Does the GOP stand for anything?...can a party with no platform succeed?

[babylonsister]

Does the GOP stand for anything?
Republicans have concluded that by opposing everything, they can end up winning in 2010 and 2012. But can a party with no platform succeed?
THE BULLPEN
•
Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Robert Shrum


The GOP is still shell-shocked. After the collapse of the Bush presidency and the Democratic victories of 2006 and 2008—especially the improbable, to their minds likely inconceivable, ascendancy of Barack Obama—the Republicans have dug themselves in behind the barricades of a nihilistic right-wing populism. They apparently think it's a position to fight back from—not just in the rhetorically heated summer of 2009 but in the cooler Novembers of 2010 and 2012.

As events unfold, Republicans are likely to discover that they've dug themselves deeper into a hole, leaving them bereft of positive ideas to offer voters an alternative, appealing conservative vision of the future. Quick: Think of a big idea—any bold initiative—that the present GOP stands for. It is a party without a platform.

In a private conversation, one of their wiliest strategists conceded this to me, and then suggested that the only expedient left for Republicans is to keep digging. He calculates that a health-reform bill probably will pass this year, but that the GOP can still run against it next year. How? Since reform won't take full effect until 2013, voters won't know that when the Republicans rail against death panels, rationing, socialized medicine, and the rest, they're the ones who will be deserving of Joe Wilson's verdict: "You lie!" They will even cast their opposition to reform as an expression of their devotion to protecting Medicare—which the GOP overwhelmingly opposed in the first place, then sought to slash during the Gingrich revolution. One of their congressional leaders, Roy Blunt, even denounced Medicare in July as proof that "the government should have never gotten in the health-care business." Apparently he hadn't gotten the new talking points.

I guess you could dignify the coming GOP sleight-of-reality as a strategy; but their desperation is almost certain to be confounded by economic recovery. The revival of growth and jobs will reinforce the president's authority while draining the GOP's. What will Americans believe: the truth in their own lives or the discredited distortions of the stimulus-denying, do-nothing Republicans? I can hear the Democratic message now: The party of "no" was wrong on the economy and they're wrong on health care.

Across the board, the default to negativism now seems embedded in Republican DNA. This week, on the basis of new national intelligence estimates, President Obama modified the Bush plan for missile defense in Europe to make it more effective against short- and medium-range missiles fired from Iran. Republican Sen. Lindsay Graham slammed the decision as "a capitulation to the Russians." Unfortunately for him, the recommendation came from Obama's—and Bush's—Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, himself a former director of the CIA. The decision was backed up, he added, by "the advice of {the} national security team and the unanimous support of our senior military leaders."

more...

http://www.theweek.com/bullpen/column/100705/Does_the_GOP_stand_for_anything

[NRaleighLiberal]

1. Yes - Got Only Poop

[Zoeisright]

2. Sure they do.

They stand for hate, judgment, cruelty, selfishness, greed, bigotry, willful ignorance ...

[grilled onions]

3. The Party Of The Undoers

Their goal is to always undo every bill,idea and dream of the Dems. Instead of moving forward,they barricade both their votes and their minds. While others move forward to equal footing for all they do their best to alienate. They do not want to be part of the future instead they want all of us to relive the past,when only a handful ran the country, where only a select few held onto the bounty of which we are all supposed to enjoy. Their party is a compass without a needle;without direction.

[SPedigrees]

4. GOP stands for "No," "Rude," and "Lies."

Also, once simply the party for business, they are now the party of predatory corporate greed.

Oh and they also stand for war, closeted sexual perversion, and their own self interest.

[havocmom]

5. They stand for telling part of the population anything they want to hear so they get elected

then they allow corporations to screw the people they were lying to who fell for their crap, and the rest of us too.

And, yes, they get a lot of success, because enough people would rather hear comforting lies than uncomfortable reality. Enough people are foolish enough to keep voting for them.

[babylonsister]

10. Wild. I love this: "enough people would rather hear comforting lies than uncomfortable reality."

There is a quote!

[CJCRANE]

6. Out of power, they are anarchists. In power, they are authoritarian.

[JaneQPublic]

7. Bingo! (nt)

[Doctor_J]

8. They can succeed as long as they control the media

Once hate radio, Fox "News", and ConNN are obliterated, the Repukes will disappear into history.

[ThePantaloon.com]

9. Negative

How can they not be negative when their leaders are Beck, Limbaugh, and Palin? It's the Co-Axial Trio of Ego.