By now, everyone is familiar with the video (see above) of Bob Dole telling Chris Wallace that he would put up a sign over the national GOP headquarters saying “Closed for Repairs.” (TPM.com)

Bob Dole, Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon wouldn’t be welcome in today’s Republican Party because they all had ideas and positive agendas, Bob Dole said Sunday.

“Reagan couldn’t have made it,” Dole said. “Certainly Nixon couldn’t have made it, because he had ideas. We might have made it, but I doubt it.”

Appearing on Fox News Sunday, the former Republican presidential candidate and Senate majority leader offered a brutal indictment of what his own party has become.

“I think they ought to put a sign on the national committee doors,” Dole said of the GOP, “that says closed for repairs until New Year’s Day next year and spend that time going over ideas and positive agendas.”

Dole, 89, said the Senate is “bent really badly” and lamented that in his day, “at least we got our work done.” He also said the filibuster is being abused.

“No doubt about it,” he said. “There are some cases we can probably justify it, but not many.”

Dole also criticized President Obama, saying he although he’s a “great golfer” and “very articulate,” he “lacks communication skills with his own party, let alone the Republican Party. And he’s on the road too much.”

“There’s nothing like knowing the person you’re talking to on the telephone if you’ve had an opportunity to sit down with that person and visit, not about anything, but just visit,” he said.

While some of the Democrats  cried out “SEE!” many Republicans responded that Dole was simply obsolete.   Dole is nearly 90 and a WWII vet.  He took a bullet in Italy and darn near lost his life.  He did lose functionality in his right arm and spent 3 years in the hospital.  Throughout his political career he was revered as a conservative, a war hero, and someone who could reach across the aisle.  He laughed at himself and was very aware that people like him were called RHINOs.

Still, those older GOP members got something done.  They stood their ground while at the same time accepting that in a political world, no one was going to get their own way all the time.  Dole is right, Reagan probably wouldn’t have passed muster and Nixon would never have been elected from the GOP.

How is Dole right and how is he wrong?

 

 

50 Thoughts to “Bob Dole: GOP Closed for Repairs”

  1. Lyssa

    Bob Dole represents the Republicans who worked within the structure to make government function. This is in contrast to the Tea Party who simply wants to tear it down and start over. Both have merit. Neither are as simple as they sound. Change is necessary but blind change the kind that occurs from complete destruction is not the answer. Neither is defining compromise as “coming around to my point of view”.

    Calling him obsolete and moving on is a mistake.

    Compromise is how we get through the day – particularly on the roads here in Northern VA. Think of those that sit on bumpers never letting anyone in front of them – I imagine they get in the right lane once they leave their driveways never moving and think everyone should do that. We all know what we say and think about those drivers.

  2. Pat.Herve

    Yes, whenever a GOP’r disagrees with the echo room, they come out of the wood work and label them a RINO, old fool, etc. What the current RNC needs to do is get out of the echo chamber of their own ideas and words – and see the world around them.

    The Republican’s in the Senate are now fighting amongst themselves to prevent the budget from going to conference – McConnel is refusing to nominate budget conferees – weren’t they the ones that were making lack of a Senate budget an election issue? Just like when they appointed Norquist drones to the deficit commission. It is time to govern fella’s, somebody just needs to tell the RNC, but they are not listening.

  3. George S. Harris

    @Lyssa
    I think you have hit the nail right on the head Lyssa. Compromise was a real working term “back in the day” but now that term has been removed from the congressional lexicon. Your road analogy is a good one–I can remember seeing two guys literally smash up the opposing sides of their cars because one was unwilling to yield to the other. They repeatedly banged into one another not giving an inch. I still wonder how they explained it to the police and their insurance companies.

    Bob Dole is right but perhaps the sign should read: CONDEMNED–TO BE TORN DOWN

  4. George S. Harris

    @Pat.Herve
    Humiliation and ridicule are favorite tools of the Republicans/Conservatives. Remember that if you weren’t with George W. Bush on our two longest wars you were “unpatriotic” and, of course, RINO, old fool, out of date, etc are standard tools in every conservative tool box.

