Conservative Andrew Sullivan Cries Foul: "Republican Taliban declare jihad on Obama"

[ClarkUSA]

Top blogger Andrew Sullivan is a gay conservative who is disgusted with the modern Republican Party. This is his pithy analysis
of the games that the party of Greedy Old Pricks are trying to play on President Obama... without much success.

Goodbye to all that? Washington, it appears, has other ideas. Barack Obama campaigned on a platform of pragmatic
liberalism and an end to frothy ideological warfare in Washington. From the beginning of the campaign he went out
of his way not to engage in Republican-bashing or even Clinton-bashing. He was intent on bringing reason and
open-mindedness to America’s often fraught ideological debates. He was incandescently clear that he rejected the
toxic partisan atmosphere that had dominated the Bill Clinton and George W Bush years.

Since November he has largely walked the walk... he did his best to accommodate Republican concerns - adding
deeper and wider tax cuts than his own party was comfortable with...this open hand was met with a punch in the
face... And this after eight years in which they managed to turn a surplus into a trillion-dollar deficit and added a
cool $32 trillion to the debt the next generation will have to pay for. Every now and again their chutzpah and
narcissism take one’s breath away... Pete Sessions, chairman of the Republican congressional committee,
explained that the Republican strategy was going to be modelled on jihadist insurgency. “I’m not joking,”
he added. “Insurgency we understand perhaps a little bit more because of the Taliban.”

Rush Limbaugh, the dominant figure among the Republican base, fresh from broadcasting a ditty called Barack,
the Magic Negro, declared in the first week of the new Congress that he hoped the new president would fail...
Bitter? At the end of last week we saw just how bitter. One of the Republicans who had agreed to serve
in Obama’s cabinet, Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, abruptly pulled out... Gregg had been under
intense pressure from the Republican base, especially in his home state, for cooperating with the devil...
Gregg was a victim of fast-shifting Republican politics. Reeling from the election, watching a new president
coopt some of their number and get alarmingly high approval ratings from the public, members of the opposition
party made a decision to become an insurgency... It’s not clear, however, that total war on the president is going
to be a better way forward. Before the latest twist, a Gallup poll found that Obama’s handling of the
stimulus package had almost twice the public support of the Republicans’. In a period of acute economic
anxiety, Americans outside the Republican base may not be so thrilled to find a replay of the 1990s. Obama
won in part because he seemed not part of that drama.

The Democrats and the liberal base have responded to all this with a mixture of cynicism and their own partisanship.
They rolled their eyes at Obama’s outreach to Republicans; they hated the inclusion of the other party in the cabinet
and had to swallow hard not to complain about the postpartisan rhetoric. Their cynicism is well earned. But my bet is
that Obama also understands that this is, in the end, the sweet spot for him. He has successfully branded himself by
a series of conciliatory gestures as the man eager to reach out. If this is spurned, he can repeat the gesture until the
public finds his opponents seriously off-key.

[madaboutharry]

1. disenchanted republicans are a lot like

ex-smokers. They really understand how toxic the addiction.

[ClarkUSA]

2. That's true. Too bad for them that Americans have been through 8 years of BushCo Al-Anon.

It's all Republicans seem to know: All tactics, no strategy. Such idiocy never worked against Team O during the election season
and it won't work against President Obama now. Republicans can appeal to their base all they want. However, they seem to be
in denial over this salient fact of politics: A president can't lose when the American people are on his side.

[Phx_Dem]

3. At least they picked an appropriate name for themselves.

[grantcart]

4. "Give them enough rope and they will hang themselves"

In a related news item

Obama Rope Factory runs overtime

[yellerpup]

5. Our new president is forcing (in the nicest way possible) the opposition

to ENGAGE. Personally, the longer it takes for them to "get it" the better off the world will be. K&R!

[Spazito]

6. I think this has already beginning to happen....

"... until the public finds his opponents seriously off-key." (taken from the last sentence of the excerpt posted).

The repubs are consistently losing ground in the polls while President Obama enjoys eye-popping support and even the Dems in Congress have improving numbers.

The American people, in ever increasing numbers, have no trust in the republican party or what it has to say.

[Paulaguyon]

7. He's not a conservative anymore, but good point by Sullivan nt

[ClarkUSA]

12. Sullivan self-describes himself as a conservative. Who are you to disagree?

:shrug:

[Paulaguyon]

16. I disagree with that characterization by Sullivan

I don't know if he still describes himself that way -- as a conservative, but I know that he was Sarah Palin's most fervent critic, and praised Obama on an almost daily basis, which is a great thing, in my opinion. That is inconsistent with a conservative view of politics.

[ClarkUSA]

17. Ever heard of Obamacans? There were other conservatives who supported Obama...

and there were conservatives who pilloried Palin. It's shortsighted to think all conservatives think monolithically.

[Cha]

8. "Greedy Ol Pricks".. that's

nice than mine..Greedy Ol Perverts. The more people who point this out the better. You can bet the cmwhores aren't going to.

[ClarkUSA]

15. I like Greedy Ol' Perverts, too...

Especially for those Larry Craig/Mark Foley Republicans. ;)

[jesus_of_suburbia]

9. Better late than never. I still don't like Sullivan. No minority should ever support the GOP.

[Paulaguyon]

10. Sullivan no longer supports the GOP

He changed around 2007. He supported Obama and hated Palin and McCain. He has changed for the best.

[ClarkUSA]

13. Sullivan voted for Kerry in 2004 and supported President Obama this time around.

He was one of the loudest anti McCain/Palin voices out in the blogosphere (his is #1 in traffic in this country), too.
Not all conservatives are bad. He's an Obamacan through and through and did more to support Barack than many
Democrats who supported other candidates and were sore losers to the end.

[Hellataz]

11. I'm not surprised, i bet we see GOP deserters popping up everywhere

AS time goes on and Obama maintains his composure and willingness to reach out and the GOP keeps slapping his hand away and screaming hate speech at him, i believe some members of the GOP will wise up and start outing their party to distance themselves from it. It will be the only way to save their positions come election time, because in the end america will see Obama as in the right and the GOP obstructionists as in the wrong.

[Vogon_Glory]

14. There Are Already A LOT Of Ex-Republicans In The Democratic Party

There are already a LOT of ex-Republicans in the Democratic Party. Most of the surviving members of what once made up the Elephant Party's liberal wing have not only voted Democratic for years now but have stopped thinking of themselves as Republicans for quite some time. I suspect that at least part of the vote for Barack Obama this last election came from the center-right, although whether or not they'll turn into Democratic activists remains to be seen.

I'd say that one of the major criteria for a Republican defector is whether or not he or she can reason for himself/herself.

Watching this latest round of GOP politicking, it looks like we Democrats might see some new faces.

:dem: