GOP Is Losing Republican Icons’ Children
And now new, high-profile defections from the GOP ranks: according to Newsweek, the Republican Party under President George W. Bush is in danger of losing the children of Republican icons, who are on the verge of voting for Democrats:
Susan Eisenhower is an accomplished professional, the president of an international consulting firm. She also happens to be Ike’s granddaughter—and in that role, she’s the humble torchbearer for moderate “Eisenhower Republicans.” Increasingly, however, she says that the partisanship and free spending of the Bush presidency—and the takeover of the party by single-issue voters, especially pro-lifers—is driving these pragmatic, fiscally conservative voters out of the GOP. Eisenhower says she could vote Democratic in 2008, but she’s still intent on saving her party. “I made a pact with a number of people,” she tells NEWSWEEK. “I said, ‘Please don’t leave the party without calling me first.’ For a while, there weren’t too many calls. And then suddenly, there was a flurry of them. I found myself watching them slip away one by one.”
In essence, Eisenhower and other Republicans of that ilk over the years were called “country club Republicans” by conservatives. There aren’t too many of them left in positions of power in the party. And they could become a politically endangered species as the country becomes more polarized — particularly during primary season where conservatives in the primaries are dominant and help shape the party’s future.
But Newsweek has some other tidbits, too…including some surprises:
Eisenhower isn’t the only GOP scion debating if the party still feels like home. Theodore Roosevelt IV, an investment banker in New York and an environmental activist like his great-grandfather, Teddy, takes issue with what he says is George W. Bush’s inattention to global warming (and Republican presidential contender John McCain’s flirtations with the religious right). He’s unhappy with the cost of the global war on terror and the record deficits incurred to finance it. Ninety years ago, former president Teddy Roosevelt attacked Woodrow Wilson’s pro-democracy idealism, calling it “milk-and-water righteousness”; Roosevelt’s great-grandson doesn’t like how the current president is promoting values abroad, either. “I come from a tradition of pragmatic Republicanism,” he says. “This administration has taken the idea of aggressively exporting democracy à la Woodrow Wilson and gone in a direction even Wilson wouldn’t have considered.”
That a descendant of TR should be sour on GWB and his crew is not TOTALLY surprising given the fact that, since Bush came to power, political maven Karl Rove has said that TR’s political rival Mark Hanna had been his role model. Also: TR was a highly-praised pro-conservation activist American President, a category under which George Bush is unlikely to ever be placed. AND:
The party might even be alien to Barry Goldwater, the 1964 GOP nominee who jolted the party rightward when he said that “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.” Goldwater’s youngest daughter, Peggy, who is active in GOP politics in Orange County, Calif., says she is a “moderate conservative,” just as her firebrand father became later in life, irked by Republicans in Washington who embrace big government. “The government is taking on more than I feel they can handle,” she says.
Traditional Goldwater Republicanism is far different from the Republicanism practiced by Bush and Rove (as those who’ve lived through Goldwater’s moments on the national stage and as younger readers who have discovered his writings know full well). It was no accident that, during the last Republican debate, GOP 2008 wannabes fell all over themselves praising Ronald Reagan (considered a political descendant of Goldwater) and kept a few continents between themselves and praise of George W. Bush.
BOTTOM LINE: The Newsweek piece again shows that there is a kind of shake up (or shake down) in today’s Republican Party with Bush loyalists representing a kind of new Republicanism where loyalty to the party’s leader (and adjusting and if necessary discarding previous beliefs as he adjusts them and a group of loyal talk show hosts help keep the troops intellectually in line) and to gaining and retaining power is the key goal. Winning elections has never been merely incidental to politicos.
But the old line about Goldwater: “He’d rather be right than be President” doesn’t apply to the current elite of the GOP which has a slogan more like: “We’d rather activate our base and win and worry about the details later.”
Another difference: previous Republican icons — even those who were blunt-spoken — seem to feel that coalition-building and consensus that aggregating interests was a virtue. The present party elite and White House seems to feel it’s symbolic of weakness (and, indeed, the approach has helped win some elections.)
In short: the seemingly impending defections suggest a reshaping of the GOP. Whether it ends in the party becoming stronger or being marginalized in coming election cycles remains to be seen.
