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In what is starting to look like a trend, the Republican Party has pushed yet another member to the breaking point by pulling so hard to the right. Former Nevada Lt. Governor Sue Wagner announced earlier this week that she has left the Republican Party, citing irreconcilable changes to the party’s mission statement and general ethos.

“It’s grown so conservative and tea-party oriented, and I just can’t buy into that,” Wagner told the Reno Gazette Journal. “I’ve left the Republican Party, and it’s left me at the same time.”

Wagner’s found herself at odds with the party when she refused to endorse Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angles due to her “extreme” views on abortion. Now, Wagner says, the party has taken a turn that has all but made her moderate ideology obsolete.

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Gay political activist and longtime Republican, Jimmy LaSalvia, did not merely leave the GOP last week. He loudly denounced his former party for its "culture of intolerance" and predicted it will never "win another Presidential election."

LaSalvia, who founded GOProud, and now plans to become independent, came to the inescapable conclusion that the party is just hopelessly "out of touch with life in America."

“The changes the Republican Party is implementing really amount to nothing more than lipstick on a pig,” LaSalvia said on Yahoo! and ABC News program Top Line. “It’s a culture of intolerance that I just don’t think any amount of policy changes can fix.”

The 2012 election that sealed the deal for LaSalvia.

“It was the Romney campaign that really got me to understand just how severe the problem is,” LaSalvia told Top Line. “And after [that], I just thought, ‘I don’t know if [the GOP] will ever win another Presidential election again.’”

His analysis was as practical as it was brutal. “The object of political parties is to win elections, and I’ve determined that the Republicans can never win a national election again, and so at that point, what’s the point?” While LaSalvia still identifies as a conservative, he feels he won't be alone as an independent. http://www.alternet.org/veteran-gay-conservative-activist-leaves-gop-c
alls-party-hopelessly-out-touch

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The Cry of the True Republican

I AM a genetic Republican. Five generations of Tafts have served our nation as unwaveringly stalwart Republicans, from Alphonso Taft, who served as attorney general in the late 19th century, through William Howard Taft, who not only was the only person to be both president of the United States and chief justice of the United States but also served as the chief civil administrator of the Philippines and secretary of war, to my cousin, Robert Taft, a two-term governor of Ohio.

Throughout my family’s more than 170-year legacy of public service, Republicans have represented the voice of fiscal conservatism. Republicans have been the adults in the room. Yet somehow the current generation of party activists has managed to do what no previous Republicans have been able to do — position the Democratic Party as the agents of fiscal responsibility.

(Speaking of Ted Cruz)This recent display of bomb-throwing obstructionism by Republicans in Congress evokes another painful, historically embarrassing chapter in the Republican Party — that of Senator Joseph McCarthy....Senator McCarthy was brought up short during the questioning of the United States Army’s chief counsel, Joseph N. Welch, who at one point demanded the senator’s attention, then said: “Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness.” He later added: “Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”

Watching the Republican Party use the full faith and credit of the United States to try to roll back Obamacare, watching its members threaten not to raise the debt limit — which Warren Buffett rightly called a “political weapon of mass destruction” — to repeal a tax on medical devices, I so wanted to ask a similar question: “Have you no sense of responsibility? At long last, have you left no sense of responsibility?”

There is more than a passing similarity between Joseph McCarthy and Ted Cruz, between McCarthyism and the Tea Party movement. The Republican Party survived McCarthyism because, ultimately, its excesses caused it to burn out. And eventually party elders in the mold of my grandfather were able to realign the party with its brand promise: The Republican Party is (or should be) the Stewardship Party. The Republican brand is (or should be) about responsible behavior. The Republican party is (or should be) at long last, about decency.

What a long way we have yet to go. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/23/opinion/the-cry-of-the-true-republic
an.html?_r=0

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I know many folks who were staunch Republicans who simply cannot be a part of the current GOP with the way its tactics and tone seem influenced by conservative talk show hosts and Tea Party members. To be sure, they have their strong proponents on the internet. Plus: current conservatives have lost the ability to communicate or discuss ideas. Lightning strikes more often than the thoughtful emails I get from conservative Republicans who disagree with TMV posts, my Cagle columns or articles in The Week. They are all screaming, yelling, and name calling. He who disagrees is an enemy, ill-intentioned, part of a conspiracy, dumb — not exactly the way to change the mind of someone with whom you disagree. But it seems largely about going on the attack against those who see things differently, not trying to make them agree.

Plus: on a national tour two years ago where I drove 49,000 miles across the country it was jarring how many people I met who were Republicans who were turned off by the tone of the current incarnation of their party and they word they used often was “extremist.” Many didn’t like the Democrats at all but they felt they had lost their party to a segment that had once been ONE segment of the party — not the party that called the shots.

And then there is the obvious: conservatives on talk radio, on cable, on Internet political sites make no attempt to hide the contempt and disdain they feel for those who are moderates or who are conservatives who believe in trying to reach some compromises, no matter how small. They’ve all but said “Get the hell out of our party” — and some Republicans who aren’t fond of Democrats are now doing just that.

And there’s little sign that the hard-liners will change their tune as they opt for a smaller tent with an ideological bouncer scrutinizing the crowd, looking for people to throw out of the tent. http://themoderatevoice.com/188227/non-tea-party-republicans-leaving-t
he-gop/#9mOjU7S8dqYmJ9Wv.99

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