Posted on 05/07/2008 3:50:49 AM PDT by Dawnsblood
Shellshocked House Republicans got warnings from leaders past and present Tuesday: Your party’s message isn’t good enough to prevent disaster in November, and neither is the NRCC’s money.
The double shot of bad news had one veteran Republican House member worrying aloud that the party’s electoral woes — brought into sharp focus by Woody Jenkins’ loss to Don Cazayoux in Louisiana on Saturday — have the House Republican Conference splitting apart in “everybody for himself” mode.
“There is an attitude that, ‘I better watch out for myself, because nobody else is going to do it,’” the member said. “There are all these different factions out there, everyone is sniping at each other, and we have no real plan. We have a lot of people fighting to be the captain of the lifeboat instead of everybody pulling together.”
In a piece published in Human Events, the Republicans’ onetime captain, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, warned his old colleagues that they face “real disaster” on Election Day unless they move immediately to “chart a bold course of real reform” for the country.
And in a closed-door session at the Capitol, National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Tom Cole (R-Okla.) told members that the NRCC doesn’t have enough cash to “save them” in November if they don’t raise enough money or run strong campaigns themselves.
Although a top House Republican brushed aside Gingrich’s broadside as “hype from a has-been who desperately wants to be a player but can’t anymore,” the harsh words from Cole were harder to ignore.
“It was a pretty stern line that he took with us,” said one House Republican.
The Bush legacy
"I'm not going to stand up here and defend our failure to lead," said Gingrich, who is considering a run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008 and plans to release a book in the fall burnishing his environmental credentials. "There has to be a green conservatism."
"The standing-room-only debate, staged yesterday in an ornate Senate hearing room, offered an indication that even diehard conservatives like Gingrich, who stepped down as speaker in 1998, are abandoning their skepticism on global warming. As recently as two years ago, Gingrich ridiculed the notion that humans are causing the earth to warm, but yesterday he said the evidence was "sufficient.""We have now passed the tipping point of that argument," he said yesterday. The former Georgia congressman even allowed that he agreed with "about 60 percent" of "This Moment on Earth," a recently published book Kerry co wrote with his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry."
"Both men agreed the problem was increasingly urgent, citing a new report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that said rising temperatures and sea levels were linked to the growing quantity of greenhouse gases emitted by cars, power plants, and factories. Without a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, the panel warned, 20 percent to 30 percent of plant and animal species could face extinction."
Exactamundo. - not to mention that McCain merging his staff with the RNC sucks all of that money into a big hole in the ground where his campaign will end.
We are in for a trainwreck of epic proportions.
And everyone whistles past the graveyard...
I can answer that;we ran a Dairy millionaire named Jim Oberweis;he ran in the primary for governor and lost,he ran for the Senate and lost,(we ended up running Alan Keyes,who lost to the Eskimo Pie in a landslide)and finally ran for Hasterts seat and lost for a third time.That seat will be up in the fall,but Illinois has been largely abandoned to Daley and the Chicago machine.
It makes me very sad for our party, our country, and for conservatism.
Unlike McCrazy, Newt has a platform and commitments to the Republic even though he's not running for office. IMO most of them are pretty sound, and all of them are true to conservative values.
When he was on Hannity yesterday, Newt was truly and noticeably stunned to hear that McCrazy is out there touting "comprehensive immgration reform" again. "He's guranteed to lose the race if that's what he's saying" (or words to that effect).
Are you sure you aren’t Leo Farnsworth?
The Rams are looking good this year. ;^)
>if fact their political power (such as it was)will likely be diminished.
Dude, you have that 100% wrong.
Think again.
In case you hadn't heard. Rush has said since the beginning of Operation Chaos, that if there were important 'down ballot' issues -- DON'T SWITCH. So if some numb-skulls in NC switched anyway, don't blame Rush. Blame the ijits who didn't know what, or whom, was on the ballot.
That being said, could the lousy GOP turnout in NC be due to whose at the TOP of that ballot - ubber RINO and 'Maverick', Juan 'I Want My Amnesty Back' McCain. Who, last I checked has the nomination locked.
>SO the name of the game now is to convince folks to reject coercive government “solutions” and embrace capitalist approaches, and Newt is very good at making that argument
Thank you for your post.
Were Newt on any ticket, I would vote for it in a heartbeat.
Me too, McCain I am no fan of. This election year is the WORST one in over the 30 years that I have been voting and this is putting it midly.
No, they did not. That's completely and 100 percent false.
In fact I went back for a second complete viewing to resolve exactly that set of questions: how deeply did Newt assent to anthropomorphic "global warming".
In fact he did not, he merely kept letting the issue pass.
You need to watch it again and if you find I'm wrong (which I am not) come back with the damning quotes from Newt. Even the Boston Globe - the most liberal newspaper in America - couln't produce a single quote along those lines.
This myth you've dreamed up is as despicable as another famous Newt story: "Newt served his wife with divorce papers in the cancer ward".
You can bet that there will be a nominee before the Dem convention. Hillary will be dropping out. Obama will emerge from the lovefest, i.e., the Dem convention, with all of the momentum, funding, and organization to prevent a third Bush term.
We will pit our party maverick, the oldest man ever to run for President for the first time, against the young, vigorous biracial guy who will promise to end an unpopular war, provide national health care, and restore a flagging economy. The GOP is facing the perfect storm with an unpopular President, an unpopular war, a flagging economy, and a GOP candidate who can't energize his own base and who holds positions on critical issues that are not supported by the majority of his own party. This spells a major disaster, which will become more apparent as we head into the general election.
But it was McLame’s turn.
If I am wrong, then why did Newt agree with John Kerry that the "science" behind global "warming" is indeed sound when we know it is BS.
If I am wrong, then why did Newt record an ad with Nancy Pelosi saying that the government must "do something" to "fix" global "warming?"
Newt sold us out. The radical environmental movement has been the latest vehicle used by socialists to advance their agenda, and Newt, as well as many other alleged conservatives, bought it.
I am enjoying seeing Rush finally exposed as the self promoting, all I care about is Rush, that the "great one" really is. Down ballot "Operation Chaos" is killing the next generation of conservative GOP candidates. with this generation of GOP pretty much RINO and "operation chaos" killing off next generation conservatives, Rush is doing a pretty good job of ensuring liberal rule for many years to come. Way to go dido heads.
In some states, this is already close to being true (see: Mass, Hawaii, NY, MD). But it's not going to happen nationwide. Instead, the Republican Party as we have known it is either going to undergo massive upheaval or be replaced entirely. Conservatives need strong party leadership and desire a coherent, articulate platform. At the moment, Republicans offer neither.
Avoiding confrontation is not leadership. "The same, but less" is not a platform. We have a President who is not interested in being a party-builder. Fine, that's survivable. But we also have a presumptive candidate for President who appears to be most uncomfortable with members of his own party and goes out of his way to antagonize them. Further, the GOP platform likely to emerge from this summer's convention will likely be a thin gruel of bland platitudes, full of silly sounds and fake fury, signifying nothing. This is a prescription for disaster, and for all his many flaws, Newt Gingrich is right to point it out.
Conservatives either need to retake the GOP or find a new home. Goldwater did it once. Reagan did it a second time (and more successfully). Someone else needs to step up now, because two left-liberal parties in America is at least one too many. "Two" too many, if you ask me.
One of the event's most interesting exchanges, though, involved the Senate's most dubious global warming denier:
Kerry: I'm excited to hear you talk about the urgency, I really am. And given that - albeit you still sort of have a different approach - what would you say to Senator Inhofe and to others in the Senate who are resisting even the science? What's your message to them here today?
Gingrich: My message I think is that the evidence is sufficient that we should move towards the most effective possible steps to reduce carbon loading of the atmosphere…
Kerry: And to it urgently, and now?
Gingrich: And do it urgently. Yes.
And yet, there he is.
Returning to that again. - note to all FReepers who state that McCain has abandoned that very same thing.
I may not be exactly stunned - I expect McCain to remain true to his nature - but I am certainly disappointed to see him throw away priceless opportunities on a regular basis.
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