Wow. A true sign that the GOP is lost in the wilderness.
On the chance that Coleman doesn’t win the recount in the MN Senate race (which is becoming more likely by the day), some think he’d be an excellent choice for chair of the Republican National Committee:
…a Republican colleague of Mr. Coleman’s on Wednesday floated his name as a potential chairman of the Republican National Committee.
“Somebody like Norm Coleman would be great,” said the senator, speaking to a small group of reporters at a Capitol Hill steakhouse on the condition of anonymity.
He’d be a “great” choice to lead the Republican party? A man who always makes the politically expedient choice, who changes his identity every year or two, and whose convictions still aren’t clear after six years in the Senate? Coleman would be one of the worst possible choices. He’d just reinforce the Republican brand of dishonesty and political gamesmanship.
But please, don’t let me stop you. I’d love to see Norm as RNC chair — especially because it would mean he’s no longer representing me.
There has been a lot of soul-searching amongst Republicans already, and there will continue to be more. Some say the party needs to reclaim the center, while others insist that the only way to restore the party is to return to ideological purity. The latest examples of the ubiquitous struggle were in a New York Times story yesterday:
Some conservatives want a return to basics, arguing that President Bush abandoned conservative principles by expanding government and driving up spending. Others draw just the opposite conclusion, warning that Republicans have tried to appeal to too narrow a base and that the party must update the focus of conservatism, especially at a time when voters are thinking more about issues like jobs and health care than about abortion and gay rights.
Okay, we didn’t really need the Times to tell us that. The debate is pretty widespread; blog readers are probably well aware of it already. The Republican party will have a long time to think about their predicament, and eventually they will come back stronger. They probably aren’t interested in a liberal blogger’s take, but I’ll give it anyway, because the blogosphere gives me the opportunity to pontificate endlessly.
As always, it’s more difficult than the two simplistic options presented. The truth is, the Republicans need to move simultaneously to the the center and to the right. Let me explain.
Please, Republicans, keep Sarah Palin as the public face of your party. Keep standing behind her in support as she makes your party a laughingstock. I am absolutely loving this.
The longer Palin is leading her party, the longer they will be wandering in the wilderness. She is the exact opposite of everything the party needs:
A right-wing extremist, when the party needs to turn toward the center
An evangelical social conservative, which will soon be a dying breed
A willing user of negative attacks and wedge politics, which have destroyed the party’s image
An anti-intellectual, when the party needs to once again champion ideas
Sarah Palin’s poor son is going to spend the next decade as a political football. As Palin makes her post-election media appearances to try to repair her image, conservatives like Michael Barone are using her baby as a weapon to attack the “liberal media”:
“The liberal media attacked Sarah Palin because she did not abort her Down syndrome baby,” Barone said, according to accounts by attendees. “They wanted her to kill that child. … I’m talking about my media colleagues with whom I’ve worked for 35 years.”
…
Barone did not dispute the accounts of his remarks. Asked about the comments, Barone said in an e-mail that he “was attempting to be humorous and, as many in public do, went over the line.”
What’s really upsetting about this, to me, is how Palin is held on a pedestal by the culture warriors for not aborting her baby. Why in the world would she abort her baby? The vast majority of people who become pregnant don’t, so what makes Palin so special? The answer is pretty clear: Conservatives love pointing out that Palin kept her baby even though he has Down Syndrome.
The implication, of course, is that children with Down Syndrome are a terrible burden, that most people would want to abort. And poor Trig Palin will go through his life hearing this rhetoric.
Minnesota House Republicans will have more than one choice for minority leader when caucus members meet Saturday to select their leader.
In an email sent to caucus members Sunday, state Rep. Tom Emmer of Delano announced he will seek the House caucus leadership position.
Tom Emmer is a major right-wing extremist, but he has a legitimate chance of winning the position. If he does, he will continue the House Republican caucus’s rapid move toward the hard right. I really hope they choose Emmer, because they won’t recover from the choice for years. I’ve said time and time again on this blog that moving so sharply to the right is going to cost the Republicans a lot of votes. I’m looking forward to Emmer helping to prove me right.
Want a taste of the direction Emmer will take the MNGOP? Check out some of these videos:
A little bit of context while Norm Coleman tries to block thousands of votes and undermine the integrity of the election: Coleman’s despicable actions stem from the long-held Republican belief that it should be difficult to have your vote counted. Why do they want to err on the side of making it too difficult to vote? Because they know their base will turn out consistently, so they need to minimize overall turnout.
