Yellowdogtexan
11-06-2007, 07:26 PM
It is not often that I agree with buckley but he may be right here. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/will-bush-suck-the-gop-do_b_71216.html In the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll [pdf], a whopping 74 percent of Americans think the country is on the wrong track. Only 24 percent think we're heading in the right direction.
Which makes the behavior of the leading GOP presidential candidates all the more befuddling. To a man, every one of the top tier candidates -- Giuliani, Romney, McCain, Thompson, and Huckabee -- seems intent on competing to see who can out-Bush Bush. Not a single one of them has tried to put any distance between himself and the president -- especially on foreign policy, the area of Bush's most catastrophic policies. As George Will put it, "They are, if anything, to the right of on foreign policy. There's a bidding war to see who can be more hawkish toward Iran."
I've written about how the lunatic fringe of the GOP has taken over the party. [B]Well, the takeover is so complete that those looking to lead the party have come to the conclusion that the only way they can win is to compete for the 24 percent of the country that does not think we are headed over the edge of a cliff. They are all vying to be voted head wacko of the lunatic fringe. Running on a platform of heightened Bushism, they seem to think the reason three-quarters of the country has turned against the president is because he just wasn't extreme enough. So the problems of the GOP will only intensify when Bush packs his bags.
The reign of Bush and Cheney has not only alienated the public. It has also alienated conservative intellectuals like Gerson and Will -- and Bill Buckley, the godfather of conservative intellectuals.
Back in April, writing about Iraq, Buckley called public opinion on the war "savagely decisive" and concluded, "There are grounds for wondering whether the Republican Party will survive this dilemma."
If the Republican Party in its current shape ends up fading away to obscurity and irrelevancy, for its epitaph, we can use the words of Don Rumsfeld (trying to sugar coat a different debacle): "The dead-enders are still with us, those remnants of the defeated regimes who'll go on fighting long after their cause is lost."The fact that the top gop candidates are trying to out bush bush may well spell doom for the GOP. It is going to be difficult to compete in a general election running on bush was not tough enough in Iraq and similar stupid claims. Bill Buckley is correct to worry about the future of the GOP and here is one time that I hope that he is right.
Which makes the behavior of the leading GOP presidential candidates all the more befuddling. To a man, every one of the top tier candidates -- Giuliani, Romney, McCain, Thompson, and Huckabee -- seems intent on competing to see who can out-Bush Bush. Not a single one of them has tried to put any distance between himself and the president -- especially on foreign policy, the area of Bush's most catastrophic policies. As George Will put it, "They are, if anything, to the right of on foreign policy. There's a bidding war to see who can be more hawkish toward Iran."
I've written about how the lunatic fringe of the GOP has taken over the party. [B]Well, the takeover is so complete that those looking to lead the party have come to the conclusion that the only way they can win is to compete for the 24 percent of the country that does not think we are headed over the edge of a cliff. They are all vying to be voted head wacko of the lunatic fringe. Running on a platform of heightened Bushism, they seem to think the reason three-quarters of the country has turned against the president is because he just wasn't extreme enough. So the problems of the GOP will only intensify when Bush packs his bags.
The reign of Bush and Cheney has not only alienated the public. It has also alienated conservative intellectuals like Gerson and Will -- and Bill Buckley, the godfather of conservative intellectuals.
Back in April, writing about Iraq, Buckley called public opinion on the war "savagely decisive" and concluded, "There are grounds for wondering whether the Republican Party will survive this dilemma."
If the Republican Party in its current shape ends up fading away to obscurity and irrelevancy, for its epitaph, we can use the words of Don Rumsfeld (trying to sugar coat a different debacle): "The dead-enders are still with us, those remnants of the defeated regimes who'll go on fighting long after their cause is lost."The fact that the top gop candidates are trying to out bush bush may well spell doom for the GOP. It is going to be difficult to compete in a general election running on bush was not tough enough in Iraq and similar stupid claims. Bill Buckley is correct to worry about the future of the GOP and here is one time that I hope that he is right.