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The Republican Choice: React or Modernize
Former McCain campaign director Steve Schmidt laid out a modernizer case to the Log Cabin Republicans, and urged support for same-sex marriage.
It's been a strange week for the Republican Party, with noisy events pushing the old-time religion, a speech by a prominent consultant urging a new moderation, and back-to-the-future reactions to President Barack Obama's friendly gestures to Hugo Chavez and other critics of America.
Who will prevail? The reactors or the modernizers?
On the 15th, conservative media outlets like Fox News promoted the so-called American "Tea Parties" into lightly moderate success. There were a few, like the one I attended outside California's Capitol, where 3,000 made a noisy show of opposition to government, that drew into the four figures. Most were much smaller.
Dominated by what I call the Talk Radio Wing of the Republican Party, the events were mini-festivals of reaction, with a collection of anti-government folks, gun enthusiasts, anti-gay rights and abortion true believers, and neoconservatives. Public enemy number one? America's first black president, Barack Obama.
Think of it as politics in an echo chamber.
Texas Governor Rick Perry, excited by the echo chamber activism of the American Tea Parties, brandished the threat of Texas seceding from the United States.
Texas Governor Rick Perry, a rather telegenic character, sparked more controversy by suggesting that Texas secede from the union. Considering how much federal money has been poured into Texas, that didn't look like a good deal. 75% of his constituents didn't buy it. A good thing, because I'd hate to be importing my cowboy boots.
This was par for the course for Perry, who appeared right after Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger told his California Republican convention in 2007 that it was past time for Republicans to get in touch with the center to avoid becoming a permanent minority. Perry disagreed with every point the once (and future) Terminator made.
Then former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who lost power after trying to shut down the federal government, and former Vice President Dick Cheney weighed in again. Cheney defending torture as an effective means of intelligence gathering. Gingrich saying Obama is weak for shaking hands with Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez and offering a tentative opening to the Castro brothers in Cuba.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was very upset with President Barack Obama for shaking hands with Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez.
I don't know, maybe it's me, but I don't think that running on a policy of torture, or of resentment about the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, is a pathway to the future.
In the midst of this stuff, the guy who directed John McCain's presidential campaign, and ran Schwarzenegger's landslide re-election campaign in 2006, gave a speech to the Log Cabin Republicans national convention in Washington.
Steve Schmidt told the group, the leading organization for gays and lesbians in the Republican Party, on Friday that the party needs to be more diverse and should back same-sex marriage. It was part of a larger critique which is captured in this passage:
To state the obvious: the Republican Party needs to grow. A review of the exit polls and current demographic trends in the United States should make it clear to all but the most determined optimist that our coalition is shrinking, and losing ground with segments of the population that are growing. Whether it's with suburban voters, working class voters, college educated voters, Hispanics or left handed Albanian psychics, the percentage voting Republican has declined. Perhaps, the most alarming of these various and generally worrying results of the last election is the huge margin by which we lost voters under 30.Having said that, it is not a foregone conclusion these are long term trends or even trends at all. They might just be the results of two lost elections, although I doubt it. And even if they do represent movement toward a center left political realignment, unanticipated events could arrest or begin to reverse them even in the near term.
I think the country is center-left, has been for some time, that the reigning media trope about it being center-right was a canard. What was lacking were politicians deft and forceful enough to break through and shrewd enough not to imagine that center-left is synonymous with left-liberal. I've discussed this with Schmidt many times, who I came to know after breaking the story that Schwarzenegger was making him his campaign manager. I described him then as something of a right-wing hatchet man. Which turned out not to be entirely accurate.
Some say that Schmidt, who ran a very hardball campaign into the Obama head wind for McCain, replete with rather irritating political trick plays that worked for awhile, until they didn't, is a johnny-come-lately in urging Republicans to support same-sex marriage. That's not true. While McCain continued his traditionalist opposition to gay marriage during last year's campaign, Schmidt spoke to the Log Cabin Republicans at the Republican national convention. Schmidt advised Schwarzenegger to oppose Proposition 8, which he did. He had advised Schwarzenegger to sign a gay marriage bill, which he did not.
Schmidt was very enthusiastic about Schwarzenegger's efforts on climate change and in promoting the biggest infrastructure investment program in two generations. In all this, he worked closely with Schwarzenegger's gubernatorial chief of staff Susan Kennedy, a Democrat who is also a lesbian. Which was not the sort of stretch that I had expected it to be for the former Bush/Cheney war room director, as Schmidt, who is married to a former Navy nurse, has a sister who is lesbian.
