It's a religious thing. If you are convinced your word is the one true word you don't compromise.

Compromising to these people means their words aren't true. They would rather fail than compromise, even if it means bringing the country and the economy down with them.

History will show Bush/Cheney/Rove got caught in late 2006 red handed in their attempts to turn our nation into single-party rule. One of the first orders of business for the new Congress should be to bring those involved in the USA firings and Mukasey to task for their involvement in such skullduggery. The brand will forever be tarnished in the minds of common Americans specifically because of the Bush years. -Kevo

Imagine if McCain/Palin are elected. These various factions will be playing Mommy against Daddy like vicious little brats.

Of course, they need to have a purge, for it is impossible for them to have fucked up so badly without having been infiltrated by Communists. They need to have some show trials to ensure that such breech of security in the leadership of the only Party that stands between America and dictatorship of the proletariat does not occur again.

The Gathering of the Cowards.

They should do the world a favor and commit hari kari.

Having one's name on the list of invitees should become the equivalent of a scarlet letter. These are the people who are responsible for the mess we are in. They probably can't get what they deserve, stoning being considered out of bounds by those not on the list, but they surely can get labeled.

Tune in for tomorrow's episode of as the GOP turns:

"Will the conservatives purge themselves of the religious right...tune in to find out!!!"

As experts in putting the "moron" in oxymoron maybe they should try creating another one on the order of compassionate conservative, seeing how well that worked for a while. They just have to find a word to stick in front of "conservative" that effectively misrepresents their extreme philosophy of abject greed and selfishness. The "country first conservative" and "Regular Joe the Plumber conservative" are just a little too moronic and not enough oxy.

I suggest they take the opposite tack and try honesty. How about "fuck-you conservative?"

"There's a sense that the Republican Party is broken, but the conservative movement is not,"

Um, actually is was the conservative movement that broke the Republican Party.

Yeesh. Right wingers really do live in their own little world.

I find this comment by the conservatives to be very interesting "One of the topics of discussion will be how to fashion a "national grassroots political and policy coalition similar to the out Reagan years," There is this tremendous desire by conservatives to return to the "glory years" of the Reagan administration as if it were the holy grail of their movement. Yet, having been very involved with the Reagan crew, it seems to me that this is the route of their problems. The country is now well past the Reaganomic era--one that has been shown not to work--- and should the current conservative movement decide on a way to go back there, they are doomed to further failure. As an aside, I cannot for the life of me understand this infatuation with Ronnie....the naming of every airport, building, street, and alleyway after him has gone far enough. His only saving grace was his ability to communicate (after all he was an actor, yet he left the country much worse off then he is given credit for.

The politics of failure have failed! It's time to make them work again!

Republicans need to have a serious conversation with themselves, but I don't think the ruling class has the introspection neccessary to move ahead.

Any conservative post mortem will be an exercise in finger-pointing rather than an honest assessment of what went wrong.

Yep, this is just what Republicans need. The should double down on their conservative principles. That's the ticket. They might end up the party of Utah and Alabama.

The real question is will Democrats run to the left leaving room in the middle for new center right party. My guess is with Obama in charge they are going stay center left. The progressive wing is going to have to fight hard for its issues.

And to demonstrate how good their judgment is, it was of course this secret cabal of conservative leaders that anointed W for president in the first place. We all know how well that worked out. I think the Republicans would be well served to replace this secret cabal with a more intelligent secret cabal.

I'm thinking that a meeting of people to form a new, politically viable coalition shouldn't include the same people that made previous coalition not viable.

New coalition -- Reliance on civic community (like Cameron). Open to all religions and role of family, whatever that means (younger Evangelicals not as nuts as older generations, this would attract minorities, etc), Ron Paul-esque resistance to government and war (it's unlikely Obama will tail back its powers and get out of Iraq/Afghanistan soon), financial sanity (getting rid of Nordquist) and pay as you go (rather than spend-but-no-tax)

This helps the corruption stuff w/ less gov power, moderates its social conservatism, and gets Wall Street back.

Look, I and others have been saying for months what Atrios finally got around to recognizing. 2006 proved the Republican brand was badly damaged, and the last two years did nothing to revive it. If I had my way -- and I advocated for this within the party -- the Democrats would have run more aggressively against the Republican brand this cycle. Not to win, necessarily, but to further define the word 'Republican' as damaged goods.

