Election '08
Western Republicans: Soul-Searching Time
By Jonathan Weber, 11-09-08
The sweeping Democratic victory across much of the West has state Republican Parties in Colorado, Washington, Oregon and even Idaho questioning their leadership and direction. In Colorado, some predictable sniping at the tactics of the party leadership is accompanied by a deeper argument over whether the party should turn to the right, as Tom Tancredo is urging, or move to the center, reports the Denver Post. Meanwhile, in the Pacific Northwest, Republicans are facing population trends (i.e. in-migration and urbanization) that look grim indeed, reports Floyd McKay at Crosscut. Oregon now has no statewide officeholders from the GOP for the first time ever. In Idaho, Republicans remain in firm control and the state party considers Tuesday to have been a fine day.giving some pause on both sides of the aisles. [End of article]I hope (in the short term at least) that Republicans listen to Tom Tancredo. One of the starkest images I will remember of this race was comparing the two convention crowds. The Dem convention looked like a cross-section of America, while the GOP convention looked like angry, old, and extremely white people [disclosure: I am extremely white]. The GOP is, metaphorically speaking, one of those South Dakota towns where the young people move away the day after they graduate from high school, the retirement center is the biggest employer in town, and they give away free land to anyone who is crazy enough to come and try to scratch out an existence.
Except for the Ruby Ridge/Oklahoma City Terrorist Bombing stuff that will invariably happen, the GOP getting older, whiter, and angrier will further isolate them into a circular firing squad and allow the rest of us get to work.
Oddly I had always thought Tancredo and Duncan Hunter were to the Republicans pretty much the same as Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms had been to the Democrats.
It isn't their age which is getting to the Republicans so much as their growing nativism. When a party begins to acquire such a wide assortment of scapegoats as post-Nixonian Republicans have needed it no long before the onus will drag them down...
Flounder - love your images. When is the population here going to realize that we live here at the mercy of the northeastern states that pay all the taxes? We use their money to play at ranching and farming, when in fact we don't raise enough food or cattle to feed ourselves, much less anyone else. Now we're playing at politics, too, and being pretty much ignored by the rest of the country. One of these days if we get irritating enough, they'll take it all away.
Comment By Lizette Bonner, 11-12-086406u82uze2m2uxs
Comment By Jim Lowell, 11-21-08Kevin Price of the Price of Business radio show talked about this at http://www.BizPlusBlog.com. He points out that the problem with Republicans is that they are not acting like Republicans but as a mild version of Democrats. The party may be sould searching, but one could argue that it has lost its sould.
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