Say Anything Blog

I was somewhat surprised to see Dick Armey (one of the main four star general in the Republican revolution of 1994) sound like Berry Goldwater in his criticism of some member of the religious wing of the party:

(ps trivia: Dick Armey is a North Dakotan)

In recent weeks, Mr. Armey has stepped up a public campaign against the influence of Dr. James C. Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family and an influential voice among evangelical protestants. In an interview published last month in “The Elephant in the Room,” a book by Ryan Sager about splits among conservatives, Mr. Armey accused Congressional Republicans of “blatant pandering to James Dobson” and “his gang of thugs,” whom Mr. Armey called “real nasty bullies” — arguments he reprised on the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal and in an open letter on the Web site organization FreedomWorks.

In an interview this week, Mr. Armey said catering to Dr. Dobson and his allies had led the party to abandon budget-cutting. And he said Christian conservatives could cost Republicans seats around the country, especially in Ohio.

“The Republicans are talking about things like gay marriage and so forth, and the Democrats are talking about the things people care about, like how do I pay my bills?” he said.

Mr. Armey also pinned some of the blame on Tom DeLay, the former Republican House majority leader, who “was always more comfortable with the social conservatives, the evangelical wing of the party, than he was with the business wing.”

Mr. Armey, who identifies himself as an evangelical, said he was tired of Christian conservative leaders threatening that their supporters would stay away from the ballot box unless they got what they wanted.

“Economic conservatives,” he argued, were emerging as the swing voters in need of attention, in part because they had become more likely to vote Democratic in the years since President Bill Clinton was in office. “A lot of people believe he brought us from deficits to surpluses, and there is a certain empirical evidence there,” Mr. Armey acknowledged

it mirrors what Mr. Conservative, Barry Goldwater, used to say:

Goldwater:

“When you say ‘radical right’ today, I think of these moneymaking ventures by fellows like Pat Robertson and others who are trying to take the Republican Party and make a religious organization out of it. If that ever happens, kiss politics goodbye.”

.."I think every good Christian ought to kick Falwell right in the ass,” ...

As Bush has been going for the Bible Belt Republicans, the Republican party has been loosing support among the fiscal conservative votes from the Northeast, as well as Goldwater-type voters from the Coastal and Central West.

This is effect hasn’t been more accentuated because the Democats are frankly mediocre as an alternative

...but I hope the GOP takes the state of Kansas as a lesson. For the sake of the country ..

In a state that voted nearly 2 to 1 for President Bush in 2004, nine former Republicans will be on the November ballot as Democrats. Among them is Mark Parkinson, a former chairman of the Kansas Republican Party, who changed parties to run for lieutenant governor with the popular Democratic governor, Kathleen Sebelius.
...
One fresh sign came from the Johnson County Sun, which said it would endorse virtually the entire Democratic ticket, including Morrison and Parkinson, after endorsing fewer than a dozen Democrats in the past half-century.

Republicans didn’t introduce the issue of gay marriage into the political sphere, the threat of action by the out of control courts did.

Secondly it’s hardly an excuse to say that one vote on gay marriage made them spend all that money.

I hardly turn to the New York Times for analysis of insider Republican politics.

What’s going to happen to US industry when the global warming extremists like John McCain double the price of electricity?  I would think all these factories will close and set up in countries where they aren’t scared of technology.