Boehner Speaks on Party Divide

John Boehner says the republican party accepts moderates. They haven't been very accepting of Olympia Snow or John McCain and I can't think of another moderate republican aside from Susan Collins.

Republicans are hitching their wagon to the tea party because they identify with the tea party. Republicans are having a battle with themselves. Fringe folk like Sarah Palin suggest that if republicans just stick to their conservative guns, so to speak, then they can win. Limbaugh:

"The Republican Party needs to learn something,'' suggests Limbaugh, whom the Obama White House has tried to paint as the voice of the Republican Party. "If it goes country club blue blood moderate, it's going to lose. If it goes Reagan conservative and commits to it, it's going to win landslides. Swamp

While most republicans seem to want to espouse tea party values, white culture and all of that, they realize they can't win elections on tea party values because that's not where the nation is.

So there is a conflict among republicans. Increasingly what's happening is the tea party fringe wants to de-legitimizing government altogether, which makes things even more interesting.

Valerie Jarrett on the marginalization of the republican party:

Rahm Discusses Fox News Slant

Rahm Emanuel says Fox is not a news organization.
It is a perspective. What's happening is other news organizations are following Fox. I agree. It's almost too late though. There has been a breakdown in what constitutes news and a gradual degradation of the craft of journalism itself. The White House is doing a good thing though. It's pointing out to people that what Fox does is not news. People need to recognize that. They need to know the difference between facts and opinion. There is this scary trend of people believing in things, despite evidence to the contrary.

Obama an Effective President Says McCain

More from John McCain, who told CNN's John King that the stimulus has had an effect. He's just worried about the deficit. I think we're all concerned about the deficit, especially Obama:

McCain says blue dogs always bark, never bite, then roll over and play dead:

McCain on Palin's quitting and the GOP's future without Hispanic leaders and voters:

McCain on Twitter:

John McCain: Obama's Off to a Bad Start

An SNL skit spoofed that republicans are irrelevant and in real life, they're working their way toward irrelevancy because they don't yet realize that Americans want a new direction.
I had originally thought that Obama would get more republicans to support the stimulus but it's become apparent that the republicans are backing into the hard right corner, so bipartisanship needs to be viewed as inviting the republicans to participate, but if they're not offering any good ideas, or the same ideas, then there's no sense bickering with them. McCain says they weren't invited to participate, but three republicans did.

CNN: “It was a bad beginning,” McCain said Sunday of the legislative process that resulted in the $787 billion stimulus bill recently passed by Congress. “It was a bad beginning because it wasn’t what we promised the American people, what President Obama promised the American people – that we would sit down together.”

While McCain said he appreciated the fact that Obama came to Capitol Hill to speak with House Republicans about the stimulus bill. But, “that’s not how you negotiate a result.” Instead, “you sit down in a room with competing proposals” and “almost all of our proposals went down on a party-line vote”

“I hope the next time we will sit down together and conduct truly bipartisan negotiations. This was not a bipartisan bill.”

NBA Players Check Out Obama's Game