After successfully engineering a massive electoral victory in 1994, the Republican Party’s slide has been nearly as spectacular and quite predictable. By building a massive internally inconsistent boil of special interests, the GOP was able to divide Americans into neat little slices to whom they pandered. By building a massive money machine based around those interests, virtually taking over all of the lobby shops in the “K-Street Project”, they ensured a firehose stream of cash that ultimately led to massive money abuses.
By posing whenever possible as “more patriotic”, “more responsible”, “more moral” and “more religious”, they also set themselves up for a fall. Power corrupts, and they had a lot of power – and a lot of the opportunity to claim success or to be tarred with their failures. Between the financial and bribery scandals, the complete lack of morality in their behavior, their complete disrespect for the evangelicals they claimed to be serving, their willingness to sell out our nation’s troops on every possible level from equipment to medical care. The Republicans spent so much time telling their special interest groups that they were “special” that they ignored that most Americans are normal folks who don’t enjoy year after year of so-called “culture wars” and other polarizing malarkey that demonizes people for not measuring up to a range of imaginary lines.
Is it any mystery that moderate Republicans are jumping ship from such a polarizing party? Kansas may well turn into a “blue state” this year – several tough races are being fought there by former Republicans who cannot stand to see the GOP-sponsored partisanship continue to paralyze our society. Rove and those who have followed the White House in lock-step harmony have brought our nation to a point where everything is supposedly about politics – and in the process they’ve forgotten what it is to simply be citizens, what it is to be Americans.
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[quote][T]here is increasing anxiety among Republicans about whether new efforts to frame the party’s message can be effective in turning a tide that seems to be running powerfully against them as a result of the Iraq war and the Mark Foley page scandal.
For months, Republican leaders have sought to reassure candidates and activists with a succession of strategies. These included efforts to transcend the national environment by focusing House and Senate races on local issues as well as high-profile speeches by Bush casting Iraq as just one theater in a larger war against terrorists. But none of these approaches has succeeded over a sustained time in reversing polls showing deep voter unrest and willingness to punish Republicans for the performance of Washington.
The mood among most GOP strategists – with the exception of Rove and a few others – is decidedly downbeat heading into the final 18 days. They see poll after poll showing a growing number of GOP House incumbents in serious danger, including many who just weeks ago were considered relatively safe for reelection. The list of most-imperiled incumbents now includes Reps. Heather A. Wilson (N.M.) and Curt Weldon (Pa.), a top GOP strategist said.
By this reckoning, roughly a dozen GOP-controlled House seats are “gone, no ifs, ands or buts about it,” said the strategist, who discussed internal party deliberations on the condition of anonymity.
A number of GOP operatives said privately yesterday that they now see minimum losses of perhaps 18 seats, with 25 to 30 a more likely outcome. Democrats need 15 to take control of the House.[/quote]