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Subscribe to RSS“The fractious GOP hierarchy seems to have finally settled on a message when it comes to President Barack Obama: take a deep breath and don’t take the bait,” Politico’s Martin writes. Overtly in speeches and more subtly with their actions, GOP leaders and potential 2016 presidential candidates are sending a message to their party that it ought not let itself be radicalized by Obama’s ambitious and decidedly left-leaning second-term agenda.” More: “Following condemnation of the president’s liberalism, the would-be GOP standard-bearers are imploring conservatives to not just oppose Obama but devise an agenda of their own that they can present to voters. These Republicans, it seems, are dreading a replay of the past four years in which a triumphant Obama win leads to a conservative backlash at the polls in 2014 but the party is then tranquilized into believing it can win gold in the next presidential cycle by doing nothing but loudly opposing the administration.”
Not everyone’s gotten the message on toning down the rhetoric. Here was Mia Love at the National Review Institute Summit in DC Sunday, per National Journal: "We need to remind everyone that the GOP was originally formed to end slavery… We're trying to end slavery from the federal government.”
The Boston Globe went to the scene of Mitt Romney’s appearance in DC Friday: “The luncheon, meant to honor Romney and his wife, Ann, took place just blocks away from the White House, where President Obama was continuing to assemble his staff for the next term. Bleachers constructed for the inauguration parade were still set up outside, and the official inauguration store – selling Obama hats, shirts, and mugs – was next door. But Romney, who has remained out of the public eye, did not permit media of coverage of his trip. His staff said he was not available for an interview. The hotel, where many events and conferences are held, cordoned off the entrance with red velvet ropes and stationed guards at the door to block anyone from entering the lobby.”
More: “While the group of Romney supporters dined on either salmon or filet mignon, Romney told them that he had kept a low-profile since the campaign but planned to be politically active in helping get Republican candidates elected in 2013, 2014, and 2016, according to a source who attended the lunch and requested anonymity because the function was supposed to be private. Romney wasn’t specific about which candidates he would help and in what way, the source said, and it remains to be seen how active other Republicans want Romney to be following a losing campaign that many have criticized. Still, those who attended the luncheon included some of the top Republican power-brokers. Among them were Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senator Rob Portman of Ohio, Senator John McCain of Arizona, and former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott. There were also several former senators -- Jon Kyl of Arizona, Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, and Gordon Smith of Oregon – as well as former diplomat C. Boyden Gray.”
Per Politico, Romney said he won’t attempt to win office again. “We lost, but I’m not going away,” he said. “I will continue to help.”
More: “‘[Romney] explained that he had been out of the news and that was purposeful,’ said the source in the room. ‘He didn’t want to say something on the fiscal cliff and have the president use that as a wedge between the speaker and the minority leader… He said it wasn’t going to last for long and that he was going to come back and start talking about the things that matter to him.’”
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From the article aboe:
They're trying to reestablish slavery with slave wages.
Salud
Bingo, these unscrupulous teabaggers are going so far as to try and fix the elections and in some ways did because of the result of the election of 2010. It is backfiring on them though as more and more moderate republicans are moving away from the party of nope. No hope = nope
Guess this would be the same Mia Love who ran for a congressional seat in Utah. Mia, a Mormon, black female running as a TeaPeople!
Oh, well, she lost!
Correction; that's "anchor baby" Mia Love.
Oh, No! I forgot about her Haitian-ness. She can join the Gov Jindal of Louisiana! Anchors Away!
It would seem to me that the GOP/TP are truly delusional if they feel their message of everything for the very rich and nothing for the masses will resonate with the American people. To do the same thing over and over again getting the same failed result is completely insane and this insanity is running wild with with GOP/TP.
The GOP seem to be attempting to be "Masters of Disguise", hiding who they really are behind yet another mask. I am not fooled and I suspect that niether is America.
