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Politics : The Obama - Clinton Disaster -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DuckTapeSunroof who wrote (12364)	5/8/2009 5:19:23 PM
From: pompsander	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 103300

Reform the Republican political culture View What links here Submitted by Jon Henke on Thu, 05/07/2009 - 10:23 in Reform Republican Party The Right Armed Liberal has comments that those on the Right (and Republicans) need to read and understand. I'll quote it at length, because it (particularly the bolded parts) is basically correct...and very important. (Via Andrew Sullivan) The GOP's problem is twofold. First, we just concluded a period of history in which the GOP ran everything. And they did it really badly. They were corrupt and incompetent. They led us into an unnecessary and costly war; they got themselves embroiled in an endless string of scandals; and they presided over an epic economic collapse. People remember all those things very vividly and it has badly damaged the Republican brand. But that's only half of the GOP's problem. The reason the Republican Party continues to bleed members has much more to do with the general attitude of the party's political and intellectual leaders than anything else. Rather than admit to any mistakes or take even the slightest bit of responsibility for the state of the country, they insist on blaming everyone but themselves. [...] They watch TV and they see a very intelligent, charismatic President who says a lot of very reasonable sounding things and exudes competence. And then they see a bunch of angry conservatives and Republicans who insist that that same man is some sort of evil communist who's going to destroy the country. In other words, the problem is not the ideas, but the attitude. Republicans are coming across as a bunch of obnoxious, unreasonable a-holes. When you've just been voted out of power for manifest incompetence and your opponents are led by a very popular and reasonable-sounding person, you don't have the luxury of acting smug and uncompromising all the time. You have to acknowledge error and show some humility. You have to act civilly. You have to at least try to appear pragmatic and reasonable. But the GOP is not interested in doing any of these things. Those who are left in the party are ultra-partisan and utterly convinced of their own infallibility and moral righteousness. Until they lose that attitude and general combativeness, it won't matter what their ideas are. They'll just keep turning people off. I keep making this point, and I'm not seeing much evidence that Republicans are really taking this seriously: The first priority for the Right cannot be defeating the Democrats. The first priority for the Right must be reforming the Republican Party. That requires some very serious, substantive contrition for the mistakes they've made. It requires Republican politicians to unilaterally embrace reforms within the GOP, without regard to how Democrats behave. It requires Republicans to plant a flag on ethics, transparency, honesty and tone - to define higher standards and consequences, and to call out other Republicans who do not live up to appropriate standards. It requires the Right to do some serious re-evaluation of the entrenched movement, infrastructure and interest groups we have accumulated. The leaders of the movement have to accept some responsibility for the condition we are in. The Republican brand does not merely need a little tinkering. The Republican brand is not the victim of Democratic rhetoric and framing. The Republican brand is so bad because people accurately perceive the state of the Republican Party. thenextright.com