This doesn't mean that this one-time counselor to Cheney is a liberal. He's a moderate hawk on military issues and thinks Obama is spending way too much money. But he isn't anti-government and does think the financial sector got out of control.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney did an exit interview with ABC News. "We don't do torture," he said. "We never have."
The truth is that his view on same-sex marriage is not only a decidedly minority view in the ranks of active Republicans, it's nowhere near being a majoritarian view in the country. Yet.
The courts in Massachusetts and Connecticut found that same-sex marriage is a civil right. The legislature in heartland Iowa did the same. So, too, did California's supreme court, with the opinion written by the state's Republican chief justice.
But that right was taken away with the passage of Proposition 8 last November, a victory for conservatives fueled by what the winning campaign's consultant called "the gift that kept on giving," the feckless moves and statements of San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, who unwittingly starred in the very effective anti-gay marriage TV ads. Whether he liked it or not. So to speak.
With gay marriage losing even in California, at least for the moment, it's still a long ways off for America as a whole. Though it is inevitable, just as segregation could not stand in the long run of history.
So the weight of the past will hang especially heavy over the Republicans. While many may privately agree with Schmidt, a moderate conservative, the party's center of gravity is far to the right.
The Conservative Party in Britain faced a similar choice.
Routed by Tony Blair and "New Labour" in 1997, the Tories could stick with their Thatcherite past, and probably lose for a long time, or move in a new direction. Which was much the same choice that the Labour Party faced before the advent of Blair and his frenemy ally, Gordon Brown.
They chose at first to stay the course, and the Tories have been out of power in Britain for a dozen years. It's only now, with modernizer David Cameron -- a sort of Blair doppelganger of the moderate right -- in as party leader that the Conservatives are highly competitive again in the UK.
You can check things during the day on my site, New West Notes ... www.newwestnotes.com.
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Re: "Republican Party... pushing the old-time religion" and intolerance, again!
President Obama was elected by Independents, Reagan Democrats, Blue Dog Democrats, Republican in Name Only, Libertarians, etc. From my "Independent" perspective... Today the GOP stands for 1) De-Regulation of Business and 2) Regulation of Morality. The De-Regulation of Business removed consumer protections, rewarded job outsourcing and caused the economic collapse. Allowing Evangelical Christians to set the social agenda caused the "Separation of Church and State" divide over: school prayer, sex education, AIDS prevention, abortion rights, gay marriage, etc. Today the DEMS stand for working class jobs and common sense. Who knows, will the GOP Secede or See the Light?
Regarding the Cheney interview: he argues that the accused in Gitmo are not US citizens, ergo they don’t belong in US prisons. Does he have a problem with Noriega being in a US prison? Did he inform HW Bush that invading Panama and obsconding with their leader and housing him in a US prison was inappropriate? Didn’t think so.
See William Bradley's Profile
I'm sure he has some tortured, as it were, rationale ...
Regarding the Gingrich segment. Toward the end there was some discussion of the Teabaggers becoming a third party....I think this might be what they're up to. They realize that the GOP brand-name has been completely destroyed by Cheney and the like. So the teabag movement is an attempt to start a new party to represent fascists that doesn't have the baggage of the old party. Note that the majority of teabag attendees self-identified as republicans in every poll I've seen...
The Teabaggers aren't smart enough to start a political party. And Limbaugh isn't dumping the Republicans. He's happy to be the King Republican.
Republicans don't do "loyal opposition" very well, do they?
In a two-party system, the party out of power must do its best to check the excesses of the party in power. It's a vitally important function.
No presidency or Congress or judiciary is perfect. There will always be crooks, chiselers, incompetents, and political renegades in any administration, as there will always be ruling-party policies that are ill conceived, or wrong in principle. A strong minority opposition helps to police such things and keep the majority party honest. (We owe the Republican minority of FDR's time a debt of gratitude for helping to check the president's plan to reconfigure the Supreme Court, which would have set a disastrous precedent--think of what Nixon or Reagan would've done with it.)
But if the GOP continues to fritter away what credibility it has left on spreading crude, easily disproved lies about the president's policies, will anyone believe them down the road when they have a legitimate grievance? As an old NY lefty, I was delighted to see the G-O-P fall on its A-S-S. But as a student of history who reveres the Constitution, the prospect of one-party rule troubles me--even if its my party (and yes, I'll cry if I want to).
And with "president select" Bush--when all SCOTUS did was rule that the election results had to be in by the due date established by the legislature regardless of what the Florida state courts said (USSCOTUS ruling that the date for the results was set by the legislature and not by the courts)--the Dems also have a bit of work to do in terms of being the "loyal opposition"
I am watching the republican party right now with this strange sense of awe and fascination. I swear I have never seen anything like it, are they in death throes or something? Sure they have always been annoying, vitriolic and petty, but this current batch is operating on a new level of insanity that cannot possibly have been approached by any political party in history. They look like one of those tweaking Somali pirates as he sits at the back of wildly careening boat jacking that little Evinrude this way and that looking for something to attack. I am going to watch the late edition of Olberman now and as I go to sleep later I will wonder, as I do every single night, what kind of republican folly can tomorrow bring and can it possibly top what we had today?