On this point --

"There's a sense that the Republican Party is broken, but the conservative movement is not,"

-- we can only hope that there are a lot of bigwigs who really believe this. Because it is completely, utterly wrong. Conservatism as a brand itself has been completely co-opted by evangelicals, leaving no shred of the small-government, limited-government, fiscal-restraint meaning of conservatism. Conservative now means exactly who and what Sarah Palin is, and that's clearly not where America is or wants to go. They can pretty her up, or find a new bimbopol, or teach her how to say better buzzwords, but the majority of the electorate is not interested in an evangelical whackjob running the country.

So, what to do?

Not a damn thing. Let them have at it.

Hope, but don't expect, that Bill Kristol, who foisted Sarah Palin on the McCain campaign, comes out with visible bruises. But the participants probably all love her.

Ah yes. The party is broken, so the best way to fix it is if a cabal of power brokers - whose names aren't even being released - meet together to forge a new mission for the Republican party. The proles will of course sign on - no one needs to actually bother asking them what they think is important.

Sounds like an excellent strategy for the GOP. They should definitely go with that. I was thinking that the crack-up might be between various factions (theocons vs moneycons vs neocons), but now I'm wondering if they might be setting themselves up for some good old fashioned "class warfare", where the overclass and the proles get to duke it out instead. Of course, the overclass still has Limbaugh to parrot their talking points day in and day out to the proles (and I guarantee that Limbaugh will be at that meeting next week), so perhaps their coalition won't fall to faction warfare after all. At least, not yet...

Their choice of Sarah Palin as the means of asserting themselves shows just how out of touch these people are. Do they really believe that more coaching can somehow make Palin into a serious, credible candidate? I doubt it. It's more likely that they believe that if they just find the right catch phrases and have Palin repeat them often enough they'll have a winner.

Are there enough rational conservatives left to even form a cabal? It will be an angry day at the monkey house. The feces will be flying.

The first thing they should look at is what responsibility the Republican Party has in the various current crises the nation is dealing with. Instead, they'll try to figure out how to rebrand themselves while adhering to their screwed up world view.

Secondly, they should examine all they have done to alienate voters through the amping up of fear and hatred. Instead, they'll look for more sellable enemies to blame next time around.

Thirdly, they should reexamine the heightened role religion has played in their party's demise and try to distance themselves from it. Instead, they'll look to new charismatic religious leaders to bring in the fold.

Because conservatives are incapable of any sort of self-reflection, this "meeting" will amount to nothing. Ultimately, they'll find a popular stooge to shill their bullshit and we'll relive the Reagan years and suffer for them.

Agenda!

The present day leaders of the republican party are the shrill finger-pointers who, three years ago, wouldn't allow anyone a platform to speak if the message wasn't approved by them beforehand. (They still wouldn't if they were in control.)

Although JM's article did not say who the attendees of this meeting would be, it seems to me that having an exclusive event like this is the unofficial split of the party. Conservatives have demonstrated time and time again that they are never to blame for their own failure. The meeting then, is ostensibly to assign blame. Fingers will point to the Obamacans, and the party will begin to cannibalize itself.

It will be a badge of honor to not be an invitee, and to be one of the republican 'accused'.

These conservatives seem to overlook the fact that Reagan was a success because he was able to bring along the social conservatives, fiscal conservatives and foreign policy/defense conservatives. Looks to me like they're trying to create a three-legged stool with only one leg.

Conservatives are exalting Reagan and his coalition? OK.

Here's my observation about local politics. Some communities want to get back to their glory days. Some communities plan for the future based on their current situation.

The communities that want to return to the glory days are mostly losers. They aren't accomplishing much for themselves.

Reagan's coalition worked because it appealed to the "Whites" who were concerned Democrats and the government were doing too much to help Blacks and allowing "Whites" to lose ground.

If Obama wins big it's hard to reconcile this with there being a large block of "Whites" who are pissed-off that government and the Dems are doing too much to help Blacks.

Even if the Conservative movement could resurrect Reagan and make him eligible to run I don't think he'd win.