In fact, just after this election, Minnesota Majority (a conservative think-tank) had an editorial in Sunday’s Star Tribune asking: Why is it easier to vote here than it is to register a boat?This is a headline, I think, that only a Republican can understand. My first thought was: Of course it should be easy to vote! Why would we try to discourage people from doing their most important civic duty? But Republicans don’t think it should be easy — mostly for reasons that they themselves admit are unfounded.
Marc Ambinder reports that “20 leading conservatives will gather Thursday at the home of Media Research Center chairman Brent Bozell” to start discussing the future of conservatism.
What’s ironic about that? Here’s what:
…attendees include Leonard Leo, the executive vice president of the Federalist Society and an adviser to the Bush White House on judicial and Catholic issues, Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform and Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council.
Grover Norquist and Tony Perkins, the former an extremist on tax policy and the latter an extremist on social issues, should not have anything to do with the future of conservatism. In fact, they are largely to blame for the downfall of conservatism. As long as they are involved in the project, the conservative movement will be unable to right itself.
It’s time for the Republicans to step back from the brink and embrace pragmatism, as the Democrats have done. Being willing to compromise, and being willing to accept moderates into your party, isn’t a sign of weakness. It’s a sign that you care more about successful governance than you do about party dogma.
One of the last surviving moderate Republicans in the Minnesota House is out: Representative Ron Erhardt has been defeated. Angry conservative activists are thrilled:
This is a huge WIN for the local GOP- kicking moderate whiner Ron Erhardt to the curb (who still ran as an Independent). Downey is a conservative Republican.
Amen for some good news.
The MNGOP is learning the wrong lesson here. One of the party’s biggest problems, both locally and nationally, is that it has moved so far to the right. Continuing to purge their moderates is going to make it harder and harder for them to regain power.
The point of the rally was to lift the righties’ spirits and boost turnout for the upcoming election. I can’t wonder, though, if the rally ultimately did more harm than good. It tarnished the bipartisan image that Erik Paulsen and Norm Coleman have been trying to project, and made it clear just how poorly even the right thinks of Michele Bachmann.
Most telling were comments by Dennis Prager, who clearly believes that Bachmann is intellectually not ready for the big time. He explained to the crowd how Matthews never could have “trapped” him:
Had he been in that situation, he said, he would have asked Matthews if there are American values — by which it must follow that there are anti-American values.
“Chris Matthews cannot pull that stuff with me. It would be impossible,” he said. [emphasis added]
The subtext is clear here: Bachmann is simply in over her head. Prager could have handled himself, where Bachmann could not. Even the conservatives apparently think she should step out of the way for someone more intellectually capable.
God will choose who wins this election. At least, that’s what Sarah Palin told James Dobson, the leader of Focus on the Family, according to CNN:
In an interview posted online Wednesday, Sarah Palin told Dr. James Dobson of “Focus on the Family” that she is confident God will do “the right thing for America” on Nov. 4.
Dobson asked the vice presidential hopeful if she is concerned about John McCain’s sagging poll numbers, but Palin stressed that she was “not discouraged at all.”
“To me, it motivates us, makes us work that much harder,” she told the influential Christian leader, whose radio show reaches tens of millions of listeners daily. “And it also strengthens my faith because I know at the end of the day putting this in God’s hands, the right thing for America will be done, at the end of the day on Nov. 4.”
I hope all of the Christian Right will stand up and take notice. They should be thrilled if Obama wins this election, and take it as proof that God has determined that Obama is “the right thing for America.”
Those greedy, greedy gays should have been happy with domestic partnerships. I mean, how many more rights do they really need? At least, that’s what Star Tribune right-wing lunatic columnist Katherine Kersten thinks:
it’s clear that these legislative attempts at fairness [domestic partnerships and civil unions] have backfired. In the past few months, the Supreme Courts in both California and Connecticut have struck down their state’s domestic partnership or civil unions law as unconstitutional under their state constitutions, and have required that marriage be redefined to include same-sex couples.
Outrageous! These two states were nice enough to the besotted, backwards gays to give them something almost as goodas marriage, but the damned gays just weren’t happy. Now, the only thing that we can do to protect “traditional family values” is retaliate and do as much harm as we possibly can to gays in committed long-term relationships.
States that want to protect their traditional marriage laws can draw two lessons:
First, if they have a domestic partnership or civil union law, they should repeal it. A court might find it unconstitutional.
Second, these states should not pass laws that give gay couples benefits similar to those of marriage. If they do, a court may find that they have created an unequal, two-tiered system of partnership, and may impose same-sex marriage as a result.
You gays brought it on yourself. See what happens when you screw with the Christian Right?
