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Repub Congressman Davis Bash's Bush/Republicans

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Anonymous

Guest
Long Read- but not surprising with all the Repub problems :wink:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/05/post_38.html


'Bad Dog Food' And The Republican 'Brand' (Joe Rothstein's Commentary)
May 15, 2008

By Joe Rothstein
Editor, USpoliticstoday.com

One of the more remarkable developments in this already remarkable election year came by email today in the form of a memo written by Republican Congressman Tom Davis of Virginia.

The memo, sent to all of Davis' fellow House Republican members, compared the current GOP "brand" to bad dog food.

And, said Davis, this bad dog food could be recalled off a lot of shelves on election day in November.

Whew! Them's pretty strong words. Tom Davis is no maverick. In fact, he chaired the Republican House Congressional Committee during the last congressional cycle.

Davis' memo appeared the same day that the Wall Street Journal ran a scathing rebuke of Republican congressional leadership under the headline, "The Republican Panic," and the Politico newspaper ran a dramatic front page graph with an arrow pointing straight down to a crumpled elephant. The headline, "The GOP Crash."

It's been fairly obvious for years that congressional Republicans were in la-la land. Under the leadership of Newt Gingrich and then Tom DeLay, both of whom ultimately resigned in disgrace, the Republican house steered a steady course into financial scandals that made a legion of Abramoffs possible. They thumbed their noses at pent up public demand for health care reform, minimum wage increases, help in stemming the outflow of jobs overseas, an energy policy that wasn't anchored on giveaways to the big oil companies, or anything that resembled a fair tax system. Meanwhile, they doubled the national debt while running up record deficits.

Bush gets a lot of the blame for this, as well he should. But Republicans in both the House and Senate marched in lock-step with him, in a remarkable demonstration of collective bad judgment.

What's triggered the current Republican congressional panic is the fact that the GOP's collection of fright wigs has stopped working. In three recent special elections held in three reliably Republican districts, three Democrats have won. Republicans trotted out the old reliables: "liberal!" "Pelosi!" "Tax and spend!" "Terrorism!"---plus some new additions: "Obama!" "Wright!!" None of it worked.

As the Wall Street Journal editorialized: This is the lesson Republicans should have learned in 2006, but the Members preferred to blame their failure on President Bush and Iraq. House Republicans pooh-poohed their own earmarking scandals, spending excesses and overall wallowing in the Beltway status quo. Rather than rethink their habits, they re-elected the same party leaders and even kept Jerry Lewis as their chief Appropriator. Congressman John Shadegg of Arizona is right when he says that "Since the 2006 elections, Republicans have done absolutely nothing to redefine themselves. We can't even get behind an earmark moratorium bill."

Redefinition was at the heart of Tom Davis' memo to his Republican colleagues. But as hard as he tries, Davis can't get past these obstacles to GOP success: 1) Bush 2) McCain 3) The bankruptcy of the Republican idea-chest.

Davis acknowledges that Bush is a drag on the ticket and that any Republican member who wants to survive a contested election had better be working on a few degrees of separation with the White House.

As for McCain, "John McCain may not be the savior we'd like him to be. The reason voters like him and are giving him a second look is the same reasons our rank and file don't like him: immigration, campaign finance reform and independence." "But," adds Davis, "John McCain helps. He doesn't carry anyone over the finish line, but he doesn't drag anyone down."...not exactly a ringing endorsement of the party's presidential nominee, but it does describe the divide between the Republican "rank and file" and the rest of the electorate.

That's why when it comes to suggesting issue fixes, Davis really struggles. Many of his suggestions require the White House to submit programs to Congress that they've refused to support in the past. Other suggestions are designed to rub salt in the wounds on immigration policy and taxes, hoping to fracture Democratic support. His best ideas are simply to duct-tape together a lot of loose proposals and label them as energy, tax and health initiatives.

In fact, a careful reading of the Davis memo, and other hand-wringing statements by stunned Republicans, turns up nothing that looks like considered policy aimed at dealing with some of the nation's most serious problems. The ideas being floated grab for tactical advantage in an election that's coming in a few months----not a serious agenda that could give an anxious public confidence that America's headed in a better direction.

