[F16Fighter]

"Arlen Specter is NOT a Republican....

... He is a democrat with an R for Reprobate afer his name....

He is pro-abortion, anti-gun, pro-high taxes, against conservative judges on the highest courts in the land and it is one of the scariest things on earth that Ted Kennedy considers him fine Supreme Court Justice material."

So much for Specter's GOP "credentials."

Now let us all imagine the evolutionary net result in twenty years of Luis Gonzales' suggestion that the GOP must surrender it's traditional principle, and:

"mov[e] towards the center of the political ideological spectrum and away from the outer fringe."

IOW, condone pro-abortion, anti-gun, pro-high tax, anti-border enforcement positions, and become like Democrats -- but technically NOT in name. However, switching policy affiliations at that point would be simple enough, wouldn't it??

I'm a RINO today. Democrat tomorrow.

Sounds like the best recipe for political disaster and CWII if ever I've heard one.

[Nix 2]

The outer fringe of the Republican Party today is the core of the Republican Party yesterday. We need desperately to get it back.

Luis, I love you, but we are not the fringers. Those who gave up their core beliefs for political expediency are the fringers because they have let their base twist slowly, slowly in the wind...have given up the principles that made them my party in the first place.
I would really hate to think that you would fall for the rhetoric of, "Do as I say, not as I do." They lie.

[Badray]

"I'm a RINO today. Democrat tomorrow."

John F. Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey would make better Republicans than the likes of Specter, Snowe, and Chaffee.

[Luis Gonzalez]

The Party today is where it is as a reaction to the division in the '92 and '96 elections.

Voters moved out to support Perot, and the Party replaced them by going into the centrist well.

The Party was solid and conservative under Reagan, but the "conservatives" decided to "teach us" all a lesson because they didn't like Bush's failure to keep his no new taxes pledge.

That brought about eight years of Clinton, and a razor thin victory in 2000, as well as some of the highest tax increases in the History of the US.

The more "conservatives" threaten to be the cause of GOP electoral losses, the more the GOP will move away from them.