Can Republicans Escape Their Extremists?
WASHINGTON — Things are looking up for the Republicans, relatively speaking. President Obama’s poll numbers have dipped, GOP recruitment for the 2010 elections is going better than expected, and the heath care battle has been rough on the Democrats.
On top of that, the surveys show Republicans now leading in this year’s two major governor’s races, in Virginia and New Jersey.
There’s just one problem: The country still doesn’t like Republicans.
A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll last week captured the public’s mixed verdict. The headlines focused on growing doubts about Obama’s health care plan and the drop in his approval rating, from 60 percent in February to 53 percent now.
But the same poll found that while Democrats as a party had a net positive rating of five points (42 percent positive to 37 percent negative), the GOP faced a 13-point deficit. Only 28 percent rated the Republicans positively; 41 percent rated them negatively.
Perhaps this has something to do with how few positive things Republicans have to say. As a result, the party is being defined by extremist voices who have faced little push-back from its leaders.
The extremists include the “birthers” who, against all evidence, insist that Obama was not born in the United States and thus ineligible to be president. These guys are so out there that party leaders and conservative commentators have started to disown them.
Race-baiting is no longer off-limits on some of the right-wing talk shows. Fox News’ Glenn Beck, for example, declared that Obama “has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture.”
Ethnicity has been an underlying issue in the debate around Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s Supreme Court nomination. Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee questioned whether she would be fair by repeatedly referring to her comment — from which she backed away — about the relative wisdom of a “wise Latina.”
Rush Limbaugh was far less subtle when her comment first surfaced. “How do you get promoted in a Barack Obama administration?” he asked. “By hating white people — or even saying you do, or that they’re not good or put ‘em down, whatever.”
Some in the party are also entering never-never land in their attacks on the Democrats’ health care proposals. Last week, for example, Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., claimed that the Republican approach to health care would be more pro-life because it “will not put seniors in a position of being put to death by their government.”
Foxx’s ludicrous notion — taking off in the right-wing blogosphere — is that Section 1233 of the House health bill is an invitation to euthanasia.
It’s nothing of the sort. It simply provides Medicare funding so seniors with life-threatening diseases can consult their doctors on advanced care and be given “an explanation by the practitioner of the continuum of end-of-life services and supports available, including palliative care and hospice, and benefits for such services and supports that are available under this title.”
The harshness of the rhetorical salvos is feeding worries among some Republicans that the GOP is increasingly perceived as a right-wing, Southern regional party.
Sen. George Voinovich of Ohio brought those concerns to the surface in an interview with The Columbus Dispatch in which he spoke of the role played by Sens. Jim DeMint of South Carolina and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma.
“We got too many Jim DeMints and Tom Coburns,” said Voinovich, who is retiring next year. “It’s the Southerners.” He added: “People hear them and say, ‘These people, they’re Southerners. The party’s being taken over by Southerners.’”
Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana shot back, calling Voinovich “a moderate, really wishy-washy” in an interview with The Washington Times. But Vitter offered indirect support for Voinovich’s claim when he said: “I’m on the side of conservatives getting back to core conservative values. There are a lot of us from the South who hold those value(s), which I think the party is supposed to be about.”
In the short term, these tussles and rumblings may not matter much. The country is focused on judging what the Democrats are doing with the power they hold. The path politics will take depends largely on the outcome of the health care battle and the direction of the economy.
But to take advantage of the opportunities that might come their way, Republicans will have to make themselves an acceptable alternative. They have not done this yet.
Facing down extremism and breaking out of the party’s regional enclave would be good places to start.
This column is copyrighted and licensed to run on TMV in full. (c) 2009, Washington Post Writers Group.
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I think the real question is how will the Democrats get rid of their extremists, particularly the one now sitting in the White House. I'm not a Republican nor am I a Democrat – I personally think both parties suck, that politicians from both sides of the aisle are irresponsible largely unaccountable self-interested jerks. But the right-wing ''extremists'' you use as an example raise many excellent questions & nothing explains why Obama will not produce his original Birth Certificate – what information is he hiding along with the rest of his mainly invented past? Obama is tanking in the polls & no amount of rationalizing can disguise the fact despite a fawning mainstream media that overwhelmingly gives a positive spin or deliberately over-looks inconvenient facts.
By the way, the issue to examine is not really so much about Left or Right but about COMPETENCE.
And the Obama administration is showing little or no evidence of competence, particularly in foreign policy & quite a bit of evidence of INCOMPETENCE.
Can we all escape democratic extremists? can our children? After all they will be paying for it if we can't as they spend us deeper in debt at record-breaking levels.
I've gotta agree with the commenters- I'm far more worried about a party that holds power and is using it to push extreme legislation than I am about the extremists from the party that's out of power who are using the vacuum to push their conspiracy theories.
