A KERRY REPUBLICAN (Kerry's 1st cousin Grant Winthrop) the New Yorker

The New Yorker
UP TO HERE DEPT.

A KERRY REPUBLICAN
Issue of 2004-05-17
Posted 2004-05-10
Eric Konigsberg


<snip>


For the most part, Winthrop has been a Party loyalist: his political vita includes a run in the 1976 California primary as a Gerald Ford delegate and a contribution to Rick Lazio’s Senate campaign against Hillary Clinton. And although John Kerry is a first cousin—their mothers, the Forbes girls, were sisters—Winthrop helped raise money for his friend William Weld’s bid to unseat Kerry in the 1996 Massachusetts Senate race.



Last year, however, at a memorial service for Kerry’s mother, Winthrop took his cousin aside and lamented the Republican Party’s rightward turn. “I told John I was thinking of switching parties, and John said, ‘Don’t do it,’” Winthrop recalled the other day in his office at Milbank Winthrop, an investmentadvisory firm. “John told me, ‘It’s better for me if you can raise money from Republicans.’” And so it is that Winthrop has come to serve on the finance committee of Kerry’s campaign in New York.



“Republicans for Kerry,” Winthrop said, chuckling. “There isn’t any official organization, though I did look into having some bumper stickers printed. It’s a growing movement.” This spring, for instance, he was in Jackson Hole, where he heard about some local Republicans who, he says, “absolutely can’t stand George Bush. I ended up coming home with a couple of checks.” So far, Winthrop and his wife have raised more than two hundred thousand dollars, and, he says, more than twenty of the people he’s collected checks from are registered Republicans. Winthrop’s two tables at a two-thousand-dollar-a-plate Kerry fund-raiser at the Sheraton New York last month were within spitting distance of the dais. Among his guests was Theodore Roosevelt IV, one of Bush’s more vocal Republican critics.



Winthrop is a ruddy and sportsmanlike fifty-five years old. He lives on Fifth Avenue but grew up at Groton House Farm, the family’s estate on the North Shore of Massachusetts, which served as Kerry’s American home when, as a foreign-service brat, he was sent back to New England for boarding school. At his desk the other day, Winthrop pawed his way through a file and produced a handwritten list of potential Republican turncoats. He pulled out an e-mail exchange he’d had with one of them, a businessman in New Jersey, who, according to Federal Election Commission records, has made some six hundred and fifty thousand dollars in political donations—the bulk of them to Republicans—since 1997. “This e-mail came after I’d seen him at a dinner, when we’d all had some wine and so on,” Winthrop said. “But he made it clear that he was very unhappy with Bush. So I asked him, ‘Would you support Kerry?’”




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http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/?040517ta_talk_konigsberg

Old Yankee Republicans just don't identify with the Republican Party of Tom DeLay, Newt Gingrich, Dick Armey, Bill Frist, Trent Lott and George W. Bush (see a pattern here?).

On the other hand, the opposite is happening all over the South in the other direction.

Compare 2000 with 1896

1896



2000

if anyone missed it . :nuke: :thumbsup: :bounce: :headbang: :nuke:

The GOPers are toast if they seem to be rubberstamping for an unpopular Bush and BushInc will crucify them if they don't campaign as Bush supporters.

Heh.

The WH and Congress will be Dem in 2005.

"In his reply, Winthrop’s target wrote, “I was one of Bush’s top five supporters financially approaching seven figures—not only could he care less, he has embarked on this partisan Christian Right Crusade. . . . I agree with the Iraqi adventure but find it incredibly poorly planned, and hold him and a senile Cheney responsible. Having said that, I am inclined to hold my nose and vote for him and am particularly leery of Kerry and Edwards, as I see no evidence of moderation. If you can convince me to the contrary, I would be open to reconsidering.”

The "uniters" are at it again, the moderate wings of the parties may just pull this off. When they got together in the past relatively good legislation was passed. We need some more good old American cooperation in Washington. But one huge problem is that things are so out of whack that extensive measures need to be taken.

And from the above "Observer" article the Republican Party may be left with pseudo Christian southerners and The Club for Growth ideologues.

I want my sane Republicans back!