Former Republican Senator: The GOP Presidential Field Is ‘Embarrassing’

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Republican John Danforth, who served as a senator from Missouri for nearly 20 years and later as George W. Bush’s ambassador the United Nations, is not happy with the slate of Republican presidential candidates. “I’ve been watching some of these Republican debates and they’re just terrible. Terrible,” he told KTRS in St. Louis yesterday. “It’s embarrassing for me as a Republican to watch this stuff,” he added, calling out audiences for applauding the candidates’ morbid boastings.

DANFORTH: What have been the big applause lines in these debates? Well, a statement that the governor of Texas is responsible for killing 234 people on death row. Or that we favor torture. Or that we’re creating a fence on the Mexican border that electrocutes people when they try to cross it. Or when people show up at the emergency room at hospitals and they’re not insured don’t treat them. And that, I mean these are the big applause lines, people just hoop and holler when they hear all that. [...]

It doesn’t have anything to do with the republican party that I was a part of. This is just totally different. And all of these people who are saying this, y’know, and claiming that, y’know, they’re for all this stuff, they also sort of ostentatiously say, “Oh, we’re very religious people. We really, we’re just very pious, Christian people.” They were for torture, and electrocution of the people on along the border and all of that. That doesn’t have anything to do with, is contrary to the Christianity that I understand.

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/12/01/380148/john-danforth-slams-gop-field/

[Bad_Daddy 2,209]

It's almost as if the GOP is trying to give this election to Obama.

[웃 910]

It's almost as if the GOP is trying to give this election to Obama.

Newt Gingrich / Haley Barbour 2012

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

Un-Republican John Danforth,...

There, fixed. Clearly, the former Senator doesn't understand what it means to be a true Republican. He can't cheer death and misery? He does not belong into the GOP.

[웃 910]

Gingrich / McCain 2012 could really excite the base.

Edited December 2, 2011 by Lord Infamous

[maning 36]

That's the scary thing about the Republican Party now, there's no more room for moderates.

[Bad_Daddy 2,209]

This nation is in need of a third party. One not so far left, and not so far right...somewhere in the center.

[kytwell 179]

This nation is in need of a third party. One not so far left, and not so far right...somewhere in the center.

Disgusted with what he calls the corrupting influence of corporate money and militarism in politics, former Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson is launching a new national political party and will likely be its presidential nominee.

“The end game is changing public policy in the interest of the people of this country. It’s changing our government,” Anderson said. “This is about taking on the two corporatist, militarist parties and in the process bringing the people of this country together so they can see that their interests, by and large, are really aligned.”

Anderson said he will likely be a candidate for the presidential nomination for the new party — which is yet to be named. He said the formation of the party will be announced next week “and shortly thereafter, I’ll be announcing my candidacy.” He has already started filling out paperwork for a presidential exploratory committee.

Once the announcement is made, he said a major effort to get on the ballot will start soon in all 50 states. The focus will first be on Mississippi and Vermont, which have a Jan. 1 deadline, but a relatively low bar to get on the ballot, Anderson said.

“This is being done with a long-term view so that we can grow and sustain a movement that will ensure that the public interest, rather than the corporate interests, are promoted by our elected officials,” said Anderson, who acknowledges he wishes he would have started the effort earlier.

Anderson said he is leaning toward calling the new organization The Justice Party or the Public Interest Party. He plans to host the party’s national platform and nominating convention in Salt Lake City during the Presidents Day weekend.

Anderson’s party won’t be alone in this election. The group Americans Elect has spent months qualifying its party for the ballot and plans to nominate a presidential candidate through a first-ever online primary. The group qualified for the Utah ballot earlier this month.

Anderson said the new party would converge nicely with the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations around the country, but his intention is not to co-opt that movement.

Thad Hall, a political science professor at the University of Utah, said Anderson is mounting a far-fetched, quixotic crusade.

Hall said states make it difficult to get on the ballot, and it’s even more difficult to win.

“Basically what Rocky is saying is he wants a bunch of Republicans to get elected,” Hall said, “because what’s going to happen in theses situations … he’s going to peel votes away from Democrats and end up electing a bunch of ultra-pro-life, ultra-gun, don’t-tax-the-rich, cut-benefits-to-the-poor people.”

Hall said American political parties are also well-branded and people “are well-sorted” into the Democrat or Republican bin. Few are truly independent, and “competing against their branding is going to be really frigging hard” and require an enormous amount of money.

Matt Lyon, executive director of the Utah Democratic Party, said he doesn’t consider Anderson’s latest action a repudiation of the Democratic Party — Anderson ran for Congress in 1996 as a Democrat.

“Rocky has always done what Rocky is going to do,” he said. “He hasn’t been involved with the Democrats for a very, very, very long time. ... He’s just Rocky.”

Anderson was in Washington last weekend meeting with supporters, formulating plans for the launch.

A leaked copy of the meeting agenda and minutes from a previous meeting noted that there was support for Anderson forming an exploratory committee as soon as possible. The document outlines a platform for the party focused on ending the corporate influence, stopping wars, promoting human and civil rights and ending for-profit prisons.

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/politics/53014248-90/anderson-ballot-former-hall.html.csp

[Dakine10 5,452]

This nation is in need of a third party. One not so far left, and not so far right...somewhere in the center.

If the Republicans blow this election, they ought to just close up shop. They have already become an weird aliance of libertarians, fundamentalists and tea party wingnuts. They can't be everything to everybody, and then they still need to get the swing voters too. A split would be good for everyone in the long run. And in the short run, it looks more and more like they got nothing anyway.