Point Fingers At Each Other

Michael Grunwald wrote in Wapo After minutes upon minutes of soul-searching, Republicans are now in recrimination mode. And the GOP's various factions all agree: This wouldn't have happened if the party had listened to us. In the aftermath of the historic GOP losses Tuesday night, moderate Republicans quickly concluded that the party needs to be more moderate. Conservative Republicans declared that it should be more conservative. Main Street is angry at Wall Street, theo-cons are angry at neo-cons, and almost everyone is angry at President Bush and the GOP congressional leadership.

Iraq certainly hurt, but if the Repub;icans could have remained the party of fiscal conservative / low government and avoided the scandals we would have been fine.

CQ blogged So what's next for George Bush after having his party stripped of Congressional control? The final two years of a two-term presidency normally get devoted to The Legacy, as Oval Office occupants start to look longingly at the history books and wonder how their own presidencies will be recorded in them. No President wants The Legacy to be gridlock and can-kicking, and so Bush has made moves towards the Democrats in a manner similar to what Arnold Schwarzenegger did in California after a series of ill-conceived referenda.

Bush has a lot more Republican support than Schwarrenegger did. I don't blame him from trying to see if they are serious about bipartianship, but when he realizes they are not, I hope he will realize that a lot of the new Dems are moderate or conservatives, and that the Republicans should be able to peal a lot of them off when the Dems get too liberal.

blue Crab blogged Actually, I think that both groups

Moderates and Conservatives.

are correct, oddly enough. The Republican-conservative coalition depends on certain conservative tenets being a bedrock foundation for the Republicans. But at the same time, conservatives must realize that there are times when moderation rather than ideological purity are the better way to go. That was Reagan's strong suit, being able to stand on the truly important issues while yielding enough on other things to make it all work. Remember, he did it with an opposition Congress. The issue now will be how to define the true bedrock and not define everything as crucially important. That should be the goal now. Get the recriminations out of your systems, then start working on rebuilding. Soon.