See William Bradley's Profile
It's a field day for Keith Olbermann, no doubt about that ...
I agree. Its disturbing and facinating at the same time. You just can't look away.
A bit like the Jonestown massacre. Macabre, yet one needs to look in order to believe it's really happening. So many of us knew this was the real GOP (or at least the neocon version of it) but they did a pretty good job of dressing up the crazies when they were in power. Now that they're not, well, they just look like themselves...
Re: texas secession and importing your cowboy boots>>>>>> the vast majority of "cowboy" boots are made in china these days, followed by Mexico, only a small minority of high end boots are made in the US anymore. It seems sort of a shame that "Western shirts" and "Western jeams" are nearly all made in other countries from Romania to Bangla Desh, to Pakistan to China to Vietnam and Macau
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Interesting. My boots are Lucchese, made in Texas.
It's difficult to find any foot apparel not made in China these days.
The republican choice: react or modernize?
My 15 year-old daughter asked me why republicans hate America so much. I honestly didn't have an answer for her. Her dad and step-mom are repubs.
I honestly think the repubs don't understand what they themselves are doing and how they look to the world.
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I know a lot of Republicans who don't hate America.
yes, and I'm sure YOUR influence has nothing to do with her misinformed statement.
The Republicans are AT LEAST as stubborn as the Brit Conservatives.
Good thing, too. :)
>>>>They chose at first to stay the course, and the Tories have been out of power in Britain for a dozen years. It's only now, with modernizer David Cameron -- a sort of Blair doppelganger of the moderate right -- in as party leader that the Conservatives are highly competitive again in the UK.
See William Bradley's Profile
I think the Thatcherite remnant had more intellectual firepower than their American counterparts do.
Is Schwarzenegger really going to be in the new "Terminator" movie?
>>>>This was par for the course for Perry, who appeared right after Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger told his California Republican convention in 2007 that it was past time for Republicans to get in touch with the center to avoid becoming a permanent minority. Perry disagreed with every point the once (and future) Terminator made.
See William Bradley's Profile
Yes, he is. The technological challenge of digitally mapping Schwarzenegger's face is solved, I'm told.
I was already looking forward to "Terminator Salvation." Christian Bale is terrific.
Dick Cheney, huh? "We don't do torture."
What a piece of work that guy is.
See William Bradley's Profile
That's an amazing quote, isn't it?
Reminds me of that old Mitch Hedberg joke (reworded for Cheney's pleasure)...
I used to do torture...I still do torture, but I used to do it, too.
1984 redux..
It's not torture if they call it enhanced interrogation.
It's not gay marriage if they call it civil union.
It's not pro-choice, it's pro-abortion.
Fortunately for us progressive/liberal/left-centrists, we've come way beyond 1984. How perfect that Ronald Reagan was president then, as so many conservatives are still living for, pining for, a return to 1984.
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So much for the idea that all euphemisms are "PC."
Mainstream Repubs, they won't buy what this guy is selling. Left-handed Albanian psychics, they're not "real Americans."
See William Bradley's Profile
They most certainly are not! For one thing, they're Albanians.
Why are we listening to Newt Gingrich again? He was a complete disaster for the Reeps in the '90s.
I'm all for PERRY seceding from America. lol
Schmidt makes good sense. I hated his campaign for McCain, though.
Reconciliation is very much warranted regarding Health Care. If we don't do it now we will never see health care for all. Republicans claim of "all out war as WY Sen Ewing? threatened is hogwash. Isn't it all out war on their part already? Have they cooperated on anything so far? They've not only refused to cooperate they've been in 'all out' attack stage ever since 'we the people' won the presidency and both houses. Republicans represent Big Business and dems represent the 'people'. We owe it to ourselves to use reconciliation and take advantage of our position. Cry as they may, they've use it over and over for issues they wanted to stuff down our throats, most of which was detrimental to average Americans. At least we'd be using it for a good cause. LET'S NOT PASS UP THE OPPORTUNITY!!
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I suspect it will be employed.
You mean ram health care reform through on a straight majority vote.
That'll work.
If that's the way it needs to be done. If a minority wants to stand in the way of doing what is necessary for the greater good, then they're going to get run over. Either lend a hand or get out of the way - but don't just be a roadblock to progress.
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