no doubt. If you think one party is correct all the time on every matter, you're just a throwing your pom poms around to the beat STOMP
I see him as trying to help the republican party. If you notice in the article, Newt may not support Obama but otherwise shares the view that the party has to be more inclusive. Not only is Powell patriotic when it comes to nation, he's demonstrating a real patriotism to Party as well. The party has lost its way, IMO. It used to be about small government, peace through strength, lower taxes, equal opportunity for all to succeed, individual responsibility, civil rights, and so on. Now it's about none of those things and merely panders to the religious right. If Powell speaking out can help move the party back to its core values, then people will have a reason to vote for republicans at all levels.
I just wish Colin Powell would be honest. He asked the Party to moderate, to get away from dogma, and he doesn't vote for the one candidate--John McCain--who represented almost everything he was looking for? The bottom line is that he wouldn't have endorsed Hillary Clinton, who held virtually the same ideology as then-Senator Obama. He voted for Barack Obama because he's half black. Period. End of story. I'd respect General Powell much more if he just admitted that he put race before beliefs.
I wouldn't. This thread is fascinating to me. I'm nowhere near the equal of many of you in my political sophistication or knowledge, but I always thought that there were clear and divisive issues about government that separated conservatives from liberals (or GOP from the Dems, if you prefer). I get most of my news from the Financial Times, Denny's articles on here ( ) and the Fox News reports my wife's watching in the morning as I'm getting ready for work, so I admit there may be a lack of seeing the NYT or Washington Post side of things. (The Seattle PI wasn't worth my time). I'm not talking about hot-button, or issue-of-the-day things, or even things like religion and abortion or gay marriage or whatever. It seems that you either think the Federal Government should run and regulate many aspects of our society or you don't. You think that the ultimate purpose of foreign policy is to defend Americans and their liberty or you don't. How do you change those values? How can you vote for someone who is the epitome of the other side's ideals and then say that you still believe in them? I don't quite understand that.
There aren't just two sides, even though the political news would have you believe that. There's a whole grey area in the middle, and there are lots of people who agree with one party on one topic and the other party on another topic. Not to mention all the disagreements within either party. And the parties aren't actually that far apart on most subjects. As for "you either think the Federal Government should run and regulate many aspects of our society or you don't." - if you don't you are neither a republican nor a democrat. barfo
Something to think about. I posted this because I agree with Powell and think highly of him. Some people think I don't post things critical of the republicans... It's just they're not as relevant these days. As some may attest, I'm positioned politically apart from either party. I wouldn't call it a grey area tho. Quite Liberal in the classical sense and in all things, especially individual Liberty and economic Liberty. I don't find either party is agreeable on all these things.
I wouldn't characterize your position as either a grey area or as being in the middle. Perhaps a better way of saying what I was trying to say is that there isn't a single axis of political thought, with Democrats/Liberals on one extreme and Republicans/Conservatives on the other extreme. It's a multi-dimensional space. And even if there was just that one axis, Democrats and Republicans would both be fairly close to the midpoint, not at the extremes. barfo
Ed, I think that would be the very reason why George Washington was against political parties in the first place.
Yes, it does, when that Democrat has the most liberal voting record in Congress. Obama opposes just about everything that the Republican party stands for, and his election is going to take the country away from Republican principles. How could Powell have voted for him? Simple. He was black.
The Republicans don't stand for supposed Republican principles. Bush sure made government smaller and was fiscally conservative, wasn't he? A fiscal conservative doesn't currently have a party. Powell strikes me as likely to be a social liberal and fiscal conservative. If you want to drum all those types of people out of the Republican party due to a desire for Christian ideological purity, have at it. The Republican party will simply continue to be marginalized. You don't win elections by shrinking your party more and more. Of course, I do see your problem. A strong Republican party (one that embraced limited government [oops, no crusades against gay marriage] and fiscal conservatism but discarded religiously-driven troglodyte social policy) is one you'd have no use for. You don't want the Republican party of Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan...you want the Republican party of Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin.
Hispanics were once a republican voting bloc, counterweight to the black voting block for the democrats. As a group, they're religious right material. Republicans drove them from the party, too. California went for Reagan in 1984, 57% to 41%. In 1988, for Bush 51-48. It's now a flyover state for republicans. Yet a moderate republican can win the governor race.
I agree. There's definitely a road map for a successful Republican party. As far as Hispanics go, while I agree that they can be a swing voting bloc or even Republican as a group, I would say it is the older generation of Hispanics that are "religious right" material. They're increasingly being replaced by a younger generation which is a lot less driven, socially, by religion. Recent polling, for example, finds that Hispanics are no more likely than whites to be against gay marriage, whereas perception has been that they are more religious on average and more anti-gay-marriage. That's one reason, I think, that Hispanics are increasingly being turned off the Republican party...the Republicans' perceived draconian policy on illegal immigrants upsets Hispanics, old and young, but there's increasingly less "religious-osity" to counter-balance that.
During the Regan years, Hispanics were religious right types though neither of those two groups were what the party was about. You can be religious and not like high taxes and big government ya know. What the religious right did for republicans was counterbalance the unions; feet on the street, fundraising, get out the vote.
