Republicans continue to divide: Democrats cannot be smug

The fallout from the 2008 presidential election continues as right-wing conservatives continue to wreck wreak havoc within the Republican Party. As we noted in October, 2008, "The Greatest Danger to the Republican Party: Sarah Palin," this nation was founded on the basis of a social compact.

The problem for the Republicans is that Palin owns the "god, guns, and gays" element of the Republican Party. She locked up the base the way John McCain, Mitt Romney, George W. Bush or even Ronald Reagan could only pretend to embrace. They engaged the abortion issue, guns, and the religious right, and the hatred for American institutions because it was politically expedient.

A year later, ultra-conservatives march on:

Uncivil War: Conservatives to challenge a dozen GOP candidates

In what could be a nightmare scenario for Republican Party officials, conservative activists are gearing up to challenge leading GOP candidates in more than a dozen key House and Senate races in 2010.

Conservatives and tea party activists had already set their sights on some of the GOP’s top Senate recruits — a list that includes Gov. Charlie Crist in Florida, former Rep. Rob Simmons in Connecticut and Rep. Mark Kirk in Illinois, among others.

There is an unholy alliance between moderate business leaders and extremists from both the religious right and the libertarians who border on anarchy.

There will be a realignment as this drama unfolds and the Democrats play a key role. There are moderates who must make a critical decision. They must cast their lot with the extreme right or the Democrats. These are responsible people who are nor convinced that the investment Democrats wish to make in human capacity and infrastructure can be done efficiently and wisely. They share the objective but question the strategy.

There are Republicans who are pro-choice and are comfortable supporting real equal rights for all people no matter what their sexual orientation or preference. But these Republicans also question Democratic mandates in areas that compromise free speech, such as regulations that punish bigoted language.

Democrats can further this political realignment in a positive way, not by lumping all moderates and Republicans with extremists from Glenn Beck to Charlie Sykes, but by listening to the moderates, listening to their own moderate Democrats.

It does not mean that compromises need to be made on national health care or rights for gays; it does mean rethinking the 'enforcer mentality.'

Comments

[R.J.]

"...continue to wreck [sic] havoc..."

Whallah!! I think I'll start a blog called 'WreckingHavoc'

http://thesaurus.reference.com/browse/wreak+havoc

[R.J.]

Interesting exhortation, except the only Democrat that matters without the smug gene encoded in his DNA is Joe Lieberman...and he's practically a Moderate.

[Alderman Steve]

Everything I know about politics I learned from Atticus Finch:

"You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view - until you climb into his skin and walk around in it."

[antpoppa]

Just sitting' back in the rockin' chair watching the elite Bourgeoisis pass by on the way to the historical ash pit

"We say to the workers: 'You will have to go through fifteen, twenty, fifty years of civil wars and international wars, not only in order to change existing conditions, but also in order to change yourselves and fit yourselves for the exercise of political power."'
MARX (On the Communist Trial at Cologne, 1851).

"The bourgeoisie sees in Bolshevism only one side . . . insurrection, violence, terror; it endeavors, therefore, to prepare itself especially for resistance and opposition in that direction alone. It is possible that in single cases, in single countries, for more or less short periods, they will succeed. We must reckon with such a possibility, and there is absolutely nothing dreadful to us in the fact that the bourgeoisie might succeed in this. Communism 'springs up' from Positively all sides of social life, its sprouts are everywhere, without exception-the 'contagion' (to use the favourite and 'pleasantest' comparison of the bourgeoisie and the bourgeois police) has very thoroughly penetrated into the organism and has totally impregnated it. If one of the 'vents' were to be stopped up with special care, 'contagion' would find another, sometimes most unexpected. Life will assert itself. Let the bourgeoisie rave, let it work itself into a frenzy, commit stupidities, take vengeance in advance on the Bolsheviks, and endeavour to exterminate in India, Hungary, Germany, etc., more hundreds, thousands, and hundreds of thousands of the Bolsheviks of yesterday or those of to-morrow. Acting thus, the bourgeoisie acts as did all classes condemned to death by history. The Communists must know that the future at any rate is theirs; therefore we can and must unite the intensest passion in the great revolutionary struggle with the coolest and soberest calculations of the mad ravings of the bourgeoisie.... In all cases and in all countries Communism grows; its roots are so deep that persecution neither weakens, nor debilitates, but rather strengthens it,"
LENIN ("Left-Wing" Communism, 1921),

[R.J.]

^^ Hosanna! Here he comes like the morning mist.

[antpoppa]

Though you greet me “hosanna”, there is no garland about my head. I choose not to dance with seraphs, my ascendancy is with simple truth and pleasures. I only seek the light. (or a clean bed at some institution)

[R.J.]

Paul, I'll give you credit for striking and not over-writing.

[mgm]

Those scroundrels! When unemployment and taxes are up, the ins have a way of becoming the outs. The ins are Democrats. Hope and change will now be Republican because the Democrats have failed to deliver what they promised. That's common sense, which is lost on leftist ideologues.

Will Scott Walker be Governor of Wisconsin? Will Republicans gain in Congress? Maybe. Maybe not. The GOP will sweep all high statewide offices in Michigan in 2010.

[anon]

I still like your hot dog post the best.