I love me some take-back-the-party Republicans. What Powell said is absolutely right. The difference between the kind of uniting that Obama did and the kind of uniting that the GOP tries to do is that Obama’s kind of uniting actually brings the country together to do good. The GOP’s kind of uniting only makes us all afraid of each other to the point where we become even more isolated from each other.

I’m sending this to my Dad.  It will do his heart good to hear it, as it is what he has been saying about his GOP for a long while.

I just don’t believe this guy when he says what some folks clearly want to hear.  This is the same guy who gave a speech to the UN and said things about yellowcake uranium and Iraq that he knew were lies when he said them.  Why are people so anxious for Powell to be credible and to credit him with integrity?  Powell is Powell…a despicable liar who helped get us into the Iraq mess and was a co-conspirator in the Bushie rape of the US and the Constitution.  So now he’s a good guy because he pissed on Limbaugh a little?  Big deal.  Let the asswipe issue an apology for having been a disgrace to the country during the Bush administration.  This is just more Republican tactics.  They’re having Powell take a stab at rehabilitating the image of the Republican thieves who got the nation and the world into a big mess.  It’s a trial balloon.  If this doesn’t gain any traction, they’ll try another tactic.

(Hey Ken Blackwell, are you up to the challenge?)

I think Ken Blackwell is perfectly capable of standing up for the evangelical nutter wing of the GOP and telling the moderates to go pound sand.  One look at his record here in Ohio shows how time and time again he was in the corner of the social conservatives.

I think moderate Republicans who are in “take back the party” mode have a long haul ahead of them.  They need to take a look around and count themselves.  Between the evangelical nutter wing and the Club for Growth nutter wing, the moderates are severely outnumbered.  In an open battle against the nutters, they’ll probably lose.

They might also want to make themselves a list titled “Why Am I A Republican” and see what their reasons are for sticking with the party.  They may find that with the way the parties have shifted over the last few decades, their ideology is better represented by the Democrats these days.  For example, the Democrats’ version of fiscal responsibility is more in tune with older Republican ideals than whatever passes for “fiscal conservatism” inside the GOP.  The whole “I didn’t leave the party, the party left me” sentiment is a trite Reaganism, but for a lot of “cradle Republicans” it is probably a very true one these days.

I certainly don’t think much of Powell after his U.N. performance, but he’s on the money here, though he could have been more explicit: “How many elections has Rush Limbaugh ever won?”

Yeah, b-b-b-but where’s Amanda’s post about the Blagojevich scandal?

Sorry, couldn’t resist poking fun at Sharon.

The GOP cannot survive without the religious conservatives.  The Reagan coalition of Crony Capitalists for the money, Neocons for the policy, and Theocons for the footsoldiers would fall apart.  Religious conservatives will simply stay home if they are not sufficiently catered to.  It’s happened in the past that some GOP candidate has failed to adequately court their vote and lost.

If the Powell wing of the party is serious about reform they have to face the fact that they are looking at 40 years wandering the wilderness before the GOP will be a serious contender to take control of the House or Senate.

[Powell] said the party as it exists cannot sustain itself by turning a blind eye to the browning of America.

Of course, they’re going to be in denial.

“You want diversity?  Why look at Bobby Jindal and that Vietnamese guy who just got elected in Louisiana! We’re the party of Ken Blackwell, Michelle Malkin, and Dinesh D’Souza!  We got more brown skinned conservatives than you can shake a stick at!”

The whole “I didn’t leave the party, the party left me” sentiment is a trite Reaganism, but for a lot of “cradle Republicans” it is probably a very true one these days.

NonyNony:  Yep, yep, more yep, and all kinds of yep.  Republicans are supposed to stand for fiscal restraint and strong national defense, right?  Is that before or after they debauch the currency, nationalize the banks, run up trillions in debt, and break the Army?

If the GOP changes, it’s going to be under duress. As Powell hints, the wedge that will apply the pressure is the so-called “immigration” issue: the Know-Nothings can’t get over their racism and xenophobia, while the neoCons are completely enmeshed in their cheap-labour crony capitalist model. Once that snake fight gets underway, a moderate conservative voice like Powell’s will be drowned out.

Obama’s victory is in some ways a plus for Republican party unity—it buys them at least 4 years of a common enemy. But during that time, there’s a good chance that Pat Buchanan’s racist isolationists and the Xtian fantasist right are going to take the opportunity to draw Know-Nothings into alternative conservative parties.

The recession also puts off the “immigration” (really labour) issue for a few years, during which time the neoCons won’t have to worry about the supply of cheap labour in any industry, and the Know-Nothings can be distracted with talk about socialist income re-distribution to eeeevil black Muslim welfare queens or something.

Of course, for this to work out in favour of liberals and progressives, the other major party has to start thinking ahead on offering a third way on the immigration issue. Unfortunately, that kind of foresight won’t come from the likes of Pelosi and Reid.

