Man, i really could listen to Walter and Thomas talk all day about where we are economically, how we REALLY got here and how to get us back on the right track.
Ditto
Plum Line
“Mosque” fight reveals Cheney-ization of GOP
Jonathan Chait makes the case that the battle over the “Ground Zero mosque” is more than just a war over issues surrounding the Constitution and religious freedom. Chait notes, crucially, that this is also an intra-party struggle over the future direction of GOP foreign policy:
The second question is about laying the groundwork for Republican foreign policy for the next GOP presidential administration. George W. Bush pursued a policy of attempting to divide the mass of the Muslim world from the dangerous and radical hard core, reassuring and praising the former while opposing the latter. President Obama has pursued the same policy, adding onto it the personal touch of using his identity and unique history to dramatize the same basic message.
The Park51 episode has become a proxy fight on this question among Republicans, many of whom see the foreign policy struggle as a clash of civilizations between Islam and Christianity/Judaism.
It’s also worth adding that if the battle over the Islamic center has revealed an intra-Republican struggle over whose foreign policy vision will prevail, it’s clear who’s winning this fight: The Cheney-ites. Consider: Virtually all leading Republicans who are currently in positions of power, or are currently lining up to run for office in 2012, have adopted the Liz Cheney line.
The project is opposed by many of the leading GOP officials in Congress, from John Boehner to Eric Cantor to Mitch McConnell. What’s more, the battle over the Islamic center has actually become a litmus test for the 2012 GOP hopefuls, with Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, and Tim Pawlenty all trying to out-demagogue each other on the issue.
Meanwhile, on the other side, the Republicans who have stepped forward to support the project are largely former Bush officials who are no longer in positions of power or aren’t running for office anytime soon. In other words, the Cheney-ite line has become the required position of thise with actual influence within the GOP — or those who are currently in the process of seeking it.
This development is actually part of a larger story that hasn’t really gotten the attention it deserves: Ever since Obama took office, there’s been a widening rift between Republican officials and politicans on one side, and the GOP’s former allies in Washington’s permanent national security establishment on the other.
Obama’s positions are more in line with the old-line GOP defense establishment in D.C. — people like Colin Powell and James Baker, as well as Bush holdovers who are working for Obama, like Robert Gates and David Petraeus. Yet Republican elected officials and office seekers have almost uniformly adopted the Cheney-ite critique of Obama on issues like torture, Mirandizing terrorists, and whether to close Guantanamo.
In other words, the widespread opposition to Cordoba House among Republicans is only the latest installment in the ongoing Cheney-ization of the GOP. I don’t need to tell you that this trend has ominous ramifications in light of the possibility of a GOP takeover of Congress or even of the Presidency.