Quote:
Originally Posted by cat's meow
To be very honest, Gore would have been easily much more 'Mr. Reach Across the Aisle' than Bush ever promised to be. Clinton actually worked with a Republican Congress on a number of things; Bush has been Mr. Veto and not listenening to anyone. Gore would have continued to work with the entire Congress. With how out of control spending got with the Republican controled Exec/Legis Gore would have been a good foil to balance poor spending habits...and likewise a Rep controled congress would have been a good foil to not have Gore impose too many taxes. This has little to do with Gore and more to do with having balanced government in this day and age. In many cases, a government that ties its own hands with balance from both sides is a good one ...they control themselves from spending too much. With all these guys becoming 'professional legislators' having either party in total power is not good. We are about to thave totally controled government from the Democratic side, that is not necessarily good but it is a backlash from the very poor governance we have had with Bush and the current Bush/Cheney/Frist/Delay/Hastert controled disaster that has been going on.
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But it has taken Bush to really marginalize Republican moderates and those who dare think independently from the Bush campaign strategists or K-street. Of those Republicans who dared challege Bush, only McCain remained in the fight and survived. But he didn't survive because of Bush or the Republican party leadership left after Bush purged the party of those willing to cross the partisan divide outside the parameters of Bush's political campaign.
Bush partnered with Kennedy in order to win the support of the retired, buying their votes with the medicare drug plan. Of course that plan also met the demands of K Street for corporate welfare for the dug companies.
The coalition of people assembled by Christie Todd Whitman before the 2004 election, which was expanded with Bloomberg further distancing himself from the Republican party and linking up with her and other marginalized moderate Republican coalitions, were the Republican "big whigs" who have been trying to move the Republican party to a new, or perhaps old, philosophy, but they didn't jump firmly behind McCain, nor did McCain join with them.
Clearly the Republican voters rejected those who were in the style of Bush, and then basically floundered in finding an alternative, some settling on McCain, others on Ron Paul who is much more pragmatic than Bush even with his rhetoric.
[[[I'm convinced that if Ron Paul was in a position where he had the responsibiity on something like "fixing" Social Security and Medicare, he and Ted Kennedy would hammer out an agreement that would incorporate Ron Paul's principles and his pragmatism, as well as Ted's goals and pragmatism. Ron Paul, in such a position, wouldn't stomp out of the room and say, "It's my way or nothing - let American go bankrupt if I don't get my way." And Ted Kennedy has worked with Bush and McCain and others with deep ideologic differences in order to do what was possible, rather than doing nothing.]]]
McCain doesn't serve as the new Republican party leader or the person who can unify and rebuild the Republican party. He clearly lacks anything like a majority among the Republicans who were in the party in 1990 or even 2000.
The excitment behind Obama is the potential many see for uniting the Clinton faction, the Democrats who left the party over the past several decades, and the people who supported the "rogues" like Dean, Edwards, et al., and the get along to work together middle of the roader Al Gore.