Colin Powell appears on Fareed Zakaria’s GPS today and unloads on Bible Spice:

I think that in the latter months of the campaign, the party moved further to the right. Governor Palin, to some extent, pushed the party more to the right. And I think she had something of a polarizing effect when she talked about "small values are good." Well most of us don’t live in small towns. And I was raised in the South Bronx and there’s nothing wrong with my value system from the South Bronx.

Powell clearly doesn’t buy the fantasy that the GOP keeps losing elections because it’s insufficiently right-wing. And I was sort of wondering when some Republican would notice that pissing on us city folk every 4 years wasn’t exactly the most sustainable electoral strategy.

But not content with taking down Caribou Barbie, Powell goes after El Rushbo:

I was impressed by an article that Mort Kondracke wrote recently that said, "Can we continue to listen to Rush Limbaugh?" Is this really the kind of party that we want to be, when these kinds of spokespersons seem to appeal to our lesser instincts rather than our better instincts?

Although Powell is certainly correct that the GOP does have an image problem as a result of its endless quest for enemies (San Francisco, Massachusetts, gays, Mexicans, Muslims, feminists, teachers, science, etc.), he makes the same mistake, ironically, as the wingnuts who will attack him for this interview.

The Republican party’s main problem isn’t that they’re haters. They hated their way through a string of big wins — from Gingrich to W. No, their problem is that Americans understand that tax cuts and criminalizing abortion won’t solve the financial crisis, the energy crisis, the health care crisis or get us out of Iraq. Tone is the least of their worries.