GOP Begins Plotting Comeback (Operation: Boehner's Donors)

Real Clear Politics ^ | November 12, 2008 | Reid Wilson

[counterpunch]

A week and a half after Republicans suffered their second rout in as many election cycles, the party is looking for ways to regroup and rebuild. The first steps, planning for which began months ago, will take place this week as three groups of prominent Republicans meet separately to plot comebacks.

A gathering of the Republican Governors Association in Miami this week will attract the most attention and will serve as an unofficial cattle call for a number of potential presidential candidates. Hosted by Florida Governor Charlie Crist, the RGA meeting will also include Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal and a handful of other possible candidates. The RGA announced earlier this week that Alaska's Sarah Palin will attend the gathering, where she will give a speech and face the press.

This weekend, members of the Republican National Committee and party strategists will meet in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina for a conference on the party's future. Hosted by South Carolina GOP chairman Katon Dawson, RNC members will discuss the path back to power. The event is largely seen as a forum for Dawson, a leading candidate for party chairman, to gain access to many of the 168 voting members of the national committee.

In what may have the most immediate and obvious impact on the party, the depleted House Republican Conference will meet in Washington next week to elect leaders for the 111th Congress. House Minority Leader John Boehner is likely to keep his post as the chamber's top Republican, but Minority Whip Roy Blunt and Conference Chairman Adam Putnam are not running for re-election. That will open the door for Eric Cantor and Mike Pence, both of whom Republicans hope can infuse new life into a beleaguered and downcast caucus.

[counterpunch]

Now it is time for us to do our part in rebuilding the GOP and setting a new direction for the party. Operation Boehner's Donors begins here. We are looking for people from each Republican held district to serve as a Team Captain, where you will help create a petition at petitiononline.com for your district and drive signatures from local registered Republicans, particularly ones who have donated to your congressman in the past.

We will pledge to withhold all campaign funds to any representative who votes to return Boner to the leadership post.

Please discuss this action here, announce your interest in heading up the campaign in your district, etc.
 

[montag813]

I won’t give a penny to the GOP so long as Boner is in charge. Time for him to go limp and replace him with a real leader. Not one who will cry on the House floor over the disgusting bailout bill, which today has been exposed as a total sham.

[Mojave]

RNC members will discuss the path back to power.

A return to conservative principles is a necessary first step. They'll skip that one.

[ncalburt]

call call call

[exist]

The question we should be asking is: what can we, as a party, do to get rid of Boner— The Isaiah Thomas of politics?

Please if I can sign a petition, or buy a hat, or donate to anybody— I will do anything to get rid of John ‘I’m going to turn the GOP into the New York Knicks’ Boner.

[SoConPubbie]

Boehner needs to leave NOW!

He is part of the problem, not part of the solution!

[Still Thinking]

A week and a half after Republicans suffered their second rout in as many election cycles, the party is looking for ways to regroup and rebuild.

Run conservatives? Maybe make sure the campaigns aren't run by the political equivalent of Barney Fife?

[counterpunch]

Boehner needs to leave NOW!
He is part of the problem, not part of the solution!

Indeed he is.
Since Boner took over as Majority Leader on February 3rd, 2006, Republicans have lost 20% of their House seats over 2 back-to-back historic defeats.

Would a commander who lost 20% of his soldiers continue leading men in the field?

It is absolutely insane for Republicans to return Boner as GOP leader yet again. STOP THE INSANITY NOW!
 

[rockinqsranch]

I think it is erroneous to focus upon the Republican National Leadership at this time. Too many entrenched of the “Moderate” persuasion. RINO’s and the like.

Grassroots action at State level will ultimately force them out if they don’t leave voluntarily. They all represent some State, but if they don’t have the support of the people of the State, they’re out.

We have to concentrate our efforts selecting true Conservatives at the State level. It will all fall into place from that point on. The writing will be on the wall, and the influence, the clout will be in the favor of Conservatives for taking back the National Party.

