Our New One Party Political System

Several years ago, I was banned from the allegedly conservative Free Republic online political discussion group for criticizing President George Bush. I was banned for repeatedly saying that Bush and his NeoCon handlers were destroying the GOP as we know it and that we TheoCons would be better off revolting and even sitting out an election rather than allowing the party and ourselves to be driven into insignificance. That was several congressional election cycles ago and unfortunately, all of my dire predictions have come true and then some. Even the best conservative pundits such as Peggy Noonan are now predicting a GOP train wreck of massive proportions in the upcoming election:

The Democrats aren't the ones falling apart, the Republicans are. The Democrats can see daylight ahead. For all their fractious fighting, they're finally resolving their central drama. Hillary Clinton will leave, and Barack Obama will deliver a stirring acceptance speech. Then hand-to-hand in the general, where they see their guy triumphing. You see it when you talk to them: They're busy being born.

The Republicans? Busy dying. The brightest of them see no immediate light. They're frozen, not like a deer in the headlights but a deer in the darkness, his ears stiff at the sound. Crunch. Twig. Hunting party. ….

… The moment when the party could have broken, on principle, with the administration – over the thinking behind and the carrying out of the war, over immigration, spending and the size of government – has passed. What two years ago would have been honorable and wise will now look craven. They're stuck.

Mr. Bush has squandered the hard-built paternity of 40 years. But so has the party, and so have its leaders. If they had pushed away for serious reasons, they could have separated the party's fortunes from the president's. This would have left a painfully broken party, but they wouldn't be left with a ruined "brand," as they all say, speaking the language of marketing. And they speak that language because they are marketers, not thinkers. Not serious about policy. Not serious about ideas. And not serious about leadership, only followership.

Pity Party, Peggy Noonan, The Wall Street Journal, Link HERE.

In the meanwhile, fresh on the heels of his public support of the recent California Supreme Court decision allowing gay marriage, nominally Republican California Governor Arnold Schwartzengger is calling for a “re-branding” of the GOP:

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger created shock and awe in the Republican Party when he warned years ago that the GOP was in danger of "dying at the box office" by failing to make the sale to a wide swath of voters.

... The answer for GOP presidential candidate John McCain: take a page out of the Schwarzenegger playbook and sell a product that is "counter" to the current GOP brand on issues like global warming, spending and even immigration reform. …

And the governor, in an interview with The Chronicle last week, had some candid advice and observations, not only about the GOP brand - but on McCain's efforts to expand his appeal to independents and disillusioned Democrats.

"The Republican idea is a great idea, but we can't go and get stuck with just the right wing," Schwarzenegger said. "Let's let the party come all the way to the center. Let those people be heard as much as the right. Let it be the big tent we've talked about. Let's invade and let's cross over that (political) center," he said. "The issues that they're talking about? Let them be our issues, and let the party be known for that."

The San Francisco Gate, May 18, 2008 link HERE:

So, the nominally GOP governor of one of the largest states in the nation, who is married to a Kennedy, is suggesting that the GOP not only move to the political center but move past it to the left in order to compete with the Democrats with their own positions. Forgive me for being naïve, but that sure sounds like a one party system to me. It’s just a question for voting the Red Social Democrats or the Blue Social Democrats.

All of my dire predictions have come true. The GOP access that Evangelicals prized so highly dried up during the Bush years to the point that McCain has stiff armed them entirely. He has been openly contemptuous of Evangelical GOP voters intelligence, relying upon the old and now discredited "poorly educated and easily led" and "where else do they have go to anyway?" strategies of years past. In the meanwhile, the GOP continues to lose key house and senate races, its public approval numbers are abysmal and the possibility of a GOP president getting anything done that conservatives want, even if he were miraculously elected, is almost nil under the current political conditions.

But, worst of all, the two parties have become politically indistinguishable to principled conservatives. The GOP has become, in its own words, a badly shop worn brand that is no longer attracting the numbers its "owners" need to stay in power.

Sometimes, you hate to be right. But, I was. And, in the immortal words of Bette Davis, “Fasten your seat belts boys and girls. It's going to be a bumpy ride.”

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Just in today from NewsMax:

MCCAIN COURTS LEFT WING BLOGGERS:

Republican John McCain’s campaign has begun holding regular conference calls with leftwing bloggers and blogs that focus on single issues such as healthcare and the environment.

On May 15, McCain held a conference call with bloggers including Greg Sargent of TPM Election Central, Kate Sheppard — a political reporter for the environmental Web site Grist.org — and Erin Kotecki, who blogs at BlogHer.com and The Huffington Post, according to Wired.com.

An earlier call included Med Gadget and other blogs devoted to healthcare issues.

Link to full story HERE.

MCCAIN STIFF ARMS EVANGELICALS - DOBSON:

Sunday, May 18, 2008 6:05 PM By: Phil Brennan

Sen. John McCain's campaign has so far turned a deaf ear to invitations to meet with politically powerful evangelical leader Dr. James Dobson at his Focus on the Family headquarters in Colorado Springs, Colo., raising the possibility that the nation's sizable evangelical bloc will sit out the presidential race in November.

The move would all but assure the election of Sen. Barack Obama, columnist Robert Novak argues in a recent column.

Noting that Dobson has indicated he can't support McCain for president, Novak writes that Dobson's opposition to McCain "reflects continued resistance to the prospective presidential nominee among Christian conservatives who are unhappy with McCain's current positions on stem-cell research, immigration and global warming, not to mention his past sponsorship of campaign-finance reform."

But conservatives are surprised that, despite the differences between McCain and some key conservatives, McCain hasn't responded to their olive branches and sought meetings.

Link to full story HERE.

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And this fresh in from Townhall.com:

GOP - GET BACK

The Republican Party is in distress. Doomsayers are everywhere. Republican National Committee Chairman Robert M. Duncan complains that conservative, pro-life, pro-gun Democrats won three special elections by stealing GOP issues.

"We can't let the Democrats take our issues," Duncan told the New York Times. "We can't let them pretend to be conservatives and co-opt the middle and win these elections. We have to get the attention of our incumbents and candidates and make sure they understand this."

Democrats didn't steal your issues, sir. You abandoned them. Your party discarded them. Democrats simply engaged in dumpster harvesting.

Unable to win by labeling Democrats "liberals," Republicans don't know what to do. Labeling worked before. Why isn't it working now? The answer is that it only works in combination with superior ideas, which you then contrast to those of your "liberal" opponent. You can't do that credibly unless you have embraced those ideas and sought to implement them. Republicans traded in their ideas in favor of gaining and keeping power as their sole objective. The party wants credit for giving lip service to its abandoned ideology while it practices cave-in politics.

John McCain has promised to bring Democrats into his Cabinet and work with Democrats in Congress. Does that mean ideas don't matter? Does it mean that when Democrats disagree with him he will embrace their ideas just to get along? If so, why should voters vote Republican? They might as well vote for Democrats and get their liberalism straight-up.

GOP- Get Back, Cal Thomas, Townhall.com, May 20, 2008. Link to full column HERE.

And from William Rusher today:

So you will look high and low before finding a professional politician, in either party, who privately expects a Republican victory this fall -- either in the presidential election or in Congress. Realistically speaking, can anything be done about this? Probably not much. In all likelihood, this is going to be "a Democratic year." Still, there is no reason why the GOP has to watch the Democratic juggernaut descending on it like a deer transfixed in the headlights of an oncoming car.

Avoiding a Republican Rout in November, Townhall.com, May 20. 2008.