Breaking from Newsmax.com

Pew’s Kohut: Right Is Cause of GOP Image Woes

The Republican Party has moved itself so far to the right that it’s losing relevance with voters, says Andrew Kohut, former president of the Pew Research Center and the Gallup Organization.

“The GOP has come to be seen as the more extreme party, the side unwilling to compromise or negotiate seriously to tackle the economic turmoil that challenges the nation,” he writes in The Washington Post.

A Pew Research Center poll last month showed that the party's favorability ratings have dropped to a 20-year low, which Kohut attributes to the dominance of the right wing driving the GOP far from the center.

Well, I am not in love with republican politicians and I think that it would be good for some of the old stalwarts to move on... But I honestly don't believe that the republicans are anti anti black or anti latino... there is room for differing views as to how immigration should be fixed, and I would hope you can see the unfairness if just giving people a free pass who came here illegally. The country is waking up to the depth of some of the issues and this includes republicans, they may be late in coming to the table on some of those issues but common sense eventually will rule the day. As far as the notion you have of republicans being against blacks and Latino's, I would suggest much of that is from a concentrated effort of the left to portray them that way and then a few pockets on state law makers that have handled some of the issues rather poorly. Personally I don't know the validity of the issues that for instance Arizona faces but I suspect they are much more severe than DC would care to admit... just a couple of years ago Phoenix was worse for kidnapping than Bogota Colombia which had always had the reputation of being the kidnapping capital of the world... you have national parks in Arizona where the government has posted for people to stay out of because of the drug and people trafficking in them makes them unsafe for our citizens to use them... I can't speak to Arizona, but I do know that the democratic party does not want to discuss many of the issues that state faces either. The democratic party did everything it could to present the republicans as being anti everything and to be honest they were very effective at it... and republicans did no present a well reasoned and palatable argument as to why this was untrue, then you had a couple of politicians and state legislatures that crossed a few different lines, but their actions do not represent the national party. A couple of examples of republicans losing fights that they should have won were both voter ids and school vouchers, voter ID was somehow won by the democrats even though 80% of Americans supported it... School vouchers offer the most benefit to inner city children attending failing schools, many of those parents fully support the idea, just watch the raffles for charter schools in NY and tell me that there is not support... The dems did a good job of defining the republican party as something that people can not trust and as a party only looking out for the wealthy... It is not true, that is not what conservatism stands for, but I agree with you that many see it that way.

There is a flip side... you say that the republicans don't care about the minorities, but I would ask you, what has the current administration and congress done to advance the condition of the African American community in this country.... The issues are deep Richard, you know this probably better than I do and the democratic party's lip service at some point will run thin and their unbridled spending with nothing to show for it will catch up to them.... The republicans will not come back until they can better articulate why there ideas are beneficial, but they certainly are not simply looking out for the rich, some of the individual politicians, maybe but that is not what the party stands for... and I promise you that you can find democratic politicians that are just as bought and paid for as are the republicans...

The republicans have an uphill road Richard... but those of us who are paying attention know this... it does not mean that we sell out our principles what it does mean is that we get rid of a few hard headed politicians and have better dialogues with each other and with the country... It is also time for the republicans to stop catering to the religious extremes, that does not mean that we not stand for our religious rights, but that we stop with the arcane pandering that leads to comments like "a real rape will not result in a pregnancy" or that "pregnancy resulting from a rape is god's will". Like I said, it will not be an easy road, but it is doable, it is also helped by your party's fiscal irresponsibility with little to nothing to show for all the spending it supports, sooner or later the youth of this country will wake up to the fact that they are being totally screwed by the current generation in power.

Let me tell you an amazing thing about this school. We are talking about middle school, kids 11, 12, 13, somewhere in that age range. At one point we had big posters all through the room labeled, "4-yr college," "2-yr college" "medical school," "trade school. We asked each kid what he or she wanted to be when they were grown-up, then asked them to stand over by the sign that indicated the sort of education they would need to reach that goal. Then we explained what education would have to be involved.

Then there is our "College for All" program, funded by wealthy donors, where these very poor kids are taken on a three-day, two-night trip to visit U.C. Santa Barbara, U.C. Santa Cruz, and other universities, and actually talk with college students there and sit in on parts of classes so they get an idea of what college will be like. They are being groomed with the expectation that they will go to college. The question is not Will you go to college ?" but rather "Which college or university will you go to ?"

In the school here I teach, which has 300 extremely poor students from extremely poor family, many of which are on various sorts of welfare, the ethos is the exact opposite of what you are telling us. These are poor people, yes, but they are being raised by their parents and this school to SUCCEED, to support themselves and their families, and to do well financially in America.

When you speak so disparagingly about the poor in this country, your comments don't accurately describe all of them.