The Mankato Free Press takes a look at local reaction to Tim Pawlenty's observations at a GOP governors' meeting:
Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, speaking to fellow Republican governors in Florida last week, said the Republican Party is in deep trouble, losing its ability to compete in large swaths of America and ceding key blocs of voters to the Democrats. . .
. . .Area Republicans, however, aren’t as gloomy as some of the GOP’s national leaders...
In GOP: The party's not over, we found this gem:
[Paul] Bade considers Obama’s rise to be similar to that of Adolph Hitler’s in the 1930s, and he believes there’s an outside chance that America is headed for a dictatorship. More likely is a slide to socialism or, perhaps, just an inept presidency, he said.
“I’m almost expecting the Obama administration to make a botch of things,” Bade said. “They’re too ideologically socialist, and a lot of their ideas are impractical. They just don’t add up.”
Now where have we heard this before? Oh yeah:
The Atlanta Constitution wrote At times, you wonder how ‘Comedy Central’ could survive without Georgia. We think there'd would always be Southern Minnesota's GOP true believers like Bade in case the Daily Show comes up short for material. At least Georgia Congressman Paul Broun is a Lawmaker sorry about Obama slam. (And the meme isn't original to Broun nor recent, as this February 2008 post by David Neiwert demonstates). Bade explains his own take on "Ultimate Security" elsewhere online
It's telling for the fortunes of First District Republicans when Senator Dick Day is the voice of reason:
State Sen. Dick Day ran for Congress this year but saw his party opt for a more socially conservative Republican, who lost badly to Democratic Congressman Tim Walz. Day said the GOP needs to stand first for responsible governing — particularly in spending.
The budget deficits run up by the Republican-controlled federal government “drove me crazy,” Day said. And he thought his party’s focus on abortion, gay marriage bans and other social issues — at a time when Americans were losing their jobs and homes — didn’t sit well with voters.
“Hey, I don’t blame people,” he said of those who chose to punish the GOP in federal elections. . . .
. . .Day thinks there may be a backlash when the cost of Obama’s spending proposals begin to add up. At the same time, he doesn’t rule out the possibility that Democrats — with universal health care, tax cuts and programs aimed at helping the middle class, more regulation on corporate America — are offering what voters genuinely want.
“Maybe people want more government,” Day said. “I could be on the wrong side. I’m smart enough to realize it.”
Day lost September's Republican primary by a slightly less embarrassing margin than that enjoyed by the far more socially conservative candidate in the general election.
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