GOP Base Rejects Calls to Moderate

politico.com ^ | April 26, 2009 | Ben Smith and Jonathan Martin

[kellynla]

A quick tour through the week’s headlines suggests the Republican Party is beginning to come to terms with the last election and that consensus is emerging among GOP elites that the party needs to move away from discordant social issues.

There was Sen. John McCain's daughter and his campaign manager who last week demanded that their fellow Republicans embrace same-sex marriage. Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman – the most devoted modernizer among the party's 2012 hopefuls – won approving words from New York Times columnist Frank Rich for his call to downplay divisive values issues. The party’s top elected leaders in Congress, meanwhile, spooked by being attacked as the “party of no,” were recasting themselves as a constructive, respectful opposition to a popular president.

But outside Washington, the reality is very different. Rank-and-file Republicans remain, by all indications, staunchly conservative, and they appear to have no desire to moderate their views. GOP activists and operatives say they hear intense anger at the White House and at the party’s own leaders on familiar issues – taxes, homosexuality, and immigration. Within the party, conservative groups have grown stronger absent the emergence of any organized moderate faction.

There is little appetite for compromise on what many see as core issues, and the road to the presidential nomination lies – as always – through a series of states where the conservative base holds sway, and where the anger appears to be, if anything, particularly intense.

"There is a sense of rebellion brewing," said Katon Dawson, the outgoing South Carolina Republican Party chairman, who cited unexpectedly high attendance at anti-tax “tea parties” last week.

[dsc]

“Conservatism does not equal anger, liberals are the angriest, nastiest most divisive people I’ve ever seen.”

And we don’t help ourselves by failing to get up in their faces about it, either.

Every forum seems to make conservatives shut up while libtards rant, then allows the libtards to shout over the top of conservatives when it is their turn to speak.

[novemberslady]

The bottom of the barrel are the people that tell those that contributed to their campaigns to piss off.
And all the while they're back slapping and yucking it up with the democrats.

They know who they are.

Time to scrub the party clean of these back stabbers...

bye bye specter
glad to see you go...

[Antoninus]

I'll moderate my views when the Socialist show that they aren't trying to kill my country and indoctrinate my children.

Until then, stuff it Meghan McCain & Politico.

[steve-b]

Staying the course that was followed in 2006 and 2008 will work a lot better in 2010, you betcha!