  5. Starry flights

    Bob Dole is a great American hero. The GOP can learn a lot from him.

  6. What a hypocrite.

    Reagan wasn’t welcome in the GOP when he ran. The most vicious attacks against him came from Republicans. He would be welcome. Even now, his ideas resonate with the conservatives.
    Bob Dole…not so much. Nixon wasn’t a conservative. He dd some good work, but he was a progressive. So why should he be welcome in today’s GOP. He’d be closer to being a “conservative” Democrat.

    The other problem is that the Democrats are not the same party that the old school GOP had to deal with. Back then, THEY too would compromise. Now, the compromise always seems to go only one way. What Democrat has McCain brought across the aisle…oh..that’s right. NONE.

    The people that get called RINO’s are the ones that give lip service to the conservative principles and then drop them while in office. Personally, I don’t think that they should be called RINO’s because I think that the mainstream GOP is all about growing gov’t just like the Democrats. But, the GOP should stop advocating smaller government if they don’t want to be held accountable.

    1. President has compromised to the point that is in trouble with his own party.

      What about still holding that senate budget hostage?

  7. Rick Bentley

    test 1 2 3

  8. Rick Bentley

    excuse that … for some reason I have spells where I can’t post. No idea what’s going on. what I’m dying to say is …

    I remember Dole as an entirely negative person who mostly defined himself in opposition to others. Certainly his 1996 campaign was a fine example of that. I remember vividly at one point him calling a press conference and decrying violent movies … citing “True Roimance” and “Pulp Fiction”. he later admitted that he hadn’t seen either movie. But that didn’t stop him from calling a press conference and from trying to make the issue a centerpiece to his vapid campaign effort. What a complete d**che.

    There is surely truth in what Dole is saying here. But the fact that he is saying it only means that he has turned his attention to the GOP, and giving it the same treatment he does evrything else in the world – demeaning it in a facile way, without offering any real systematic solution. Just ranting about how much better things were in the past. That’s who Dole is, and that’s what he does. Bridge to the past!

  9. Starry flights

    Aside from repug candidates losing the majority of five of the last six presidential elections, Dole does not know what he is talking about

    1. He does know what the grand old party was like. He was part of it.

      I just had some oboxious survey call my house telling all sorts of lies about freedom of worship. I wish I knew who to report them to.
      usa2013votrpoll
      202-888-0203

      If I am bored in the middle of the night, I might have to annoy them.

  10. middleman

    The reality that Bob Dole refers to is that the current GOP is the “regressive party” to the Democrats progressive party. They want to suppress the minority and immigrant and youth vote, deny science, control female reproduction and generally go back to the 20th century. Whenever they gain control of state legislatures, this is their first order of business, not the economy or jobs or repairing infrastructure or anything positive.

    It’s clear that the Democrats as a whole have come far further to the GOP side than the GOP has to the the middle. The Dems backed the GOP healthcare plan, now known as Obamacare, even though it wasn’t their preference, which would have been single payer. The Dems backed cap and trade- another conservative idea- to achieve consensus, even though they preferred a carbon tax. The list goes on and on. Today’s GOP has no interest in governing or compromise, just in obstructing progress.

  11. Cato the Elder

    Moon-howler :
    Depends

    Is this a Jeopardy! Question?

    What is the undergarment Bob needs to change before he goes on camera and pops off?

    Did I win?

    1. What drug did he endorse?

  12. Wolverine

    Perhaps Republicans/Conservatives have only adopted some of the tactics of their foes. Alinsky’s 5th Rule for Power Tactics: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” The other side should be flattered.

    1. Who do you see as the foes of the Republicans/Conservatives?

  13. Wolverine

    Yes, indeed, Bob Dole, the great American hero. Man, do I remember those halcyon days in 1996, when Bob headed the Republican ticket. The whole country was astir with great excitement. Huge attendance at every campaign event. Predictions of swamping the election in a landslide. Democrats of all stripes abandoning their party in droves and clinging to the words and charisma of the great American hero. Absolutely breathtaking. Never forget it myself.

    1. Bob Dole represented the standard for the GOP.

      Why do you feel it necessary to ridicule him? How about George H. Bush? Is he an object of derision also?