Amusing to see them keep Mitt away from the Inaguration, and smuggle him into town with a bag over his head. Do you think Mitt has the message? The GOP, like the rest of us, are just not into you!
imploring conservatives to not just oppose Obama but devise an agenda of their own that they can present to voters
This about sums up the Republican Party: they have to be reminded that political office is about governing, not just about getting on TV to spout Ayn Rand-isms and collect a big check from wealthy (albeit stupid) donors.
The GOP pushing a different tone? They just don't get it. As long as they come across as the 1% entitled to rape the country of its treasury, take away any remaining worker rights from the majority of hardworking Americans and treat them like serfs...as long as they continue to attack women, gays, minorities and refer to Americans as "takers," they don't have a prayer of resurrecting the party fortunes.
It seems to come as a great surprise to them that the centrist policies of this President are not rejected by voters. The Republicans are out so far on the right, that they can no longer recognize centrism when they see it.
We need to well functioning political parties in this country, if the Republican Party does not reject the extremists in charge, they will go the way of the dinosaur.
If the GOP thinks it can trot out the same ideas but in a different wrapper and attract women and minorities it's still in a serious state of denial. The majority of the American public has moved on from the seriously backward social views of the cabal that has Boehner hog tied. Ryan's budget is still a joke and totally unacceptable in terms of where it concentrates spending cuts. He's still talking about decimating programs that affect the well being of people while ignoring corporate welfare.
If tone was their only problem, them perhaps Robme wouldn't have lost the electoral college in a landslide and by 5 million votes overall. It is the message that small government is the answer, whereas it has proven not to be the case (Sandy). What Americans would believe cuts to Social Security and Medicaid while oil company and mega farm subsidies, a bloated military budget and tax breaks for the rich are untouched was a winning message? For 30 years Americans heard that trickle down economic argument and reject it now just by simply looking at their shrinking paychecks versus the mega disparity with the pay to executives? How is an increasing divide in wage disparity without apology from the GOP a winning message?
One only had to watch Lyin' Ryan on Meet the Press Sunday to see that nothing has changed in their leadership's mindset and that will result in their own losses in 2014 and beyond. It's going to continue to go against the Republicans until they track further to the middle, while the rest of the country tracks to the middle left. I see an awful lot of Democrats winning in generally conservative districts and states if ultra conservatives keep winning GOP primaries!
daveNJ-2028123........
Regarding "Lyin' Ryan on Meet the Press".
Rep. Ryan's appearance on MTP was noticeably UNnewsworthy.
He (Ryan) mostly whined about President Obama's refusal to "move toward the middle". One must suppose this absurd viewpoint springs from Ryan's continuing state of denial that HE and Romney LOST.
Ian Emdee........
Abso-freakin-lutely!
Hey Ryan- who needs to move toward the middle? YOU!
When one who is living on the extreme end of the spectrum sees anyone to their, in Ryan's case, left, even slightly, they are considered by people like Ryan as beeing too far in the one direction. If Ryan would move more toward the middle, himself he would realize that Obama has moved toward the center from the left that he occupied as a Senator.
With a few more whoopin's in major elections and the once grand old party may finally realize that their message is not what people want for this country and that if they don't move toward the center Karl Rove will have his wish of one party, the only problem for Rove is that it won't be his party.
They're just trying to re-frame their lies and present them as something different. The way the republicans think, if a lie doesn't work the first time, tell it a different way and hope nobody notices.
Note to GOP: When you quit letting Fox, Limbaugh and right wing talk radio run your party, you will turn it around, and only then. If there's one thing most Americans despise, it's lying. And that's all you get from Fox, Limbaugh and right wing talk radio. The republicans have been headed to the sewer ever sense the Supreme Court told Murdock (Fox) they could lie through all their media outlets.
The Republican party was radicalized YEARS ago. Now, it is a factional mess whose members can agree upon only ONE thing: They despise President Obama.
The end of the 2nd Obama administration will erase (much of) the GOPeaParty's raison d'etre. Oh well, that's the essence of reactionary politics.
Translation: We need to remind Republicans (esp. Tea Party supporters) that the GOP was originally formed as a P-R-O-G-R-E-S-S-I-V-E party.
