Pat Robertson: Republican Base Being Too Extreme

[RyanPsych]

Today on The 700 Club televangelist and past Republican presidential candidate Pat Robertson warned that the Republican primary base is pushing their party’s potential nominees to such extremes that they will be unelectable. While Robertson has said that he will not make an endorsement this cycle, in 2008 he caught flak from many in the Religious Right for supporting Rudy Giuliani. After a segment on Herman Cain’s ever-changing and completely incoherent views on abortion rights, Robertson told viewers that he thinks that the Republican presidential nominee may be unelectable if he or she embraces all of the policy positions of the party’s far-right base.

When even Pat Robertson thinks the Republican Party has shifted too far to the right, you know there is a problem:

"I believe it was Lyndon Johnson that said, ‘Don’t these people realize if they push me over to an extreme position I’ll lose the election? And I’m the one who will be supporting what they want but they’re going to make it so I can’t win.’ Those people in the Republican primary have got to lay off of this stuff. They’re forcing their leaders, the frontrunners, into positions that will mean they lose the general election. Now whether this did it to Cain I don’t know, but nevertheless, you appeal to the narrow base and they’ll applaud the daylights out of what you’re saying and then you hit the general election and they say ‘no way’ and then the Democrat, whoever it is, is going to just play these statements to the hilt. They’ve got to stop this! It’s just so counterproductive!"…

Well, if they want to lose, this is the game for losers.

more and video at: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/even-pat-robertson-thinks-republican-voters-are-too-extreme

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. You know they've jumped the rails if Pat Robertson thinks they are extreme.

I always thought he was one of the looniest of the bunch.

[Zyzfyx]

4. Sad when insanity decreases with age

:9

[SkyDaddy7]

12. What Pat is actually saying is...

Don't tell the American people what we actually want to do to this country...Pat knows the path is to LIE to the American people & then do what you want once you are in power!

[corkhead]

2. you reap what you sow Pat.

[dtexdem]

5. Hear, hear! That says it all.

[Old and In the Way]

3. Much better to lie about your real agenda, right Pat?

It's the christianist thing to do.

[gordianot]

6. I would like to see Robertson's source for the quote regarding Johnson.

As I remember it Johnson loved Goldwater's radical positions at the time. Johnson even managed to portray Goldwater as a warmonger as Johnson spooles up a war of draftees in Vietnam. In his later years it was Goldwater who moderated his views with almost a swing to the left on social issues. I fully expect Romney to become a liberal if Obama follows the lessons of the 1964 election.

[savalez]

7. In other words, "Shhhh, you'll blow your cover."

[Douglas Carpenter]

8. this story seemed surreal when I first read it. But although Pat Robertson is one of the founders of

the fundamentalist Right and thus one of the founders of modern social-conservatism - But his father was a Democratic Senator. Pat may not be an economic liberal. But I doubt that he actually agrees with crazy talk about letting the sick die if they cannot afford medical care. I doubt that that he agrees that it is always a persons own fault that they are not rich. I suspect like in the tradition of his father who was a conservative Southern Democrat - they would believe that government had at list some minimal role to play in helping the the truly helpless. Even older style conservative Republicans or conservative Democrats did believe that there was at least some legitimate government role in helping the deserving needy. Today's right-wing is so extreme that they cannot even concede that. I suspect it is really true that they are too extreme for Pat Robertson.

[thucythucy]

9. When Pat Robertson calls you out

on your right wing extremism, I think it's safe to say you've jumped an entire ocean's worth of sharks.

[blkmusclmachine]

10. Is this the same Liar who claims he doesn't know who the Dominionists are,

we he is a card-carrying member of that Cult?

[marmar]

11. Whoa. That's like Jabba the Hutt saying you have a weight problem.

nt

[thucythucy]

13. Did he ever express a problem

with the extremist GOP base before an African American man became its front runner?

If not, well, isn't this an interesting development?