Colin Powell to Limbaugh and Cheney: It’s my party

Former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell warned Sunday that ideological conservatives, particularly radio commentator Rush Limbaugh, had gained a hold over the Republican Party that risked driving the GOP into an extended exile from power.

Powell cast his warnings in unusually personal terms as he answered recent charges from two champions of the Republican right -- Limbaugh and former Vice President Dick Cheney -- that he was no longer a Republican.

“Rush will not get his wish, and Mr. Cheney was misinformed,” said Powell, whose resume includes military advisor to President Reagan, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President George H.W. Bush, and secretary of State under George W. Bush. “I am still a Republican.”

Powell, a moderate who has been featured prominently over the years by GOP candidates trying to broaden their appeal, repeatedly clashed with Cheney during the George W. Bush administration. He bristled at critics’ charge that he had left the party.

“Neither [Cheney] nor Rush Limbaugh are members of the membership committee of the Republican Party,” Powell said. “I get to make my decision on that.”

Powell’s public retort adds to the often acrimonious conflict between Republican moderates and conservatives that has left some centrists feeling alienated.

Pennsylvania’s Arlen Specter, for example, became a Democrat last month after 28 years as a Republican senator. He cited GOP hostility to his vote in favor of President Obama’s economic stimulus package, among other things. Maine’s two moderate GOP senators -- Susan Collins and Olympia J. Snowe -- also have expressed misgivings about the atmosphere in the party.

Nor was Powell the only Republican moderate to caution the party Sunday. Former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that if the GOP wanted “to restore itself, not as a regional party but as a national party, we have to be far less judgmental about disagreements within the party.”

Ridge, who served as secretary of Homeland Security under George W. Bush, reportedly was among those passed over as running mate to GOP presidential nominee John McCain last year because McCain didn’t want to alienate conservatives.

Powell reflected moderates’ angst in an interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” criticizing “diktats that come down from the right wing of the party.”

Two weeks earlier, Cheney said on “Face the Nation” that Powell had “left the party” when he endorsed Obama for president late last year. “I assumed that that is some indication of his loyalty,” Cheney said.

Limbaugh had begun the drumbeat on his radio show earlier this month.

“What Colin Powell needs to do is close the loop and become a Democrat, instead of claiming to be a Republican interested in reforming the Republican Party. He’s not. He’s a full-fledged Democrat,” Limbaugh said, according to a partial transcript of a May 6 show on Limbaugh’s website.

On Sunday, Powell targeted Limbaugh for the most severe criticism, accusing the radio host and his followers of using intimidation to stifle competing voices in a necessary debate on the party’s future after disastrous electoral losses in 2006 and last year. Limbaugh, he said, “shouldn’t have a veto over what someone thinks.”

Powell cited the experience of Republican Party Chairman Michael S. Steele, who in March described Limbaugh as a mere “entertainer” with an “incendiary” radio show. When Limbaugh criticized Steele in response, Steele quickly apologized and hailed him as “a national conservative leader.”

Two Republican congressmen also reversed themselves and apologized to Limbaugh after making similar comments recently, Powell noted.

Powell, like Steele, used the word “entertainer” to describe Limbaugh and said, “If he’s out there, he should be subject to criticism.”

He urged the party to undergo a wide-ranging “after-action review,” saying its successive losses demonstrate a “leakage [that] cannot continue if the Republican Party is going to play a major role in the life of our country.”

Powell cited polls showing plummeting numbers of people who identify themselves as Republicans, as well as the party’s dwindling competitiveness in most of the country outside the South.

“The Republican Party has to take a hard look at itself and decide, what kind of party are we?” Powell said. “Are we simply moving farther to the right and by so doing simply opening up the right of center and the center to be taken over by independents and to be taken over by the Democrats?”

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mdorning@tribune.com