{"id":73,"date":"2005-10-13T23:50:31","date_gmt":"2005-10-14T05:50:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/?p=73"},"modified":"2005-10-13T16:52:02","modified_gmt":"2005-10-13T22:52:02","slug":"how-the-republicans-let-it-slip-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/nada\/dump-duhbya\/how-the-republicans-let-it-slip-away\/","title":{"rendered":"How the Republicans Let It Slip Away"},"content":{"rendered":"

How the Republicans Let It Slip Away<\/a> By David Ignatius<\/p>\n

What’s interesting is that most of these wounds are self-inflicted.<\/strong> They draw a picture of a party that, for all its <\/p>\n

seeming dominance, isn’t prepared to be the nation’s governing party. The hard right, which is the soul of the modern <\/p>\n

GOP<\/em>, would rather be ideologically pure than successful.<\/strong> Governing requires making compromises and getting your hands <\/p>\n

dirty, but the conservative purists disdain those qualities. …<\/p>\n

Bush and the Republicans had a chance after 2004 to become the <\/p>\n

country’s natural governing party. They controlled the White House and both houses of Congress. The Democrats were in utter disarray, <\/p>\n

leaderless and idea-less. When Bush took the podium in January to deliver his soaring second inaugural address, the future seemed to <\/p>\n

belong to the Republicans.<\/p>\n

Bush squandered this opportunity by falling into the trap that has snared the modern GOP — of playing <\/p>\n

to the base rather than to the nation. The Republicans behave as if the country agrees with them on issues, when that <\/p>\n

demonstrably isn’t so.<\/strong> …<\/p>\n

A CNN\/USA Today\/Gallup poll in late August found 54 percent describing themselves as pro-<\/p>\n

choice and only 38 percent as pro-life, roughly the same percentages as a decade ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How the Republicans Let It Slip Away By David Ignatius What’s interesting is that most of these wounds are self-inflicted. They draw a picture of a party that, for all its seeming dominance, isn’t prepared to be the nation’s governing party. The hard right, which is the soul of the modern GOP, would rather be … Continue reading How the Republicans Let It Slip Away<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dump-duhbya"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}