Where are the moderate Republicans?

AdMan

Penultimate Amazing
AdMan
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I read the latest op-ed from David Brooks in the NY Times, and he raised some questions I've been wondering about for a while. These questions have been amplified by what's been happening in the Republican search for a candidate to challenge Obama.

All across the nation, there are mainstream Republicans lamenting how the party has grown more and more insular, more and more rigid. This year, they have an excellent chance to defeat President Obama, yet the wingers have trashed the party’s reputation by swinging from one embarrassing and unelectable option to the next: Bachmann, Trump, Cain, Perry, Gingrich, Santorum.

But where have these party leaders been over the past five years, when all the forces that distort the G.O.P. were metastasizing? Where were they during the rise of Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck? Where were they when Arizona passed its beyond-the-fringe immigration law? Where were they in the summer of 2011 when the House Republicans rejected even the possibility of budget compromise?
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Is there no one left in the Republican party with enough balls to stand up to these extreme elements in the party, to make a point about how radical these elements are, and how far from how modern, young America thinks? They can't all have all bought into this anti-intellectualism, anti-education, anti-science platform that all Republicans now appear to be supporting, can they?

Way back when I was a freshman in college in the late 80s, I joined the Young Republicans. Yes, I was a progressive (and even a coming-out-of-the-closet atheist) in many ways, but I still felt I shared many of the GOP's goals, particularly in the area of economics and fiscal restraint. (I didn't feel, for example, that my atheism conflicted with belonging to the Republican party--believe it or not, you 21st centurers!)

That day is long gone. I no longer think I could ever support a Republican candidate. They have alienated me, and I think many others, by their unyielding focus on religiosity and social conservatism that I think makes no sense in the 21st century.

I don't miss the Republican party, but I am amazed that they seem to so blindly cling to outmoded and distasteful ideas such as the ones that are on display every day in the current GOP primary campaigns.

Is there really no one prominent in the party who is willing to challenge this, to try to bring the GOP out from what to me and to many seems to be the Middle Ages?

Or are they simply being drowned out by everyone else?
 
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If Santorum were to win the primary and lose to Obama in the National Election I think the moderates could reemerge. If Romney loses to Obama I think the extremists could hold onto power for 4 more years.
 
I voted for Bush in 2000. The only conservative ideal that I can get behind these days is fiscal responsibility.

Note I said conservative rather than republican and ideal rather than proposal.
 
"Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican."


- Ronald Wilson Reagan​
 
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Good question. Former GOP presidents look like lefties compared to the current crop of Republican candidates. And another question--why have the kooks risen to the top? Wouldn't the GOP have a better chance with more intelligent, moderate candidates?

I guess it shouldn't be surprising considering that W was the last Republican president. Did Republicans really think W was the most qualified person in the country to be president? I'm guessing not most qualified, but most electable.
 
jimtron said:
Did Republicans really think W was the most qualified person in the country to be president? I'm guessing not most qualified, but most electable.
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No we didn't think W was the most qualified person in the country to be president. We just thought he was more qualified than Gore or Kerry.
 
Brainster said:
No we didn't think W was the most qualified person in the country to be president. We just thought he was more qualified than Gore or Kerry.
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In your opinion, why wasn't the most qualified person nominated to be the GOP candidate?

ETA: for the purposes of this thread, I'm not interested in whether W was better or worse than his Democratic opponents. I am curious why W was elected to be the GOP candidate, and same for Romney, Gingrich, Santorum, et al.
 
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jimtron said:
ETA: for the purposes of this thread, I'm not interested in whether W was better or worse than his Democratic opponents. I am curious why W was elected to be the GOP candidate, and same for Romney, Gingrich, Santorum, et al.
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Most rational people are still trying to figure out how he even became governor of a low-information state like Texas.
 
I thought McCain was a fairly moderate Republican, but Palin demolished that moderation.
 
jimtron said:
Good question. Former GOP presidents look like lefties compared to the current crop of Republican candidates.
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Consider just one example. Nixon signed the EPA into law. That makes him look like a lefty compared to Obama, much less the GOP wannabees.
 
Halfcentaur said:
I thought McCain was a fairly moderate Republican, but Palin demolished that moderation.
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Not quite. McCain seems to have actually changed his politics. In 2008, he tacked pretty hard right before he chose Palin as his running mate and based on some of his more recent rhetoric, he seems to have stayed there.
 
The squeaky wheel gets the grease. A frightened person tends to make noise. And right now there are elements in the GOP that are terrified. They look around them and see an America that might be allowing gays to marry, electing atheists to congress or even the Senate and then there is the prospect of universal healthcare that they think means the onset of Communism. They see these things as possible and it has them quaking in their boots. Therefore this thoroughly scared element is asserting itself and trying to fight a last stand for their ideal society where everyone is forced to be Christian, heterosexual and resigned to death if they get sick while poor.

So they have risen up and taken control while moderates, as much as there still are some, lay back as they are frightened to say anything against these people who seem to think they have God on their side. Because when someone thinks they have God on their side they are willing to do terrible, terrible things since they think it is their path to heaven.
 
Travis said:
The squeaky wheel gets the grease. A frightened person tends to make noise. And right now there are elements in the GOP that are terrified. They look around them and see an America that might be allowing gays to marry, electing atheists to congress or even the Senate and then there is the prospect of universal healthcare that they think means the onset of Communism. They see these things as possible and it has them quaking in their boots. Therefore this thoroughly scared element is asserting itself and trying to fight a last stand for their ideal society where everyone is forced to be Christian, heterosexual and resigned to death if they get sick while poor.

So they have risen up and taken control while moderates, as much as there still are some, lay back as they are frightened to say anything against these people who seem to think they have God on their side. Because when someone thinks they have God on their side they are willing to do terrible, terrible things since they think it is their path to heaven.
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*applause*
 
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