      I might not have liked his politics but both men were gentlemen.

  14. Wolverine

    You’ve gotta love the bizarro. Let a Republican, once an arch-enemy, make a comment critical of his own party; and he suddenly becomes a hero and a symbol of all that used to be right with the political world. But, let a Dem like Corey Booker say something less than flattering about his own party leadership; and the fellow has to walk it back so fast you would think someone had lit his briefs on fire.

    1. I guess that’s the plus of being in office.

      I think Bob Dole was a hero before he made his party statement.

      I certainly didn’t see Bob Dole as an arch enemy. I didn’t see George H. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford or Richard Nixon as arch enemies either.

      Only George H. Bush is alive amongst those notables. Do you think he would agree with Bob Dole?

  15. Wolverine

    And Cargo is on the mark. Ronald Reagan had to fight like Hell just to pass muster in the party of Gerald Ford and Bob Dole.

    1. I remember how powerful Gerald Ford was. NOT!

  16. Cato the Elder

    Wolverine :
    You’ve gotta love the bizarro. Let a Republican, once an arch-enemy, make a comment critical of his own party; and he suddenly becomes a hero and a symbol of all that used to be right with the political world. But, let a Dem like Corey Booker say something less than flattering about his own party leadership; and the fellow has to walk it back so fast you would think someone had lit his briefs on fire.

    Corey Booker’s allocution looked like one of those hostage videos the Jihadis make.

    1. @Cato

      I must have missed that.

  17. Wolverine

    I am not ridiculing Bob Dole. I am using sarcasm to ridicule those on the other side who hear Dole make some remark about his own party and then begin to hail him like he was a veritable political god from the old days who was loved by one and all. Great American hero indeed. In the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, the Dems used to call him “Nixon’s hatchet man.” Now he is a downright sweetie who represents all that was once good about the old-time GOP. I am laughing.

    1. The other side? i thought we were all Americans. Silly me.

      Bob Dole was calling it as he sees it. Did you hear what Barbara Bush had to say about some of the newcomers? Did you hear the disrespectful way Sarah Palin spoke about the old guard? Now that is who can’t pass full GOP muster.

      The GOP is fortunate to have some of the Old Guard still with them. The Democrats have very few left. Jimmy and Rosyln Carter are sort of the Old Guard but have never been insiders.

  18. Lyssa

    I don’t think listening to someone from “the other side” means you hail him as a veritable god. I would just call it polite and smart. A few might be. I voted for Dole in 96. Does that make me eligible to say there is merit to his comments? What makes someone eligible to agree with him? What are the rules for the sides to listen and deal with each other? Must we deal with lines in the sand and death and ridicule to those that step accross to look around? Rather medieval.

    Sarah Palin is simply disrespectful. Resigning from your elected position as Governor on the 4th of July (for Pete’s sakes) to further personal gain due to a brief foray into public service and public trust was disrespectful or at least in very poor taste. Or is that the new capitalism – the new selfish American way?

  19. Rick Bentley

    middleman says the GOP wants to “deny science”. Presumably you’re talking about climate change.

    At the risk of getting off topic (my modus operandi) – it’s the Democratic party that has politicized climate change. Al Gore decided to make this his “ManBearPig” issue to save the world with, and ever since he put his movie out this has been a partisan issue.

    Democrats apparently want to believe that everyone who doesn’t think like them is evil and/or manipulated by “big oil money”. But the truth is simple, and not to do with propoganda. We don’t have much control over whether the earth gets warmer or cooler. We never did and we still don’t. The most alarming models about how we are/were supposedly trapping CO2 in our atmosphere and how that was causing warming have not stood up to scrutiny during the last 10 years – they’ve broken down as we’ve collected more data. THE NARRATIVE DEMOCRATS ADOPTED 10 YEARS AGO HAS BEEN PROVEN UNREAL. Ideally, the media would have reported this fact in ways that people could digest. Maybe they’re waiting for some public figure to make an Oscar-winning film about it. At any rate, we collect temperature data from satellites, which reflects temperature in the atmopshere. By all accounts it’s very different than the “Inconvenient Truth” narrative proposed at that time, and shows that CO2 does not trap heat within our atmosphere to nearly the degree thought.

