Powell Must Do More To Reshape the Republican Party

The back-and-forth comments among former Secretary of State Colin Powell, former Vice President Dick Cheney and radio entertainer Rush Limbaugh have been, well, entertaining and fascinating.

You have these enormous personalities and egos slamming into one another over what it means to be a Republican and the course the party should be on, as it is in desperate need of a vision.

Yet while folks like me in the media love the brouhaha and TV and radio producers salivate at the chance to book any of these three on their programs, the inevitable question has to be asked: What now?

And this is where former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is correct. Powell must go beyond commenting on the state of the party and what it needs and work to help rebuild, reshape and revitalize the GOP in the form he thinks is appropriate for the 21st century.

Let's be clear: Powell is under no obligation to hit the road campaigning for candidates, raising funds, participating in strategy sessions, and doing the dirty work necessary to make his vision a reality. But without a leader championing this cause, what he has been saying as of late is merely talk.

It always has been my contention since the 2008 presidential election that the Republican Party is in desperate need of a separate entity that would have the same effect on the GOP as the Democratic Leadership Council had on the Democrats. Talk to liberal Dems and they will tell you that the DLC was set up for nothing more than countering the impact the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. had on the party after his presidential runs in 1984 and 1988; they feared the left was dominating the party levers.

So these largely white Southerners and moderate and conservative Democrats created the DLC to broaden the Democratic Party's reach and to make it more palatable to big business and fiscal conservatism. And who came out of this effort? Bill Clinton, who went on to win two terms as president and dominate the party for 16 years, until President Barack Obama came along. This, frankly, is what is needed in the Republican Party.

It would be a helluva thing to witness if Powell took his stature and considerable influence and banded together with other liberal to moderate Republicans to create an organization that represents their values and vision.

Like it or not, the opposition to them in the GOP already is organized with infrastructure and a fundraising mechanism.

So to counter them, there has to be an entity that people can look to, or enlist in, to show the rest of the world that Powell isn't whistling in the wind, but has thousands — or millions — standing behind him who think like him. If such an organization were created and all of a sudden you had chapters forming in states across the country, you would have the infrastructure to identify candidates who could run in local and state races and challenge the people Powell and others thought were driving the party further into isolation as a largely Southern and regional party.

It's clear the GOP has enormous problems in the Northeast, and seeing as Obama won a sizeable portion of the Hispanic vote and the party has a staunch opposition to illegal immigration, it is going to have a helluva time in the Southwest and West. And with a fractured party, there is no better time to create an alternative that people can believe in and rally behind.

On CNN recently, senior political analyst Gloria Borger said there clearly is a civil war raging within the GOP, and Powell and Cheney are on opposite sides. I chimed in that in any war, I'd trust the guy who put on a military uniform — Powell — over the guy who ran from serving his country — Cheney.

Powell has clearly shown that he is adept at leading our troops to victory on the battlefield by planning and shaping a perfect battle plan to defeat the enemy. Now it's time to see whether he has the chops to do the same in the political arena, where your enemy is not as readily identifiable.

There is no doubt that he has the capacity to do it. It's now a question of whether he wants to. As the old saying goes, you can talk the talk or walk the walk. Mr. Powell, do you have your walking shoes on?

Roland S. Martin is an award-winning CNN contributor and the author of "Listening to the Spirit Within: 50 Perspectives on Faith." Please visit his Web site at www.RolandSMartin.com. To find out more about Roland S. Martin and read his past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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