People with names like Eisenhower and Roosevelt (TR), are looking at the party as being so alien to the party they knew that the children and grandchilden of icon republicans see an exodus from the republican party.
"Eisenhower isn't the only GOP scion debating if the party still feels like home. Theodore Roosevelt IV, an investment banker in New York and an environmental activist like his great-grandfather, Teddy, takes issue with what he says is George W. Bush's inattention to global warming (and Republican presidential contender John McCain's flirtations with the religious right). He's unhappy with the cost of the global war on terror and the record deficits incurred to finance it. Ninety years ago, former president Teddy Roosevelt attacked Woodrow Wilson's pro-democracy idealism, calling it "milk-and-water righteousness"; Roosevelt's great-grandson doesn't like how the current president is promoting values abroad, either. "I come from a tradition of pragmatic Republicanism," he says. "This administration has taken the idea of aggressively exporting democracy à la Woodrow Wilson and gone in a direction even Wilson wouldn't have considered."
They really have nothing to rally around and Bush has taken the party in a destructive ride. With his presidency there are more people deserting. Bush drove out the principles of the party and now only one thing unites the republicans...
"Some Republicans, such as former secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger, believe Republicans will always close ranks behind their standard-bearer, unlike ever-fractious Democrats, no matter how upset they are with the direction of the party. "Certainly, Hillary unites the Republicans when almost nothing else will," he says. But Lowi thinks today's GOP schisms are "deeper and harder to plaster over." That worries GOP mavericks like Sen. Chuck Hagel as well as moderate party loyalists like Brent Scowcroft, national-security adviser under George H.W. Bush, who says, "We lack an organizing principle for the party."
Poll numbers don't yet reflect a massive moderate exodus. Still, Michael Dimock of the Pew Research Center says that Republican party identification has dropped "quite a bit." In 2002, 30 percent of Americans identified themselves as Republicans, 31 percent as Democrats. This year it's 25 percent Republican, 33 percent Dems. Independents, Dimock says, are leaning "much more Democratic." Even so, Eisenhower and other lifelong Republicans say they haven't heard much yet from the leading Democratic candidates that persuades them. "I can't tell you how many Republicans I've talked to who are thinking along radical lines" about deserting in '08 if they hear the right message, says Eisenhower. "It's a buyer's market. Make my day."
for the full story:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18507722/site/newsweek/
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