    Bottom line there are two cyclical “wobbles” in earth’s orbit that will necessarily cause cycles of climate change. And we don’t have enough historical record to know where we are in those cycles. Meanwhile, the sun’s output also has peaks and valleys, and we cannot predict those either, or know where we are in that cycle.

    We don’t really know whether it’s going to get warmer or colder over the next year, 10 years, 100 years, 1000 years, or 10000 years. That’s the truth. We may end up exploding particles into the atmopshere over the poles, to trap heat in rather than letting it dissipate, if the world starts to get too cold. (We have this technology, it’d be easy to do).

    It’s the Democrats who are failing to incorporate reality into their world view, not the GOP, on this issue. Every time I hear the President pretend that it’s vital we reduce warming, I cringe. It’s idiotic.

    If you want to reduce pollution, or create more “social justice” where big nations don’t consume so much, that may be a noble goal. But to do it by proxy, by creating a cottage industry of “climate specialists” who sell a false narrative to the American people, is horrible science and bad for everyone.

    Some of my friends use the argument “well who knows, but it’s better to be careful and not pollute as much, so I’m happy to adopt the fiction for the common good”. It’s analogous to the argument that many people (who have weak critical thinking ability) use about their religion. “If Christianity is real and I don’t believe, I’ll go to hell, so I may as well believe”. Come on, what are we, 4 years old? Let’s tell the truth about things. We don’t much control warming and cooling, we’re at the mercy of our orbital pattern and of the sun. Pollution is generally bad but some forms are worse than others. Overconsumption of fossil fuels is hopefully a temporary phenomenon, until we can come up with cost-effective ways to use other energy sources. Meanwhjile, fossil fuels are the cheapest, so we use them up and we make some nations rich doing it. That’s what’s real.

    I can’t get with this whole thing humans do of pretending that the weather is our fault – that “nature is angry at us”. 2000 years ago people would slaughter livestock to Gods to change the weather; they assumed the Gods were angry at them – because there’s a human proponsity for self-flagellation. What the Democrats have fallen into now is pretty much the same thing. No one should take it seriously.

    Al Gore should be slapped across the face with a wet fish for creating this nonsense, in an attempt to be an important man. Watching the way he has conducted himself in the past 13 years, I’m increasingly convinced that he would have been a terrible President (and I did vote for him). Bush was no prize but he may well have been more in touch with reality than Gore, and less self-centered.

    1. The difference is you can see the damage Bush did. You don’t have to speculate. Ask anyone who was killed or wounded in Iraq. Ask an Iraqi even. Are they better off than they were 12 years ago?

      How about the Scopes Monkey Trial? Is that enough science on trial for you? How about the age of the earth? How about those who want to substitute religious belief for science in school? Are those folks usually Democrats? People can believe whatever they want to believe but I certainly don’t want anyone’s religious beliefs taught as science.

      I plan on keeping an open mind about climate change. Frankly, I am not ready to bet the ranch on what the nay-sayers say either. it really shouldn’t be a political issue.

  20. Rick Bentley

    If i could go back in time I’d still vote foir Clinton twice, and for Kerry in ’04. And maybe for Obama in ’08 because McCain is IMO not fit to be President personality-wise. But I do regret that vote for Gore in 2000. He’s a self-centered man who profiteers off the crazy narratives that he sells to his followers.

    1. But then you would have to vote for George Bush if you could take it back.

      Maybe in govt, Al Gore wouldn’t have turned into whatever it is you don’t like. I don’t like him now either but perhaps the course would have been different. I mean I liked OJ at one point in his life.

  21. Rick Bentley

    Gore is directly responsible for 30-40% of America tilting at the “climate change” windmill instead of confronting some real problem. God knows where he would have lead America if he had the chance. I shudder to imagine.

  22. Rick Bentley

    “But then you would have to vote for George Bush if you could take it back.”

    Or vote for Howard the Duck as I did this time. That’s probably what I would do. But if it was gun to my head, pick one to be President, I’d go with Bush.

