Colin Powell Lectures GOP – Return to Center Because Americans Want MORE Government and Taxes
Mayor Michael Bloomberg, left, joins former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell in Washington for President Barack Obama’s $5.7 billion national service bill signing, Tuesday, April 21, 2009. The bill triples the size of the AmeriCorps service program over the next eight years and expands ways for students to earn money for college by helping those in their neighborhoods
The Republican Party is in big trouble and needs to find a way to move back to the middle of the country, former Secretary of State Colin Powell said Monday.
Powell said the GOP is “getting smaller and smaller” and “that’s not good for the nation.” He also said he hopes that emerging GOP leaders, such as House Minority Whip Cantor, will not keep repeating mantras of the far right.
“The Republican Party is in deep trouble,” Powell told corporate security executives at a conference in Washington sponsored by Fortify Software Inc. The party must realize that the country has changed, he said. “Americans do want to pay taxes for services,” he said. “Americans are looking for more government in their life, not less.”
Powell, secretary of State during the first term of former President George W. Bush, made waves last year when he came out for the Democratic presidential candidate, then-Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois. Powell described the 2008 GOP candidate, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, as “a beloved friend” but said he told him last summer that the party had developed a reputation for being mean-spirited and driven more by social conservatism than the economic problems that Americans faced.
Powell also criticized other GOP leaders, for bowing too much to the right.
Wrong.
Obviously, Powell who has never been a conservative cannot even read the polls.
Why doesn’t Powell, who was fired by President Bush and replaced by Condi Rice, re-register and end his misery with the GOP?
Technorati Tags: Colin Powell, GOP
2 Comments
Reaganite Republican Resistance
Yet another attempt at baiting fake conflicts on the right >yawn< in order to divert attention from Obama’s habitual dishonesty, shocking disregard for the law, constitution, and/or ethics… and general, all-round incompetency.
Team Obama, the DNC, and their MSM sycophants have been employing despicable Alinsky-esque divide-and-conquer and character assassination techniques for months now… manufacturing synthetic “fights†like Rush vs. Steele, plus ceaseless ridicule of Jindal, Palin, even shameful distortion of the legacy of Ronald Reagan. Clearly, the strategy is to eliminate GOP rallying points and philosophical framework for 2010/12 and create the image of a party in disarray.
And it’s not difficult to see why the Democrats might prefer to banter playfully about made-up GOP “scandals†and irrelevancies like Meghan McCain’s latest drivel than debate Obama’s ongoing destruction of the country.
When their pork-n-welfare spending orgy fails to create any real economic gains -but stokes vicious inflation and crashes the dollar instead- the Democrats face a bloodbath in 2010.
And by 2012?
LOL, the GOP could take 40 states running Gilbert Gottfried.
Exile
Reaganite: While I generally agree with your sentiment, you vastly overestimate the Republican Party’s position in the Obama-Era political battlefield. The GOP is hurting, and in desperate need of reform. Americans are ill-informed about the extent of Obama’s policies and do not understand philosophical criticism of his spending policies. Republicans should be the first and last line of defense in this new era of government growth, but instead they are pandering to these juvenile fights created by Democrats. Colin Powell would rather all Republicans just become Democrats and get on board, but he doesn’t realize that by failing to mount a proper offensive against Obama’s policies they are effectively doing just that.
The Republican party needs new blood, and a return to the lower tax, smaller government and free market models. What do Republicans stand for these days? Conservative morals? Anti-abortion? Anti-immigration? Old white men running the show? Republicans are hurting and these views are doing nothing to grow their strength. I foresee a bleak 2010 and 2012 if Republicans either stay the course and continue doing nothing or follow the Powell doctrine and become an opposition party in name only. Or have all the Republicans today simply lost sight of why we prefer small government in the first place? (Hint: We fought our very first war as a nation for smaller government, it must have meant something).