Friday, January 11, 2008

The Republican house of cards – Part II



A conservative is a conservative is a conservative. True? False!

As pointed out here before, the contemporary Republican Party coalition has become something of a house of cards. The various elements of American conservatism that came together under the leadership of Reagan are now in competition with one another for the Republican Presidential nomination. As it turns out, many representatives of these different elements are not particularly fond of one another and question each other’s conservative credentials as evident from the video above (compliments of Talking Points Memo). It seems that “political correctness” is as much (or more) a vice of the right as the left.

Better yet, this is impacting upon the Republican race for the White House. As Jeff Weintraub put it, “Several people have suggested, only half-facetiously, that it's mathematically impossible for any of the Republican presidential candidates to win the nomination, since each of them is strongly disliked by sectors of the party that add up to more than 50% of Republican primary voters.”

We can only hope.

2 comments:

Comrade Kevin said...

As I said before, I believe the GOP is due for a convention fight and a very ugly one at that. It is quite foreseeable that come convention time, no candidate will have a majority of delegates.

No GOP candidate has made a centrist appeal to set up the oft-stated "Big Tent" and unless that happens, you'll see this kind of divisiveness. If the GOP is to recover they will need to rethink their strategy of coalition building. The one which they are using now is outdated and needs desperate revision. The same old thinking is no longer applicable.

Paul Hammond said...

This is the fun part of politics, watching them tear each other to shreds and see who emerges from the scuffle. It's old fashioned free for all politics and has been going on a long time.

I think John McCain has made a pitch for the center and seems to be doing quite well with it. Huckabee's a centrist too. Romney and Guiliani would be if they weren't falling all over themselves pretending to be conservatives. When it's all said and done they will have a center right ticket and unless the conservatives want to commit political suicide they push it for all its worth