[Brad’s Gramma]

Let’s see now.....

RNC moves to the center/left.
RNC loses money.

Sarah is brought on.

Sarah is uber conservative AS WE ARE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
RNC GAINS money.

Think! THINK! You can DO this, RNC! THINK!

[counterpunch]

The question we should be asking is: what can we, as a party, do to get rid of Boner— The Isaiah Thomas of politics?

What we can do is first separate Boner from his support in the House.
We do that by going withholding donations to anyone who votes to return Boner as minority leader.
But we also need a suitable replacement whom House Republicans can rally around.
A suitable challenger won't emerge so long as Boner enjoys support in the caucus, and he will enjoy support in the caucus so long as a suitable challenger doesn't emerge.

Republicans tend to be a weak and timid lot, and they will continue to run mindlessly like a herd of frightened prey until they hit a wall or run off a cliff once they get spooked.
 

[smokingfrog]

I don't think the concept of "Reaganism" is vague and generic at all.

Read this...

[Redcloak]

Here's what they need to do:

• Come up with a really good plan to pay for everyone's prescription drugs.
• Spend a boatload of money to help failing banks.
• Get the money out of politics by putting restrictions on how much people can donate to candidates and what they can say. 
• Identify worthy projects around the country and find money on the budget for them.

Oh... Never mind. They tried this act-like-Democrats s**t before and it didn't work. Perhaps they should try acting like Republicans this time.

[Smokin' Joe]

Think! THINK! You can DO this, RNC! THINK!

I think they have to look under the bus. Their brains are down there with the conservatives they have been shoving there for two election cycles.

For starters, it would be nice if the Party would pick its own candidates instead of let PBSMSNBCBSABCNN do it. If the relative number of "Moderates" (Translation: liberals running as Republicans because they were not quite liberal enough to run as Dems) were lower, the press could not promote them as well. That alone would help shift the ticket and the party to the right.

More than that, the Republican Party needs a set of principles to which its candidates would be expected to adhere. In earlier years it was called a platform. Now, I wouldn't let a chickadee land on it for fear the bird would get hurt in the collapse.

The planks:

Pro life. Unabashedly, unashamedly in support of the unalienable Right to Life.

Smaller Government. Not another committee to study the feasibility of conducting a feasibility study, but going at the budget, structure, and the host of Federal Departments without Constitutional mandate with a meat cleaver, then passing part of that savings on to the taxpayers, using the other part to pay down the debt.

Pro gun Not just talking about the Second Amendment but actively promoting the concept that gun control laws not only have not worked, but have actually made the streets of our major cities more dangerous. Then pushing for repealing the ones which do not work (most of them), back to the NFA of '34 and beyond.

Strong National Defense which includes the Constitutionally mandated defense of our borders.

This would include tracking those who are not citizens within our borders, and evicting those not legally present therein.

Just the basics, for starters, but a solid group of concepts to build on.

[nathanbedford]

Republicans "are going to have to have essentially the Council of Trent, to get the popes and the cardinals together and figure out what it is they stand for," said longtime GOP consultant Craig Shirley. "The debate is going to boil down to this: The future of the Republican Party, is it based on Bushism or is it based on Reaganism? Is it based on a K Street access project where you tax cut, tax cut, spend and spend, elect and elect ... or is it going to be a populist type of conservative party that is going to take on the moneyed elites and the political elites?"

This guy has been reading my mail. Here is what I wrote before the election:

Here is a portion of a post which I published before the election in response to a politico article calling for Republicans and conservatives to move left to fill the big tent:

As we conservatives drag the remnants of our movement into the wilderness with no idea how we will emerge or whether we will ever emerge as an electoral force in America which is recognizable by my generation, we must inevitably engage ourselves in the most soul- searing inquiry of what went wrong. This will be an agony but equally it will be effective only to the degree that it hurts. It will not succeed without bloodshed. There must be finger-pointing and bloodletting. We must carve to the bone. The process must be Darwinian. Those whose ideas are false must be bayoneted on the trial.

