Looking for a political comeback, leaders in the Republican Party yesterday launched a group to strategically oppose the Democratic agenda, reports The Wall Street Journal.

Republican strategist Ed Gillespie and pollster Whit Ayers will head the group, called Resurgent Republic, co-founded by Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, former Rep. Bill Paxton (N.Y.), former Sen. George Allen (Va.) and Republican strategist Mary Matalin.

In what could be seen as an inspired bit of synchronicity, the group launched on the same day as Republican Sen. Arlen Spector--a 29-year veteran of Capitol Hill--announced his intention to leave the party, saying it has "moved to far to the right." Spector's defection puts the Democratic Party within striking distance of a filibuster-proof Senate majority, with only the still-disputed Minnesota seat standing in the way.

Resurgent Republic unabashedly models itself after the Democracy Corps, a Democratic organization founded by strategist James Carville (Matalin's husband) and pollster Stan Greenberg in 1999, which is "dedicated to making the government of the United States more responsive to the American people," according to the Democracy Corps Web site.

The new Republican group, which is "dedicated to shaping the debate over the proper roll of government," will gauge "public opinion about policy proposals under consideration by the White House and Congress," according to its Web site, and will perform a "steady stream of national polls and focus groups," making its results publicly available.

"Resurgent Republic helps policy makers, think tanks, interest groups and others advocate for policies that are consistent with conservative principles, and to oppose policies that stifle job creation, weaken national security and undermine values that have made America a great country," according to the site.

"Our nation is at an historical juncture and the actions we take today with regards to promoting free market principles will have an impact for a generation or more," Gillespie told The Wall Street Journal. "Resurgent Republic will serve as a strategic resource for the general public, policy makers and Congressional leaders."

Previous Comments

ID

146529

Comment

If this group is being formed to just oppose everything Democrats do, then it would be a waste of their time. If they offer solutions they would think are better than what Democrats are offering, then they may get somewhere.

Author

golden eagle

Date

2009-04-30T10:37:05-06:00

ID

146530

Comment

From the blurb, it sounds like they plan on doing that. Anything's better than a 3 trillion dollar deficit, you've got to admit.

Author

Ironghost

Date

2009-04-30T10:39:08-06:00

ID

146534

Comment

Actually, *anything* is not. Like, a completely collapsed economy and bread lines on every corner. I sure wish your party had come up with its huge aversion to deficits before it gave Bush and his Iraq War and his twisted ideas a blank check for eight years. (And that Dems had grown some balls long before now.) It's funny to watch Barbour try to save the GOP, as he knows it. He's in complete denial that his party needs to evolve, not keep devolving. They need to be embracing the Arlen Specters and Olympia Snowes of the world, instead of the zealots. But they won't. So they implode. Something better will replace it, though, just as the Democratic Party had to implode to get to a point where Obama could be elected. I'll be happy to say what the Republican Party becomes once it runs off the hatemongerers.

Author

DonnaLadd

Date

2009-04-30T10:51:53-06:00

ID

146535

Comment

Oh, and the name "Resurgent Republic" is hilarious. *That's* gonna work.

Author

DonnaLadd

Date

2009-04-30T10:52:23-06:00

ID

146537

Comment

Barbour and his co-horts will have a hard time selling the party to voters who now realize that Republicans pretend to be fiscally conservative until they are in power, but act worse then Dems in terms of fiscal irresponsibility.

Author

Jeff Lucas

Date

2009-04-30T11:33:56-06:00

ID

146545

Comment

The Republican Party of today is starting to remind of the Kremlin of the early 1980s: Aging, shrinking, insular, ideologically pure, and becoming more of the above with every passing day. They need their own Gorbachev, but Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, and Bobby Jindal will not be it. Their best chance to redefine themselves as a national party was John McCain, and they blew it in a spectacular fashion; they had a second chance with Michael Steele, but he descended into self-parody so quickly that he won't be able to do the job, either. 2012 is going to be hard to watch. We don't really want a one-party state, but we're heading there fast because every time an intelligent person leaves the Republican Party, the percentage of intelligent people in the Republican Party decreases, and with it the odds of intraparty reform. I think Bloomberg's idea of a national centrist party--which would be to the Republicans what Kadima is to Likud--is well founded. Stick Bloomberg, Specter, Collins, Snowe, Lieberman, Schwarzenegger, Pataki, Steele, and Crist--maybe even Barbour, Tuck, and Hosemann--together in a party that is centrist on social issues, hawkish but multilateralist on foreign policy, and fiscally conservative, and you have a viable national party. But as long as the Republican Party is run by Joe the Plumber and Miss California, its only sustainable momentum will be gravity.

