A group of Republican leaders, led by former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, Senator John McCain of Arizona, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, and House Minority Whip Eric Cantor of Virginia, formed today the National Council for a New America, which plans town hall meetings around the country to produce Republican ideas on education, health care, energy, national security and the economy, as alternatives to the programs of the Obama Administration.
The group is separating itself from Republican National Committee Chair Michael Steele, demonstrating that a split has developed as to tactics to be utilized.
Senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine, and George Voinovich of Ohio have argued for a "bigger tent" in order to expand the party base. They argue that the party must move from the narrow conservative party which turned off young voters, Hispanics, women and Independents, to a party of inclusiveness. As it is now, the Republican party, originally the party of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, has become the party of the Old Confederacy and of narrow minded leaders, including Sarah Palin, Mark Sanford, Rick Perry, and Michele Bachmann.
So the GOP is involved in its own "civil war", and the public utterances of Rush Limbaugh and Dick Cheney only make the possibility of Republican success in the future less likely. When only 20 percent of those polled identify themselves as Republicans, we are indeed witnessing the disintegration of the party as we knew it. The road from the political wilderness to power will be a long, hard trek, and one must wonder if a new party will form and replace the GOP as the loyal opposition.