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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (557172)	3/26/2010 5:16:28 PM
From: longnshort	2 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1571204

Obama's next trick will be amnesty for 40 million illegals, he's counting on their votes in Nov. that and the census

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (557172)	3/26/2010 5:50:59 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1571204

Republican elite in disarray after David Frum is sacked by think-tank America’s conservatives were in open disarray after the abrupt sacking of a leading Republican for daring to blame his own party for “the most crushing legislative defeat since the 1960s”. David Frum, who coined the phrase “Axis of Evil” as a speechwriter for President Bush, was fired by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) after posting a column on his website that called healthcare reform a disaster for Republicans and blamed it squarely on their own refusal to compromise with the Obama Administration. A prominent neoconservative throughout both Bush terms, Mr Frum said that his departure was forced by a furious reaction to his column from donors to the AEI, a powerful Republican think tank that has many former Bush administration officials on its staff. His sacking came at the end of a week that conservatives predicted would mark the beginning of the end for Democrats in Washington. Instead President Obama has a new nuclear arms treaty to add to his healthcare Bill and it is the Republican movement that is flailing — unsure how a revived White House agenda will play with voters, embarrassed by the ugly excesses of its own rank and file and wrong-footed not just by Mr Obama but by Mr Frum himself. He posted his column within minutes of the Democrats’ securing the votes to pass health reform last weekend, condemning a Republican strategy of “no negotiations, no compromise, nothing”. He accused his party of trying to repeat its humiliation of President Clinton in 1994 while forgetting that Mr Obama won office with a far larger proportion of the popular vote. “We went for all the marbles, we ended with none,” he wrote. As the column was distributed among Republican moderates and gleeful Democrats, quills were sharpened on the right for retribution. On Tuesday the Wall Street Journal dismissed Mr Frum in an editorial as “the media’s go-to basher of fellow Republicans” and attacked him for “peddling bad revisionist history that would have been even worse politics”. On Thursday, he was taken out to lunch and offered the chance to stay on at the think-tank “on a non-salaried basis”. He declined. Another former Republican White House advisor, the economist and historian Bruce Bartlett, has since claimed that AEI staff have been muzzled for agreeing with too many of the Obama Administration’s health reforms. Several current fellows at the think-tank have denied the claim. If tensions within the Republican movement were confined to think-tanks and the fringe it would amount to business-as-usual for a party that lost badly in the last two big election years. However, mainstream figures including the standard-bearers of the Republican establishment, are being forced to the right by “purity tests” on key issues and a groundswell of Tea Party activism that moderates fear could marginalise the party in the long term. In Tucson and Phoenix, Senator John McCain hit the campaign trail with Sarah Palin, his old running-mate, in an effort to head off a primary challenge from John Hayworth, a talk show host who considers the Senator too soft on immigration, same-sex marriage and health reform — even though Mr McCain has led Republican demands this week for the entire Bill to be repealed. In Florida, the once-popular Republican Governor Charlie Crist has been attacked relentlessly by Tea Party bloggers since supporting the Obama stimulus package last year. He faces defeat by Marco Rubio, a firebrand of the hard right, at the midterm elections in November. Among potential 2012 Republican presidential contenders, Mitt Romney has been forced to condemn the health reforms as an “historic usurpation of the legislative process” even though it is based largely on a Bill he shepherded into state law as Governor of Massachusetts. Mike Huckabee, until recently a favourite of social conservatives, slid back to also-ran status three months ago when a prisoner he released nine years ago went on a shooting spree. The backlash against health reform has not yet descended to shooting, but it turned so nasty this week that a succession of Republican leaders risked alienating Tea Party agitators to denounce it. Death threats and bricks — such as one thrown through a district office of Congresswoman Louise Slaughter — have no place in politics, John Boehner, the House minority leader, told reporters. No senior Republican has dared to criticise Mrs Palin for urging her supporters to “reload” and take aim at vulnerable Democrats, whose districts are identified with rifle crosshairs on her website. This may be because, as Mr Frum said, “the elite isn’t leading any more; it’s trapped”. It is a trap that threatens moderate conservatism as a whole. If Mr Obama’s reforms prove more popular than anticipated, Mr Frum and his allies must find a way to reassert control of their party, or get used to irrelevance. timesonline.co.uk