…
In all seriousness, this is a sign that the Christian Right is just getting angrier and angrier. The tide seems to be turning in the culture war, and the only thing they can think to do is lob even more hateful attacks. The social conservatives are running into the same losing battle as all other Republicans: as they’ve lost support from independents, they have retreated to trying to energize their base. But energizing this particular base requires so much hatred and anger that it causes them to lose even more support from independents. I really think that conservative of all stripes are heading into a downward spiral. The only question, in my mind, is can they pull out of it by 2012?
It’s no secret that I think conservative attacks on ACORN and voter fraud are a cynical attempt to drive down turnout in this election, and possibly to cast the election as illegitimate. If you need even more proof that the hand-wringing over ACORN is just more manufactured outrage, how about this: There has finally been an arrest for voter fraud — and the criminal was working for the Republicans:
The owner of a firm that the California Republican Party hired to register tens of thousands of voters this year was arrested in Ontario over the weekend on suspicion of voter registration fraud.
…
Jacoby’s arrest by state investigators and the Ontario Police Department late Saturday came after dozens of voters said they were duped into registering as Republicans by people employed by YPM. The voters said YPM workers tricked them by saying they were signing a petition to toughen penalties against child molesters. (via Georgia10)
I want to be very clear: I don’t think voter fraud is a big problem. There are always a few bad seeds filing improper voter registrations, but ultimately neither this wacko nor ACORN are going to cause problems with the actual voting on November 4th. But here’s the point: I have yet to hear any prominent Republicans who are outraged over this. Republicans know that this stuff happens occasionally on both sides, and they know it’s not a huge deal. Nevertheless, they have spent weeks fulminating about how the election is being “stolen” from them.
When bad people do bad things, we catch them and they get arrested. Ultimately, neither Jacoby’s nor ACORN’s bad voter registrations are going to pose a problem for the integrity of our electoral system. Voter registration fraud is the product of a few bad apples from both sides, not a systematic effort to steal the vote. Maybe now the right will tone down their ridiculous rhetoric and stop trying to undermine Americans’ confidence in this election.
On a scale from 1 to 10, the nastiness of American politics just hit 13. I am truly starting worry about where the culture warriors are going to drag our nation.
The worst of them is Minnesota’s own Michele Bachmann, who went on a McCarthy-like rant on Hardball last night, furiously denouncing the Obamas as anti-American, and suggesting an “expose” into the number of anti-Americans in Congress. Have a watch, and then please, please donate to her opponent, El Tinklenberg. We desperately need this dangerous woman to be thrown out of office.
But this is not just one person acting like a lunatic. This is, apparently, the right’s latest message. Sarah Palin yesterday was saying the exact same thing:
We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard working very patriotic, um, very, um, pro-America areas of this great nation. [emphasis added]
Folks, there is simply no way this is acceptable rhetoric from what is supposed to be a mainstream party in this country. We’ve been hearing for a few years that liberals are the “blame America first crowd,” that liberals don’t support our troops, and so on. That was all unfair, and it was an unfortunate line of attack. Saying that liberals are anti-America is an outrageous, dangerous accusation that ratchets up the hostility to a place that makes me fearful of what will happen on November 5th. I think Minnesota’s other congressional candidates, John McCain, and as many prominent Republicans as possible need to denounce this rhetoric immediately.
This garbage has to stop right now. Joe Biden said it best during the Vice-Presidential debate: you can disagree with people, but never, ever question their motives. To say that someone like me hates America, just because I disagree with you on the issues, is just poisonous to our political dialogue. After this election is over, the Republican party is going to need to do some serious soul-searching over whether they truly want to base their message on pure, unbridled hatred.
Republicans don’t make a fuss about “voter fraud” because they’re concerned about you, the voter. Voter fraud, to them, is just a synonym for too many Democrats voting.
Most Republicans are too clever, of course, to actually say that out loud. But not all of them. Back in August, Republican congressional candidate Barb Davis White showed exactly how ludicrous attacks on voter fraud were. In an interview with Doug Grow of MinnPost, she opined that a number of the votes Keith Ellison received in 2006 were due to voter fraud:
“This year, I don’t think an Independent is running,” she said. “I get the Republican vote, I get the Independent vote.”
That still seems a little shy of what she’d need. But, she says, Ellison will lose some votes because there will be tighter controls at the polls this year.
“We might have poll watchers who say, ‘You got to stand up straight, be sober and be able to read the ballot,” she said.
Maps I use maps to show the political dynamics of each Congressional district in Minnesota.
The Incredible Shrinking GOP Voter apathy is hurting the GOP this year. But the party's sharp moves to the right may marginalize it for the next decade. I keep track of the indications that the GOP is becoming a fringe party for extremists.
[note: I am currently editing the category structure]
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Jeff Rosenberg | November 20, 2008
