congress are just not doing a good job. But it obvious that President Obama's remarks last week about Rush have gotten under his skin. It's a pretty smart move - you can see that Obama is starting to push Limbaugh out of the herd, isolate him. Limbaugh will have his herd of dittoheads, but he's not going to have the influence he once held.

Tom Davis speaks truth to the lack of GOP power

Former Virginia GOP Congressman Tom Davis has some pretty blunt talk for his conservative colleagues over at the Ripon Society blog (Ripon Society? It's a moderate Republican group that takes its name from Ripon, Wisconsin, where the party was founded back in Lincoln's day.) Davis, who is not popular with his party's right-wing, has been speaking out loudly for a while now about what ails the GOP:

But let’s not kid ourselves, our party is broken. In no small way, we’ve been victims of our own success. We fought communism and won. We fought stagnation brought on by high taxes and restrictive government policies. Today, voters take low taxes as a given, and the burden of proof – even in the wake of the financial crisis – is on those who would regulate, not those who would remove regulation.

With the heavy lifting out of the way, we indulged in more trivial pursuits – and this led to trouble. We talked to ourselves and not to voters. We became more concerned with stem cell policy than economic policy, and with prayer in schools rather than balance in our public budgets and priorities. Not so long ago, it was easy to paint the Democrats as the party of extremists. Now, they say we’re extremists, and voters agree.

As a result, we’ve seen our support erode. Urban centers remain under Democratic control. Exurbs and rural areas remain under Republican dominance. But in the battleground that lies between – the suburbs -- we were winning them; now we’re not. Our candidates are safe in a swath that extends from North Texas across to North Alabama and up through Appalachia. Elsewhere, we are on the run. Almost every voter who can be convinced – who sometimes votes Democratic, sometimes Republican – now votes Democratic.

Davis goes on to give several examples of areas where he sees the party has build-in advantages over the Democrats and why they need to exploit these advantages. The one thing the party can't do, he continues, is go back.

What we can’t do is go back. I’ve heard much talk of going back to our conservative roots, to the issues that helped us win in 1980 and 1994. That issue matrix has changed so much as to be nearly unrecognizable now. The voters who dealt us our electoral disasters in 2006 and 2008 did so because they thought we were all too true to our roots. That we were exclusive, favored rich over poor, and didn’t care sufficiently for the plight of the little person.

Also, I suspect this call to return to our “roots” really is a call to do nothing. And doing nothing, I hope Republicans will agree, is not an option.

A call to do nothing? (Rush, that is a comment directed at you and your ilk.)

If Davis and his allies can carry the day, the GOP could be back in the fight by 2012 at the latest. If the "do nothing" GOP adherents carry the day, the Democrats will be in power for a generation, at least.

The Economist labels the GOP "the stupid party"

The Economist lays into the Republican party, accusing it of a lack of meaningful ideas about how to deal with domestic and global problems, and labelling it "the stupid party."

Republicanism’s anti-intellectual turn is devastating for its future. The party’s electoral success from 1980 onwards was driven by its ability to link brains with brawn. The conservative intelligentsia not only helped to craft a message that resonated with working-class Democrats, a message that emphasised entrepreneurialism, law and order, and American pride. It also provided the party with a sweeping policy agenda. The party’s loss of brains leaves it rudderless, without a compelling agenda ...

Why is this happening? One reason is that conservative brawn has lost patience with brains of all kinds, conservative or liberal. Many conservatives—particularly lower-income ones—are consumed with elemental fury about everything from immigration to liberal do-gooders. They take their opinions from talk-radio hosts such as Rush Limbaugh and the deeply unsubtle Sean Hannity. And they regard Mrs Palin’s apparent ignorance not as a problem but as a badge of honour.

And it's only going to get worse if the Limbaughs and Hannitys continue to push the party in a this "stupid" direction.

The God gap in the GOP

Interesting piece from The New York Daily News on the God gap in the GOP:

The Republican rift over Palin is hardly the first sign that the party's religious and establishment wings are drifting further apart. President Bush's 2005 nomination of evangelical White House counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court thrilled the Christian Right - Focus on the Family's James Dobson devoted a handful of his radio shows to promoting her - before many of the same establishment figures now lamenting Palin torpedoed Miers' nomination.

Many less fanatical religious conservatives are also aware of the problem created by zealots like Dobson. The future of religious conservatism in the GOP needs to be in the hands of guys like Rick Warren, not James Dobson.

Whistling past the graveyard

I've seen this happen before. In Canada.

There, the Progressive Conservative party became so unpopular during the second term of then-Prime Minister Brian Mulroney that in the election of 1993 it went from 151-seat majority government ... to two seats. The phone booth caucus as we called it. The 149-seat loss was the most ever in a Canadian election for one party.

Canadian conservatives then wandered in the wilderness for the next 13 years. It took the actual disappearance of the PC party, a totally revamped conservative movement, and incredible corruption on the part of the Liberal government of Prime Minister Jean Chretien, for the conservatives to return to power, and then only as a minority government.