Funny, back when the GOP held both branches, when most of the stories here highlighted GOP scandals or misdeeds and some of us conservative commenters noted the imbalanced coverage, I distinctly remember being told that this was because of the power discrepancy (it was more important to talk about what the majority party was doing wrong.) We were told that we'd see a shift in the focus if/when the Dems came to power. I'm still waiting.
Why is that the nutter birther/teabaggers (as evidenced in this thread, among many others), when confronted with a serious, intelligent topic about themselves, refuse to discuss the actual topic at hand and instead bring up totally unrelated non-sequiturs about Obama?
It's a trend I have repeatedly noticed for the past few months. A commenter brings up some criticism of a republican leader or action, focusing exclusively on the republicans without mentioning Obama at all. Instead of talking about that point, the republican defenders immediately ignore the original topic and write something along the lines of “Oh yeah? Well, what about Obama when he did xxx?” or something similar, like bringing up the nonsensical birth certificate stupidity. Ummm, guys, totally not the point of the discussion.
That I see as part of the whole problem that is preventing the republicans from growing up and becoming a serious alternative to the Democratic Party – their inability to address their own failings and problems. The only way they can address themselves is by trash-talking Obama – as evidenced by the first three off-topic comments from the birther/teabagger wackos in this thread. The main topic of the article posted by E.J. Dionne is not about Obama – it's about how the republican party needs to reign in their extremist fringe that now has a stranglehold on the party's microphone before they can progress and be taken seriously by the true American general public.
Republicanism (with a “big R”) has plenty of good ideas, and it is truly a shame that the republican party has abandoned their principles and instead choose to focus on petty, small-minded bickering and outright birther lies. As long as the *first* response to anything republican is to turn around and point an accusatory finger at Obama (as so eloquently illustrated by the first commenters in this thread, although I could bring up a dozen other examples on this blog or others if I so desired), then we will continue to see a stunted, non-productive republican party unwilling to look to the future and be taken seriously by Middle America.
Why is that the nutter birther/teabaggers (as evidenced in this thread, among many others), when confronted with a serious, intelligent topic about themselves, refuse to discuss the actual topic at hand and instead bring up totally unrelated non-sequiturs about Obama?
Gee, I dunno, perhaps because otherwise the serious issues with the party that currently holds all the power in DC are not being covered much at all at this and other nonconservative blogs? Perhaps because the focus of ridiculing GOP extremists is a pretty obvious change of subject in and of itself, from the important issues of the day?
“I'm far more worried about a party that holds power and is using it to push extreme legislation”
I'm more worried about the increasingly intellect-devoid opposition and lies regarding what the DNC is trying to do. When even the senators of the GOP are now on a high-school level of criticism and interest in a subject I'm starting to wonder.
“Funny, back when the GOP held both branches, when most of the stories here highlighted GOP scandals or misdeeds and some of us conservative commenters noted the imbalanced coverage, I distinctly remember being told that this was because of the power discrepancy (it was more important to talk about what the majority party was doing wrong.) We were told that we'd see a shift in the focus if/when the Dems came to power. I'm still waiting.”
Could it just be that the GOP was more difficult to see in a positive light while it was in power and still is just as unpalatable in the minority? Seeing as soundbite-spewing hecklers and ideological nutters demanding attention at town halls are now supposed to be the brave vanguard against Obama's healthcare plans, I can see the reasoning. You're a reasonable person who comments in good faith, Stanley, and that makes you less representative of the GOP than you'd want to know. I can think circuits around people like Grassley or Bachmann even with a concussion, and they're supposed to be the upper echelon of the GOP.
The GOP seems to me like the climate skeptics – they act indignant over their negative portrayal in the MSM (which *always* is a result of bias) while still committing themselves to make the manipulation and swaying of the MSM zeitgeist into their forte. If the MSM is so horrible and lame, why is the right-wing so interested in creating the sort of easy soundbites and narratives that the lousy MSM is so prone to spread? Can't have it both ways.
You're a reasonable person who comments in good faith, Stanley, and that makes you less representative of the GOP than you'd want to know.
Or less like the caricature you've come to believe about the GOP, Kastanj. If I'm not mistaken, you aren't an American, are you? If not, then why do you believe you have an accurate perception of real people here from what you read on blogs?
If I've mistaken your identity, sorry- but Kastanj seems like a pretty uncommon screenname so I'm assuming you're the same person I've had discussions with on another blog.
Is it extremist to want the whole truth about the POTUS? I don’t trust ANY politician and almost no one in the media. I still want two answers.
1) Why can't we see his long-form? Obama knows that millions of citizens want to see it yet he continues to hide it. What/why is he hiding?
and most disturbingly,
2) Why don't BHO's supporters want to know the whole truth, especially since there’s a reward of $100,000 for proof that Obama is a “natural born” citizen of the United States.
OBAMA, STOP HIDING. SHOW US THE LONG FORM BIRTH CERTIFICATE!!!!!
