Looking at the Republicans from a Perch in Europe

London Guardian

Republicans lurch ever rightwards
The party's refusal to move to the centre threatens to undermine any hopes Republicans have of recapturing Congress in 2010

Steven Guess
guardian.co.uk, Friday 26 March 2010 20.00 GMT

The Republican party is showing no signs of moving to the centre of the political spectrum and is pushing forward with a strategy of total opposition to the president and his policies. It's an all-or-nothing gamble that has the party backed into a corner in the face of shifting attitudes towards the president and his domestic agenda. So long as Republicans continue to characterise the president as the antichrist, bent on imposing a total government takeover of the economy, it's impossible for them to reach across the aisle to soften their image. Congressional Republicans find themselves unable to work with an administration their base views as tyrannical and arrogant without being seen as legitimising a neo-Hitler figure by their supporters. It's an unhealthy dynamic that threatens to undermine any hopes Republicans have of recapturing Congress in 2010.

The latest evidence that the party is lurching to the right comes as a former Bush speechwriter, David Frum, resigned from his position at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington-based conservative thinktank. Frum's resignation comes not long after writing a scathing editorial attacking the GOP strategy of total defiance. Frum argued that conservative entertainment doesn't want Republicans to succeed on a policy level because it would require the sort of compromises with Democrats that doesn't foment angry outrage in the base. Suddenly, a Republican voice was suggesting that it wasn't Democratic trickery that got healthcare passed, but a flawed Republican strategy...link to complete article