Tuesday, November 24, 2009
A Pro-Choice RNC?
(9) We support protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing and denial of health care and government funding of abortion;
Faithful to the first guarantee of the Declarationof Independence, we assert the inherent dignity andsanctity of all human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life whichcannot be infringed. We support a human lifeamendment to the Constitution, and we endorse leg-islation to make clear that the FourteenthAmendment’s protections apply to unborn children.We oppose using public revenues to promote or per-form abortion and will not fund organizations whichadvocate it. We support the appointment of judgeswho respect traditional family values and the sanctity and dignity of innocent human life.
"We do'nt want to get into a debate with candidates on general principles," he said. "These are specific items, when possible, that we expect to come up this year or next year."
The goal, he said, is stopping the Obama agenda.
"After the Republicans take over Congress after the 2010 election, this will change," he said. "This is how we're going to look at the standards for funding candidates election cycle by election cycle."
Labels: abortion, Republican Party, RNC
Monday, May 18, 2009
Big Game Huntsman
Damn, this guy is good.
What's that old nugget about the truest things being said in jest?
Maybe closer attention should have been made to President Obama's supposedly "comic" appearance at the White House Correspondents Association dinner one weekend ago. One of the president's jokes:
In the last hundred days, we've also grown the Democratic Party by infusing it with new energy and bringing in fresh, young faces like Arlen Specter. (Laughter.) Now, Joe Biden rightly deserves a lot of credit for convincing Arlen to make the switch, but Secretary Clinton actually had a lot to do with it too. One day she just pulled him aside and she said, Arlen, you know what I always say -- "if you can't beat them, join them." (Laughter.)
The corollary to the "beat them" line might be: "If they all join you, you don't have to worry about them coming to beat you."
Need proof?
On Saturday, Obama pulled one more surprise out of his presidential bag of magic tricks: He appointed Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman as his ambassador to China. It's a master stroke on several levels. For one thing, the guy's remarkably qualified for the job: He's an expert on the country and the region and speaks fluent Mandarin from his years as a Mormon missionary. Selecting him shows that the president is serious about forging strong ties with the unarguably the U.S.'s most significant economic and strategic rival. But, this selection is also one more example to which Obama can point as fulfillment of his pledge to have a bipartisan administration. The Republican governor thus helps fill the embarrassing void left when New Hampshire Sen. Judd Gregg first accepted, then rescinded Obama's invitation to be secretary of commerce.
Finally though, the true genius in selecting Huntsman is that -- like selecting Hillary Clinton as secretary of state -- he removes a potential 2012 rival from the political sphere. Huntsman -- though a conservative (he's a Republican from Utah -- what else would he be?) -- he's shown a strong willingness to work with Democrats in his home state and has been rather critical of the congressional Republicans for their near universal opposition to Obama proposals. Indeed, back in February, he called them "inconsequential." Last month, he also got into a scrap with Michigan conservatives for backing civil unions for gays.
But that very pragmatism could have made him a potentially formidable candidate for the GOP come 2012 -- even if he had to go through a major scrap with the conservative base to get the nomination. Now, for all intents and purposes, he's removed from the field.
Of course, Huntsman may recognize that, at 48, he has more opportunities than just 2012 to consider running for president (unlike, say Hillary). This is the time, as he said Saturday, to accept a president's "call to service." (And perhaps, a cold calculation that Michael Steele's recent suggestion that the current GOP base is going to be problematic for a Mormon candidate in the foreseeable future is fairly accurate).
However, as good a pick as Huntsman is for the country -- and for Obama's near-term future -- his removal from within day-to-day Republican politics could be awful for the party's near future. Whether Huntsman was able to get the 2012 GOP nomination or not, just his presence as a governor distancing himself from the congressional party -- and provoking debates with various aspects of the party base -- would have been healthy.
He would have been a new, younger, voice for a party in desperate need for same. Instead, House Republican leader John Boehner was once again stuck Sunday explaining why it wasn't a big deal that Cheney, Gingrich and Limbaugh were the current face of the party.
And so, the Obama machine absorbs one more Republican piece off the chess board, leaving the party weaker as it loses an internal critic and possible future leader.
Good policy, great politics.
Labels: Barack Obama, China, Jon Huntsman, Republican Party
Sunday, May 03, 2009
Last Pass For The GOP QB
Labels: Jack Kemp, Republican Party
Saturday, May 02, 2009
Getting "Real" With The GOP
Surrounding Obama's 100th day, the bottom appeared to fall out of the Republican Party over the last 10 days: It lost a special election -- and a senator -- and saw the RNC get into a civil war between its members and chairman while elected officials created their own "alternate" party structure. Paging Mark "Survivor" Burnett and Simon "American Idol" Cowell)!
We may have your new reality TV smash!
Forget Rod Blagojevich! -- he's basically a one-trick pony (based on the hair -- one of the Shetland variety at that). The real action is in the Republican side of the ledger.
This week, one liberal Republican senator jumped to the Democrats, starting an internecine party battle over whether moderates should be welcomed, tolerated or expunged; a liberal Republican Supreme Court Justice retired (at 69, relatively young for high court justices) allowing a Democratic president to replace him;Republican National Committee members launched a procedural move to restrain their own recently elected party chairman from making decisions on how to spend the party money; that chairman blamed any possible money problems at the committee on his predecessor; and a former GOP speaker of the House mocked those members as "precious" spoiled individuals.
