Campaign exposes deep rifts in GOP coalition

[Lone_Star_Dem]

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. — The house that Ronald Reagan built is in danger of collapsing.

The coalition of fiscal conservatives, national security conservatives, anti-tax activists and social conservatives that rallied behind Reagan in 1980 and has defined the Republican Party ever since is coming apart at the seams heading into the 2008 election.

All the men running for the party's presidential nomination invoke Reagan's name repeatedly. But all of them offend at least one wing of the party enough that they'd find it difficult, and perhaps impossible, to pull the disparate elements of the old coalition together.

"It's gone," said Ed Rollins, who worked on Reagan's 1984 re-election campaign and now chairs the campaign of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.

"The Reagan coalition is pretty much gone," added Karen Spencer, a Republican strategist in California who watched the Reagan phenomenon firsthand when her father served as Reagan's chief political strategist. "It's been 28 years. Maybe it is time for a change."

What happened?

Times changed, of course.

Fighting terrorism has created divisions where confronting the Soviet Union and rebuilding the U.S. military unified the party.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/24624.html

One more accomplishment for Bush to add to his legacy.

[Warpy]

1. I started to see the cracks 5 years ago

when the pious Idiot failed to get abortion overturned, homosexuals into internment camps for reeducation, and forced Protestant prayers at all public functions. After this election, those cracks will be obvious chasms.

An alliance between the rich and the ultra religious was always doomed to failure. The only mystery is why it lasted as long as it did. They have been at cross purposes since the very beginning.

The only question is what will happen. Will the religious form their own party? Will the fiscally mean leave the GOP and join the Libertarians? Will it be a quiet demise with the ultra religious diving back into their bible study groups and giving up on politics?

Even the giveaway of taxpayer dollars to crooked fundamentalist preachers isn't going to salvage the Reagan coalition. It's doomed.

[opihimoimoi]

2. K&R......Pubs have doomed themselves...delved into fantasy once too often

[asjr]

3. I sometimes wonder if the Republicans

actually do not know that Reagan is dead.

[RuleOfNah]

4. Campaign? Wait until criminal prosecutions expose deep rifts in GOP coalitions!

:popcorn: