Obama Camp Sees Potential in G.O.P. Discontent

[babylonsister]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/31/us/politics/31repubs.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&ref=politics&adxnnlx=1217593458-zjrjV8BeduuJQvbLB1Q8hw

Obama Camp Sees Potential in G.O.P. Discontent

By PATRICK HEALY
Published: July 31, 2008


Chuck Lasker, a political blogger and Internet consultant in Indiana, hosted a gathering last week of 20 people he calls “whispering Republicans” — party members like him who support Senator Barack Obama, a Democrat, for president. Over iced tea and brownies, the renegades took turns explaining why they liked Mr. Obama and recalling the strange stares from other Republicans.


Senator Barack Obama campaigning Wednesday in Rolla, Mo. Advisers say anger over the Iraq war and the economy could help them draw some Republicans to the polls for Mr. Obama.
Jae C. Hong/Associated Press


“It was sort of like a group therapy session,” said Mr. Lasker, who said he had never voted for a Democrat, for any office, until the Indiana primary in May. “We all wanted to make sure we weren’t a little crazy.”

Republican anger over the Iraq war and the economy has left some advisers to Mr. Obama hopeful that they can capture pockets of Republican votes on Election Day in states like Alaska, Indiana, Montana, North Dakota and Virginia. Advisers also said they had recently begun emphasizing Mr. Obama’s ties to Republicans as a way to make undecided independent voters more comfortable with him.

In recent weeks, Obama aides have met with Republican leaders in crucial states to strategize about wooing undecided voters. The campaign is considering inviting Republicans to speak at the Democratic convention. Obama aides pointed to a defense by Senator Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska, a critic of the war, after Senator John McCain’s campaign ran an advertisement attacking Mr. Obama. And they have tapped sympathetic Republican brand names like Susan Eisenhower, the granddaughter of the former president, to reach out to party members.

snip//

An invigorated McCain campaign, though, is not what some Republicans want. Even some who once supported President Bush say that they have tired of the party’s hawkishness, unstinting support for the war and attacks on privacy, and that they believe Mr. Obama offers fresher thinking than Mr. McCain or others in both parties.

“I really worry McCain would just continue most of these wrongheaded policies,” said Rita E. Hauser, a prominent philanthropist and former Bush fund-raiser who supports Mr. Obama. “I don’t want to become a Democrat; I just want a new direction and then a chance for the Republican Party to get back to its roots.”

[speedoo]

1. Beautiful. This is even better than rethug apathy. nt

[Hope And Change]

2. K & R!

[Alcibiades]

3. The old-line, pre-Reagan Republicans

Before the evangelical right and tax cuts at all costs, with their belief in rectitude and responsibility, and the old Taft Republican tradition against militarism. Some of them have come out against Bush. They don't fully realize what their party has become. Any Republican who wishes to become president must morph himself into Bush. If they were smart, they would abandon hope of reforming the Republicans and become Democrats, because ours is now the only party supporting responsibility, the Constitution and the rule of law.

[starroute]

4. I wouldn't *want* them to become Democrats

We *need* a two-party system. The Democrats are as capable of being corrupted by power as anyone -- or at least of becoming stale in their thinking and set in their ways.

But we need a second party that doesn't base its agenda on gaming the nation's institutions to attain permanent dominance. That means we need real Republicans to stand up and take back the wreckage of their party.

[Alcibiades]

5. I'd prefer a multi-party democracy

rather than a two-party system, but I get your meaning. I was suggesting that they have an epiphany that their party is flat-out wrong and become progressives. Hey, it could happen. This would not leave the US as a one party state--it would leave us in charge, for a time, and leave the Republicans with no one but lunatics as their base.

The strange frankensteinian coalition of selfish rich people, wanna-be selfish rich people, corporations, militarists, evangelical Protestants, conservative Catholics, conservative Jews, libertarians and crypto-fascists will fall apart eventually.

[dflprincess]

6. Perhaps after he wins over the discontented Republicans

he'll remember the discontented Democrats and throw us a few bones.

If Republicans aren't happy with the direction their party has taken, they should try and fix it. Don't come over and break our party by turning it any more Republican Lite than it's already become.


"The campaign is considering inviting Republicans to speak at the Democratic convention..." :wtf: