quick follow up - the Specter Aftermath

Side note - Specter is switching. Of course some in the GOP are arguing "good riddance"; i even read comments somehow arguing that the GOP was more excited about having "30 principled senators" than to have members like Specter. I am much more inclined to agree with Olympia Snowe, a senator who i have increasingly grown to respect over the past several years: (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/29/opinion/29snowe.html - This is a fantastic Op-Ed by the senator and definitely worth reading...). I think one of the key statements she makes in the op-ed was the following:

There is no plausible scenario under which Republicans can grow into a majority while shrinking our ideological confines and continuing to retract into a regional party. Ideological purity is not the ticket back to the promised land of governing majorities — indeed, it was when we began to emphasize social issues to the detriment of some of our basic tenets as a party that we encountered an electoral backlash.

Again... this is not a time for the Republicans to push further right! Its not as if the voting trends around the nation show an eagerness for Republicans to move further right -- states are, in the words of some analysts, turning purple as they move from red to blue - not at all the other way. Again i say, if the GOP wants to stop the bleeding they have to remove the "bunker" mentality and instead get out in the field. America doesn't need more Limbaugh; it doesn't need more Reagan memorial bumper stickers; or accusations of "socialism." What we need is a real debate over the biggest issues; where we can debate the merits of the direction our foreign policy is headed rather than whether Obama "should" have "bowed" to a foreign dignitary; where we can debate our country's fiscal future without ignoring that under the watch of the Republican majority, and a Republican president, our national debt soared. Rather than making worn-out speeches about " the free market" and offering up vague alternatives - what if Republicans could devise actual, detailed working solutions to our nation's fiscal woes? what if more than 3 senators decided to actually come to the discussion table and attempted to provide balance to the majority rather than "toeing the party line" and sitting on the outside like children being benched at a soccer game for misbehaving?


This does not have to signal the end. Rather, i believe wholeheartedly that this is an opportunity for Republicans to not only "re-brand" the party, but even more so to rebuild the party.

UPDATE: hahaha... so i have been writing these thoughts on and off over the past week, and ironically apparently the "rebranding" has begun - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/02/AR2009050202082.html ; http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/05/03/cantor-weve-got-a-lot-to-learn-from-obama/;

I'll have to provide some thoughts on this later...