Hamilton, Madison, and Jay

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Location: Mesa, Arizona, United States

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Sunday, November 9, 2008

Looking At The Future

Thomas is right. I have not been smiling a lot this week because I see nothing really to smile about. The GOP got shellacked in Tuesday's historic election. Not only did we lose the White House, which in and of itself was virtually a given, but we are on the verge of losing the filibuster firewall in the Senate, and we are nowhere near majority status in the House. For the first time since 1992, the Republicans are again in the minority.

Now there is hope on the horizon. But before I touch on that, I would like to bring up two things picked up by Jonathan Martin at Politico. The first is a point made by Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour:

For a party anxious to move past a brutal election up and down the ballot, and especially a presidential campaign it would just as soon forget, it’s not too soon to start thinking about "next time," as the pros call it.

Now officially of course, any talk of a presidential run is verboten.

“Oh, man,” drawled Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, when asked about 2012 and specifically his own interest in a possible presidential run. “I’m going to tell you something. One of the worst things that can happen to the Republican Party in our effort to rebuild is for a bunch of people to start running for president. Anybody harboring that ambition needs to squelch it until after 2010. … Anybody out there running for president is undercutting what’s important. You do this against your own interest.”

He is 100% correct. The Republican party needs to take a good, long, hard look at what went wrong in this election, and repair that damage. The party needs to fix what is broken, and do it in enough time to be viable in 2010. Anyone right now even considering a possible run in 2012 is not only undercutting themselves, but they are cutting the party off at the knees. President-elect Obama has not even taken the oath yet, and some people are already eyeing 2012? Please. The people who put themselves before the party are fools.

Mr. Martin also picked up on an interview with Steve Schmidt:

Looking forward, [Steve] Schmidt sees the need for a wholesale reinvention of the party. “The party in the Northeast is all but extinct; the party on the West Coast is all but extinct; the party has lost the mid-South states — Virginia, North Carolina — and the party is in deep trouble in the Rocky Mountain West, and there has to be a message and a vision that is compelling to people in order for them to come back and to give consideration to the Republican Party again.”

Mr. Schmidt gets it. He knows that the only way to go forward is to evaluate the failures of not only this year, but years prior where the GOP failed not only it's supporters, but the nation. And it has failed the nation. Overspending in Congress alienated the base and the nation. Reaching across the aisle with Democrats, only to be cold-cocked, alienated the base.

The GOP has to make every effort to reach out to, and listen to, it's base. That starts right here with Rebuild The Party. We no longer have the luxury of sitting off to the side as others carry on the fight. Those of us in the base that are politically motivated need to get in to the scuffle and get our hands dirty. Only together can we be a united, conservative party again.

Marcie

1 Comments:

Blogger knowitall said...

What went wrong was the fact that the mainstream media carried the left-wing illuminati on their backs, and threw the GOP to the wolves. The GOP will regroup, and be stronger than ever.

November 17, 2008 at 6:18 PM  

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