The best strategy for the GOP may be to lay low and wait for Dems to screw-up. I mean how long can this FDR-LBJ-BHO coalition last? It might only be a couple decades, right?

If they're all gathered in one place it will be easier to arrest them.

Fiscal conservatism died two weeks ago, when they partially nationalized the banks (under a Republican administration!). And social conservatism by itself is just, so, 20th century.

Steve Benen wrote: "The party had it all just a few years ago, did exactly what it wanted to do, ran over Democrats as if they were speed-bumps, and saw all of their ideas fail miserably."

On the contrary, their "ideas" were largely successful in accelerating the concentration of wealth and power into the hands of the Republican Party's owners -- the most reactionary and rapacious elements of America's Ultra-Rich Ruling Class, Inc. The rich are richer, and more powerful, and more firmly in control than ever of the Federal government as a powerful mechanism for expanding and enforcing their grasp on wealth and power. And everyone else is screwed, impoverished and disempowered. And these changes will be very, very, very difficult to reverse, even for an Obama administration and a strong Democratic majority in both houses of Congress.

That's the Republican definition of success.

The Democrats refuse to bring liberalism out from the closet where it's been hiding for nearly thirty years, and so there is no alternative to free market unfettered capitalism where government exists only to further the interests of the rich and powerful.

There was a point made by one of the pundits last night - I can't remember which show - that Obama is being very careful in his campaign to avoid mentioning that Democrats are in a position to control the legislative and executive branches, enabling them to make sweeping changes in national policy. In effect, the Democrats are terrified that somebody is going to notice they're in power, and shout "Liberals! Run for your lives!" The Republicans revel in their power, and thump their chests in triumph. The Democrats shrink in shame, and mumble humble apologies for showing up at all, and promise that government won't actually do anything.

How can you expect Republicans to admit that their ideology doesn't work, when even the Democrats don't dare utter such sacrilege?

The Democrats will fail, because they don't want to do anything different. Not really. And the Republicans will regain power because they do Reaganomics much better than the Democrats do.

The "don't dilute the Kool-Aid" reflex used to belong to the left, in Europe anyway. Back to Clause 4! This guaranteed long stretches of conservative rule. As long as Obama performs reasonably, he can comfortably look forward to 8 years.

The Republican Party needs a moderate left wing to appeal to moderates and independents. The nuts are not going to allow it, so Barrack Obama is going to scoop those voters, as he already is doing.

This has all the markings of a political Wannsee Conference; the goal being to plot the practical implementation of usurping power and overthrowing the Republic, because an Obama presidency will seal their fates, both collectively and individually. There's just too much cash on the line for it to be anything else.

This is the ramp-up to their "Final Solution...."

The gathering won't do them much good unless they confront the fact that their problem is more of governing than of getting elected. They had nearly a decade of smashing electoral success, and what do they have to show for it? Runaway government, and a weaker presence in the world than at any moment since WW2.

But that self-defeating kind of government is inevitable when your electoral strategy is to pander to yahoos. You don't have a basis for anything beyond your base's fears and resentments.

Oh yeah, the Democrats have done that before, too. Only we don't call it a 'retreat.'

We call is a 'circular firing squad.'

They'll do nothing but blame each other, and the Republican party as we know it, the evil alliance that Rove leveraged, will collapse.

This is Bush's legacy.

"There's a sense that the Republican Party is broken, but the conservative movement is not," said this source

The problem is that there is no coherent conservative movement, just a Republican Party. The various factions (each of which overlaps with some of the others, but directly opposes some that it does not overlap) that vie for control of the "conservative" label, from the defenders of existing wealth to the secular authoritarians to the neocons to the Christian fundamentalists to the libertarians, aren't part of one movement, indeed, their interests are often directly opposed. They've been superficially united because they all believed something that couldn't be true for all of them: that working together in the Republican Party would help advance their vision of America. Essentially, they each believed that they were taking advantage of the gullibility of the others (and at different times in the last several decades, that's been true to a greater or lesser extent for different factions, but the big winners for most of the time when the Republican Party was successful were the overlapping pro-wealthy and secular authoritarian factions, with the neocons having their moment in the Bush Presidency, and the Christian fundamentalists and libertarians getting stroked and given mostly symbolic pandering--not that those panders weren't horrendous policy, and significant in their own right, just not significant in advancing the interests each group wants, so as to keep them hungry.)

