Why is the GOP in trouble?

[Krugerrand]

Dubya got a hold of the keys, got high on neocon hooch, and crashed and rolled the family SUV.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/uc/20090508/cm_uc_crpbux/op_339920

I thought that line was a winner. My friend Pat suggests battling against all race and gender preferences will help the GOP. ... Perhaps it will, but I don't see it being a huge issues to help the GOP either.

Many here were blaming Bush's relationships with the social right. I thing Pat is closer with:


He launched an unnecessary war against a country that had not attacked us. With his utopian No Child Left Behind scheme and his Medicare drug plan, he did his passable imitation of LBJ, and blew a hole in the budget .

Touting globalism, he presided over the loss of one in every four U.S. manufacturing jobs and ran up $5 trillion in trade deficits. He refused to defend the Mexican border against an invasion, then pushed an amnesty for the invaders.

[BuddyRey]

Bump!

This is a great question, and I'm going to have to go with "all of the above."

It's hilarious to me that the rank-and-file GOP'ers are battling to the death to defend the legacy of a man whose record almost perfectly mirrors that of the big-spending profligate idealist and Patron Saint of the Welfare State, Lyndon Johnson.

I also think Bush's relationship with the Social Right didn't help much, since the GOP is supposed to be the party of "to each his own" and "it takes all kinds." This plank in the Bush policy undoubtedly alienated a fair number of libertarian Republicans from the party and further cemented the Democrats as a majority party for a fair number of years to come, at least until the GOP decides to clean house and give Ron Paul a place at the "grown-up table."

[dgr]

All of the above and then some. I'm a right winger and a life long republician and I saw that I had been had by Bush -Cheney by 2003 and nothing has changed my mind since . It is a mistake to lump right leaning social conservatives into the "true believer" catagory. most of the people who left the GOP left over Bush and the Iraq war and his globalization policies, his failure to secure the border, push for amnesty and betrayla of the border patrol agents and his destruction of the middle class . Being social conservative and religious is what made them leave they couldn't stomach the betrayal and deceit

[Todd]

Why? Because they think it's a keen idea to run Palin 2012 for starters...