The object is to find our soul - nothing less. In a come to Jesus sense we must get absolutely clear what it means to be a conservative. Only at this point do we look to the tent flaps and open them. Those who cannot subscribe to the hard-won consensus, to a confession of faith as to what is a conservative, should walk out through that flap. Those who are attracted from the outside to the core message of conservatism should be encouraged to walk through the flap and enlarge the tent. What the left wants us to do is to expand the census in the tent prematurely and thus turn a movement into a menagerie. The Soul-searching must be conducted by conservatives without the earnest ministrations from liberals like those of Politico. This article, of course, has nothing whatever to do with explaining why Republicans lost 2008 election across the board, it has everything to do with first efforts by the left to sabotage the rebuilding process on the right which must be done exclusively by the right.

We have not lost the 2008 election because we were excessively partisan while Obama was enlightened and transcendental. We actually lost the election because George Bush and Karl Rove betrayed the soul of conservatism. A party without its soul is like an army which does not believe in itself, it cannot win the next contest. A party which had abandoned its principles and so lost the last two elections and frittered away both its power as the ruling coalition and its status as the majority philosophy of the nation, cannot expect to swell its ranks by recruiting to a lost cause. The party must first know what the cause is and only then can it recruit. To again borrow the military analogy, a party like an army disintegrates without a mission. Armies are assigned missions but a political party finds its mission only through soul-searching.

As this process occurs we will be told by the left that only a big tent party can win and that to become a big tent one must move to co-opt the center. That is not how it works. That is the reverse of the way it works. The center is not peopled by voters with fixed notions about the exercise of power who wait for one of the great political parties to surrender their values and embrace the tempered and resolute opinions of the middle. That happens with splinter parties but not with the mushy middle. When an unaffiliated voter bestirs himself to enter the polling booth he is confronted with one of two options: right or left. He does not consider who has moved the farthest geographically from right to the left or left to right any more than he commits because of his own long held political beliefs. He votes for the fella who best tickles his fancy at the moment. Put more charitably, he votes for the candidate who persuades that he is the best, and has the best to offer.

If we as conservatives do not believe that we have the best to offer we should get out of the business. A candidate, like a party, who is centered on his philosophy has integrity and is persuasive. And that philosophy must first have a vertical spiritual component which finds expression and out working in a horizontal governing philosophy.

Because of his race, Obama was asked only to demonstrate that he could walk and talk like a president. Obama has won the middle, not because he pandered to them, which he did, but because he had the wind at his back.

As John McCain reverts from titular head of the Republican Party to United States Senator, it falls to the rest of us to contrive a governing philosophy which he, unfortunately, did not own and therefore could not bequeath to us. We had such a legacy from Ronald Reagan but we squandered it. We must construct our own. We must do it in the wilderness. We must do it unaided by intermeddling liberals. Their's is the serpent's way, the easy way, a pander to the superficially popular, the accommodation to the middle. The bed of birth has always been a bed of pain. The pain must be embraced if we are to receive a new life.

[doosee]

How about Duncan Hunter for the leader? Boehner comes across as a pretty poor spokesman for the GOP. He waddles like a penquin and is not very articulate as the loyal opposition.

[eeevil conservative]

I am with you!

no “boner” for Boehner here....

[Cboldt]

-- the party is looking for ways to regroup and rebuild. The first steps, planning for which began months ago --

Hahahahaha. These "planners" had a hunch, months ago, that McCain was a loser in a presidential race. And see too the number of GOP pols hitting retirement months before the election. Insiders appear to have known the party message wasn't resonating, and what did they do? They waited.

I wouldn't donate a bucket of water to put out the "Charlie Crist" GOP if it was on fire. The GOP is offering government solutions to real-world problems. No thanks.

[reefdiver]

Hunter is a good choice

[ScottinVA]

“Boner”

ROFL!!