Below The Beltway

Former Republican Congressman and 2008 Libertarian Party Presidential Candidate Bob Barr talked with CNN about the state of the GOP three months into the Obama Administration:

(CNN) — Former Georgia Rep. Bob Barr said Saturday it’s hard to “overestimate the damage” that’s been inflicted on the Republican Party — not only with this week’s defection of Sen. Arlen Specter, but also the “lack of any coherent philosophy, vision or leadership.”

“The Republican Party is in very deep trouble right now,” Barr said in an interview with CNN.

Barr, who was once a loyal soldier in the GOP, joined the Libertarian Party in 2006 and was the party’s presidential candidate in 2008.

The ex-Republican said he doesn’t feel like he relates to Specter’s reasons for switching to the Democratic Party. “Where I came from there really was a philosophical basis for leaving the Republican Party,” Barr said.

(…)

Barr added that Specter’s decision is “just another sign that the Republican Party nationally lacks any semblance of leadership.” Democrats, he said, also don’t have a coherent agenda, but they have “something that Republicans absolutely lack.”

“They have a charismatic leader and they have party discipline. The Republican Party has none of that,” he said.

And until they find it, the GOP is likely to continue spending a lot of time in the political wilderness.

As things stand now, it doesn’t look like they’ll find either in time for the 2010 elections and, outside of picking up a few House seats in districts that already lean Republican and possibly a Senate seat in Connecticut, it seems unlikely that the GOP will come anywhere close to the type of 1994-style comeback that some Republicans already seem to be counting on.

H/T: Jason Pye