Thread: Rout Just What GOP Needs to Save Itself

EMBARRASSING ROUT JUST WHAT AILING GOP NEEDS TO SAVE ITSELF
by Charles Hurt

HAVING suffered their worst setbacks in decades last night, Republicans took solace knowing that from here things can only get better.

Watching Barack Obama rack up state after state was a little like getting a flu shot. It was painful and senseless to watch all of those enemy germs plunged into their arm.

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But it was a necessary first step in finally getting their rotting, dilapidated house back in order.

"Barack Obama has saved the Republican Party," said one loyal Republican, surveying the wreckage.

"Now we have something to fight against besides ourselves. This is the best thing that could have happened to the Republican Party," he said.

This GOPer with ties to the White House could not bring himself to vote for Obama yesterday.

But he also refused to vote for John McCain, who spent his career betraying his own party on everything from taxes to illegal immigration to federal judgeships.

Many such Republicans - especially younger, more idealistic conservatives - are exhausted of carrying water for corrupt Republicans in Congress, an out-of-touch White House and profligate spending everywhere.

For them, Obama is a breath of fresh air. And unlike the Clintons, Obama is an honorable foe.

In North Carolina, a top Republican operative watched in horror earlier this year as his party picked McCain to be its nominee.

"You could not have picked a worse candidate to be at the top of the ticket in North Carolina," he said, noting McCain's authorship with Ted Kennedy of the major immigration bill that was widely cursed as "amnesty."

From the outset, Obama targeted the reliable GOP state with his sunny appeals for "change."

As the campaign went on, things only got worse for Republicans.

When President Bush proposed the $700 billion taxpayer rescue plan for Wall Street, McCain approved.

Thrilled with the idea of taxpayers rescuing Wall Street, McCain made a point of quitting campaigning and rushing home to get the deal done.

"That really killed us here," said the Republican strategist, noting the North Carolinians who have lost their mill jobs.

"He really spit in their faces with that. There was just no reason for Republicans to show up at the polls."

In the end, the Republican advantage in a state that Bush carried by 13 points in 2004 got wiped out so badly that the state's popular senator, Elizabeth Dole, got routed by an unknown.

And that GOP operative who has spent his entire professional life electing Republicans? He voted for Obama, too.


churt@nypost.com

http://www.nypost.com/seven/11052008/ne ... 137125.htm

Remember the "Contract with America?"

Your next contract will be in the mail.

The "Republican base" (that the media talks about) is good people....But since the Republican party is equated with privileged corporate CEO's, antiquated energy policies, and reckless militarists (none of these charges completely true) it managed to shoot itself in the foot.

Obama, who is really a mixed race or mulatto, managed to get American blacks, even the fundamentalist religious ones who should have supported Palin, almost unanimously lined up to vote for him.

Plus the Republicans were unfairly tarred with the economic downturn which has been building for decades.

From a practical standpoint the Republican Party has been living on borrowed time or life support---bailed out in 1980 by the tectonic shift of religious conservatives into its ranks. I think the only way it can regain any strength is to redefine itself as a moral, populist association with some hard headed economic solutions to the big crises looming for us.

When President Bush proposed the $700 billion taxpayer rescue plan for Wall Street, McCain approved.

Uh, so did Obama.