Rush Vs. Powell

The battle inside the Republican party was highlighted this week when Colin Powell took a shot at Rush Limbaugh:

"I think the party has to take a hard look at itself," Powell said in the interview, which was taped Wednesday. "There is nothing wrong with being conservative. There is nothing wrong with having socially conservative views — I don't object to that. But if the party wants to have a future in this country, it has to face some realities. In another 20 years, the majority in this country will be the minority."

"I think the party has to stop shouting at the world and at the country,"Powell said. "I think that the party has to take a hard look at itself, and I've talked to a number of leaders in recent weeks and they understand that." Powell, who says he still considers himself a Republican, said his party should also stop listening to conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh.

"Can we continue to listen to Rush Limbaugh?" Powell asked. "Is this really the kind of party that we want to be when these kinds of spokespersons seem to appeal to our lesser instincts rather than our better instincts?"

The video is here, if you're interested. What Powell is basically saying is that the Republican party needs to gain influence again by appealing to moderates and minorities by moving toward the center to peel some support from the Dems and Indies. The flip side, of course, is what true conservatives like Limbaugh suggest: the way to broaden the base of the party is through defining and sticking to a set of core principles that anyone is welcome to join. Powell is saying that the GOP needs to chase voters in order to implement an agenda; Limbaugh is saying that we need to set an agenda which will attract voters.

Anyway, Rush responded this way:

Full transcript here.

Hot Air backs up Rush with a rather obvious argument on why Powell is wrong:

For someone who supposedly wants to promote tolerance, Powell seems pretty intolerant of dissent. And let’s make one point very, very clear: when the Republicans actually nominated a moderate for their candidate, fellow “moderates” like Powell left the party anyway. If Powell want to support Republican big-tent efforts, they need to stop going running away when a big-tenter runs for office.

If the GOP wants to win governing majorities again, they will have to find ways to make their message relevant to the majority. That will never happen with purity purges, which are ideologically satisfying but a quick path to a generation out of power. Rush knew that, which is why he supported John McCain in the general election, and why he supports Republicans at election time. Powell apparently hasn’t learned that much about politics as yet, which is why he doesn’t support Republicans at election time but feels himself enough of an authority to speak on party unity.

That is exactly right! The big-government Reps have been whining for years now about how we need to moderate to draw in support of non-conservatives. Well, guess what? That's what the party has done, and it has been losing steadily ever since. When it came to crunch time, those same moderates jumped ship, while we conservatives held our noses and closed ranks. And yet, for some reason, we're now supposed to let the moderates stay in charge??

If we look to history, we can see that during the times of the biggest Republican victories, the party has been strongly conservative.

That's because Americans live in a way that is fundamentally conservative. For example, who wants more government interference in their lives? Who wants to pay enormously higher taxes? Who wants to lose the freedom to choose what one buys, where one goes, and how one gets there? A few, perhaps, but not many; certainly not a majority! Those are fundamentally conservative ideas, and even if most Americans aren't conservative Republicans, they still think along these lines. When a dynamic conservative leader with a record of integrity and success comes along, the country rallies behind that person and the GOP wins. That's because those core principles hold true for everyone regardless of race, gender, economic class, and so on. They don't depend on demographics, they depend on integrity, trust, and fairness.

So, with all due respect, Gen. Powell, you're wrong. You had your way for the past eight years, and your way has thrown the GOP into a shambles with toothless minority status. How about we go back to our way, when we had 49-state landslides and 40-seat gains in the House?

It works so much better that way.

There's my two cents.