Why they think this is a good election strategy is beyond me. The strategy CAN backfire! The only contests I can figure might be helped by such a polarizing approach are the Louisiana and North Carolina Senate races. But why go national with Hate Week, with all the attendant risks, when you can just focus on the South, with a regional approach? The rest of the nation isn't the South, after all (duh!), and what works there doesn't necessarily work everywhere. Why not focus just on Louisiana and North Carolina, and leave everyone else alone? Beats me. That's why I don't get all that blogger payola the GOP is said to be scattering around.
Nevertheless, the Mosque Controversy, which seemed like such a big winner for the GOP just two weeks ago, is now showing its age. Joe Scarborough seems to have finally realized that there are troubles with the GOP approach, and has launched an attack on Newt Gingrich. If the GOP doesn't find a way to hate someone other than Muslims for a while - gays, maybe, or atheists, or French people, or the Chinese - then cracks in the GOP will start appearing at an alarming rate. That's why, despite all its attendant evils, I don't want the Mosque Controversy to disappear just yet. Keep it stoked, keep it rolling, keep it on Page One, keep it on Cable TV 24/7, day after day, week after week, month after month, and watch the whole campaign suddenly fly completely apart, just like the Deepwater Horizon oil platform did in the Gulf of Mexico. If we are lucky, the explosions happen just before Election Day!
The Mosque Controversy seems superficially simple, almost irresistible for demagogues, but like all NYC zoning squabbles, it is about as Byzantine as figuring out what is happening inside the Kremlin. Only fools stake everything on prevailing in Manhattan land-use squabbles!:
Republicans are going to be embarrassed at the way they've opposed a mosque -- known as Cordoba House or Park51 -- that's planned near Ground Zero, according to one conservative host.
MSNBC's Joe Scarborough told Republicans Monday that they should "speak out against Newt Gingrich and the voices of hate." While he was at it, Scarborough threatened to leave the GOP for a party "that actually believes in small government."
Last week, Gingrich compared supporters of the mosque to Nazis. Appearing on Fox & Friends, Gingrich said, "Nazis don't have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust museum in Washington."
Prior to that, Gingrich argued that the mosque shouldn't be built near Ground Zero until churches and synagogues are allowed in Saudi Arabia.
"This is demagoguery of the first order," Scarborough, a former Republican congressman, said Monday. "And people in the Republican Party need to separate themselves from these voices."
"And I talk to you, my Republican brethren," he said into the camera. "I don't know how much longer you'll be my brethren. I'll be honest. I'm looking for a conservative party that actually believes in small government and not engaging in Wilsonian wars but that's another discussion."
"I'm just talking, you know, as a friend," Scarborough continued. "I promise you this. You're going to be embarrassed. You're going to look back two, three, four years from now and this is going to be dark blot on your record if you don't speak out against New Gingrich and the voices of hate."
"This is an embarrassment and you need to speak out against it," he said.
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