GOP Fighting

GOP Split Over Fighting Obama's Every Move
by Sam Stein
Only days after losing the White House and suffering large defeats in both houses of Congress, the Republican Party is striking a posture of defiance.

Within the past 48 hours, the RNC has sent out memos blasting the president elect for appointing Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff and hiring David Axelrod to serve an advisory role.

"Barack Obama's first White House hires are hyper-partisan operatives," read a statement from spokesman Alex Conant. "For a President-elect who promised to change the tone in Washington, it's disappointing that he is filling his White House with partisan bomb-throwers."

Additionally, Republicans have put out a press release drawing attention to the fact that the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, had congratulated Obama on his victory -- as if it represented a certain brand of foreign policy acquiescence.

Not everyone within the GOP has shared the fight-them-at-every-corner mentality. Craig Shirley, a conservative consultant, argued that the party needed "to start getting about the task of what they are for," and said of the RNC memos, "You got to pick your fights. It is almost like the RNC is in desperate need of adult supervision."
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One political scientist described it as such: "they could be the 'hell no' party, or they can be the 'yes and no' party."
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"There is a third way, that is that neither the 'hell no' side or the 'yes we will work with you' side, would be to offer our own ideas and proposals and legislation and all within a framework of a conservative governing philosophy," he said. "And you see it now in the post campaign fight between the McCain staffers and Palin. It is all reductionism. It is all attack, attack, attack. The campaign is over. They can't go after Obama so they go after Palin. At some point, Republicanism has been defined in many ways as always being against things. We need to be for something."