Jul 12 2008
Can Burr Reunite GOP?
A fellow North Carolinian on the committee, Mary Summa of Charlotte, said the platform would reflect the party at large rather than a “rubber stamp” of McCain’s presidential platform. Summa, a former aide to the late Sen. Jesse Helms, believes immigration, gay marriage and embryonic stem cell research are contentious issues among Republicans this year.
“If the platform supports embryonic stem cell research, I’ll do everything I can to get it out,” Summa said of the controversial medical initiative that McCain and Burr have supported. (McCain said last month that he’s open to re-examining his position.)
Burr said the platform would be drastically changed from previous conventions only if a compelling case could be made that the majority had redefined its position on an issue, and he doesn’t think that’s the case with studying embryonic stem cells.
If gay marriage and stem cell research are examples of what they deem as really important to the country right now, then this coalition of Burr and others in the Republican Party has already failed. Limited government and personal liberty has played second fiddle to social conservatism for the last eight years. While Republicans wasted their time sweating over who was going to get married and who was burning the American flag, they allowed their elected representatives to spend away their future, drag us into an unjustified war, and roll back our rights. This is what drove away many voters who had been GOP supporters ever since the Reagan years and their continued crusade of government enforced morality won’t win them back.
