Today's GOP

It’s not even about what I think anymore.  It’s about what the GOP thinks of itself.

This morning, Michael Steele’s blog was titled, “What up?”

No more.  It’s now, “Change the Game.”

Laughable.  Like the other “changes” the Republican Party has attempted in order to offset its significant losses, surface changes only work momentarily (see, e.g., Sarah Palin and Steele’s election as chair) but don’t change the underlying problems that have led to the nation’s discontent with the Republican Party.

Here’s the White House and DNC Web sites, to offset having linked to the RNC site.

[Thanks to @txvoodoo for having secured the screen capture of "What up?"]

A.G. McMaster (R-SC)

South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster “has spent three decades working for the people of South Carolina,” as his Web site tells us, and today he announced that he’s going to be one of the Republicans running to be the state’s next governor.

His opening ad is a back-and-forth of contradiction.

He begins by telling South Carolinians that “[s]o far, under Barack Obama, over 39,000 South Carolinians have lost their jobs” — with no mention of Gov. Sanford’s Republican office, which made a pre-scandal mission out of trying to refuse stimulus money, or the state’s Republican-led statehouse.

McMaster then quickly shifts, noting that he “stands tall for family values” but understands the distrust in government, borne of “too much dishonesty and too many scandals” — with no mention that South Carolina’s primary recent scandal involves its current Republican governor.

And, this is only, as the site proclaims, “Day 1.”

Not quite.  Actually, not at all.

Even before Friday’s happenings, Palin was not “loved” by one-third of the country.  Assuming that “love” is more than just having a favorable impression of a politician, it would appear that polling showing that one has a “very favorable” impression of Palin is about the closest, polling-wise, that we can get.

That number, per Pew, is 15 percent (pdf).

At best, per Pollster.com’s Mark Blumenthal, looking at the same Pew data, slightly less than one-third of Republicans loved her.  He wrote:

Twenty-eight percent (28%) of Republicans, 31% of white evangelical Republicans and 32% of conservative Republicans report “very favorable” impression of Palin (thanks to the Pew Research Center for sharing those additional results).

Finding the slightly less than one-third of Republicans who have a “very favorable” impression of Palin is about the only way one finds that “a third” of any group “loves” Palin.

And, again, that was before her numbers, I’d think, took at least somewhat of a hit from Friday’s happenings.

Regardless, Douthat is wrong to claim that “a third of the country loves” Sarah Palin.

Steele is interesting; I just hope that his other problems don’t lead to an ultra-conservative convincing the party that Steele’s problem is that he’s too moderate and needs replaced on that account.

Below, please find the parts of the interview related to sexual orientation.

Here it is:

Do you have a problem with gay priests who are celibate?
No, it’s your nature. It’s your nature. You can’t—I can’t deny you your nature.

Let’s talk about gay marriage. What’s your position?
Well, my position is, hey, look, I have been, um, supportive of a lot of my friends who are gay in some of the core things that they believe are important to them. You know, the ability to be able to share in the information of your partner, to have the ability to—particularly in times of crisis—to manage their affairs and to help them through that as others—you know, as family members or others—would be able to do. I just draw the line at the gay marriage. And that’s not antigay, no. Heck no! It’s just that, you know, from my faith tradition and upbringing, I believe that marriage—that institution, the sanctity of it—is reserved for a man and a woman. That’s just my view. And I’m not gonna jump up and down and beat people upside the head about it, and tell gays that they’re wrong for wanting to aspire to that, and all of that craziness. That’s why I believe that the states should have an opportunity to address that issue.

So you think it’s a state issue?
Absolutely. Just as a general principle, I don’t like mucking around with the Constitution. I’m sorry, I just don’t. I think, you know, in a pluralistic, dynamic society as the one that we have, every five years you can have a constitutional convention about something, you know? I don’t think we should be, you know, dancing around and trying to amend it every time I’ve got a social issue or a political issue or a business issue that I want to get addressed. Having said that, I think that the states are the best laboratory, the best place for those decisions to be made, because they will then reflect the majority of the community in which the issue is raised. And that’s exactly what a republic is all about.

Do you think homosexuality is a choice?
Oh, no. I don’t think I’ve ever really subscribed to that view, that you can turn it on and off like a water tap. Um, you know, I think that there’s a whole lot that goes into the makeup of an individual that, uh, you just can’t simply say, oh, like, “Tomorrow morning I’m gonna stop being gay.” It’s like saying, “Tomorrow morning I’m gonna stop being black.”

So your feeling would be that people are born one way or another.
I mean, I think that’s the prevailing view at this point, and I know that there’s some out there who think that you can absolutely make that choice. And maybe some people have. I don’t know, I can’t say. Until we can give a definitive answer one way or the other, I think we should respect that.