Click below to see possible obama Kenyan records!
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageI…
Well CStanley considering your admiration of and regular posting at “the dutch lads” site your question (and inference) seems…
I don't even have a word for what it seems but it would be somewhere between hypocritical, selective xenophobia, and ad hominem.
Whatever, Steve. The 'Dutch lad' you mention has also at times received comments from me when I felt that his views weren't accurate due to his lack of immersion in our culture/society. I have no problem with people from other countries commenting on the American system, and in some ways they bring a perspective that we sometimes lack (seeing forest, not just trees.) But this is a case where Kastanj is clearly echoing stereotypes of conservatives that one would get if one was mainly informed from blog reading, IMO.
“I'm far more worried about a party that holds power and is using it to push extreme legislation”
As was correctly noted already, while the Dems and their media mercenaries lie about the GOP, the left wing of the Democrats (the true extremists in Washington, and which hold actual power) have been at the forefront of the current mad rushes by Dems, openly influenced and even directed by the extremists, to pursue all kinds of bad legislation and objectives. That they're also exposing dysfunctionality among themselves with the health care effort in particular (they have rushed to put together idiocy, experimenting on the fly, literally, as if everyone were so stupid as to have unquestioned faith in their extremism and in them as rulers) is not a surprise.
Obama is a liberal Democrat and is offending the (intelligent, moral) public with his dogged insistence on getting this very-poor health care interventionist effort passed, whereas in addition merely to making many a campaign promise that only the stupid would be expected to accept on faith, he actually _did_ act at times earlier to muzzle the worst extremists among the lib Dems, namely the anti-Bush-Cheney demented revanchists. It's a shame he's going now with extremism and the low-IQ appeal with health care.
“I'm more worried about the increasingly intellect-devoid opposition and lies regarding what the DNC is trying to do.”
[Correcting you by redirecting your statement toward where it actually belongs] Well, why don't Obama and the other notorious Dems be honest and above-low-room-temperature-IQ for a (real) Change [tm]?
[dusting hands]
I won't believe those “possible obama Kenyan records” until I see the long form original copy!
The problem, as Leonidas somewhat pointed out, is that the extremists on the right are dangerous to us all as a distraction from what the left is doing. I like the current administration, but I also WANT a solid opposition to it so that the Dems don't get “too big for their britches.” But when the people you're supposed to be looking to for a check on any stepping out of line are certifiably bat sh*t insane over certain things, you question the rest. Before you know it, you're ignoring any and all criticism of the administration because, hey, they can accept an obvious (and quite laughable) forgery with many, MANY errors and a questionable source (not to mention that the Kenyan government and/or hospitals can't find anything), but they can't accept a written and oral statement from an official U.S. government entity stating that they have records of Obama's birth in Hawaii. They destroy their credibility, and then of course you have the Dems running wild because they can.
…which is precisely why you aren't seeing as much focus on the left side of these things. What you're seeing at this point is a classic “boy who cried wolf” syndrome. I warned about it months ago, and well, here you have it.
I won't believe those “possible obama Kenyan records” until I see the long form original copy!
LOL…I don't agree with the rest of your comment, but that was pretty funny, almoderate.
The reason I disagree with the rest is that there are apparently just as many 9/11 truthers or people who at least give them some credence as there are birthers, yet that apparently didn't stop the Dems from organizing an electable coalition to oppose the former GOP majority. The fact is that there are a lot of conspiracists on both sides, and then even more people who are skeptical enough to perhaps not go all the way to tinfoil land but keep a roll of Reynold's Wrap just in case…yet somehow our republic always seems to survive.
“It's a shame he's going now with extremism and the low-IQ appeal with health care”
People have to stop calling each other stupid for this debate to have any productive results. It doesn't help. It just generates more mendacity. Why have we reached a point where many people's first reaction is just to hurl insults? I know many people who hold very divergent political views. Their views are heart and head felt, and are produced by their own unique perspectives and are of course valid. It would seem to me that to automatically go for the insult-route suggests that a person doesn't really have much faith in their own ideas, and are threatened by any opposing point of view.
I don't think its necessary for Republicans to escape their extremists. What I do think is that its necessary for people to step back from this issue and maintain good debate. I also think its necessary to stop adding unnecessary items to this bill. We don't need to fund abortions with a public healthcare bill. We don't need threats holding blue dogs from voting the way their constituents want them to.
Case in point.
Speaker Pelosi and Chairman Waxman (D-Hollywood) wanted a second vote on the healthcare amendment to the health bill and another attempt to include abortion coverage in the health care bill currently being debated in Congress. To allow a second vote, they needed permission from the Committee members. Congressman Charlie Melancon voted to allow the Committee permission to bring up the vote again.
Why do you need to bring something up again that just got voted down?
http://www.lanewslink.com/archives.php?id=12601