The Pink Flamingo :: GOP Weeping & Wailing & Gnashing of Teeth!

There are danger signs everywhere. To quote Threepio, “We’re doomed.” While I don’t think it is that bad, yet, I do think my old history teacher, the one who pushed me into all things political and saw my potential as a writer had a quote. “When in danger when in doubt, run in circles scream and shout. (Doyle Puckett).

I think we can safely say this is the hinny-penny message most conservatives are preaching right now. Their world is falling in now that their god is under assault. Could it be that legendary “Golden Microphone” is starting to tarnish? Or, could it be the fact that conservatives are finally starting to reap their unintended consequences of the continued assault on liberals. And – the liberals are going to end up in the same position.

IMMIGRATION IS THE KILLER

Larry Kudlow does some hand-wringing today in NRO.

“…Meanwhile, Rich Nadler’s WSJ op-ed explains why a deportation, criminalization, and “enforcement first” policy is a huge electoral loser for the GOP. I mentioned this last week. Why can’t the message on immigration be a balanced one? Border security plus earned-legalization — as well as English-only in the schools? If the Republicans drop New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, and maybe even Arizona, they will get creamed next year.  Plunging GOP hopes for the Hispanic vote? Republicans losing their grip on the business vote? This is very pessimistic stuff. Sure, these problems can be turned around —all of this is salvageable. But the GOP needs to make the case….”

In the WSJ today, Richard Nadler details the hard-line GOP candidates who went down in flames last November, due to their anti-immigration stance.

“…What does this mean nationwide? Republicans' presidential Hispanic vote share increased to 40% in 2004 from 21% in 1996. In 2004, Latinos comprised 6% of the electorate, but 8.1% of the voter-qualified citizenry. With the partisan margin shrinking, the incentive for major Hispanic registration efforts by either party was scant.

That changed in 2006, when the GOP's Hispanic vote share declined by 10%. And, as we have seen, the drop was twice as precipitous where Republicans disavowed comprehensive immigration reform. With the huge wedge in vote share that "enforcement-only" opened, the cost-effectiveness of voter-registration efforts improved dramatically--for Democrats.
In recent years, Democratic Party operatives have conducted registration drives in urban communities that boosted African-American turnout to 65% from 23%. Republicans, should their national ticket adopt "enforcement-only," can expect Democrats to wage similar Hispanic campaigns in the most hotly contested political real estate of 2008. Such standard political operations will more than erase Republican majorities in New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado, Florida and Iowa, and may endanger the GOP electoral hold on Arizona as well.

That is the short-term fallout Republicans may suffer from "enforcement-only." But the election of 2008 marks the beginning of the political attrition, not its end….”

Not only is immigration separating the GOP from moderate voters, not to mention the Hispanic vote, but this constant harping on the problems associated with it is causing once logical, balanced conservatives to go off the deep end. I can’t think of anything more telling than last week’s hyperventilating by Michael Chertoff basically blaming illegal immigrants for “Global Warming”.

In order for conservatives to embrace an increasingly hard-line anti-immigration platform they must suspend basic conservative ideas:
Family values
Small government
Government interference with small business
Big brother surveying businesses
Destruction of families

Funny, isn’t it?

BUSINESS PROBLEMS

According to today’s WSJ, there are very serious problems within the business community.
“The Republican Party (read conservatives) left me.”

“…Some well-known business leaders have openly changed allegiances. Morgan Stanley Chairman and Chief Executive John Mack, formerly a big Bush backer, now supports Democratic front-runner Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York. John Canning Jr., chairman and chief executive of Madison Dearborn Partners, a large private-equity firm, now donates to Democrats after a lifetime as a Republican. Recently, he told one Democratic Party leader: "The Republican Party left me" -- a twist on a line Ronald Reagan and his followers used when they abandoned the Democratic Party decades ago to protest its '60s and '70s-era liberalism….Some of the most compelling evidence suggesting a redefinition of the Republican Party comes from prominent Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio. Earlier this year, he surveyed 2,000 Republican voters, updating his similarly exhaustive poll of 10 years ago. In 1997, about half of Republicans said they were motivated mainly by economic issues, and about half by social and moral issues. This year, the culturally conservative wing was roughly the same size, but economic conservatives accounted for just one in six Republicans. In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the ranks of Republicans whose main concern is defense have grown after subsiding with the end of the Cold War

The economic conservatives, Mr. Fabrizio found, are split into opposing camps: "free market" conservatives opposed to any new taxes, spending and regulations; and what he calls "government-knows-best" moderates, who sometimes favor regulations and higher taxes for causes such as education, environmental programs or infrastructure
The once-dominant "deficit hawks," who put balanced budgets ahead of tax cuts (think former Sen. Robert Dole, or Mr. Bush's father), are all but extinct. A quarter-century of infighting between those Republicans and others who seek lower taxes regardless of deficits has been decisively settled in the current Bush administration in favor of the tax cutters.
The result has been big tax cuts, and in the dozen years when the Congress was under Republican control, big spending increases as well.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire former Democrat who left the Republican Party three months ago, complained Sunday at Britain's Conservative Party conference that conservative politicians in the U.S. were guilty of "lunacy" for running up deficits for future taxpayers to pay.

