The GOP: Whose party is it, anyway?

The fight over who’s a real Republican has gotten personal, said Adam Nagourney in The New York Times. Ever since the GOP’s disastrous performance in November, conservatives have been reading moderates out of the ranks for betraying the cause. Their favorite whipping boy is currently former Secretary of State Colin Powell, whose heresies include endorsing Barack Obama for president, and agreeing with him on closing the Guantánamo Bay prison. “What Colin Powell needs to do,” Rush Limbaugh harrumphed recently, is “become a Democrat.” Powell, declared former Vice President Dick Cheney, has “left the party.” Last week, Powell shot back. “Rush will not get his wish,” he said on Face the Nation, “and Mr. Cheney was misinformed.” Urging his fellow Republicans to resist “diktats that come down from the right wing,” he called for an open debate about why the GOP fell from power, and how it could once again appeal to independents, Hispanics, women, and young people. “If we don’t reach out more,” Powell warned, “the party is going to be sitting on a very, very narrow base.”

If Powell is indeed a Republican, said Jeff Jacoby in The Boston Globe, he’s a very strange sort. Republican presidents have appointed him to every lofty position he’s held, from chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to secretary of state, yet “Republicans perpetually appear to rub him the wrong way.” What kind of Republican says, as Powell now does, that “Americans are looking for more government in their life, not less”? A phony Republican, said Jim Geraghty in National Review Online. All of Powell’s policy prescriptions—closing Guantánamo, “sharing the wealth,” being “more inclusive”—would turn Republicans into Democrats. Whatever the GOP needs to do to get back into power, shouting “Me, too” to every Democratic proposal isn’t it.

You’ve missed the point, said Bruce Bartlett in Politico.com. “The job of a political party is to win elections, and to win elections it must be inclusive.” Powell is a moderate Republican in the mold of Dwight Eisenhower, who won two elections with a pragmatic, centrist philosophy and strong leadership credentials honed in the service of his nation. If Powell were to run for president, I’d sign up for his campaign today. The right wing can scoff all it wants, but Powell is sending it a message it can ignore only at its own peril: “Follow him and win, or follow Cheney-Limbaugh-Palin and lose.”

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