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16 Responses to “GOP Is Losing Republican Icons’ Children”
Traditional conservatives are at odds with the increasing influence of Christian evangelicals over the party’s agenda. Anyone who watched the GOP candidates debate last week could no longer doubt that to obtain the nomination the litmus test is social conservatism. The fact that three major candidates who are otherwise viewed as rational men could admit that they do not believe in evolution should scare the descendants of traditional Republicans like Eisenhower or TR, because it is an indication that faith-based decision-making may be replacing reason and rational thought. Goldwater, the father of the conservative movement, rejected the party’s marriage to the religious right in the years before his death. He felt quite rightly that the GOP’s commitment to small government and individual liberty was in jeopardy, and was angry at the perversion of those values.
The past six years have shown that viewing the world in absolutist black and white terms may fulfill one’s moral code, but fail dismally in the real world, where there are many nuances. Diplomats who understand that are much more likely to achieve some degree of success than those who try vainly to force their world view on everyone else.
Governing should be about pragmatic compromise for the greater good, not the blistering defeat of evil. Evil normally does not exist as an absolute, and by trying to eliminate it, we have blinded ourselves to the complicity of our own actions. If the Republican Party is to survive, more “country club” Republicans (or cloth coat Republicans) need to speak up to preserve the party’s pragmatism and relevancy in the real world.
The GOP is unsalvageable. It’s unsalveagable because the institutions that nurture new leaders and pay the bills- schools, internships, think tanks, fund raisers – have been totally infected by the know-nothingism of the Values Conservatives.
Where are new Republicans coming from? Christian Rightist (and even Dominionist) schools, which Gonzales recruited his little elves from. Think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute, which sent youngsters to Iraq to “rebuild the country” – a task for which they had no experience and no aptitude, but they did have a Rightist agenda which was not only completely irrelevant to the job, but destructive of it. These institutions do not educate or train people to be critical thinkers, innovative problem-solvers, or even to understand elementary logic. They’re ideological, first last and always.
The new Republicans are formed in those hothouse environments where real-world standards never apply, then sent out to be staffers for more parallel-universe Congresspersons, advocacy groups, and federal agencies (FEMA, DoJ, even the military). At no time do they have to deal with the damage they do to other human beings; at no time are they held accountable; at no time are they corrected.
Where does GOP money come from? The far, far Right: Scaiffe-Mellon, the Christian Right, and America’s wanna-be plutocrats. None of these people, none of these groups, are interested in utilitarian governing principles, “the greatest good for the greatest number.” They’re only interested in protecting their own interests, which are very narrow, and very destructive.
The GOP has turned its back on stewardship, on knowledge, on science, on egalitarianism, on everything that good governance is built on. It has eaten its seed corn, and salted the earth where that seed corn once grew.
There’s nothing to save. The entire structure would have to be taken apart and rebuilt from scratch.
The GOP deserves to die. Let it.
If we elect Giuliani or McCain, the GOP is salvageable.
CaseyL,
the Democrats could possibly claim that they can manage government services if a any of the children of the presidential candidates were sending their children to public schools. Why should I believe that someone like Senator Obama can produce good government services when after ten years of being a state senator, Illinois and Chicago could not produce a single classroom that was fit for Senator Obama’s children.
Maybe the Democrats could clain that they can manage large organizations if they managed to close a majority of the homicide cases in a deep blue area like Baltimore Maryland. Or if the Democrats could get the bus drivers in DC to comply with the current traffic regulations.
The country club republicans wold have some credbility if they had ever managed to win elections or produce a Republican majority. Country club Republicans were always content to the minority party and to let the Democrats do whatever they wanted. Go back and look at the late 1970′s and see what happens when Country club Republicans have their way.
Holly, anyone who’s tired of the current administration’s “my way or the highway” style of government should run far, far away from Rudi Giuliani.
After 8 years of Bush, his election would permanently cast the Republican party as the party of autocrats.
Holly – People like Susan Eisenhower are die-hard Republicans whose entire lives have revolved around politics -if they are giving up on the party because of too much influence by the religious right, shouldn’t we?
There was a picture of Mitt Romney, who was a moderate GOP governor of a very blue state, with Pat Robertson at Regent University in WaPo today. These candidates are pledging to adhere to the Christian right’s agenda in return for the support that they have to have to get the nomination. That means conservative judges who will outlaw a woman’s right to choose, maybe taking evolution out of our schools’ curriculum, and denying federal spending for embryonic stem cell research. Gay rights may be infringed upon also.