    I think Gore in 2000 is the same guy as now. Everyone noticed in the 2000 election that he was a serial exaggerator who inflated his own importance. You don’t need a degree in psychoanalysis to see that little Al started stretching the truth early in life to be noticed or respected by his dad. Gore is not a particularly intellectual guy – he was a journalism student with C grades. He’s come to believe in his own self-importance and it’s a mystery to me why anyone takes him seriously. To me the South Park episode “ManBearPig” captures his essence exactly – he’s an infantile personality.

    If he’d been President I don’t know what bogus epic quest he would have tilted us towards, maybe a fight agsinst global warming and maybe something else, but there would have been one, at any cost.

    1. Well, that’s your opinion. I am not sure why any of what you find weong with him, from a distance (do you know him personally?)disqualifies him from the presidency.

      We get 2 choices. The 2 choices are chosen by the party faithful. No one is offering us perfection. You just have to go with whoever is closest to your belief system. Howard the Duck is just throwing your vote away and in my opinion, reduces your validity as a presidential critic.

      I used to have a friend who hasn’t voted in over 40 years. She was the first person to bitch and moan about Obama, yet she was too lazy to go vote. No one listened to her.

  23. Rick Bentley

    Not dissimilar to Bush. But Bush had an end goal (increased presence in the Middle East) beyond his and his followers’ psychological need to be heroes and saviors.

  24. Wolverine

    Lyssa — Look. Old political trick on display here. Nothing more. Former party honcho goes before the cameras and expresses some disagreement with the current party people. Opposition jumps up and screams: “See ?! Told ya so! Even one of your own says you guys are full of it and need to change!” Suddenly, the guy who was the political foe of that Opposition for all those years becomes a great American hero and an all-knowing guru who speaks nothing but truth, and, by God, the rest of those people had better listen if they know what is good for them.

    Balderdash. I am somewhat surprised that anyone here may still believe that this kind of silliness works.

    1. It seems you have misread a lot of people, or else assumed a lot.

      Let’s stop mischaracterising people on this blog.

    2. Its a post for discussion. Nothing more, nothing less. Silliness works? Who is acting ‘silly?’ What are THEY supposedly working on?

      Woverine, you are reading waaay too much into the post and the responses.

      I don’t think anyone has ever taken away from the fact that people like John McCain, Bob Dole, George H.W. Bush have served their country with honor, even though not everyone agrees with their politics. The only time I have heard a vet receive disrespect from the “opposition” was John Kerry. Does anyone see a pattern?

  25. Wolverine

    Hmmph. How many “Dole is right” responses, followed by “great American hero” does one need to see the obvious?

  26. Lyssa

    @Moon-howler

    Moon-howler :
    The difference is you can see the damage Bush did. You don’t have to speculate. Ask anyone who was killed or wounded in Iraq. Ask an Iraqi even. Are they better off than they were 12 years ago?
    How about the Scopes Monkey Trial? Is that enough science on trial for you? How about the age of the earth? How about those who want to substitute religious belief for science in school? Are those folks usually Democrats? People can believe whatever they want to believe but I certainly don’t want anyone’s religious beliefs taught as science.
    I plan on keeping an open mind about climate change. Frankly, I am not ready to bet the ranch on what the nay-sayers say either. it really shouldn’t be a political issue.

    If you fish, you see it. Skipjack Tuna now a regular off Maine. Oh, okay.

  27. Lyssa

    Not a lot of reflective reasoning required for the “we” and “they” thinking process. Or is that even thinking 🙂

  28. Censored bybvbl

    I’m not a Bob Dole fan – he was too negative IMO. But to dismiss what he has to say is akin to disregarding the poll data showing Romney falling behind going into the last election. The GOP has cultivated a string of negative images as it has targeted segment after segment of American society. Soon there is only a squealing base left repeating bullet point after bullet point to each other while the rest of the nation happily hums “La, la, la…I can’t hear you! And no longer want to.”

    1. I am not a fan of his either. I have never voted for him. But….that is not to say I feel disrespect towards him. I do not.