Many old-school fiscal conservatives are also upset. Economist Bruce Bartlett, a Treasury official in the Reagan years, recently commiserated with like-minded conservatives on a blog. "I haven't changed my philosophical views in any significant way over the last 10 years, but in the pre-Bush era, I felt comfortable in the Republican mainstream," he wrote. "Today, I don't really feel there is any significant element of the Republican coalition where I am comfortable."
One glue holding the party together is that social conservatives often share the goals of economic conservatives. Social conservatives supported the Bush tax cuts and wanted to make them permanent. But their priority, and what keeps them Republicans, is opposition to abortion, gay rights and the like….”

TWICE THE CANDIDATES
From The Politico comes news that the GOP candidates are having problems raising money. I have another theory that is much more logical than the “Hinny-Penny” theory. The Dems only have two serious candidates sucking the money out of the party faithful. Aside from the also-rans, the GOP has 4 serious front-runners. If you add up they money they’ve taken in this time, you come up with numbers close to the Hillary-Barack show.

As for the GOP in the House and in the Senate raising money, sorry, but they’ve done it to themselves.

This piece in The National Journal highlights the problems facing the GOP.

“…Moderates Take a Hike  The factors boosting Democratic hopes in Arizona, with its 10 electoral votes, are doing much the same in Colorado, with its nine. Bush won Colorado by 9 percentage points in 2000 but by just 5 in 2004. During the last big year for national Democrats -- 1996 -- Bill Clinton lost the state by 1 point. But that occurred before a demographic shift similar to the one in Arizona brought in independents and Democrats from California and the East Coast. Likewise, immigration has divided Colorado Republicans, with such hard-liners as Rep. Tom Tancredo alienating many moderates and pushing independents toward the Democrats.

In Colorado, the GOP's more conservative wing oversaw the party's domination of state government in the mid-1990s, and it pushed hard-line stands on abortion and gay marriage, as well as restrictions on the government's growth. The Colorado GOP first split over taxes, with then-Gov. Bill Owens joining forces with Democrats in 2005 to repeal provisions of the Taxpayer Bill of Rights law that forced refunds of taxes that he said were needed for legally mandated increases in entitlement programs. Owens, an original champion of the strict tax law, provoked bitter opposition from more-conservative Republicans.

And, as in Arizona, immigration has further divided the party….”

THE WAR OF WORDS
Nothing exemplifies the problems facing both ultra conservatives and ultra liberals than this piece from Right Wing News. Evidently one of the Daily Kos regulars think that there is a potential that GWB, on January 20, 2009 will refuse to hand over power to Rudy Giuliani. And there’s the whole story in a nut-shell.

MY MINI RANT
Hostilities between both extremes have reached the boiling point. Conservatives like to point to the MoveOn.org crew manipulating the course of the Dems. This much is true. BUT – what conservatives absolutely refuse to acknowledge is the fact that they started it. One of the hallmarks of maturity is being able to acknowledge the fact that you need to take responsibility for your actions. Today MoveOn.Org is proof of the law of unintended consequences. Put blame where blame belongs, right back on the door-step of the Washington Times, all those misc. entangled conservative non-profits that are sucking the life out of the GOP, and our conservative talk radio hosts.

Doesn’t Rush Limbaugh have the brains to realize the moment he put his foot in his very big mouth liberals were going to retaliate – with glee. He goes after every little Dem foible with increasingly shrill and cruel attacks. What goes up must come down. Payback’s hell. What goes around comes around. That’s life. Act like an adult and cowboy up and face it like a man.

Rush spent 8 years making Bill & Hill’s lives a living hell. I am ashamed to admit I enjoyed every minute of it. There’s a difference between Saturday Night Live parody and attacking people who don’t deserve to be attacked. The Battle of the Bulging Egos between Rush and Harry Reid is, in many ways, appropriate and poetic. It is rather ironic that it is putting all Reid’s agenda on hold.

I think what is annoying me the most is what an opportunity Rush is missing. He could go for the jugular with Reid, but, because of his big mouth, he is now on the defensive. Too bad. At least we’re no longer discussing immigration.

THE DARK HORSE TICKET
Maybe the problem is the GOP needs to think beyond the box. I want to propose a Dream-Team of General Jerry-Curry (Baritone) and Governor Sarah Palin (Alaska). From George Archibald

“…Here is General Jerry Curry's personal webpage link that shows why he is a proven leader in charge and a dark-horse alternative presidential candidate who could quickly sweep away all the tired political has-beens in both parties:
http://www.jerrycurry.com/ His newly-published book, From Private to General, clearly shows he is a proven leader with ancestral roots that are the basis of our American and Western culture –- and who worked with Asians in South Korea and South Vietnam as a military commander to help secure their freedom and economic opportunity in the midst of global political turmoil before he became one of President Ronald Reagan’s military stars. Watch Curry's space. Also check out this Youtube link to see for yourself: http://youtube.com/watch?v=K-B2JgKtTIw Curry sings opera to boot as a baritone who is as good as Luciano Pavarotti, José Carreras, Michael Bolton, and others when it comes to singing the favorite sacred arias of all time. He has a CD out titled Generally Singing to prove it….”