Shooting Our Own

One complaint I’ve always had about the Republican Party is that we have a habit of shooting our wounded. Exhibit A - Trent Lott who makes an innocent comment about Strom Thurmond during the congressman’s 100th birthday. A few people were able to twist his benign remarks into a racial slur and many of his fellow Republicans lined up to chuck him overboard. The silly incident led to his resignation as the House Leader. Now I’m seeing a similar attitude during the Republican primaries; only someone doesn’t have to be wounded – he simply has to be in the lead and then everyone starts gunning for him.

In the polls leading up to the Iowa caucuses, it was a pretty close race between Romney and Huckabee. Romney came out with his “contrast ads” against Huckabee. Huckabee came back with his counter ad but decided not to run it; instead, he showed the press the ad and explained he wouldn’t run it because it was too harsh (wink, wink). Come on, Mike. I know I’ve endorsed you and all but even I can see through this tactic. Rush had a good analogy: Imagine if Mike had said, “I want to call Mitt a bad name but I won’t – but if I did, I’d call him a so and so.”

Huckabee did very well in Iowa but in the much more liberal state of NH, McCain is the real competition for Romney. So, over the last few days Romney has been running “contrast ads” against McCain. In some of the televised debates, McCain had some pretty heated exchanges with Romney but in the FOX forum, McCain said he wanted to run a positive campaign and eased off a little.

Rush Limbaugh, while he hasn’t come out against Mike, hasn’t been terribly kind to him either. Still, Rush is holding his endorsement for whichever candidate wins the nomination. On the other hand, Ann Coulter, a conservative author and extremely funny lady, has slammed Mike on her website; she calls him, the Huckster.

The media has been quick to point out all these barbs as well. It seems to me they are much more quick to point out the exchanges among Republican than among the Democrats (the Democrats have actually been much worse).

I know that I’ve had a harsh word or two about some of the candidates in the past, but I’ll take any of them (except perhaps Ron Paul who truly is a nut) over Obama, Clinton, or Edwards. One of these candidates is going to be the Republican nominee for president. When he runs in the general election, I want him to beat the Democrat nominee. All of this in-fighting is going to diminish the electability of whoever wins the nomination.