American conservatives now face the same situation. An enormously unpopular leader/president. The perception among many people - most importantly, independents - that the party is bankrupt of ideas, a perception enhanced by the "attack all the time" campaign tactics of current GOP presidential nominee John McCain. And a growing split among conservatives over just what it means to be a conservative.

The fissures are starting to show. On the one side, you have the Limbaugh-Palin faction of far-right, red meat, fundamentalist Christian, anti-intellectual zealots. On the other side, you have the Sullivan-Brooks faction of moderate, limited government involvement in the economy and people's personal lives, big tent, intellectual ponderers (with a touch of wonk).

These two sides got along great during the Reagan years when they basically had a leader whose greatest talent was that he was a mirror on to which the two factions could project their beliefs and see them reflected back. But the connections started to fray in the first Bush presidency and were completed destroyed by Bush 43. Now there is open warfare.

For instance, look at these comments made by Rush Limbaugh, the "official" spokesman for one of the factions:

"The Republican Party, we gotta be a big tent," and that's code words for, "We gotta have some pro-choicers in our party to get rid of the influence of these hayseed hicks in the South who are pro-life."  Well, they have gone, and I, for one, say, "Damn well good riddance!"  Weld, why don't you stay a Democrat?  McClellan, stay a Democrat.  All you intellectual conservative media types, go ahead and stay a Democrat once you move over.  By the way, we know what this is about.  This is about being invited to state dinners in a Barack Obama administration.  This is about the social structure of Washington.  This is about style.  It has nothing to do with the fact that these people love Obama's policies.  They couldn't if they're paying attention.  Not if they say they're Republicans.  They couldn't possibly. 

Then on the other side, you have today's column in the New York Times by David Brooks. (Andrew Sullivan has been also very clear on this issue, and a quick visit to his blog will find dozens of references about the need to build a new conservative consensus. Heck,he wrote a whole book about it.)

McCain and Republicans stayed within their lines. There was a lot of talk about earmarks. There was a good health care plan that was never fully explained. And there was Sarah Palin, who represents the old resentments and the narrow appeal of conventional Republicanism.

As a result, Democrats now control the middle. Self-declared moderates now favor Obama by 59 to 30, according to the New York Times/CBS News poll. Suburban voters favor Obama 50 to 39. Voters over all give him a 21 point lead when it comes to better handling the economy and a 14 point lead on tax policy, according to the Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.

Perhaps the clearest signal of this split was when the influence conservative thinker, former Reagan-era Solicitor General and Harvard professor Charles Fried announced that he has voted for Obama. Fried, who had backed McCain in January when things looked bad for the Arizona senator, said he was switching his vote because of McCain's pick of Palin as his vice president.

This split will get worse before it gets better, and there is a very good chance -- as Brooks has said to some people -- that the American conservative movement will have to wander in its own wilderness for a few years.

And while Canada is a very different country than the U.S. in terms of the body politics and the way people react to government, there are still lessons the American conservative can learn from their Canadian cousins that could help shorten the sojourn.

1) DYOB - You've got to be ready to blow the movement up and start over again. It is painful and not pretty to watch. But right now, I'm not sure if anyone can really say what it means to be a conservative in America in a way that all conservatives would approve.

2) Be willing to compromise for the greater good - The newer far-right Reform Party in Canada realized that it was going to have to moderate its message if it was going to attract moderates, while the old Progressive Conservatives realized they were going to have to shed the Mulroney years of corruption and not really standing for anything except grabbing power. It took a while to hammer out, but eventually the Conservative Party was born of a compromise between the two sides. (And if you don't think compromise is possible in the US, it's amazing what being out of power can do to warm up relations between the two factions.)

3) Control the message - This is harder to do in the US than in Canada, with its parliamentary democracy and party unity, but it's an absolute necessity. American conservatives need to find a unify theme (perhaps that old limited government notion, eh) that can be used as a platform on which regional conservative groups can build additions without actually losing the greater message.

4) But for something, not just against everything - These days it seems that the conservative message is perceived as being overly negative. As I noted above, this is partially the result of John McCain's decision to spend most of his time attacking Obama. Not that he hasn't offered alternatives, but they've been drowned out in his William Ayers attacks, etc.

You can win one election on people being tired of the other guys. But you win multiple elections by actually standing for something.

Thoughts on the GOP convention and Sarah Palin

Just heard Mike Huckabee talk. Love that guy. I still believe that if he was the Republican presidential nominee, it would be a real fight this year ...

Can't talk about the convention without talking about Gov. Sarah Palin. She is an intriging pick, and will energize the GOP base and ... that's about it. Palin will not help John McCain win this election.

I could give numerous reasons why (none of which have anything to do with her family). The off-the-record conversation between Chuck Todd, Peggy Noonan and Mike Murphycaught on tape that basically called her selection a joke is incredibly telling (despite Noonan's attempts to deny reality). Not to mention this perceptive piece from Rick Klein at ABCNews.com about who Palin is playing in the supermarket aisles.

