Sqrl said:
Normally I don't quibble over polls but your number is so completely off I have to make an exception: Courtesy of a Politico article: "The survey showed Cheney’s favorability rating spiking 8 percentage points since he left office in January, increasing from 29 percent to 37 percent." Which is doubly relevant since his spike is at least in small part due to his more vocal approach to making the case on this very issue since January (note the poll was before his recent speach so it might have changed up or down). Regardless his recent speach was not his only public comments on this and he has risen 2 more points than Bush has in the same period, this means people are finding him more favorable, at least in part, because of his position on this issue, which contradicts the point you were making. Additionally polling indicates that republicans hold the most popular position on 5 of the 9 issues you listed and aren't far behind on 2 others (3 depending on how you measure). Especially the issue of less taxes and less government they are overwhelmingly winning in the polls. Although it is fair to note that this has been their rhetoric and not their actual policy which is one of the main reasons they have lost party ID. My take is that while the Republicans are certainly in an organizational and leadership crisis right now you're taking the opportunity to set a narrative that is more representative of what you want to be true than what is actually true by extending it to a policy problems. They don't need to change their positions (even though I do disagree with them on a couple of those you listed), they need to actually adhere to them while in office. |
If Republicans let people like Cheney fill the leadership vacuum in their party, a guy who has no future in politics and in normal times would have been thrown in federal prison, Republicans will be in the wilderness for a very long time. And even the Bush Adminstration abandoned almost all the policies Cheney is beating the war drum about by 2004. They knew they weren't effective, highly questionable morally, and overall more of a liability when fighting terrorism rather than a strength. Its much easier to argue for these policies in the abstract than it is when the news spills out and you have to do damage control for the remaining time you are in office. Cheney is fighting a battle that was lost about 5 years ago. He's stuck in the past and is worried about his legacy. He's moving the Republican Party in the wrong direction and is fighting battles in the past rather than offering an articulate view of the future.
As to the rest of your post, the problem is that Republicans are unwilling to budge on pretty much ALL those issues I listed. The Democratic Party is more flexible. You want to be a pro-life Democrat, that's not a problem (the DNC ran quite a few in the South in the last few election cycles). You want to be a pro-gun rights Democrat, that's cool too (DNC also fielded quite a few of these candidates). You want to be big on national defense, that's alright (many Democrats in places of power have this stance, like Hillary Clinton and Joseph Lieberman). The problem with the power holders in the Republican Party is that if you don't agree with them on every issue, they want to kick you out of the party. You can't run the same kind of candidate in New York City that you can in Alabama.
Republicans are actually finally starting to figure this out and will do a better job of fielding candidates who can ACTUALLY WIN in the places they are running outside of the Deep South. Thank people like John Cornyn and Lindsey Graham.
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke
It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...." Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson
