Energized GOP Trying To Avoid Intraparty Feud

Energized GOP trying to avoid intraparty feud

I think it's a mistake for the GOP, long term, to go the route the likes of Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh and our very own Sen. Jim DeMint are urging the party to take. It may pay dividends in 2010. I'm not sure. But the fundamental demographic changes remain daunting: We are speeding towards being a minority-majority nation, and if the GOP successfully kicks out the folks who agree with it a lot -- and that includes a ton of black and Hispanic people -- but are turned off by its rhetoric and far right wing, they will cut off their own legs on the national level. Remember this: Had Ronald Reagan run in 2008 and won the same percentage of white and black and Hispanics voters he did in the 1980s, he would have lost in a landslide in the same way he won in a landslide in '84. The country has changed that much. Forward-thinking politicians understand.

Comments

[Robert Meek]

When in the course of my 52 years on this planet did Republicans & Democrats become mortal enemies that clearly hate each other & spew diatribes of vitriolic hate & rage?

I vaguely remember a time when we deemed ourselves to civilized to do such a wretched thing.

Maybe it started when we became a society so stupefied as we have, indeed, become, characterized by a Podiatrist's business sign in front of his office, which I read, contained, in parentheses, the definition "Foot Doctor"!

[Robert Meek]

Typo error correction: "...ourselves too civilized..." and not "...ourselves to civilized..."

Sorry.

[Brian37]

Lets not throw the baby out with the bath water here. EVEN our country had a "civil war" which is an oxymoron, because having said that there is nothing "civil" about war.

In any case, I agree that our politics has become gang warfare almost to a tipping point. But without the ability to dissent and disagree we would not have the ability to criticize or blaspheme our government, EITHER SIDE. That is something the founders DID set up. They remember the King silencing dissent.

Jefferson responded to a letter from Adams after the Revolution, in which Adams complained about this very thing. Adams said that our elected officials should be respected. Jefferson in a very polite way responded with "WHAT THE CARP!"

He reminded Adams that it was the price of being a public figure and the price of living in a free society, and we are better off because we can speak freely without fear of our government.

While I agree we should get on with problem solving, I do not want to see the ability to dissent or even blaspheme, be thrown out. We don't have to have a civil war over our current situation, but some people forget that our ability to blaspheme our leaders has been around since the founders, and is nothing new.

I think we cry "be civil" because everyone is frustrated. But at the same time, we all want to have our say without fear. So the solution is not demanding political correctness. The solution is to recognize that we all want the same thing.

Both sides want a healthy economy, and both sides want to be able to say what we/they want without fear. So what we can do without destroying free speech for either side, is to keep that in mind when we do disagree.

I think it was Franklin who said, "We should hang together or we will certainly hang separately".

We can and will get through this and the worst thing either side could do is demand the silence of the other.

[Aileron]

Well said, Brian.