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Pedro Gonçalves

Powell Jousts With Cheney on Path of Republican Party - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...25talkshows.html

US Politics Republican Party Colin Powell Dick Cheney Tom Ridge Karl Rove Newt Gingrich

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 25 May 09 - Cached
  • Colin L. Powell challenged Dick Cheney on the legacy of the Bush administration and the future of the Republican Party on Sunday, declaring that Republicans should not bow to “diktats that come from the right wing.”
  • The remarks by Mr. Powell, a former secretary of state, amounted to a public rebuttal of Mr. Cheney, the former vice president, and Rush Limbaugh, the conservative radio commentator, who have questioned Mr. Powell’s Republican credentials and suggested that he should leave the party. “Rush will not get his wish,” Mr. Powell said Sunday on “Face the Nation” on CBS. “And Mr. Cheney was misinformed. I am still a Republican.”
  • Mr. Powell broke with Mr. Cheney on the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, saying that he agreed with President Obama that it should be closed and that Mr. Cheney disagreed as much with his former boss as with Mr. Obama.“Mr. Cheney is not only disagreeing with President Obama’s policy,” Mr. Powell said. “He’s disagreeing with President Bush’s policy. President Bush stated repeatedly to international audiences and to the country that he wanted to close Guantánamo. The problem he had was he couldn’t get all the pieces together.”
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  • Mr. Powell said Guantánamo prisoners could be safely housed in United States prisons, undercutting the main theme Congressional Republicans have been wielding against the president.
  • In another indication of Republican discord, Tom Ridge, who was a secretary of homeland security for Mr. Bush, said on CNN that he disagreed with Mr. Cheney that the nation was less safe because of Mr. Obama’s national security policies. He, too, supports the closing of Guantánamo.
  • Mr. Powell infuriated many in his party last fall when he endorsed Mr. Obama for president. His appearance on “Face the Nation” comes two weeks after Mr. Cheney, appearing on the same program, said he believed that Mr. Powell “had already left the party. I didn’t know he was still a Republican.”
  • He made clear that he thought a major threat to the party were suggestions by Republicans like Mr. Cheney and Mr. Limbaugh that there was no room for Republicans like Mr. Powell. “What the concern about me is, ‘Well, is he too moderate?’ ” Mr. Powell said. “I have always felt that the Republican Party should be more inclusive than it generally has been over the years.”
  • Mr. Powell’s call for expanding the party was embraced by Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker and a leading conservative in the party, who said Republicans would be doomed to minority status if they adopted a small-tent view.“I don’t think anybody has the authority to read anybody out of a free party,” Mr. Gingrich said in an interview. “Having started my career in Georgia when there were no Republicans and we were eager to show up, and having been in the House for 15 years as a member of the minority, I’ll tell you if we didn’t have moderates, we would never have become a majority party. You can’t be a national party without internal tension.”
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