[Lamplighter]

I don't think I've ever agreed with Friedman before, but this time he has a unique idea !!!

Chron.com
THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
February 12, 2012


Friedman: Few answers from today's GOP

Watching the Republican Party struggling to agree on a presidential candidate,
one wonders whether the GOP shouldn't just sit this election out - just give 2012 a pass.

You know how in Scrabble sometimes you look at your seven letters and you've got only vowels that spell nothing?
What do you do? You go back to the pile. You throw your letters back and hope to pick up better ones to work with.
That's what Republican primary voters seem to be doing.
They just keep going back to the pile but still coming up with only vowels that spell nothing.

There's a reason for that: Their pile is out of date.
The party has let itself become the captive of conflicting ideological bases:
anti-abortion advocates, anti-immigration activists, social conservatives worried
about the sanctity of marriage, libertarians who want to shrink government,
and anti-tax advocates who want to drown government in a bathtub.

Sorry, but you can't address the great challenges America faces today with that incoherent mix of hardened positions.
I've argued that maybe we need a third party to break open our political system.
But that's a long shot. What we definitely and urgently need is a second party
- a coherent Republican opposition that is offering constructive conservative proposals
on the key issues and is ready for strategic compromises to advance its interests and those of the country.

Without that, the best of the Democrats - who have been willing to compromise
- have no partners and the worst have a free pass for their own magical thinking.
Since such a transformed Republican Party is highly unlikely,
maybe the best thing would be for it to get crushed in this election and forced into a fundamental rethink.

Because when I look at America's three greatest challenges today,
I don't see the Republican candidates offering realistic answers to any of them.<snip>

Until the GOP stops being radical and returns to being conservative,
it won't provide what the country needs most now - competition -
competition with Democrats on the issues that will determine whether we thrive in the 21st century.
We need to hear conservative fiscal policies, energy policies, immigration policies
and public-private partnership concepts - not radical ones.

Would somebody please restore our second party?
The country is starved for a grown-up debate.