If the Party falls apart, the "conservative movement", as such, is dead, in favor of a whole bunch of smaller "conservative" movements with conflicting and sometimes diametrically opposed understandings of what it means to be "conservative".

Conservatism better mean more than red-baiting, race-baiting, deficit spending, overturning Roe V. Wade, and American Exceptionalism. That's what got them in the fix they're in.

this has all the markings of a wansee conference.

but maybe they're just gathering to await the mother ship that's hiding behind the hale-bopp comet!

"How can you expect Republicans to admit that their ideology doesn't work, when even the Democrats don't dare utter such sacrilege?"

Really ?

Obama on trickle-down economics:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/30/two-minute-obama-ad-blast_n_130507.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoaUWG-wqE8

In a rather silly segment by Mara Liason on Morning Edition, Michael Gerson, former speechwriter for President Bush, had the following revelation:

"Because of Iraq in 2005 and 2006 and his political weakness, every disturbing element of the Republican Party had a kind of renaissance or revival."

So the crazies only started finding their voice in the GOP in "2005 and 2006" -- due to Iraq? Up until then, it was all sweetness and moderation?

Next we'll be hearing that George Bush was really a closet liberal.

Three questions:

1) Who is still considered conservative enough to be invited to this shindig? Are conservatives like Andrew Sullivan, who support Obama, going to be there? Or is it only going to be for "true" conservatives?

2) What exactly do Republicans have left to run on? They've lost all credibility on foreign and economic policy and most American's are finally realizing that you cannot repeatedly cut taxes and still have a functioning government. Smaller government sounds great in the abstract, but isn't turning out too well in reality.

3) What are moderate Republicans going to do? Are they going to stay Republicans and try to regain control of the party, or are they going to abandon the right-wing and form a centrist third party?

But while the religious right is a bunch of lunatics, they're not what destroyed the Repub brand.

It was right-wing economics that wrecked the party.

Once the economy took a screaming nosedive into the shitter, middle class Americans bailed on 25 years of conservative management of the economy. That's why Repubs will spend the next quarter of a century wandering in the desert.

Had the economy not tanked, social conservatives would still be getting Repubs to kiss their asses.

The real civil war within Repubs will be whether over accepting how much of a role should the government have in managing the economy.

Abortion, gay rights, sex ed -- all sideshows now.

They should name the confab "Stabbed in the Back 08." It's all they'll have to talk about for a couple of years.

Schadenfreude....mmm.

I did a "find" on "Grover Norquist" in this article. Did I missing something? Surely this stalwart of the GOP will be present at this not-so-secret meeting. It's inconceivable that Jack Jack Abramoff's cabana boy wouldn't be on hand, pounding on the table demanding taxpayer relief with his right hand and scooping up kickbacks with his left.

I did a "find" on "Grover Norquist" in this article. Did I missing something? Surely this stalwart of the GOP will be present at this not-so-secret meeting. It's inconceivable that Jack Jack Abramoff's cabana boy wouldn't be on hand, pounding on the table demanding taxpayer relief with his right hand and scooping up kickbacks with his left.

"The Phantom's" comment pretty well nails it down. His remark > should become a Democrat's mantra.

Conservative? You mean like Bush and Palin?

quote "There's a sense that the Republican Party is broken, but the conservative movement is not."

god, i hope that obviously backasswards spirit prevails.....they'll be in the wilderness forever if the dems don't scootch the pooch....

one can only wonder how this unnamed source defines "the conservative movement."

if he means the trickle-down crowd + the bible thumpers + the neo-con foreign policy "experts" then i'd say he's really into drinking the kool-ade....

the conservative movement is broken because conseritive ideas have been conclusivly proven to be fraudulent.....

and yet these guys seem to think it's the republan "brand" that's at fault...

why they can't understand the concept that "the dog won't eat the food" is beyond me...

guess i must lack faith in the american people or somethin'

Christopher Buckley predicted this several days ago and suggested the meeting be titled "Conservatism--What the F**k?"

the majority of the electorate is not interested in an evangelical whackjob running the country

Again!