Battle for Soul of GOP Best Waged on Ideas

There is a difference between engaging in thoughtful introspection in hopes of rebuilding a political party and using insults, invective and infighting to attack one another. What some prominent Republicans are engaged in at the moment resembles the former more than the latter, and they should put an end to it at once.

Not because Republicans shouldn't criticize one another. There is nothing wrong with that. There is a lot to be learned from such interplay. But much of what is going on now within the GOP is more about personal attacks and jockeying for position. It's not constructive. It's ego-driven.

It began when conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh criticized former Secretary of State Colin Powell, a Republican, for endorsing Democrat Barack Obama "purely and solely based on race." Powell subsequently responded that "what Rush does as an entertainer diminishes the party and intrudes or inserts into our public life a kind of nastiness that we would be better to do without."

There was more nastiness between Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele and potential 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Steele recently declared that the GOP base rejected Romney in 2008 because it "had issues with Mormonism." A Romney spokesman charged that Steele had misfired when trying to "shoot from the hip."

Ironically, Romney engaged in some of that same behavior himself recently when he insulted former GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin.

After being told by a reporter that Palin had been chosen by Time magazine as one of the 100 most-influential people, Romney sneered: "Was that the issue on the most beautiful people or the most influential people?"

Former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee got into a rhetorical scuffle with a group of GOP leaders — including Rep. Eric Cantor, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush — whom Huckabee mocked for launching a "listening tour" to reach out to voters, even though the first stop only went as far as the Washington, D.C., suburbs.

Then former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge jumped into the fray by saying that Limbaugh and former Vice President Dick Cheney don't represent all Republicans and arguing that the GOP should be more inclusive. And let's not forget GOP pollster Mark McKinnon, who recently warned that the Republicans who tried to run Powell out of the party were on a "suicide mission."

It goes on. The Republican Party needs less infighting, and more ideas. No one person on the right seems to have the one definitive answer about how to move the party out of the wilderness. So Republicans shouldn't be so quick to dismiss each other's contributions. They should accept that there is a lot of talent on their bench, and stop trying to thin it out. Most of all, they should be cognizant of how bad this looks to the country, which is left with the image of a political party unable to govern itself, let alone the country.

Democrats love seeing this spectacle, no doubt. But for anyone who thinks that democracy is served best by providing voters with viable choices, this Republican slugfest is hard to watch.

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