The Future of the GOP - a symposium

American Thinker ^ | May 01, 2009 | A Symposium

[neverdem]

Arlen Specter's party switch has reignited the debate over the GOP's mission: a conservative party vs. a big tent coalition including liberal Republicans ("moderates" in media-speak). Five AT writers have addressed the topic, taking rather different positions.

Richard Baehr argues for the big tent approach:

We need a party that can win legislative elections in the Northeast, the suburbs, and other areas where the social conservative vote comes nowhere near a majority. Putting GOP moderates in the House and Senate from those states or districts where they are the only kind who can win, does help. There has been a successful strategy by the left depicting Republicans as Southern, religious, racists, led by Rush Limbaugh, playing off the cultural prejudices of the metropolitan elites who get their news from mainstream outlets.

I am not suggesting Specter or Susan Collins type Republicans need to run in Mississippi. The conservative base will always dominate the legislative delegation as a whole, but for the GOP to have any legislative power at all, it must be competitive in more than the conservative heartland. The GOP can be a minority power, with some ability to block, and with an upward trajectory, or have no power at all.

It is easy to be angry or disgusted with Specter, who has always been a ridiculous egotist, and say best to be rid of him. Wrong. Unless you like card check, national health insurance and cap and trade.  For that is what you may now  get -- all this year, thanks to Pat Toomey's entrance into  the GOP race, which forced the Specter switch.  

The GOP is now self-destructing. The behavior of the Club for Growth is a big part of it. They are as absolutist on their issues as some social conservatives are on theirs.  This is the reality: the number of those who are conservative on all the key areas:  social issues, the role of government in the economy and in favor a tough foreign policy approach, is a shrinking minority -- less than 30% of all Americans, maybe a lot less.  Maybe that's enough to win most of the time  in Idaho and Utah, but guess what? The Democrats now have Congressmen from both states and a Governor in Wyoming.

Chuck Schumer picked Bob Casey, a pro-life Democrat to take on Santorum, and rob him of his blue collar pro life union base in western Pennsylvania. It worked. Rahm Emanuel picked a dozen Iraq war vets to run in 2006. Most of them won.

One party is smart about winning seats, and taking power.  Our side has a lot of chest thumping purists. The other side fights  policy battles among themselves after they have taken power.  Our side conducts death marches in party primaries.  Pretty dumb if you ask me.

The reality is the GOP has lost the suburbs around all major cities in the East, Midwest, and West. This is because those voters grew more fearful of GOP's social conservative agenda than of the Democrats' big spending.

Obama and Dems can overreach and drive some suburbanites back.  But the reality is that with changing demographics, GOP has no future unless it expands beyond white voters, and in particular white males, and accepts that to regain a majority, the GOP candidates in some places  will be very different than the more conservative GOP candidates who can get elected easily in Utah or Texas.

Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins are the only Republicans who can win in Maine.  Do you want them in the Senate, or would you prefer Democrats who would vote the wrong way 90% of the time, instead of 40-50% of the time with the two Maine women? It may have been Frum who said it the other day- but the GOP wants to play football on its own 10 yard line when the ball is often in play on the other team's 40.  That was a good way to describe the Toomey challenge to Specter.

I say good riddance to Toomey and the Club for Shrinking.

There is nobody who can run and win against Obama 2012. The key will be to not get embarrassed. 24 of 33 senate seats up in 2012 are filled by Dems, so there's not much down side that year. But a big Obama win could increase their House majority even more. Presidential election years attract more Democratic base voters -- especially with Obama running.

If the economy will be in the tank in 2010, there should be some opportunity to pick up seats in the House. The Senate is a problem due to GOP retirements in swing states -- Ohio, Florida, Missouri, New Hampshire; Bunning is a sure loser in Kentucky, and North Carolina is a tossup (burr running for re-election).

Near half of Americans do not pay income taxes, though they do pay Social Security taxes. Bush is responsible for this in large part. It makes it harder to fight class warfare; more and more folks want the rich to be squeezed more on taxes and want government to do more for them. 

I think the growing debt is a better issue, since it plays to the future -- children and grandchildren -- and to insecurity that China and Middle East thugs will run us by owning our debt.

Kyle-Anne Shiver argues for conservative politics as the driver.