And that's what's really at the heart of the Republican dilemma. If "liberal" and "taxes" and "soft on terror" don't work anymore, where do GOP candidates go?

Well you can bet that some of them will jump onto the Democratic agenda, as they did this week when the farm bill passed with veto-proof numbers. And, more than ever, some will find issues with which to separate themselves from Bush over the next few months. Most will do their best to localize their own elections and try to disengage from the national issues that are working against the Republican "brand."

Republican Congressman Davis says it's going to take more than a new sales team for the Republicans to avoid an election debacle this year. He's right. The problem isn't their sales pitch, it's their product. And until the Republicans fix that, their brand is going to seem like....bad dog food.

Joe Rothstein is a veteran national political strategist and media producer and editor of USPoliticstoday.com. He can be contacted at [email protected]


May 16, 2008
Rep. Davis Calls Bush "Absolutey Radioactive"
Posted by TOM BEVAN | E-Mail This | Permalink | Email Author
Republican Rep. Tom Davis does not mince words with Al Hunt on Bloomberg TV:

AL HUNT: We begin the program with Congressman Tom Davis. Congressman, you wrote this now famous 21-page memo about the Republican problems this fall. You say it's the worst environment you've seen in 30 years. The Politico this week talks about the GOP crash. Things don't look good. What two things could the Republican Party do right now in order to head off a disaster in November?

REPRESENTATIVE TOM DAVIS (R-VA): Well, two things - number one, they've got to get some separation from the president. The president is the face of the party. He is absolutely radioactive at this point. And they're seen as just in lock-step with him on everything. They've got to go back and establish - I'm talking about Congressional Republicans at this point and McCain, to a certain extent.

MR. HUNT: How do you strike more distance than they are right now?

REP. DAVIS: Well, you don't have to -

MR. HUNT: And, as you know, Karl Rove said they ought to align themselves with the president.

REP. DAVIS: They've done that. I mean, they've done that on SCHIP and they've done it on stem cell and they've done it on the war. And, in every case, they've walked down an alley where they're 30 percent of the electorate. And that makes you a permanent minority.
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
WOW :shock: :shock: :shock: This guy doesn't mince any words- and he's hit the nail right on the head about the leadership/GW creating an impending disaster......


Viguerie: Republican Leaders Must Resign

The Republican Party must replace its leadership or conservatives will continue to withhold support and the GOP will face “disaster” in November, leading conservative activist Richard A. Viguerie declared
.

“Republican Party leaders must resign,” said Viguerie, publisher of ConservativeHQ.com and the pioneer of political direct mail.

“Leaders in the White House, the Congress, and the Republican National Committee and its affiliates, along with most Republican leaders at the state level, have failed — or outright betrayed — the conservative voters who put them in their positions.

“The result is that the Republican Party’s brand has become a negative to an extent greater than in the Watergate era, perhaps even worse than in the days of Herbert Hoover.”


Viguerie made these points:

The number of new Republican voters is flat while Democratic voter registration is soaring.
Contributions to Republican candidates and committees are way off, while donations to Democrats are "setting records."
In this year’s primaries, votes for GOP candidates at all levels are running far behind the Democrats.
In recent special elections, Republicans lost House seats in Illinois, Louisiana, and Mississippi that had long been in GOP hands — all in districts carried overwhelmingly by President Bush. A single election can be a fluke, but when Republicans lose three seemingly safe seats in a row, “disaster is looming.”
“The hard work of the last 50 years by millions of conservative campaign workers, donors, candidates, writers, intellectuals, and activists has been trashed,” he said.

“The conservative movement has been set back 10 to 20 years — possibly even permanently — by politicians consumed by power.”

He named a number of prominent Republicans, including President Bush, Karl Rove, party chairman Mike Duncan, House Minority Leader John Boehner, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, and House Minority Whip Roy Blunt.

“Some deserve more of the blame than others, but they are all part of an establishment that has brought the Republican Party down,” added Viguerie, whose latest book is “Conservatives Betrayed: How George W. Bush and Other Big-Government Republicans Hijacked the Conservative Cause.”

