GOP in trouble

[newbie]

The GOP, or Grand Old party, is having it's fair share of problems. Let's see if I can keep track here:

Karl Rove - testifies before grand jury, what, 4 times now

Scooter Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, also in trouble over the "plame game"

Michael Brown - chronyism and total incompetent

David Safavian - 3 counts of criminal complaints, oh and links to Hamast and Hezbollah

Bill Frist - insider trading

Harriet Miers - chronyism

John Roberts - chronyism

Tom DeLay - indictments

Bush - incompetent, 10s of 1000s killed on his watch.

Oh, and let's not forget Pat Robertson, Bush's Christian buddy, making plans to knock off a South American leader.

Doesn't look good for the 2006 midterms. Kinda makes Clinton's BJ look pretty tame.

[Black Dog]

The conservative crack up

The “movement” – that began 50 years ago with the founding of Bill Buckley’s National Review; that had its coming of age in the Reagan Years; that reached its zenith with Bush’s victory in 2000 — is falling apart at the seams.

[shoop]

That the Republicans are falling apart seems to be evident. The question is can the Dems get themselves organized or will they waste the chance with infighting. There isn't a lot of love between the Clinton centrist wing of the party and the Howard Dean left wing of the party.

Can Hillary court enough left-leaning Democrats?

Can Dean et. al find a candidate who would have a remote chance of winning the general?

[Toro]

Shoop.

Exactly.

It makes you wonder why Presidents run a second time. They all seem to get into political trouble in the second term.

The GOP will lose seats next year. The only question is whether they will lose either chamber. Its unlikely.

Simply because the Republicans are imploding doesn't mean the Dems will gain, or at least gain much. Nobody knows what the Democrats stand for. And if they nominate someone from the Dean wing, they'll get crushed.

Black Dog

Do not use this as evidence that the conservative movement is cracking up. That's hopeful thinking. The Right have been winning almost all the battles over the past two decades. Even when they lose elections, they have pulled the Democratic Party to the right. If the Left in America thinks all they have to do is stand aside, then they will lose over and over again. The Left has a lot of work to do if it wants to ascend to prominence.

[August1991]

I barely follow American politics and even less the internal disputes of the Republican party. It seems to me though that we are a year away from the mid-term elections, and Bush is in a second term. The disputes strike me as irrelevant.

In addition, the noise seemed to arise because Bush appointed a relative unknown to a so-called 4-4 split Court, rather than a die hard conservative. I'll turn the commentary over to Mark Steyn:

Where do I stand? To be honest, I haven’t a clue. A vacancy comes up on the Supreme Court and for a month or so every columnist is expected to be an expert on the jurisprudence of a couple of dozen legal types he’d never previously heard of. I had some chit-chat on the nominations a few weeks back with National Review’s Kate O’Beirne and the former solicitor-general (and rejected Supreme Court nominee) Robert Bork. I did my best to keep my end up.

--

For what it’s worth, my sense is that Harriet Miers will be, case by case, a more reliable vote against leftist judicial activism than her mercurial predecessor, Sandra Day O’Connor. Why do I say this? Well, she’s a strong supporter of the right to bear arms.

--

What’s left, then, is the base’s distress and the perception of weakness on the President’s part. The first is real and may cause problems in 2006, though I can’t see it costing the GOP its congressional majorities. As for Bush personally, he was the better of the alternatives in both 2000 and 2004 but, come on, the ‘compassionate conservative’ thing was, in its implications, far more insulting to the base than the steel tariffs or the proposed illegal-immigrant amnesty or the judicial nominees. Bush, it seems ever more obvious, is the Third Wayer Clinton only pretended to be. The Slicker reckoned that, to be electable, a Democrat had to genuflect rhetorically to some kind of sensible soccer-mom-ish centre, and he was right, at least in so far as without him the Dems have been el stinko floppo three elections in a row. But Bush, for good or ill, believes in himself as the real Third Way deal: it’s a remarkable achievement to get damned day in day out as the new Hitler when 90 per cent of the time you’re Tony Blair with a ranch. The President is a religio-cultural conservative who believes in big government and big spending and paternalistic federal intervention in areas where few conservatives have ever previously thought it wise. Not my bag but, that said, every time I or anybody else has predicted he’s blown it, he manages to produce another victory.

Mark Steyn

Tony Blair with a ranch... Steyn's hilarious.

[Guest eureka]

There is no chance for a Democrat in the USA until the Theocracy is cracked. What does not seem to be understood is that the fundamentalist Christian Right has organized to a degree that will not be matched by political debate.

Though a minority (still) in numbers, they have the allegiance of the more normal Christian Right. Together they form a Bloc that controls the Republican Party and, to the point, a Bloc that will get out and vote thus ensuring Republican victory for the immediate future.

Unless Liberalism can find a way to discrdit that fundamentalist element, it will remain in the rear. It must do that without the attack and contempt that these fanatics deserve for that will only firm the support for the extreme Right..

I recently saw somewhere, that 59% of Americans now believe in a literal meaning for the Bible and that 25% believe that we are now in the end days.

Both those figures are fundamental to any understanding of America and both its domestic and foreign policies.

It means that the 25% do not care what happens and welcome war and pestilence. Climate Change, Iraq, Pensions, misery and poverty, so what! Christ is about to return and take them up. Nothing matters other than that and the war to end wars is imminent.

It also means that those fundamentalists, organized as they are, do not have much difficulty in attracting the political support of the more moderate,

Thus Bush, incompetent buffon that he is, is the perfect leader. He is the connection between the Fundamentalists and the neo-liberal Right. He serves adequately the purposes of both since he is close to a Fundamentalist himself and he is a charter member of the neo-liberal movement - even if he doesn't know what it means.

America, in my opinion, is in parlous condition. Unless there is an organizing forse opposed to these two ideologies that is capable of doing more than criticizing and debating, the Right will remain dominant and may get stronger.

That could mean the collapse of American society as a democracy and the theocratic rule that has found a way to circumvent Article 6. of its Constitution. The corporate structure has no reason to oppose such a development.

[August1991]

Thus Bush, incompetent buffon that he is, is the perfect leader.

What is it about the American/Canadian Left that it always ridicules the American Right as being either buffoons or dangerous or both? It belies a smug disdain for ordinary people, the very people the Left is supposed to defend.

[Guest eureka]

I think you could do better than that, August, if you really tried. Or are you, too, reduced to snivelling about the Left when faced with real analysis?

I have just given the real lowdown on America. Remember that you heard it here first. If you keep up with the better class of American journalism, I think you will be hearing more of it in the future.

[Shady]

John Roberts - chronyism

This is the worst of your partisan talking points. John Roberts is anything but a Bush crony. Everyone believed/believes that he is immensely qualified to be a supreme court justice, even those who voted against him.

There is no chance for a Democrat in the USA until the Theocracy is cracked

Hmm, I just read over the current American constitution again, and didn't find anything about a theocracy. Maybe you're confused with another country? If not, you're grossly misinformed.

[newbie]

John Roberts - chronyism

This is the worst of your partisan talking points. John Roberts is anything but a Bush crony. Everyone believed/believes that he is immensely qualified to be a supreme court justice, even those who voted against him.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Let's see. Roberts was a college pal of Dubya, and served under Reagan and G.H.W. Bush. What's your definition of crony?

[Guest eureka]

You have identified your problem, Shady. You cannot read or comprehend.

The American Constitution does not mention a theocracy anywhere. It does in Article 6. set out how it is not intended to be one and does not allow religion to invade politics.

The religious Right has hijacked the Constitution quite lawfully, showing another weakness in that less than perfect blueprint.