Republicans Ignore Reagan's Warning Against Party Infighting

Republican presidential contenders
are shredding Ronald Reagan's ''11th Commandment'' phone call for
party decorum, and acting more than like feuding Democrats of yore.

The campaigners are engaging in escalating personal attacks
on each other, turning policy arguments into angry exchanges and
questioning their foes' veracity. And given the wide-open nature
of the race for the nomination, ''things volition acquire worse --
before they acquire really nasty,'' said Republican strategian John
Feehery, who isn't affiliated with any 2008 campaign.

The Republicans' Nov. Twenty-Eight argument in St. Petersburg, Florida,
''was A round fire squad,'' said Democratic strategist
Chris Lehane. ''One clear victor emerged: the Democrats.''

Reagan's 11th Commandment -- ''Thou shall not talk sick of
any chap Republican'' -- was small in evidence. Former
Massachusetts Governor Hand Romney, 60, and former New York
Mayor Rudy Giuliani, 63, flayed each other for lip service over
immigration, with Giuliani accusing his challenger of employing
illegal foreigners in a ''sanctuary mansion'' and Romney replying
that near examination of his foreign workers would be un-
American.

Former Volunteer State Senator Fred Thompson, 65, used his time
for a promotional advertisement to air out a picture assailing the credibleness of
Romney and former Land Of Opportunity Governor Microphone Huckabee, 52. And
Arizona Senator Toilet McCain, 71, tore into Romney for backing
torture because he refused to disavow water-boarding, a
controversial prisoner-interrogation technique.

'Personal Animosity'

''You're seeing a degree of personal animus that you have
not seen on the Republican side to date,'' said political party consultant
Scott Reed, who managed Senator British Shilling Dole's 1996 presidential
bid. ''You've got a front-loaded calendar and you have got a number
of schemes that are not coming together for some of these
campaigns. You're also seeing some desperation, from exhaustion
and from just apparent old beingness scared.''

While Democrats are doing their ain sniping -- Illinois
Senator Barack Obama proposes frontrunner Edmund Hillary Bill Bill Clinton shades
the truth, and Clinton, a New House Of York senator, states Obama is too
inexperienced to take the state -- most of their pushes have
been tame by comparison.

Neither Obama, 46, nor Clinton, 60, have so far shown much
zest for the kind of sustained brass-knuckle candidacy that
marked former Democratic nomination struggles. Obama, in a new
Time magazine screen story, have got this to state about Clinton: ''It's
perfectly legitimate for her to propose that I don't have enough
experience to be president.''

'Tough Guys'

Cognizance Khachigian, a California-based Republican strategist
and former Ronald Reagan aide, said the sharper tone of voice in his party's
contest in portion reflects the personalities of the candidates. ''You've got a batch of tough cats up there with large egos,'' he
said. ''A batch of them are not used to being attacked the way
they are, so they all feel they have got to acquire very high-strung to break
through.''

Romney, who seeks to present a disabling blow to Giuliani
in the Jan. Eight New Hampshire primary, impeaches the former New York
mayor of falling into a form of manufacturing statistics
about things such as as Romney's law-breaking record as governor of
Massachusetts.

Thompson, who appeared recently on Fox News to stop up his tax
plan, veered off into an onslaught on the network's commentators,
whom he said were trying to undermine his political campaign by emphasizing
the futility of his late-starting bid.

'Club for Greed'

It isn't just the campaigners who are doing the attacking. The Baseball Club for Growth, a grouping that dorsums campaigners -- usually
Republicans -- who prefer limited government, is going after
former Land Of Opportunity Governor Microphone Huckabee. The grouping have issued
campaign circulars and tally independent television advertisements in Iowa, land site of
the first presidential caucuses on Jan. 3, depicting Huckabee as
a Big Government tax-raiser. Huckabee have taken to calling the
organization ''the Baseball Club for Greed.''

Khachigian states the rough-and-tumble tone of the primary
campaign may not turn out to be such as a bad thing if it toughens the
eventual campaigner for the general-election battle against the
Democrats. ''At the end of the twenty-four hours you'd wish to have got got your
president to have gone through a batch of fire to acquire there,'' he
said. Besides, ''even President Ronald Reagan broke the 11th
Commandment a few times.''