The hot house atmosphere of the GOP convention is superheating the Palin issue. Yet once the delegates go their way and aren't gathered together to try and blame all their problems on the media, the focus will begin to change. But there are two things that would really bother me if I was a Republican: All the polls that have come out since the announcement of her selection have been very pro-Obama - a lead of 6-8 points. I honestly expected her selection to give McCain more of a bounce.

(By the way, the whole "Obama and Biden have no executive experience" ignores the fact that McCain has none either. But that's just a thought. I guess being head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, like Biden, just isn't as exciting as being mayor of Wasilia.)

But none of this changes the Obama game plan. It's all about getting people registered and getting people out to the polls. And the Democrats are far better organized on this front than the Republicans. Until I see some evidence to convince me that the tables have turned, or the GOP has caught up, it won't change my opinion one bit about who will win this election - despite all the Palin platitudes.

Tom Davis Says the GOP Needs to Retool

If the Republicans are ever going to recover from the all-too-obvious funk that they find themselves in, then they are going to have to listen to smart people like soon-to-be-retired Virginia Rep. Tom Davis. Davis was the guest at this week's Christian Science Monitor's breakfast. Davis recently wrote a memo to his party basically telling its leaders to smarten up or else disaster loomed. Davis, who says he feels a lot freer to say what he thinks now that he is leaving the Congress, says that Sen. Jon McCain -- who Davis supports -- will have short coattails this election and that the GOP could lose 20 seats in the House and up to six in the Senate.

The Republicans' weakened state "is the spillover of the fact we have not done any retooling since we got beat in '06," Davis said. He argued that the Republican Party brand suffers due to a war where "expectations weren't managed very well," along with the effects of sharply higher gas prices and a weaker economy.

One solution for his party's woes, Davis said, was for it to become more inclusive. "The Democrats have cracked the code, and we still have an admissions test to get into the party and be a candidate. And that is one of the difficulties at this point. Democrats are smart. They want to win. Our guys still want to be right."

      

State of GOP: "Paralysis and Denial"

It's a pretty harsh indictment from a pretty gung-ho team player.

In an opinion piece in today's Wall Street Journal, conservative Republican Sen. Tom Coburn writes that "As congressional Republicans contemplate the prospect of an electoral disaster this November, much is being written about the supposed soul-searching in the Republican Party. A more accurate description of our state is paralysis and denial."

Coburn believes that the answer to Republican problems is to, well, go back to being Republicans.

Becoming Republicans again will require us to come to grips with what has ailed our party – namely, the triumph of big-government Republicanism and failed experiments like the K Street Project and "compassionate conservatism." If the goal of the K Street Project was to earmark and fund raise our way to a filibuster-proof "governing" majority, the goal of "compassionate conservatism" was to spend our way to a governing majority.

Coburn's tough love message is that Republicans need to be willing to "give up our political careers so our grandkids don't have to grow up in a debtor's prison, or a world in which other nations can tell a weakened and bankrupt America where we can and can't defend liberty, pursue terrorists, or show compassion."

A voice crying in the wilderness?

Backlash Grows Against Tennessee GOP

After its attack against Michelle Obama and Sen. Barack Obama's subsequent defense of his wife this morning on Good Morning America, the Tennessee GOP has come in for a real backlash. (It was also the Tennessee GOP that had released the controversial picture of Obama in traditional Somalian garb earlier this year.)

Here is the footage of Obama's defense:

First, Republican Senator Bob Corker sided with Obama today, chastising his own party. His staff released the following statement:

After the Republican National Committee damaged our campaign with their infamous ‘Call Me’ ad — which we immediately denounced — we have strongly encouraged the national party and state parties to absolutely refrain from getting involved in negative personal campaigning, and we have asked the state party to remove their You Tube ad from their Web site.

Republicans will be in much better shape if we spend our time focused on issues like reducing federal spending, lowering the cost of health care and creating a coherent energy policy.

Meanwhile, Post Politics at the Nashville Post notes a comment made by another local blogger about the GOP attack backfiring:

I really don’t know many men in Tennessee who want to be associated with picking on a man for doing what many of them see as the right thing, the thing a man’s supposed to do when someone comes gunning for his wife.

I mean, honor is important here and Hobbs [Bill Hobbs, communications director for the state GOP] is straddling the line, if not crossing it, into impugning Obama’s honor. Folks might not like Obama, but I just can’t see that they want to be associated with someone who’s intentionally dishonoring Obama and then trying to act like he wasn’t trying to pick a fight and he can’t understand why everyone’s upset.

Boehner: Cole Staying Put

Despite three straight losses in special elections held in seats considered safely Republican, Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said Sunday that House Republican campaign chief Rep. Tom Cole (Okla.) will remain in his post.

Boehner made the statement on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.”

“We know the kind of changes that need to be made in order to help our members and help our candidates go out there and do their best in a very difficult environment,” Boehner added.

The Hill reports that there had been speculation that Boehner would replace Cole with moderate (and retiring) Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia who had "prepared a 20-page memo on the GOP's electoral woes that was handed out to House Republicans on Wednesday."