Herbert Hoover hijacked the GOP to be the tool of Big Business. Richard Nixon invited in (to the GOP) a horde of former Southern Democrat racists (good riddance BTW) and sundry other extreme social conservatives.
Now, look at the GOP. It is a very sad parody of the proud party of Lincoln.
(One of) the biggest challenges for Democrats is keeping our own liberal agenda sensible while the Republican party is both incompetent and impotent (to play that role).
Ian Emdee
Good points.,...We need to remind everyone that the GOP was originally formed to end slavery...and Ronald Reagan started his career as the President of the Screen Actor's Guild; the most popular Republican in modern times was a union President and originally a Democrat....maybe Republicans should remember THAT.
Mo, it is like putting lipstick on a pig. You can change the color of the lipstick but it is still lipstick and you're putting on a pig. Apparently the Republicans think by changing the color of the lipstick that no one will notice the pig.
Ought not to be radicalized? It is way too late for that now. They have been run by radicals for over a decade, long before Obama was elected. What the Republican party needs to do is quit being obstructionist, move toward the center and learn to compromise. The President has tried working with them but to no avail.
The Republcan party, as mentioned by Ian, was originally progressive. John C. Fremont was their first presidential candidate. The party was formed, mainly of progressive Whigs and a few disgruntled Democrats who had one thing in common, they disliked slavery. They came on strong with the man credited as being America's greatest President, Abraham Lincoln.
At the end of WWI, as with any such conflict, there was a small recession. Presidents Harding and Coolidge led the country down a garden path of uncontrolled banks and stock market (sound familiar). After Harding died in office and Coolidge left office the country elected a businessman, Herbert Clark Hoover as President. He was not even in office a year when the stock market crashed as a major cause of the Great Depression. While it wasn't Hoover's fault, entirely, he didn't do enough to curb it either, at the time the Congress didn't like some of the ideas of Hoover that eventually were expanded by and introduced by FDR.
The social programs of FDR such as CCC, WPA, TVA, and a mirad of other programs helped bring us out of the depression. Events also highlighted the need for safety net programs such as Social Security.
Theodore Roosevelt was another Progressive Republican. TR ended child labor and was very environmentally aware. He was instrumental in the creation of national parks and monuments. When William Howard Taft, TR's hand picked successor failed to continue the progressive programs started by TR, Teddy formed the Progressive Party with the bull moose as it's symbol. In that election, 1912, the Republican party was split between Roosevelt and Taft, with the Democrats behind Thomas Woodrow Wilson. Wilson won with Roosevelt in second and Taft a distant third.
After leading the nation's troops in Europe during WWII, Five Star General Dwight D. Eisenhower was rewarded for his actions by electing him President. He was a moderate, slightly right of center. President Eisenhower warned about the military-industrial complex. Obviously the good general and president was correct. We have seen the horrible results of doing just that.
Then the nation's Republican party started moving more and more to the right until they got to the point where they are today, run by an extremist group including the so called Tea Party Patriots who are so extreme that one can believe that they want this to be a Fascist nation.
Whatever they do the Republican party, if they don't want to meet the fate of the Federalist and Whig parties before them needs to move back toward the center. I would be, as I belive most folks would be, satisfied if they returned to the party of Eisenhower even if they don't move into Teddy Roosevelt's version of the Republican party.
Two things Adler, you didn't go far enough in your praise of former republican presidents. Eisenhower when faced with a recession got congress to pass the interstate highway act. (not the real name, I don't think). which put people to work much like FDR did, plus we have a fine highway system that has been left virtually untouched since that time and still functions well.
All in all, your post is a great lesson in history, the demise of the the republican party is as certain as the was the shellacking of the democratic party around the time of Reagan as they became too liberal, even for liberals. You could have also mentioned Bill Clinton, a moderate democrat who had to move more to the middle to get anything passed in congress. However he was one of the most successful of all presidents in managing this nations economy. He created a boom like I have never seen in my lifetime. The Viet Nam war was bad for humans but good for the economy but even that still did not come up to the times of Clinton.