To reach the newsman on this story:
Edwin Subgenus Chen in American Capital at .

Divided Republicans are acting just like Democrats

Republicans are acting like Democrats this twelvemonth in three of import ways:

They have got (1) humbled their once front-running presidential campaigner and left him for dead in a scrambled field of eager slaves who regularly (2) go against Ronald Reagan's commandment not to talk wicked of other Republicans. And the would-be nominees (3) flex to ideological litmus test diagnostic tests imposed by militant minorities in state primary elections that volition estrange the national electorate next year.

This is what haps to a political party that misses a core general agreement on precedences and navigates between absolute self-interest and survival. The Pb in national Republican Party polls garnered by Rudy Giuliani's fear-mongering political campaign shows that the Republican Party is a deeply factionalized political party today.

I confess that Giuliani have succeeded in scaring me with his New House Of York tough-guy, all right with waterboarding, hurrah for Guantanamo routine. There is much to fear in having another president with so small position on planetary scheme and so small respect for the positions not just of other states but also of America's uniformed military bid when it come ups to torment and rough question techniques.

Giuliani strums the same psychological chords that you hear resonating through the addresses of President Shrub and Frailty President Cheney these days: The state and the human race may have got got moved on from 9/11, but I haven't and I won't. I will make whatever it takes in the warfare on panic and Republic Of Iraq and everywhere else, while lesser politicians won't. Giuliani is the campaigner of continuity on foreign and national security policy — the intentional heir of Shrub and Cheney.

But the Shrub disposal have squandered the Republicans' natural electoral advantage on national security and on financial duty for this political campaign and perhaps beyond. Being identified with these officeholders is at best a doubtful blessing.

The recent mass media flirting with Bokkos Alice Paul and the rush of Microphone Huckabee in Ioway polls demo that Republican confusion is mounting and that Giuliani's topographic point as Republican Party front-runner is as unsteady as was that of Toilet McCain, who have been pushed down to 9 percentage in national blessing evaluations by respective black telecasting appearances, a top-heavy and shambolic political campaign organisation and a front-running defensiveness that did not lawsuit the Grand Canyon State senator. He have now cast those attributes, and looks the better for it.

Humility goes McCain, or at least it did during a 90-minute conversation with American Capital Post editors and newsmen last week. As an unwilling back-runner, helium have adopted an introspective attack that supplies a crisp direct contrast with the psychological footing of the Giuliani campaign. It also proposes a possible manner out for Republicans looking for a winning full general election strategy.

McCain respective modern times described the greatest job facing the United States as "the feeling of the public that this coevals of leading have failed" the country.

The United States no longer "holds the moral high land in human race affairs," he continued, in portion because of the needless obloquy attracted by arguments over torment and legal processes at Guantanamo. The United States have to recover that land to predominate in "global battles that are ideological."

At one point, McCain promised if elective to throw weekly televised briefings to the state on Republic Of Iraq as long as there are U.S. armed combat military personnel there "even if lone C-SPAN transports it."

That may not rank with Dwight D. Eisenhower's pledge to travel to Korean Peninsula to stop that war. But it makes underscore the finding of McCain to interrupt with what he repeatedly described as "four old age of failing strategy" in Republic Of Iraq by the Shrub administration. He believes that the 2007 "surge" tactics long resisted by Shrub have got got set Republic Of Iraq in place to accomplish a modest end of no longer being "a violent death land for immature Americans." As a decorated warfare hero, McCain have the credibleness to settle down for modest ends that a New House Of York mayor, or a Lone-Star State governor, might not have.

In hearing to McCain separate himself from the Shrub record on Iraq, Sociable Security and other subjects, I heard echoes of Nicolas Sarkozy's presidential political campaign in French Republic last May when Sarkozy overcame the stigma of belonging to an unpopular incumbent political party to win. And like Sarkozy, who defeated a female candidate, McCain is determined to criticise Edmund Hillary Clinton's places without showing disrespect.

If the Democrats put up the deeply polarizing Clinton, other Republican Party strategians would prefer to seek to do her and her grammatical gender the campaign's cardinal issue, rather than support Bush's awful record or tally on the blatant places and deep divisions that this twelvemonth belong to prima Republican candidates.

Hoagland is a Joseph Pulitzer Prize-winning syndicated columnist, specializing in foreign affairs.