Colin Powell Wants The GOP To Embrace Moderates, But What Was John McCain If Not A Moderate?
From reading the news tonight, I see that the media is painting Colin Powell and his response to criticism from Rush Limbaugh and Dick Cheney as a battle between some underdog hero and a couple of mustache-twirling black hats. CNN even has a poll out showing that Powell is more popular than Limbaugh and Cheney. But as much as the liberals in the media are gleeful in their all-but-overt support for the liberal Powell, and determined in their not-so-oblique condemnation of Limbaugh and Cheney, the truth is that Powell’s argument is flawed.
Doug Ross points out how in an open letter to Colin Powell published on his blog.
I read with great interest your recent statement that the Republican Party must be “more inclusive” and that it must expand its “very, very narrow base”.
While all Americans respect and honor your service to this country, when it comes to political theory, economics, law and history, you are thoroughly, utterly confused.
On October 19th of last year, you endorsed Barack Obama for President on Meet the Press.
But America had a “moderate” Republican candidate for president at that time. John McCain was an “inclusive” candidate and certainly didn’t pander to a “narrow base”. Yet you abandoned him, Mr. Powell, and — in fact — helped sabotage his campaign by publicly endorsing the most ideologically pure, leftist candidate this country has ever seen.
The narrative Democrats and their friends in the media want to promote right now is the idea of the GOP as a marginalized party, and conservatism as an irrelevant movement. Their chief point in that is saying that the GOP has gotten too extreme. It has gone too far right, and that people like Limbaugh and Cheney and the tea party folks are moving it even further right. And, of course, Powell’s little scuffle with Limbaugh and Cheney fits into all that perfectly.
But the truth is that the GOP hasn’t moved too far right. How can the GOP have gotten too extreme when, as Mr. Ross points out above, John McCain was the last national politician? McCain is hardly a rock-ribbed conservative. He’s barely a conservative at all. In fact, I’d say he’s only slightly to the right of Obama on a lot of issues.
Yet because those facts don’t fit into the left’s narrative about the demise of the GOP, they ignore them. The real problem with the GOP is that they don’t mean what they say. They talk limited government, but they do not govern with that in mind.
