Thursday, May 6, 2010

Eric Cantor Blames Liberals For GOP's Failure With Moderates

From an article at The Huffington Post:
You wouldn't know it to look at the homepage for the Republican rebranding effort National Council for a New America, spearheaded by House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.), but CQ reports that the GOP's 2009 effort to stave off minority-party status has been "suspended" indefinitely.

Intended to be a series of traveling town halls by prominent Republicans including Cantor, Sarah Palin, John McCain, Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush, the much-ballyhooed effort to reach beyond the party's base never really made it out of the Beltway. Cantor's office told CQ the "relentless attacks from the left" were to blame, but most high-profile criticisms of the effort to make Republicans seem more moderate came from figures within the party itself -- Rush Limbaugh, Michael Steele and Mike Huckabee, among others -- and the Republican base.

Instead of inclusion, HuffPost's Tom Edsall wrote last fall, Republicans doubled down on "intolerance." A year later, with Democrats expecting to suffer heavy losses in the midterm elections, the GOP doesn't seem likely to pursue a strategy of moderation or inclusiveness in the near future. They may, however, head back to Arlington for more pizza.
It is really easy to blame others for your own, or your party's failures.  The GOP has engaged in a risky brand of politics, using dangerous rhetoric to whip up their base, pretty much merging with the Tea Party, wasting no time attacking liberals and moderates, labeling them as Marxist socialists.  They had gone as far to issue a conservative purity tests, and have waged war against their own when they even looked towards the middle of the road.

It is funny because they believe they will have enormous wins this fall, but it appears that they may be losing momentum, and come November, the moderate vote will play an important role.  Are the GOP surrendering the moderates to the Democrats, believing that a majority of the nation are conservative?  I'm not sure, but it doesn't look good for the politicians who decided to pander to the fringe...

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