Let it go, Tommykey, let it go: with any luck we’ll never hear of ‘her’ again.

(And, staying positive seems to be working, so let’s trend THAT way.)

Nice addendum:
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/12/11/powell-values/

Gov. Palin, to some extent, pushed the party more to the right, and I think she had something of a polarizing effect when she talked about how small town values are good. Well, most of us don’t live in small towns. And I was raised in the South Bronx, and there’s nothing wrong with my value system from the South Bronx.

  And when they came to Virginia and said the southern part of Virginia is good and the northern part of Virginia is bad. The only problem with that is there are more votes in the northern part of Virginia than there are in the southern part of Virginia, so that doesn’t work.

Ok, so there’s some friction within my party, at least we don’t walk in lockstep like you LIEbral DEMONcraps, because we’re mavericks with a big tent!

That’s not the future of the party. That’s the current of the party. The future of the party is whatever happened to the Whigs.

The last 8 years has been the GOP going supernova.  It’s now collapsing on itself and is about to become the sucking black hole of American politics—taking the rest of us with it, if it can. </metaphor>

Is that before or after they debauch the currency, nationalize the banks, run up trillions in debt, and break the Army?

they get some hardcore cognitive dissonance going on for that. Republicans are “for fiscal responsibility and strong defense” so as bad as they fucked up both of those things, by definition, democrats would have done even worse somehow.

it’s not a reality based approach.

Powell is wrong again.  Put simply, it appears that Powell believes is an actual group of like minded citizen who think their vision of the future is the better way for this country.  But we all know that’s ridiculous.  That party doesn’t exist anymore (if it ever did).  This is not about schism so much as the yet unrealized fact that the republican party represents an extremely small minority of business owners in this country.  That’s it.  All the rest is just bluster to keep them in the running.  Do I need to point to the thousands of examples?

Look, it’s arguable that the democrats aren’t much better in some ways but there’s no arguing that those differences are vital.  The dems may cave in, a lot, to their lesser natures but in general they still do stand for what a majority Americans want.

When the needed realization hits the republicans there won’t be talk of reforming the republican party, there will be talk of abandoning the wealthy minority and creating a real conservative party.

Rat. Sinking ship.

OK, that’s cruel. But when Powell gets out in front of something—instead of telling people he had private reservations while he was publicly cheerleading the war, endorsing a guy he was pretty sure would win over someone who hated his guts, dissing a witch-hunt policy that has 2/3 of the country against it and so forth—then I’ll start to respect him. For now I just feel sorry for him. He sold his soul, and he didn’t even get the two cents.

Same with the rest of the so-called moderates: let them call out someone who isn’t already on the way down.

How do you get to be “a STAR” if the majority of the party isn’t for you?
+++++++

Paul, the traditional payment for a soul is thirty pieces of silver.  Two cents is the ferry fee to the Land of the Dead.

Pepito, <u>where</u> do these “moderate Republicans” make their case for tossing the theocons?

Two cents, Paul?  Deflation must be here already I always thought it was thirty pieces?

Two cents: Not Judas Iscariot but Jabez Stone. “The Devil and Daniel Webster” was pretty much a religious text in my grade school.

Rat. Sinking ship.

No, it’s not. This guy was a day late and a dollar short, as usual. He “endorsed” Obama a week before the election, when it was clear who the winner would be. Powell is all about sucking up to whoever will make life better for Powell.

I think the message most Republicans will take away from this is “pretend to be moderate long enough to sucker some voters, then go back to being assholes.”

IIRC, technically speaking, in 20 years the majority (i.e. white Americans) will be the plurality, not actually a “minority”... the point still stands though.

It seems to me that Powell is a fundamentally weak man - he always follows, never leads. In the ‘90s, he didn’t run for President even though he could have. In the early 2000s, he went along with Bush rather than taking a stand against him. And now the wind is blowing left he’s starting to make leftward appeals. Hell, maybe it’s better that he didn’t run for President - he could very well have just been dictated to by the Republican Congress.

Powell, as usual, is the reliable font of conventional wisdom, the one who jumps on board whatever the leading sentiment of the day is.  The man who lied us into Iraq later regretted it, the man who was the mouthpiece for Don’t Ask Don’t Tell now changes his tune, the man who sucked up to the religious right for years while he rode the Republican gravy now wants to distance himself from them.  Powell is a weak passive man who has made a career out of being a dutiful water-carrier of whatever his superiors demanded. 

How someone so mind-numbingly mediocre ever got to where he is….oh, um, wait.

Let’s get real here. Powell is a good soldier. He does what the Commander in Chief, yeah the guy we elected, tells him to do, And, by the way, he does not bitch about his orders to outsiders. I am amazed at those who whine about Powell and yet stay away from where the fault really lies. With us, we elected George W. Bush. I know, I know, he cheated. But the election should never have been close enough for him to steal. We let it happen. Blaming Powell is just juvenile.

There is a reason they call people like Powell RINO’s (Republicans in Name Only).