Daily Kos: Today's Republican Party

by Armando

Sat Nov 19, 2005 at 05:40:08 PM PDT

An interesting exchange at Josh Marshall's place:

I was exchanging emails with a longtime Republican reader. And in the course of that exchange I mentioned that while I understood the pushback against John Murtha and the announcement he made last week I didn't understand quite the ferocity of it.

Here's how this reader responded ...:

. . . Instant response is what you do in a modern election campaign . . . Discrediting a critic's argument isn't enough, because it takes too much time in an environment when time is everything. Campaign politics are the primary frame of reference for politicians in Washington today. Republicans of late have practiced this trade more aggressively . . . Karl Rove's influence on GOP political operatives may be even more profound, and GOP political operatives have vast influence in Republican politics.