Author

Tom Head

Date

2009-04-30T12:54:25-06:00

ID

146550

Comment

It's interesting the way two organizations have set up their purposes: The Dem org is “dedicated to making the government of the United States more responsive to the American people.” In contrast, the Repub org is “dedicated to shaping the debate over the proper role of government.” That speaks volumes about their basic philosophies: Dems want government to serve the people; Repubs want to tell the people what to think.

Author

Ronni_Mott

Date

2009-04-30T13:21:30-06:00

ID

146553

Comment

Gee, Donna. You'd think being in charge of Congress the entire time Bush was in office would have made a difference. It's a shame the Dems couldn't make a difference. Of course, now that they're going to be in charge 100%, they can't blame the Republicans when Obama's socialism fails miserably and there are no nations left with enough money to fund his boondoggles. I mean, so far all the Dems have done is run the deficit higher than the past couple of dozen presidents combined.

Author

Ironghost

Date

2009-04-30T14:08:55-06:00

ID

146556

Comment

"You'd think being in charge of Congress the entire time Bush was in office would have made a difference." It might have if this had actually been the case. Republicans had a majority in both houses until January 2007, with the exception of the short-lived Jeffords plurality in the Senate. This is why the Republican Party isn't doing so hot right now. "Democrats were in charge of Congress the entire time Bush was in office" is the best talking point they've got...it's all over radio and what passes for the right-wing blogosphere...and it's utterly, completely, and provably false. Democrats only had a majority in Congress for the final quarter of Bush's presidency, and even that was a slim majority.

Author

Tom Head

Date

2009-04-30T14:22:24-06:00

ID

146557

Comment

Good grief, Ironghost. I'm not sure you can get any more predictable with your hateful knee-jerk partisan rhetoric. Obama didn't cause the current crises any more than any one other person or party. There is, as has been stated over and over again, plenty of blame to go around. If Obama's policies fail, it's not because they're "socialist." It could, however, be because of those who are bound and determined that they do fail, regardless of the impact of that failure on the American people and on the World.

Author

Ronni_Mott

Date

2009-04-30T14:26:33-06:00

ID

146563

Comment

...how about the deficit, Ronni?

Author

Ironghost

Date

2009-04-30T15:01:45-06:00

ID

146565

Comment

[quote]That speaks volumes about their basic philosophies: Dems want government to serve the people; Repubs want to tell the people what to think. [/quote] Yuck...I wouldn't take it THAT far, making the Dems sound like the party of angels. They are for moment simply the lesser of two evils. Neither party seems very concerned about paying down our deficit, but the GOP sound like the bigger hypocrites in that regard.

Author

Jeff Lucas

Date

2009-04-30T15:12:04-06:00

ID

146571

Comment

Jeff, I found it to be an interesting comparison in their approaches. I never said the Dems were a "party of angels," which would be silly. Iron, what about the deficit? Seems to me that there was something about a substantial federal surplus at the end of the last Democratic president's term, something that had not occurred since Eisenhower. Bush managed in four year to give us the largest deficit since Reagan. I also remember Obama saying pretty clearly that the deficit was going to increase before it started going down again with his agenda.

Author

Ronni_Mott

Date

2009-04-30T15:33:59-06:00

ID

146632

Comment

Is this the new republican name for the Klan? Barbour has a problem with any non white leadership, I wish he would come to the hood and talk his mess their.

Author

Tony Davis

Date

2009-05-01T12:52:26-06:00

ID

146644

Comment

One thing I will say for Barbour: He did spend more time in District 2 in 2007 than any other Republican gubernatorial campaign of my lifetime, and lined up some high-profile black endorsements (Espy, Garrett, etc). Not that this changes his policies any, but I have to give him props for that because it's something I'd long wished Republican statewide candidates would do, and something Phil Bryant probably will not do in 2011.

