Posted on 11/10/2008 12:27:03 AM PST by Glacier Honey
GOP a dying breed in New England
Incumbent U.S. Sen. John Sununu, R-N.H., gives his dad John Sr. a hug before... 13 hours ago
Loading... Must Read?Thank You Yes 39HARTFORD, Conn. — A generation ago the Republican Party was the dominant political force in New England, populating the region's congressional delegations with moderates like Connecticut's Lowell P. Weicker Jr. and Rhode Island's John Chafee.
But today's GOP, led by a more socially conservative wing of the party, is finding votes harder to come by.
Voters on Tuesday cast out Connecticut's veteran Rep. Chris Shays, the last New England Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives. Sen. John Sununu was voted out in New Hampshire, leaving that state's Judd Gregg and Maine's Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe as the only Republicans among the region's 12 senators.
Shays' loss to former Goldman Sachs executive Jim Himes marks the first time since 1969 that southwestern Connecticut will be represented by a Democrat in the House.
"I felt that we were going to win this, I really did," Shays told supporters. "I felt that people were so good to me, they were so nice to me. But they were deciding they were going to go the other way."
New England's decision to "go the other way" in recent elections is a dramatic transformation for a region considered a Republican stronghold a generation ago.
(Excerpt) Read more at comcast.net ...
Liberals fleeing the blue states for safer environs have moved into red states and like all rotten apples, they have contaminated the entire barrel.
GOP IS DEAD EVERYWHERE.
Okay, then, I say Liberals are not welcome in Tennessee. If you northeastern Liberals are thinking of moving here to escape the messes you've made for yourselves, forget it. Just keep right on going to Florida or Georgia or North or South Carolina where you will be far more comfortable with the politics. We're turning darker red here in Tennessee. 'Pubbies just took over both state houses for the first time since reconstruction. We don't want you to coming here and screwing this state up like you screwed your home states up! There are enough of your ilk here already. We're all "bitter clingers" here. Everybody has guns. Almost everybody does for themselves, with the exception of the transplant crybabies. You won't like it at all. Pass the word: Tennessee sucks!
Really, even under Reagan in total, the RNC/GOP has always been a bigger government, more tax party that blows off most everybody. They are the Chrysler to the Democrats GM.
We had 8.5 years of ridicule directed towards President Bush and Republicans, right out of the Rules for Radicals book. We laughed initially, and granted Republicans, President Bush and the White House failed to take all the charges seriously. Voters, on the other hand, did.
It seems to me we can either learn how to fight back and defeat Democrats or we can take the high road and be in the minority for a long time to come.
Morality is DEAD in New England....Rabidly PRO-ABORTION and GAY RIGHTS.
To be more accurate, you would have to say that the moderate republicans have been wiped out because moderate democrats are flourishing.
The key phrase in the article is the direct quote:
"Its a party(GOP) that's becoming more narrow and there's really no sense of compromise."
The cultural conservative's aka cultural populist's positions are based on moral absolutes, and there is no compromising moral absolutes.
As an example of the moral absolute, James Dobson refused to endorse McCain, until McCain picked Palin.
The cultural populists were kicked out of the democrat party in the 60s and they gradually joined the GOP and eventually became the power behind the throne. It is only natural that they now want to own the GOP and implement their dominionist "heaven on earth".
The problem with that is that they don't have enough votes to nominate God, much less get him/her elected.
Well OK then... we are not Northeast Liberals... infact we are very strong conservatives... and looking to move out of NH. Just where we have not figured it out as yet. We want a state that is strongly conservative an lower taxes. What’s the tax rate in TN?
If Palin had not been on the ticket it probably would have been worse, I agree, because her job was to galvanise the die-hard republicans, and she did a pretty good job of that. But do you realise how ridiculous that strategy is? Obama won partly because the democrats were better organised this time round and got THEIR core vote out, but partly also because he persuaded the undecideds and moderates and unsures. If conservatism is relying for electoral victory on just “getting its core vote out” rather than winning over new voters, well...that will work for a short while, but in the long term its a recipe for disaster.
Sales tax, but no income tax. Dirt cheap to register a car, as well.
Thanks for the info. Will look it up.
