Steele: On Moderates

All you moderates out there, y'all come. I mean, that's the message," Steele said at a news conference. "The message of this party is this is a big table for everyone to have a seat. I have a place setting with your name on the front.
"Understand that when you come into someone's house, you're not looking to change it. You come in because that's the place you want to be." .......
"That vote on the stimulus bill was the effectiveness of a party call," he said. "That was a stand-up moment for every Republican.... And so, you voted yourself out of the party. We didn't kick you out." ......
Steele - who appeared to be the only African-American in the room Friday - said when he visited a Maryland Republican Party dinner in the mid-1980s he was "obviously a stranger in the room." But he said he was quickly embraced and rose to county party chairman two years later. From there, he went on to become state party chairman and lieutenant governor. ........... "The problem isn't that Americans are less conservative," he said. "It's that our credibility with them is shot. It's that we left them along the side of the road on our way to drinking that Potomac River water, getting high on power and influence and forgetting how we got where we are."

Well I'm from Maryland, I'm a Republican, and I was active in the 80's as well. I also supported the stimulus plan under Bush and Obama. In fact as I read the article I thought back to those days in the 80's when we supported Wayne Gilchrest against Roy Dyson, when we offered a simple solution; heh lets run an honest person who will not get intoxicated by the Potomac waters. And years later Wayne was not drunk on personal power or corrupted and yet not Republican enough.

I wonder who the GOP thought was the door to door foot soldiers? Who were these people that drove Dorchester county and posted signs at the firehouse, psoted signs in yards, went door to door and on election day helped get out the vote of the elderly?

Let me say again, in this blog I stated that I would "hold my nose" and vote for the aid to the economy. I said this as an American and a pragmatist with experience in finance, brokerage trading, private sector business, and international finance. I did not vote myself out of the party.

As a matter of fact if Steele claims his start as I do at the same time in MD, I propose that he "vote himself out of the party" as this is still my party as well. My blog has long supported Sen. Warren, Sen McCain, Sen Hagel, Colin Powell, Wayne Gilchrest, and other moderate republicans. If truth be told the party has been hijacked by a segment of the party who were marginalized when we "built the party" back in the 80's and 90's.

I'm glad that there is a recognition that there was a "drinking of koolaid" an intoxication of power. And I still think that the GOP doesn't get it. I think the GOP "gets it" when they reconnect with the Mainstreet Republican's. I think the GOP gets it when they stop claiming a monopoly on the ideas of the party and what divides, but instead focus on a gameplan ahead that people can participate in.

But lets get real.. there is no litmus on being Republican and seeing the systemic default risk, seeing a crisis, acting decisively, and supporting the market intervention. As a matter of fact what was irresponsible was starting two wars and going on a drunken spending spree, what made that "republican?" I mean it took this "new type of republican" to suggest a pre-emptive war, tax cuts, and an expansion of police state powers while waving a fetus to bring the GOP where it is at today.

I just want to point out two things, I have been republican as long as Steele has, that we both have but one vote, and that the only real difference is that I'm not seriously advocating that Steele leave the party, or that he has "voted himself out of it."

There is a serious absence of ideas and pragmatic solutions and approaches to the challenges we face where we hear the same old tired out rehearsed wedge issues from the now fully discredited pundits of the right.

Yeah we need new faces, new attitudes, and a new approach to imagining that the GOP is a "house party being hosted at our house."

Lets try taking the party back into the public, back into the library meeting room, and lets stop pretending that the party is "owned" by the few and instead belongs to us all.

If you try that approach that worked close to a quarter century ago you will foind that it works and that the people who will be unwelcome are the ones that don't want to observe those observations made above.

It's not your party... It's our party.. get use to it!