Rebuilding the GOP
By Alan Stewart Carl | Related entries in Conservatism, RepublicansEven if John McCain pulls out a win, Republicans will almost certainly be crippled in Congress. But Soren Dayton cautions his fellow Republicans not to deflect the blame:
Maybe the problem is us. The lesson of this election for Republicans cannot be about John McCain, although he has his faults. It has to be about the establishment and us. Our leaders have lead us astray. It is probably time to find new leaders. Rank and file Republicans get that. That’s why the last two guys standing were the farthest from the establishment: John McCain and Mike Huckabee.
Until the establishment in Congress and party accept that they are part of the problem, we are just going to continue to lose more seats and continue to destroy our party and our movement. McCain isn’t doing that.
Four years ago, Republicans appeared poised to remain in power for a generation while Democrats wallowed in the morass of old ideas and shredded credibility. But only two years later, Americans decided that it was the Republicans who’d lost their credibility by exchanging their reformist spirit for the trappings of power. Now, with even greater defeat a real possibility, forward-thinking conservatives like Dayton are preparing for the kind of leadership change Republicans must undergo if they hope to make their time in the minority minimal.
I’ve never been a Republican, but I am actively rooting for a revived GOP that can provide a strong alternative to the liberalism we’ll likely see from a Barack Obama administration and a Pelosi/Reid Congress. Republicans would do well to cast out the anti-intellectualism that masquerades as populism, sweep away the Tom Delay power gambits that substituted for leadership and stop allowing pugilists like Rush Limbaugh treat party discipline as more important than new ideas.
There is still room in our political culture for fiscal responsibility and the promotion of personal liberty over government mandates. But the Republicans, in their hunger for power, jettisoned those principles. Now they need to reclaim them and remake them to address 21st century challenges. The longer Republicans point fingers, the longer before they can begin rebuilding.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 28th, 2008 and is filed under Conservatism, Republicans. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
October 28th, 2008 at 10:52 am
“Four years ago, Republicans appeared poised to remain in power for a generation while Democrats wallowed in the morass of old ideas and shredded credibility.
Sorry, but that is crap. Gore won the popular vote and clearly more people in Florida intended to vote for him than for Bush. In 2004 Kerry did better than any candidate in our history running against a sitting president during wartime. And, again, likely won in Ohio. The great Republican tidal wave was a lie the media ran with. The wins were not from a groundswell but from clever deceptive transitory political machinations.
October 28th, 2008 at 1:47 pm
[...] on contributions and an opposition party with a share of power. The Republican party is about to be rendered impotent, and transparency is not a high priority in the Axelrod/Obama campaign. So – we will see too much [...]
October 28th, 2008 at 9:21 pm
Great blog – the question of what becomes of the Republican Party is the most interesting question out there right now. I would gladly cast a vote for a practical fiscal conservative, but I would never vote for the Republican Party as it is right now: pandering to Christofascists, anti-science, anti-intellectual. I mean, Sarah Palin – come on now! Even at this point I would consider voting for McCain had he not chosen that narrow-minded divisive woman! But I wonder, can the GOP really divorce itself from its far-right bigoted base? If not, we need a new “Bull Moose”-style party.
November 20th, 2008 at 6:52 pm
Quote Of The Day…
“I?ve never been a Republican, but I am actively rooting for a revived GOP that can provide a strong alternative to the liberalism we?ll likely see from a Barack Obama administration and a Pelosi/Reid Congress. Republicans would do well to cast out …