“For things to change, for conservatives to be justified in once again giving our contributions, our volunteer efforts, our energy, and votes to the GOP, the party must clean house. The party leadership should resign immediately.

“Republicans are doomed to wander in the political wilderness until this generation of weak-kneed, no-vision, inarticulate, afraid-of-the-liberal-media politicians are replaced with principled conservatives in the mold of Bill Buckley, Barry Goldwater, and Ronald Reagan.”

Viguerie has this message for the current GOP leadership: “For the future of the Republican Party, for America, and the cause of freedom: Go!”
NewsMax.com
 

Texan

Well-known member
May 18, 2008
A Wall Of Worry For the GOP
By David Broder

WASHINGTON -- One way of measuring the current miserable state of the Republican Party is to note that in the past 10 weeks, 55 years of Republican seniority in the House of Representatives were wiped out in three special elections.

Another gauge is that President Bush's 31 percent job approval score in this month's Washington Post poll is one of the lowest ever recorded for a chief executive.

However one measures it, this is surely the springtime of the GOP's discontent -- a condition that led one Capitol Hill Republican to say, "Thank God we've still got almost six months until Election Day."

There's no telling what may happen between now and Nov. 4, but we know that John McCain is bucking a powerful head wind as he seeks the White House, while Barack Obama (or maybe Hillary Clinton) can enjoy at least a favoring breeze.

The situation is reminiscent of 1980. Six months before that election, it was evident that the country had grown weary of Jimmy Carter and his administration. What remained to be determined was the degree of comfort voters felt with Ronald Reagan as his successor. Would Reagan be seen as a B-movie actor and TV host, peddling eccentric and maybe dangerous notions, or as someone who had governed California successfully for eight years and could restore some sanity to a dysfunctional Washington? Once he delivered the necessary reassurances, the election was over.

The threshold for Obama now is no higher than what Reagan faced, but the mental exercise of placing Obama in the Oval Office requires more imagination than did moving Reagan from the silver screen to Pennsylvania Avenue. Obama's name, his face, his whole biography are precedent-setting. People need time to adjust. That's the reason it has been a mistake for him to all but avoid campaigning before skeptical voters in West Virginia and Kentucky. He has to earn the trust of voters like them -- and he can't postpone that effort until the fall.

If he can make it past the credibility threshold, as Reagan did, a happy prospect awaits him. The voters clearly are ready to expand the Democratic numbers in the House and Senate.

The special-election victories in recent congressional races have toppled one Republican stronghold after another: Louisiana and Mississippi districts that had been Republican for 33 and 13 years, respectively; and former Speaker Dennis Hastert's seat in Illinois, which had gone Democratic only once in the last 50 years.

House Minority Leader John Boehner called the Mississippi race last week "a wake-up call" to all his embattled flock, but it seems more like a nightmare to many of them, portending large losses in November.

Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, the unlucky campaign chairman for the House GOP, tried to put the best gloss on the situation, telling reporters that the avowedly conservative Democrats who won in Louisiana and Mississippi cannot be role models. Come November, with Obama likely to be atop the ticket and defining the Democratic message, "it will be harder for Democrats to run against their party," Cole said.

That remains to be seen. What's driving the vote now is not just opposition to Bush but a failing grade for Republicans. John Anzalone, a polling consultant for the winners in Louisiana and Mississippi, told me that those races -- which featured Republican efforts to link the local Democratic candidates to Obama, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi -- showed "in hard times like these, the kitchen-table issues supersede the wedge issues" the GOP employed.

In the Post poll, Democrats led Republicans, 53 percent to 32 percent, as the party more trusted to cope with the main problems facing the country -- twice as big as the GOP deficit in the summer of 2006, approaching the election that stripped Republicans of their congressional majorities.

Cole said that McCain, with his reputation for independence, can pull in votes not available to any other Republican. He's right. The same Post poll showed him trailing Obama by only seven percentage points and running far ahead of his party. But Lord, what a party.



http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/05/what_a_mess_for_the_gop.html
 

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