Q- Will Republicans Get Their Party Back After Bush Leaves? ....

[Blackhatjack]

With 31% approval ratings for Bush, and such public hostility toward any kind of 'surge' that will lengthen and widen the Iraq war, there are a lot Republicans unhappy with Bush and the NeoCons and their actions.

The big question is will Republicans get their party back after Bush leaves office? If Republicans remain silent, and do not speak out in support of more moderate, traditional Republicans they may never get their party back.

Very little of what Bush/Cheney and the NeoCons have done comes anywhere close to traditional Republican values like smaller government, less government intrusion in private lives, balanced budgets, etc.

At some point in the next 2 yrs leading up to the next election and seating of a new President, those silent Republicans are going to have to speak up and challenge those holding power in their party. IF they do not repudiate the likes of Karl Rove, Ken Mehlman, and the numerous NeoCons embedded in federal positions, they are likely to see two things happen: Republicans lose even more seats of power of D.C. becoming a smaller minority than they are today, and the prospect that disaffected Republican Voters and Republican Leaders will 'drop out' in campaign contributions and participation in party efforts or they will 'bolt' the Republican Party for a new party led by a traditional moderate Republican.

The forces inside the Republican party will not meld into one lockstep group. Ken Mehlman's parting statement that the election of 2006 was not a fluke is evidence that dissension lies in the Republican party as well.

[ClassWarrior]

1. Will the criminals get their criminal party back after the current...

...criminal-in-chief leaves office?

Sorry, moot question.

NGU.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

2. My Repblican friends have repudiated their party

they say Bush is not a Republican at all. But what I see them doing is either voting Democratic or joining a third party, usually the Libertarian Party or Constituional Party.

[Bobbie Jo]

3. There's a reason Dems had a 40yr run in the majority...

We give it to the Repugs for 12, and look what a mess they've made.

[charlie]

4. The bunch that's been voting for reactionary gits

since before the Reagan "revolution"? The ones that can still be moved to vote against the Hippie Menace, 40 years after the Summer of Love? Dixiecrats, theocrats, bottom-dollar mercantilists, and American-might jingoes are the Republican party. There aren't enough Rockefeller Republicans left to fill an Amway convention in Boise.

[goddess40]

5. They haven't 'had' it since Nixon screwed up

that's when the real power of the republican party took over and they only put figureheads in the White House, that's why they started with an actor.

[wakeme2008]

6. Did Bush just get his way with Senator Martinize (sp) being

appointed head of the RNC... Bush is still in FULL CONTROL of the Repugs... Why I do not know... :shrug:

[Blackhatjack]

7. Many Repubs Were Seduced By The Prospects of Majority Power...

... thinking that once majority power was obtained then they could get the changes they wanted(which had nothing to do with looting the public treasury for Bush's corporate buddies, starting a war in Iraq, and expanding the government and dwarfing past increases in the national debt and yearly deficits).

Now it is clear that after 6 years most 'true republicans' have seen very little done to promote their ideals by Bush and his NeoCon advisors.

The Republican voters have pretty much remained silent where these obvious disconnects lie, but now with a presidential election beginning on the heels of the 2006 election that swept them from power in both Houses of Congress, they have to decide.

I predict the Hagel wing of the party will coalesce and oppose the rest of the party, creating a split that will weaken the Republican party for an extended period of time. The question will be whether the Republican party stays together or splits into two or more different entities.

[ronatchig]

8. Split into

those who rot in prison asnd those who get out after 20 years if there is any justice

[WiseButAngrySara]

10. !! LOL! ...n/t

[tanyev]

9. The local parties were taken over lock, stock, and barrel

by religious extremists. That's what made George Bush possible. The sane Republicans won't get their party back until they manage to oust them.

[Blackhatjack]

13. The bloom is off the rose as far as the right wing fundamentalists are concerned...

.... they are unhappy with Bush as well.

But what do you expect when you decide to join up with Bush and hope he will promote a Christian fundamentalist agenda?

Those who inhabit the Republican Party who are not part of the right wing fundamentalists are unhappy for a multitude of other reasons.

Nothing brings dissatisfaction within a party to the surface like losing seats and majority power in government. When Republicans took power, all the simmering animosity within the Democratic party became public. THe same will happen now in the Republican Party, and Republicans publicly begin to speak out against and oppose Bush and the NeoCons.

[tanyev]

15. I do agree it will happen, but the infiltration by the fundies was

a long, slow process and I think it will take longer than the departure of Bush for traditional Republicans to get back in control.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

11. I think it's still Poppy holding the Bush network together. When he goes, >

> so goes control of the GOP. No one of his sons can combine the drive, name recognition, and criminal genius to keep the dynasty going. The next generation seems to be a complete waste of space.

[Skidmore]

12. The Republics don't know what their party stands for right now.

The Neocons, the religious right, and the traditional conservative really do not have much in common once power is taken out of the equation. Republics need to do much soul searching.

[Blackhatjack]

14. Some time ago a liberal talk show host read a list of Goldwater beliefs to a Repub...

... and asked him if any of these principles and goals sounded like what Bush and the NeoCons were doing in office.

At the time, the Republican guest would not answer the question --revealing the obvious. There is almost nothing that Goldwater promoted as bedrock beliefs of Republicans that Bush was pursuing or putting into action.

Shows just how far Bush is from what a 'traditional Republican' believes.

[Bluestar]

16. And the problem is?

So what if they lose their party. We should have beaten them into the ground and into oblivion when Nixon resigned. Haven't we learned anything? This bunch has presided over most major problems/disasters in our country's recent history. They can't be trusted not to hand over power to neo-cons and fundamentalists. I, for one, am fed up and hope they drift into the sunset.

[louis-t]

17. Bush continues to drag the party down.

His "surge" will fail. I think that one, single issue will keep the Republics in the minority for 20 years or more.

[WiseButAngrySara]

18. Interesting post. We have several splits in the seeming facade

of unanimity and talking points solidarity, which IMHO have lost more than individual souls. It has also lost votes. The Republican Congress voted with en bloc support for 'the decider' and it has cost them. No thinking human can help but believe that many of their votes of support for BuchCo's policies were based not upon what is right, but upon what is politically expedient in a purely selfish way; they are elected representatives that sold out what was best for the country for what was best for themselves. If they had been more honest in their dissent of his policies, perhaps some of this current tension could have been avoided. But they 'went along' against their individual consciences, and voted with Rovian and DeLay collective Pseudo-Unity.

So we have NeoCons, Big Business interests, traditional Republicans, and the far right wing religious ideologues all voting en bloc; how can these diverse entities ever "meld into one lockstep group"? It is my contention that they never were a lockstep group. They are as diverse a group as Democrats, although they put out the appearance of unity, because this is a more favorable front for them to maintain in a largely fabricated 'war-time' and 'terra-time.' And I think that some of them are realizing how many of our precious constitutional rights have been whittled away because of their lack of dissent....

[WiseButAngrySara]

19. And KNR! Thanks for posting. ....n/t