http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/05/05/ ... index.html
The only problem is that no such pick has been announced yet.
There's been a flurry of action on behalf of the Republican Party over the past week. They're ramping up for a fight over the Supreme Court and going on a tour to try and "re-brand" the Party. Yet in every respect, them seem to not understand that their problem isn't just a communications problem.
The Republican Party ultimately lost the 2008 election for the same reason they lost the 2006 election; their policies were not, by and large, successful and their base has been shrinking. The Party has been drifting more and more the politically-conservative side of the spectrum for years...and that hasn't been a secret. It elected figures like South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint, who is so far right that he has publically stated that gays and single women shouldn't be allowed to get jobs in the education sector. The recent defection of Senator Arlen Specter to the Democrats shouldn't have come as much of a surprise; Republicans have been steadily purging their ranks of moderate Republicans for years.
Yet the re-branding tour is essentially a retread of an old tire, not the shiny new tire that the GOP needs. The Republican Party isn't really making a major departure from its' previous political platform; they're just saying it needs to be repackaged, with more emphasis on economic issues (and conservative economic priorities) and less on hot-button social issues. Republicans are losing elections because their voting base has dropped to just one in four Americans, approximately. They have largely abandoned the center, and are now in a paradoxical political position; in order to regain relevancy and power, they need to moderate themselves. Yet any move to moderate themselves enrages the hard-core neoconservatives who now form the rank and file of the Party, endangering the support of a bloc that the Republicans literally cannot win without. Democrats, on the other hand, are not as beholden to their liberal base and have been able to make major inroads amongst centrist and independent voters.
The Republicans appear not to have learned any lessons from the past several years; shrill voices on the Right like Limbaugh demand an even sharper and more fanatical conservatism. They seek to pick a fight with Obama on his Supreme Court pick...not because they have any qualm with the as-yet-to-be-named candidate, but simply because Obama is a Democrat. In other words, conservatives want a fight just for the sake of political posturing and resistance to a majority selected by the American people.
And how terrified he is that Obama is going to pick a nominee for the wrong reason. Hey, Orrin, you brainless jackass -- you're on the judiciary committee!! Guess what you get to do then -- you get to NOT APPROVE a nominee who you think is too "activist" or "empathetic" or whatever-the-fuck.
