so reading the rolling mccain thread, what strikes me more than anything is how moderate mccain is on a number of major issues (gay marriage, campaign financing, etc.) that most prominent, vocal republicans are pretty unreasonably far-right on. but this guy's got the nomination, so - no matter how "split" the party might be in november, no matter how much he's trying to cover it up - his moderate side clearly appeals to a lot of republican voters.
so, my question is, are there actually that many moderate republicans left in congress? did the reagan-bush I era successfully purge every remaining non-right-winger from the party?
― J.D., Thursday, 10 April 2008 23:19 (seventeen years ago)
Hagel? Lugar? Collins? Olympia Snowe? Those are the names you usually see voting with Democrats.
― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Thursday, 10 April 2008 23:26 (seventeen years ago)
pls
― gabbneb, Thursday, 10 April 2008 23:27 (seventeen years ago)
hagel was the first name that came to mind, yeah.
i think it's easy to underestimate now just how radical the reagan administration was, and how comprehensively it swept away so much of the party's past. one observer at the 1984 convention remarked on how not a single speaker ever referred back to a single major republican figure before 1980 - not nixon, not eisenhower, not even lincoln. it was as if reagan had just invented a new party.
― J.D., Thursday, 10 April 2008 23:33 (seventeen years ago)
Hagel's very much a Conservative, he's just middle-of-the-country-isolationist enough (like Ron Paul), with some DC foreign policy realist orientation thrown in, to not like the war much
― gabbneb, Thursday, 10 April 2008 23:36 (seventeen years ago)
In national office? Damn few, if any. By now they all have been stained badly by the administration's arm twisting them into shameful, shameful votes. But hten, the PATRIOT Act left a lot of similar stains on "moderate" Dems, too.
"Hey, boys and girls of the COngress! Let's all vote for this unseen, unread bill-in-a-poke that hasn't even been printed by the Congressional printing office, yet! Because, if we don't pass it this very instant, we'll all be eaten by ogres."
"Sure thing, boss! We all hate them ogres."
― Aimless, Friday, 11 April 2008 00:27 (seventeen years ago)
my kingdom for a genuine ogre scare in our lifetime
― J0hn D., Friday, 11 April 2008 00:32 (seventeen years ago)