Whitman Bashes Conservatives

Patrick Ruffini analyzes Christine Todd Whitman's claim that the Republican Party is loosing support because of its "social fundamentalist" wing.

Reading the transcript of Lou Dobbs' interview with her last night, one leaves with a sense that the MSM wants Whitman to succeed in diffusing the influence of Christian conservatives in the party.

Ok, no surprise here. But the logic behind her arguments is amazingly bereft of historical perspective.

DOBBS: . . . there was once a liberal and conservative and moderate wing in the GOP party, the Republican party, the fact is today one scratches their heads wondering what happened to fiscal discipline. Republicans were styled as much in their rejection of imprudent fiscal management, trade deficits at record heights. Where is the Republican party in your judgment headed? Where should it be going?

WHITMAN: I think it's headed frankly in the wrong direction, which is why I wrote the book to [. . .] remind people of what the Republican party stood for and how it moved forward from the days of Eisenhower forward when I first became sort of cognizant of what was going on, and to try to get it back on that track, to understand that it's our party, it has room for a lot of different opinions, but there are certain basic beliefs that distinguish the Republicans from the Democrats, and we need to get back to those.

Let me clear this up first: fiscal discipline has gone out the window in the last four years under the Bush administration. No conservative can argue against that. Conservatives bit their lips on the issue during the election last year knowing that by comparison, Democrats are much less fiscally responsible.

That having been said, there are two significant numbers she should remember: 40 and 63 million; years the Republicans were out of power and number of people who voted for a social fundamentalist influenced administration.

If Christine Todd Whitman wishes to see the Republican Party revert back to having three wings--as Dobbs suggests--she clearly doesn't understand how that fractured approach destroyed any hopes of electoral success in the 60's and 70's. And what in the world did the Republican Party do right in the 50's under Eisenhower's leadership other than elect a President? If she truly believes these are the ideal circumstances under which the Party should operate, someone needs to ask her if she inhaled.

But she doesn't believe this, and thus we come to the true reason for her concern. It's the same pretention under which Democrats operate: self-aggrandizement. It's a desire to consolidate power within a small inner circle of the initiated. No organization can have success under such pretentious leadership. To be precise, Christine Todd Whitman truly seeks to re-establish the prominence of the Rockefeller Wing of the Party while George Bush (largely) is solidifying the Reagan.

I'll take the latter, thank you.