I think the most dangerous thing the conservatives can do will be to underestimate this guy and how dirty and underhanded this administration will be.
I know things are going to go sideways, but I’m afraid that Obie has positioned himself in such a way that he may be tough to knock down after a re-election. I was literally blown away by some of the results in PA, VA and NC. The college kids actually got out of bed this year!
He’ll be fleecing the taxpaters on one hand and shaking down the taxtakers at the same time. The war chest that he will accrue will be tremendous in 2012. Gotta start picking off those seats in 2010. Conservative, Libertarians and mods are going to have to quit the foodfight and work together.
Obie will also be using ACORN, La Raza, et al to fix the elections that the Dems can’t win. Look at MN right now!!!
Local Washington AM has a question out today “Obama Honeymoon?” There are some Dem shills calling in, but the response is a resounding “HELL NO!” which how I vote.
This guy is going to run the country the way Kwame Kilpatrick runs Detroit ~ the problem is that there are NO burbs for us to run to.
Oh goody, another Goldman Sachs guy. It’s not like we’ve had enough of those guys “fixing” our economy the last few years.
I figure when you have to get $10 billion from the government to hand out $8.5 billion in bonuses, there may be something horribly wrong.
Perhaps more accurately these people have turned their backs on what they THINK conservatism IS. But, hey, if people have no concept of what the conservative platform is, that’s the fault of the conservative movement. Turning this thing round might therefore start with putting the case forward in a better way.
Conservative need to stop sending their kids to schools to the tune of 20k only to have their kids come out as Obamabots.
There are good, small colleges to be found where your children won’t be indoctrinated.
My brother, a conservative just sent my niece iff to school at University of TN, just to have her brain filled with mush. No job skills other than to join the green force of Al Gore and carbon offsets.
It’s his own fault! He didn’t do the necessary legwork and was lulled into the big name state school.
I refuse to believe that the “high road” is the one that leads inevitably to destruction.
If that ever became the case, I would reccomend emigration.
IJ,
So many useless degrees, let me assume she now has one.
Some of the harder curriculum's are Business and the Engineering disciplines, Good jobs, but can they hack the math and the abstractness of Accounting. Again the NEA education system doesn't point them their and the dumbing down does not make them ready, unless the kids are fast tracked with advanced courses.
Nothing against your niece, but in terms of trades skills, she might have been better off learning TIG or MIG welding, become an A & P aircraft Mechanic, learned plumbing, fine cabinet making or electrican rather than what her degree might earn her.....
No. Obama won COMPLETELY because they were better organized and got their core vote out, and much of the base was so PO'd at McCain that they would never vote for him. Palin recovered a significant number of those voters, but not enough. There is zero evidence that "undecided and moderate" voters cost McCain the election. The "country club" Republicans (Schwartzenegger and others) have been trying to sell this for the last forty years, and it hasn't worked yet. They had their way completely in this election, with their preferred presidential candidate, and lost their asses.
When Republicans run as conservatives, they win, witness Reagan, Bush I (who lost because he betrayed the conservative position on taxes), Bush II (who ran as a conservative, despite the fact that he governed as a moderate). McCain refused to run as a conservative, and lost his ass.
Yeah, McCain believed that, too, and look what HE got.
"If that ever became the case, I would reccomend emigration"
Where?? If the US goes down, then freedom is done. And I'm afraid it's done, anyway, because the first thing "the Obama" and the remaining "moderate" Republicans (with McCain leading the charge with Ted Kennedy) will do is pass "comprehensive immigration reform" (aka complete amnesty with full voting rights for any illegal). This assures Obama's victory in the next election, and likely an indefinite string of "democratic socialist" governments on into the future. If he screws things up so badly that even THAT voting block doesn't support him, then the country is toast, anyway.
I have an alternate suggestion, why don't all you "moderates" emigrate, like to Canada. They're all "moderates" up there.
They don’t die, they just move away.
In Milwaukee, the pundits can’t figure out why the ring of counties around Milwaukee voted 60-70% in favor of McCain while Milwaukee County went 72% for Obama.
Producers vs. consumers. Earners moving outside the reach of entitlement culture best they can. Many more head right out of state while the business culture hollers “brain drain” and struggles to figure out why.
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