GOP Strategist Offers Up Party Advice on Specter

April Ratings: FNC Beats CNN and MSNBC Combined
How’s this for cable news domination – Fox News beat CNN and MSNBC combined in every hour from 6amET to MidnightET in both Total Viewers and the A25-54 demo for April 2009.

Some of us remember the 90′s when a number of Democratic congressmen and, at least one senator, jumped to the Republican party. Even with Franken, the prospect of 60 votes is not guaranteed. i.e. Ben Nelson and Byron Dorgan. However, the pendulum of political thought continues to swing. The challenge for Repubs, which Dems met, is to move to the middle-where most voters are- and hope for congressional scandals and a Dem. Bush-like presidency. Offering a positive message of change, without intellectual dishonest, sarcasm, and hypocrisy is also essential. Of course, none of the above is likely to happen. Many of my longtime G.O.P. friends are deeply worried that the party is headed back into the wilderness for another 40 years.

What a hoot! Are the rats abandoning the sinking ship?

Is Specter pragmatic or just a political w—- who will do anything to get re-elected?

The GOP has allowed itself to be overrun by the right-wing Southerners. I’m from Tennessee, and it’s amazing to see the change that has occured down here over the last 10-15 years. At one time, we in the South were looking towards the idea of a “New South”. It seemed like in the late 70′s through the early to mid-90′s that we in the South were really trying to scrap the Confederacy-era mentality and become as progressive as anywhere else in America, but that came to an abrupt end when the GOP increased their divisive rhetoric down here. All of the sudden the “New South” ideas went away and were replaced with a resergence of a solid white South that seems determined to turn back any process made in the last 50 years. “Bubba” has become king again in the South – good luck finding a radio station in the morning that doesn’t have their own Bubba or Jethro proudly spewing their simpleton stupidity over the airwaves.
It is so good to see that the GOPs success in the South has become their own undoing in the rest of the USA.

I find Arlen Specter’s remarks and reasoning very disingenuous when he said because of the extremes from both parties that he and people like Joe Liberman can’t win. Well if I remember, Liberman ran as an independent to win reelection. Arlen cannot do this because he is a fraud. Eliminate all politicians and we are all betteroff without them.

The GOP was also down and out when Jimmy Carter was elected. It took them exactly four years to return from the dead.
Considering that Obama is almost as stupid as Carter, I expect history to repeat itself.

Does anyone know when President Obama plans a new apology tour? There’s nothing I like better than listening to someone trash my own country.

Mell, I agree with you……those idiots don’t know that the world is changing…….nothing remains the same!
Hehe!

I am a Pennsylvania moderate Democrat. Before today I probably would not have voted for Senator Specter’s re-election due to my fear that he would adhere to the extremist Republican views when majorly pressured by his party. But, give Arlen’s independence over the years and his use of logic and reason while most Republicans have abandoned it for irrational idealism, he has endeared himself to me. As a Democrat I will give him my vote – even though I already thought I had decided on another Democratic candiate.

what happened to the Ford,
Nixon, Ike Republicans?
Kinda more down the middle
than the “no” to everything
batch we have now.

Fox news is comedy central and Americans love to laugh around dinner time and before going to bed. Most people who watch fox don’t agree with Sean Hannity and Bill O’reilly but they watch anyway for the laughs..most of the people that watch Fox news voted for Obama..so I don’t understand the few Republicans left gloating over this. Americans go for anything that can stimulate a good laugh..MSNBC and CNN are serious news. I and most of my friends watch Fox for its humor value but we voted for Obama.

Republican party = voodoo economics and wars…no domestic policy..party for the rich and those who pretend to be rich. All the heretofore pretenders are now solidly behind Barack Obama and have defected from the party that made fun of community organizers in their convention. The attendees at the Republican convention are 95% white with 5%(I wish I was White)..whereas the Democrat convention reflects America with its diversity of whites,blacks,asians, hispanics, and everyone else. The Republicans try to use the black man steele to sugar coat but Americans are not buying it. America has seen through the nothingness of the Republican party. Thanks to the comedians Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Glen Beck and the the skinny lady(can’t remember her name). Bye Bye Republicans! It feels good! God bless president Obama and Arlen Specter and God bless America!

Perhaps what the Republican party needs to do is to schism into two affiliated parties. The far right conservative party existing now and a new “moderate” Republican Party that espouses the traditional philosophies on governing i.e. non-interventionist, free-market, strong on national defense etc, while at the same time actively centrist on social issues such as abortion/gay marriage/religion. They could cooperate as a coalition and govern that way. My thinking is that the moderate party could run for seats in the more liberal states (uncontested by their coalition partners) and the current party in the conservative states. It seems clear that there are a lot of voters who naturally lean toward the right but have been alienated by the hard stance taken on social issues and general inflexibility of the party. The Republican party needs to recognize that trying to get elected on a conservative values platform when only about 30% of the population agrees with those values is self-destructive.