      I have voted for John Edwards and I feel nothing but disrespect towards him. Edwards has earned it.

  29. Lyssa

    Smart people listen to others even when they disagree. If they’re nice.

  30. middleman

    Rick, I’ve been away for awhile (driving around spewing CO2 from our Murano), so forgive the tardiness. I just had to address your points since you’ve apparently reached some important scientific conclusions.

    Your findings on climate change contradict those of climate scientists, so I think it’s really important that we let all those scientists know where they’ve gone wrong (your statements like:we don’t have much control over whether it gets warmer, we’re not trapping CO2 in the atmosphere that’s causing warming, orbit wobbles are causing climate change, there aren’t enough historical records to decide if the climate is changing, we don’t know if it’s going to get warmer or colder, Al Gore created this “nonsense”).

    All of your assertions directly contradict the findings of the actual scientists that study our climate, so it’s important we get the word out on what you’ve found. Where can we find the research papers that document your claims? As you probably know, the way science works is that researchers publish papers that are peer-reviewed and other scientists attempt to duplicate the findings. If they can, the claims are accepted as real. The latest study found that 97% of peer-reviewed scholarly articles agree that the climate is warming and that it is human caused:http://skepticalscience.com/97-percent-consensus-cook-et-al-2013.html

    So, Rick, please send us the peer-reviewed studies that support your position and we can send all these liberal climate scientists packing! Maybe they can find jobs in oil exploration. Or coal mining. Or searching for Noah’s Ark!!

  31. Rick Bentley

    middleman, you have to parse language carefully when dealing with the output from “climate scientists”. We have to get down into small details.

    But the larger picture, I submit to you, is as I stated it. No one can reasonably claim to know whether the Earth is going to get warmer or cooler over any stretch of time, and CO2 will be less of a factor in it than the sun’s output variation and the irregularities in Earth’s orbit (there are two known orbital “wobbles”, one causes a 40,000 year cycle that will affect climate, and we don’t know where we are in it at present.

    I’m not going to change your mind today, middleman. But keep an open mind. I subkit to you that if you watch “An Inconvemient Truth”, and then fact-check what’s presented in there as “Peer reviewed truth” against what’s known now, a lot of what’s in there that got this craze going is alarmist and unreasonable. A lot of the body of “peer reviewed studies” that inflamed this little religious-type movement have since been obsolesced. Unfortunately because the issue is now politicized, it’s hard for that to be heard.

    I liken to it someone standing on a building top and shouting that there’s no known God, and that the Christian Bible has logical contradictions in it. HE?SHE IS ABSOLUTELY CORRECT, but lots of people don’t want to hear it. The issue has become political and emotional and beyond reason. We’ll look back in time later and see it for the absolutely bizarre phenomenon that it was.

    1. If you watch “An inconvenient Truth” you will surely fall asleep. Yawn.

  32. Rick Bentley

    If you want to come around to my way of thinking, read up about the Earth’s orbital wobbles, read up about the Sun’s output, and read up about the peer reviewed scientific consensus in the 1970’s the global cooling was our immediate threat. And read up about the way that satellite temperature measurements of the atmosphere and tropshere have contradicted the belief about trapping CO2 in the atmopshere that was in vogue 10-15 years ago. There are sites that collect this info – “skeptic” sites. They’re not funded by big oil. They’re just stating the truth and providing the perspective that the left in America has lost touch with.

  33. middleman

    Rick, you want me to keep an open mind, but your’s seems to be shut like a steel trap! As the years have passed, the science has become more and more sure about climate change being caused by CO2 in the atmosphere and being caused by man. Sea level rise, ocean acidification, coral reef die-off, animal and crop habitat changes are all effects of the additional CO2 in the atmosphere that has been measured and documented and has caused our climate to warm.

    Rick, you need to examine why you (and others) resist the facts. You can compare the phenomenon to the resistance of the linkage of smoking to cancer, clouroflourocarbons with the hole in the ozone layer, automobile exhaust with smog, and on and on. There is always resistance to science when it gores someone’s ox. And the bigger the ox that’s gored, the more the resistance.

    Global warming may not be easy to deal with, but wishing won’t make it go away…

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