The Sons and Daughters of Some Iconic Republicans Tell Newsweek They Are
Contemplating Crossing the Aisle in 2008
NEW YORK, May 6 /PRNewswire/ -- Susan Eisenhower is an accomplished
professional, the president of an international consulting firm who also
happens to be Ike's granddaughter-and in that role, she's the humble
torchbearer for moderate "Eisenhower Republicans." Increasingly, however,
she tells Newsweek Senior Editor Michael Hirsh, that the partisanship and
free spending of the Bush presidency-and the takeover of the party by
single-issue voters, especially pro-lifers-is driving these pragmatic,
fiscally conservative voters out of the GOP. Eisenhower says she could vote
Democratic in 2008, but she's still intent on saving her party. "I made a
pact with a number of people," she tells Newsweek in the May 14 issue (on
newsstands Monday May 7, 2007). "I said, 'Please don't leave the party
without calling me first.' For a while, there weren't too many calls. And
then suddenly, there was flurry of them. I found myself watching them slip
away one by one."
(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20070430/NYSU004 )
Newsweek reports that Eisenhower isn't the only GOP scion debating if
the party still feels like home. Theodore Roosevelt IV, an investment
banker in New York and an environmental activist like his
great-grandfather, Teddy, takes issue with what he says is George W. Bush's
inattention to global warming (and Republican presidential contender John
McCain's flirtations with the religious right). Roosevelt tells Newsweek,
"This administration has taken the idea of aggressively exporting democracy
a la Woodrow Wilson and gone in a direction even Wilson wouldn't have
considered."
The party might even be alien to Barry Goldwater, the 1964 GOP nominee
who jolted the party rightward when he said, "extremism in the defense of
liberty is no vice." Granted, these are no ordinary voters. But their
unhappiness with the GOP suggests there's a new middle up for grabs in
2008, Newsweek reports.
Even so, Eisenhower and other lifelong Republicans say they haven't
heard much yet from the leading Democratic candidates that persuade them.
"I can't tell you how many Republicans I've talked to who are thinking
along radical lines" about deserting in '08 if they hear the right message,
says Eisenhower. "It's a buyer's market. Make my day."
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