That GOP Big Tent!

The GOP is so open to new ideas, that some are even telling their own party members that they can hit the road! now that's what i call a 'big tent'.

heh.

"If they can't agree and support the president and the platform, then they ought to go over to the Democrats," said Jan LaRue, chief counsel for the conservative group Concerned Women for America.[...]

The to-do list includes defending traditional marriage, banning human cloning, reforming Social Security, passing more-restrictive abortion laws and stepping up enforcement of obscenity laws, said Ms. LaRue of Concerned Women for America. And if moderates don't agree with those objectives, perhaps they don't belong in the GOP, she said.

Ms. LaRue calls Mr. Specter a RINO - Republican In Name Only - and questions why politicians such as Sen. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island remain in the Republican Party when they didn't even vote for Mr. Bush.

"Get real," she said. "These are Democrats in Republican clothing."

and how do GOP moderates feel?

"There is no future for moderate and progressive Republicans in the Republican Party," said Jim Scarantino, president of the centrist GOP group Mainstream 2004. "The far right wing and the fanatics have seized control."

Mr. Scarantino isn't sure where his brand of Republican politics fits into the GOP. Some Christian conservatives say it doesn't.[...]

While big-name moderates such as John McCain, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Rudolph Giuliani took the stage in New York, conservatives controlled the party
platform.

"The party has ruthlessly exploited moderate Republicans," Mr. Scarantino said. "I think they're deluding themselves thinking they're ever going to get anything more than the opportunity to be on the stage."