And that doesn't even touch on the family part of it: While Meghan McCain got into a Twitter fight with Karl Rove (just writing that shows how insane this has gotten), daddy John McCain signed onto a new GOP group designed to "rebrand the party" (which will undoubtedly raise money that might otherwise go to the RNC -- wonderful)! Making things even more interesting is that one of the members of this National Council For A New America is Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour -- himself a former RNC Chairman.
Notably, neither Newt Gingrich nor Michael Steele were invited to be part of this new NCNA organization..
So, already it looks like some form of "Survivor"-like alliance has been created within the GOP structure, so a talking-head C-SPAN type-show would be awful. Instead, it should be a vote-off, like "Survivor" or "American Idol." Either have a Tribal Council (perhaps made up of folks like Grover Norquist orthe Club For Growth -- who took credit for driving Specter out of the party) or a panel of judges (including Robert Bork, who Specter famously helped vote down two decades ago) who decide who stays, who goes, and who gets electoral "immunity."
It's got hit written all over it. Spike TV, perhaps? Or, appropriately enough -- the USA Network!
Alas, Peggy Noonan insists on being all responsible and serious abut the collapse of the GOP. Sorry, Peggy, I think maturity went out the window sometime ago.
Labels: Destruction of the GOP, Republican National Committee, Republican Party
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
SPECTER Beats (GOP) Bond
Could Barack Obama have wanted a better headline to wake up to Wednesday morning than some variation of the following?
"Will the last Republican east of the Mississippi please turn out the lights?"
With Arlen Specter's jump to the Democrats, that shrinking roll call include the Maine Senate femme fatales -- Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe -- Delaware Rep. Mike Castle and just three out of the 29-member New York House delegation. Except for the aforementioned Collins, Snowe and Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, there are no elected members of Congress in New England. The blue trend of New York was consolidated last Friday when Republican Jim Tedisco (a long-time state assemblyman) conceded the 20th district congressional seat to newbie Scott Murphy. The Democratic National Committee wasted no time in gloating over the win -- and the importance that RNC Chairman Michael Steele place on winning the seat.
With a party deteriorating, it's not exactly wise for its chairman to further that trend. After suggesting that the RNC might support a primary challenger to Specter and two other stimulus-supporting Republicans, Chairman Steele sort-of backed down. Understandably, he unleashed a bucket of venom on Specter after this switch -- referring to Specter's "left-wing" votes. But, does Steele really believe that having an ideologically "pure" party is really in his best interests? Even worse, the party is also just about as geographically isolated as it is philosophically. As has been noted elsewhere, the Specter switch puts Democrats within a hairsbreath of a spot where no party has been in the Senate in thirty years -- with a filibuster-breaking 60-vote majority.
Even Patrick Buchanan realizes that the demographic lines aren't favorable to the Republicans. The party doesn't have to become an echo of the Democrats, but it should realize that it needs flexibility and diversity within its ranks. Not-so-subtly suggesting that an Arlen Specter shouldn't be in the party -- or urging, as Rush Limbaugh did Tuesday, that John McCain should also leave -- is a prescription for continued disaster. Unlike Specter, McCain didn't vote against the stimulus package. Just because his daughter has been expressing more liberal views than the rest of the party, why should a man who has served the party well be a target for expulsion?
It's statements like this that underscore why it's a disaster for Limbaugh to even be considered a "leader" of the party. Leaders try to expand their constituency -- not reduce it. Sure, Limbaugh is expanding his "constituency" -- his listeners. But based on recent polls, fewer Americans than ever are identify with the Republican Party. Those are trends going in two different directions.
Specter's leap -- and Limbaugh's response to it -- says all that one needs to know about the state of the Republican Party after 100 days of Barack Obama. The party is grasping for true leadership, direction and vision -- and showing little signs of that any are in sight.
Labels: Arlen Specter, Destruction of the GOP, Republican Party
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Arlen Makes GOP A Specter of It's Former Self
Labels: Arlen Specter, Republican Party
Friday, April 24, 2009
Torture's Double-Edged Sword
Okay, let's stipulate that getting mired into discussions of whether torture "works" -- or if what the US did to terror suspects in the months after 9/11 was, strictly speaking "torture" -- is not exactly at the top of the Obama administration wish list.
It risks, as many have said, becoming a "distraction."
But, is this really a discussion that the opposition party wants either? Far more troubling for Republicans -- who should be trying to craft a forward-looking agenda -- is that the very little air-space in which the minority party is able to play is actually be taken up by the discussion of Bush-era policies.
Consider what this debate has done:
1) It's made former VP Dick Cheney even more the face of the GOP than Rush Limbaugh could ever pretend to be. His interviews immediately eclipse anything from any Republican congressional leader or governor.
2) GOP leaders -- including Boehner -- are being drawn into this debate instead of offering alternatives on health-care, energy and other policies. The White House can handle a variety of issues at the same time. The minority party can't.
3) While the GOP feels that it is on offense when discussing national security and terror-fighting tactics, the fact is that ultimately the party is playing defense -- of the decisions made by the former administration. That would be an administration that is supremely unpopular, fairly or otherwise.
Barack Obama, for all his obvious flip-flopping, at least appears reluctant to pursue the torture issue -- while continuing to push his main agenda. But the the GOP seems eager to engage him on it. As a result, the president looks like he's proceeding forPublish Postward, while Republicans are battling a war that most Americans want to move away from. Geez, even Shepherd Smith is dropping F-bombs over the discussion of torture.
Conversely, Republicans end up defending something that sort-of-sounds-like "torture." In short, this strikes me as a lose-lose proposition.
Labels: Republican Party, torture
