board77

Quote:

"All you moderates out there, y'all come. I mean, that's the message," Steele said at a news conference. "The message of this party is this is a big table for everyone to have a seat. I have a place setting with your name on the front.

"Understand that when you come into someone's house, you're not looking to change it. You come in because that's the place you want to be."

Quote:

“Do you realize that under our dynamic leadership of our leader, we have gone from 55 and probably to 40 (Senate seats) in two election cycles, and if the tea leaves that I read are correct, we will wind up with about 36 after this election cycle.
So if leadership means anything, it means you don’t lose … approximately 19 seats in three election cycles with good leadership.”

Quote:

Gingrich warns of third party in 2012
Posted: 11:56 AM ET

From CNN Political Producer Peter Hamby


The former Republican Speaker discussed 2012 during a recent speech at a Missouri college.
(CNN) — Former House speaker Newt Gingrich is warning of a third party mutiny in 2012 if Republicans don’t figure out a way to shape up.

“If the Republicans can’t break out of being the right wing party of big government, then I think you would see a third party movement in 2012,” Gingrich said Tuesday. The speech, to a group of students at the College of the Ozarks in Missouri, was recorded by Springfield TV station KY3.

But Gingrich, bemoaning President Barack Obama’s “monstrosity of a budget,” acknowledged that Republicans are partially to blame for the escalation in federal spending.

"Remember, everything Obama’s doing, Bush started last year,” he said. “If you’re going to talk about big spending, the mistakes of the Bush administration last year are fully as bad as the mistakes of Obama’s first two, three months.”

Gingrich told the students that the current governmental system “is so sick, so out of touch and so arrogant that you’re going to have a nationwide rebellion at the polls of people in both parties who are just fed up.”

“You can do a Facebook page, you can Twitter,” he said. “I Twitter right now and I think we’re at like, I don’t know, 18,000 or 20,000 thousand people that follow my Twitter, which I have to say I think is nuts. But there are ways to communicate, you’re not trapped by CBS news.”

Gingrich has repeatedly said that he will decide in early 2011 whether he plans to seek the White House in 2012.

vison wrote:

It is a VERY long way to 2012. Think back to 2007. Could anyone have seriously believed that Barack Obama would be elected president in 2008?

vison wrote:

While I agree with much of what the Newtster has to say, I have to say also that he's loony if he thinks he's going to get the Republican nomination or, failing that, head a viable third party.

It is a VERY long way to 2012. Think back to 2007. Could anyone have seriously believed that Barack Obama would be elected president in 2008?

There could be (and I hope there is) a nifty Republican in the wings. But it's not Newt Gingrich.

Quote:

As for Obama, I told someone once after his DNC speech he would be the next President. I was told that one good speech isn't enough to make him a presidential canidate.

Quote:

It's silly to fault an opposition party for opposition; obstructionism helped return Democrats to power. Republicans actually have plenty of ideas.

That's the problem. The party's ideas — about economic issues, social issues and just about everything else — are not popular ideas. They are extremely conservative ideas tarred by association with the extremely unpopular George W. Bush, who helped downsize the party to its extremely conservative base. A hard-right agenda of slashing taxes for the investor class, protecting marriage from gays, blocking universal health insurance and extolling the glories of waterboarding produces terrific ratings for Rush Limbaugh, but it's not a majority agenda. The party's new, Hooverish focus on austerity on the brink of another depression does not seem to fit the national mood, and it's shamelessly hypocritical, given the party's recent history of massive deficit spending on pork, war and prescription drugs in good times, not to mention its continuing support for deficit-exploding tax cuts in bad times.

As the party has shrunk to its base, it has catered even more to its base's biases, insisting that the New Deal made the Depression worse, carbon emissions are fine for the environment and tax cuts actually boost revenues — even though the vast majority of historians, scientists and economists disagree. The RNC is about to vote on a kindergartenish resolution to change the name of its opponent to the Democrat Socialist Party. This plays well with hard-core culture warriors and tea-party activists convinced that a dictator-President is plotting to seize their guns, choose their doctors and put ACORN in charge of the Census, but it ultimately produces even more shrinkage, which gives the base even more influence — and the death spiral continues. "We're excluding the young, minorities, environmentalists, pro-choice — the list goes on," says Olympia Snowe of Maine, one of two moderate Republicans left in the Senate after Specter's switch. "Ideological purity is not the ticket to the promised land."

Quote:

"The outlook for Republicans is even worse than people think," says Ruy Teixeira, author of The Emerging Democratic Majority. "Their biggest problem is that they really believe what they believe."

Quote:

We're excluding the young, minorities, environmentalists, pro-choice — the list goes on," says Olympia Snowe of Maine, one of two moderate Republicans left in the Senate after Specter's switch. "Ideological purity is not the ticket to the promised land."

TheEllipticalDisillusion wrote:

There was a commentary on CNN.com about why the Republicans will bounce back. One of the reasons cited was that the Republicans are the de facto Libertarian party. I almost fell out of my seat. Suddenly the Republicans stand for fiscal responsibility, and small government? The last 8 years could have fooled me.

TheEllipticalDisillusion wrote:

There was a commentary on CNN.com about why the Republicans will bounce back. One of the reasons cited was that the Republicans are the de facto Libertarian party. I almost fell out of my seat. Suddenly the Republicans stand for fiscal responsibility, and small government? The last 8 years could have fooled me.

Quote:

"Something else you have to understand is these people hate Palin too," the conservative radio host said Monday. "They despise Sarah Palin, they fear Sarah Palin, they don't like her either. She's, according to them she's embarrassing. McCain said, 'I was there with Ronald Reagan'…. No Reagan voter ever believed McCain was a Reaganite.

"And I think… a lot of this is aimed at Sarah Palin. When you strip all the talk — It's 'the Reagan era is over, stop all this nostalgia and stuff.' Clearly, in last year's campaign, the most prominent, articulate voice for standard, run-of-the-mill, good old-fashioned American conservatism was Sarah Palin. Now, everybody on this [NCNA] Speak to America tour has presidential perspirations [sic]. Mitt Romney there, he wants to be president again. Jeb may someday. Eric Cantor, some of the others, McCain — I don't think he does, but you never know. So this is an early campaign event, 2012 presidential campaign, primary campaign, with everybody there but Sarah Palin."

Quote:

That's also the reason the Republican Party won't fall. The Democrats will save them, no matter what it takes, lest an actual opposition party rise up to replace it.