May 24 (Bloomberg) -- Former Secretary of State Colin Powell said the Republican Party needs to break free from the grip of conservative radio commentator Rush Limbaugh and forge a more inclusive identity.

Powell responded to comments by Limbaugh urging him to become a Democrat, and by former Vice President Dick Cheney that he had abandoned the party. Powell declared his loyalty to the Republican Party and said he is trying to boost its electoral prospects.

“Rush Limbaugh will not get his wish and Mr. Cheney is ill-informed,” Powell said on CBS News’s “Face the Nation” program. “I’m still a Republican.”

Powell, a retired Army general, said the party must be “more inclusive” to expand its electoral base or risk losses similar to those suffered in the November elections, when Barack Obama won the White House and Democrats expanded their majorities in the House and Senate.

“On almost every demographic indicator the Republican Party is losing,” Powell said. “The Republican Party has to take a hard look at itself and ask, ‘What kind of party are we?’”

Cheney said on “Face the Nation” on May 10 that Powell, 72, “had already left the party” when he endorsed Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign. “I assumed that that is some indication of his loyalty.”

Asked if he would “take Rush Limbaugh over Colin Powell,” Republican Cheney, 68, said, “I would.”

Powell Backs Obama

Limbaugh criticized Powell’s endorsement of Obama, suggesting during his May 6 program that considerations of race had trumped politics. Obama and Powell are black.

“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 the program on Limbaugh’s official Web site.

“The only reason to endorse Obama is race,” Limbaugh said.

Powell said Limbaugh ignored reasons that Powell described in his decision to support Obama. Powell had called Obama “a transformational figure” from “a new generation coming onto the world stage,” in a televised interview on Oct. 19.

“Mr. Limbaugh saw fit to dismiss all those reasons and put it into a racial context,” Powell said today. “That was very unfortunate.”

Limbaugh’s Power

Powell said Limbaugh holds too much sway over Republican officials, citing recent incidents in which Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele was forced to “lay prostrate on the floor and apologize” for criticizing the radio personality.

“He shouldn’t have a veto over what someone thinks,” Powell said.

Newt Gingrich, former Republican speaker of the House, said today on NBC’s “Meet the Press” program that his party has to make itself open enough to include both Cheney and Powell.

“I think Republicans are going to be very foolish if they run around deciding they’re going to see how much they can purge us down to the smallest possible base,” Gingrich said.

Former Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge, who served from 2003 to 2005 under Bush, agreed.

Limbaugh and other commentators who “get the base all fired up” are sometimes too divisive, he said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“Let’s be less shrill,” said Ridge, a former Pennsylvania governor. “Let’s not attack other individuals. Let’s attack their ideas.”

Guantanamo Prison

Powell sided with Obama in his debate with Cheney over the closing of the military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

“I’ve felt it should be closed for the past six years,” Powell said. “Guantanamo has caused us a great deal of trouble throughout the world.”

He also said Obama “didn’t handle it very well” by asking Congress for $80 million to close the camp without having a detailed plan for how to handle the approximately 240 detainees that remain incarcerated there. The Senate last week rejected Obama’s request in a 90-6 vote.

Obama and Cheney made back-to-back speeches on May 21 in which they effectively debated the national security policies espoused by the Bush administration and repudiated by Obama.

‘A Mess’

Obama said the U.S. “went off course” during the previous administration and that Guantanamo is “quite simply a mess, a misguided experiment that has left in its wake a flood of legal challenges.”

Bringing Guantanamo inmates to the U.S. may risk U.S. security, Cheney said.

“The president will find upon reflection that to bring the worst of the worst terrorists inside the United States would be cause for great danger and regret in the years to come,” Cheney said.

“There’s nothing wrong with the prison in Gitmo,” John Kyl, the Senate’s No. 2 Republican, said today on the “Fox News Sunday” program. He said it would be “a very foolish decision” to close the prison “without having figured out what to do with the people.”

Powell said U.S. prisons are capable of holding any detainees, and that it is important to bring them into the U.S. legal system. He said he had told Obama the same thing.

Waterboarding

Powell said that when he was secretary of state, he was aware that the CIA and Justice Department were discussing the use of harsh interrogation techniques such as waterboarding on terrorism suspects.

“When we started to examine those techniques, I was in some meetings where they were discussed,” he said.

Powell defended the use of techniques that Democrats have labeled torture. Waterboarding simulates drowning. He also said he doesn’t know whether those interrogations yielded any useful information that, as Cheney said, saved thousands of lives.

“It’s easy now in the cold light of day to look back and say, ‘you shouldn’t have done any of that,’” Powell said. “But if we had another attack like 9/11, say on 9/11 a year later, nobody would have forgiven us for not doing everything we could.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Alison Fitzgerald in Washington at afitzgerald2@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: May 24, 2009 13:45 EDT