Author

Tom Head

Date

2009-05-01T17:27:08-06:00

ID

146647

Comment

[quote]Iron, what about the deficit? Seems to me that there was something about a substantial federal surplus at the end of the last Democratic president's term, something that had not occurred since Eisenhower. Bush managed in four year to give us the largest deficit since Reagan.[/quote] Clinton came off the Tech Bubble, so he had a suplus. That crashed, if you recall. Bush did the deficit no favors, as has many a president (democratic and republican) in modern times. Obama, however, is the first president with the guts to propose trillion dollar deficits. Not billion, Trillion dollar. There's also darn little his plans will do to get things in gear economically. Don't lecture me on the "grand" things his Newer Deal will do, because they didn't work for FDR, I doubt they'll magically work now.

Author

Ironghost

Date

2009-05-01T18:03:20-06:00

ID

146649

Comment

Clinton came off the Tech Bubble, so he had a suplus. Really? If a bubble was all it took, where was Bush's surplus from the housing bubble? Clinton inherited a huge deficit from Bush Sr., who inherited one from Reagan. Clinton left office with a $127 billion surplus, which Bush Jr. managed to bring to, what, a $455 billion deficit? That's not a mess you clean up in 100 days. Don't lecture me on the "grand" things his Newer Deal will do, because they didn't work for FDR, I doubt they'll magically work now. Come on Iron, show me where I've "lectured" you on the "grand" things this new spending will do. I'm simply responding to your on-going right-wing rhetoric. Again. As for FDR's programs, they will be debated for centuries in ivory towers. They were neither all magically delicious or total demonic failures. See Forbes' "The Truth About Stimulus and the Depression," for one fairly conservative, yet balanced viewpoint: Because the New Deal was so sprawling, there are also programs that historians and economists agree were deeply effective, like establishing the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, or FDIC, which stopped the run on banks. The Civil Works Administration quickly employed 3.6 million people. And Fishback has done some research showing that an added dollar of public works and relief spending was tied to an increase in retail sales of 40 to 50 cents. There's also a correlation between areas of the country that received more relief spending and lower infant mortality and property crime rates. So, Iron, there were several FDR programs that worked well. There were also programs that didn't work well and others that fell somewhere in between. I suspect the Obama administration's recovery programs will have a similar success rate.

Author

Ronni_Mott

Date

2009-05-01T19:23:31-06:00

ID

146652

Comment

I think it's way too early to judge what this group will or will not do. I know these guys and until proven otherwise, everyone should gauge them six months or a year from now. We've screwed up in a ton of ways in the governing majority. I, along with this group, thinks that the core of that is forgetting that one of the key principles of the party is that government should be small and it's intrusion into folks lives, should be minimal. You can disagree with that, but it's a valid view to hold. The GOP in DC has actually tried to outdo the D's in being big government, big spenders. I believe this group is trying to steer back in another direction. I hope they are successful. Ronni, your mention of the Forbes article is a good one. One thing I'm seeing that is troubling with the stimulus is beyond the votes to spend the money, government machinery has taken over and because of the tons of regulations kicking in...controls are also kicking in to slow down the process. There are billions that are earmarked for infrastructure that may be 2011 hitting the ground and actually doing any good. One reason I hear for this is the mistakes made with Katrina money. Whatever the reason, government has got to figure out a better, more efficient way to get this money into the system.

Author

Hayes

Date

2009-05-02T08:04:51-06:00

ID

146653

Comment

Hayes, I think it's pretty easy to assess this group right now based on who is in it, and their track record on public policy. Also, the fact that they are unabashed about being against what the majority of Americans have asked for. They are also the old guard that brought us the principles that got the nation in this mess. They are old-guard corporate Republicans who use social conservatism to protect the interests of their corporate friends (and clients). If they want to show us something completely different from that, and re-transform that party into something to be proud of again, tell your friends to bring it on. But right now, they're pretty transparent. Otherwise ... yawn.

Author

DonnaLadd

Date

2009-05-02T08:30:06-06:00

ID

146654

Comment

Whatever, Haley took over the Congress in 1994 and while I think the damage is far greater now than then, have confidence that he'll move it in that direction again. As far as old-guard goes, Mr. Obama has the same old-guard with him, so if one refers to people that hang around and wait for their party to come into power or those that plot and scheme to get their party back into power as old-guard, so be it. The names and faces just don't change in DC.

Author

Hayes

Date

2009-05-02T08:39:51-06:00