Newt, McCain and others have met with Robertson, Falwell and Dobson to get their blessing. There will be big expectations in return for that blessing. That’s how we ended up with Alito and Roberts. The right wants to pack the courts with conservatives who will roll back gay rights and abortion rights. Its no longer about picking an individual candidate.
The government ran fine under Clinton- welfare was reformed, there was a surplus in the treasury -he was not a big spender-and FEMA functioned much better under James Lee Witt than it did under Brownie. I know that you believe that the Democrats are incapable of running anything bigger than a mom and pop stand, but you are generalizing too much, and ignoring the flaws of your own party’s current leadership.
Abramoff scandal has been suppressed, the US attorney scandal has been covered up and there have probably been many violations of the Hatch Act. The GOP didn’t practice fiscal conservatism but spent like drunken sailors, and now the deficit is enormous.
Bush just vetoed his second bill yesterday- approving all of the pork of the spending bills from 2001-06. We are losing two wars, mostly due to incompetence and lack of coherence in the executive branch. FEMA floundered abominably under Brown, and recently lost over a billion in fraudulent payments. There is 9 billion that was paid to contractors that no one can find in Iraq. The projects that we paid billions for are all substandard, mostly because nobid contracts were given to big donors who didn’t come through as promised. The GOP does not deserve to regain their power.
If this had happened on a Democrat’s watch, then maybe you would have a right to talk- but it didn’t- so you will be seeing the Republican party sink into oblivion- at least for the next few years.
kritter,
If you would look up the bio on Susan Eisenhower, you would see she is anything but a diehard Republican. She is probably much close to a LearJet Liberal of the John Kerry type.
She also appears to be an elitist who probably resent that the white suburbanites and blue collar types ever got involved in politics. She also shows her bias because she never bothers to attack how the Democratic Party is totally beholden to the Black Congressional Caucus and the Hispanic caucus. Why else would ever Democratic Presidential candidates support open borders, Affirmative Action, and racial set asides when the vast majority of Americans want the borders secured and want an end to racial quotas?
[...] [Turn signal: TMV] [...]
SD-If that’s true about Eisenhower, why is she intent on saving her party? I would have thought she would have been voting Democratic all along. Traditional Republicans do not stand for the same thing as the modern-day Republican party, which is why many are switching parties. If they do it will broaden the base of the Democratic Party to include more white suburbanites.
Why should Eisenhower attack the Democratic Party for that? Maybe she realizes that it is the party of diversity, which is not necessarily bad for the party or for society. Look at the GOP candidates who debated. Ten middle-aged Christian white males. That worries me more than the influence of the Black Caucus, even though it may look exactly right to you.
You can point out as many flaws in the Democratic party as you would like to, but it is not enough to overcome the failures we have experienced as a nation under Republican rule. The Republicans are no longer the party of personal responsibility, of balanced budgets, small government or common sense. They have defeated themselves and are in disarray. It will get worse as the war drags on and Bush’s poll numbers get even lower. Which president will he compare himself to next, Jimmy Carter or Richard Nixon? He’s used all the other historical contexts up, but people aren’t buying it.
I’m a Democrat and I’m not at all happy with much of what the new Democratic Congress is doing. I find Giuliani preferable to many of the Democratic presidential candidates and don’t believe a word of what he’s saying to the Religious Right.
Holly, Bush was a moderate in Texas who worked with Democrats. When he ran for president he got the blessing of the religious right, by assuring them of his court picks, and allegiance to their agenda. Giuliani was very shaky in his answers Thursday on a woman’s right to choose, and will be appointing more conservative justices to the judiciary. In any case, my money is on Fred Thompson to win the nomination not Giuliani.
[...] The Republican Party Is Bleeding. [...]
[...] party of their parents. While I could detail the ideological differences, the real difference, as The Moderate Voice points out, is that the party has abandoned principle for “a kind of new Republicanism where [...]
[...] of course, by all means everyone, keep your knickers in a wad about those eeevil Christianists. They’re the real threat, not those kindly oppressed types who are actually using a pinched [...]
Holly doesn’t believe that Rudy believes in what he’s saying to the Religious Right. So of course he won’t appoint judges to the courts just like the ones Bush has appointed. He won’t swing into being an anti-gay moralist crusader. If he is elected on the basis of promises to the base he will keep those promises if he wants a second term. And what President doesn’t want a second term?
People who thought like Holly are the reason we are stuck with Bush. Good luck with the post-election disappointment if you vote for him and he wins, Holly.