So, pragmatism is in; principle is on the way out.  Refusal to support abortion on demand is deemed the Republican Party's albatross and social conservatives are being tagged as the scapegoats.  The Party's problem is that we have "a lot of chest thumping purists."

Could the real problem be that we have too many Party politicians who are simply unable to explain, easily and pragmatically, why abortion on demand, embryonic stem cell research and homosexual "marriage," among the host of other social issues, are just plain bad for the society that practices them? 

Why do we not have politicians well-versed in citing the demographic nightmare that befell the Soviet Union, the first to legalize and promote abortion?  Why do we not have politicians able to explain how the killing of 50 million American citizens has all-but-destroyed the Social Security system?  Why are not our candidates well-versed in the eugenics history of abortion and the inherent dangers to other segments of our population?  None of the abortion arguments need to be about religion.  There is more than ample evidence that as societies have practiced these policies, they have fallen into decay, ripe for the picking of foreign powers.

Why are candidates not able to quickly point out, when asked about support for homosexual "marriage," that marriage is not now, nor has it ever been about the adults in the marriage.  Societal/state support for the natural family is grounded in what is best for the raising of future generations.  There is not a single study available which shows that a child raised in a homosexual household has even near the outcome expectations as a child raised in the home of an intact heterosexual couple.  It's not about civil rights; it's about what is best for children.  Children are the future of our Country.  Why is this so hard?  Why must religion be brought into it?

While folks are attempting to explain what's wrong with Republican Party politics in the aftermath of Obama's victory, it is all too easy to place the blame on those "chest-thumping purists," but the Republican Party would do well to remember that it is the vast organizations of those same purists which are genuine activists, who also get out the vote, spread the message and contribute regularly.  Without them, the Republican Party would be a lot less than it already is.

Also, the Republican Party needs to ask itself whether its members are willing to lie, cheat, steal and spread false propaganda in order to win elections.  This was the decision Democrats had to ask; we know how they have answered.  A resounding, "YES," anything is allowed because winning is the only way for them to bring us all to their vision of "utopia." 

In my opinion, the Republican Party is courting a major split, if it decides to scapegoat social conservatives and traditional religious voters.  If the Party movers and shakers are so darned smart, then they ought to be able to argue the pragmatic side of social conservatism every bit as effectively as they argue the pragmatic side of small government.  The problem isn't the argument; it's those who are presenting it. 

I, personally, believe that the seeds of Republican resurgence are in being bold, not the opposite.  Support for the Fair Tax, ensuring that all Americans will pay taxes, support for term limits on Congress and the end of the professional political class, and support for abolishing the Dept of Education, would go far, I believe, in reviving debate on these issues and be a winning combination.

On the other hand, there may be nothing that can revive genuine American Republican government at this juncture.  I do believe this is a very real possibility.

I am beginning to see a point where I, as a committed Christian first and foremost, will be forced to remove myself from politics altogether.  This is a sentiment I am hearing more and more frequently from conservative Christians. 


Ed Lasky sees hope in the tax issue.

I think the tax issue will be of immeasurable benefit to the GOP. We see how it is hurting Paterson in New York and Deval Patrick in Mass. I don't need to draw the parallels, do I? Obama and company will do all they can to screw the 'wealth' to get the money and will try to push the tax-raising into the second term by various gimmicks.

Eventually people are going to wake up and realize they are going to pay very high taxes and that the growth just may not be there (of course, Bernacke is flooding the world with dollars so maybe we will have the same type of bubble developing that eventually blew up in our faces last year).

The GOP should be very much up front, telling Americans that the taxes are coming, the taxes are coming. I know the issue does not poll well because taxes have been relatively low but that is going to be history.

The GOP should say, "We believe in transparency and we are being honest. The taxes are going to ruin us."

At the national level, we may see a new generation of political leaders developing. Mark Hemingway profiles one promising example, Martin Cruz of Texas. Of course, Texas has been demonized in other parts of the country, especially since G.W. Bush. But Cruz is Hispanic. Sports elite academic credentials and gifted communicator, so he may be able to transcend liberal bigotry.

For districts in which conservatives cannot win, I think we can take as a role model the Congressman who represents me in suburban Chicago: Mark Kirk. He is one of the few GOPers who survives in a district that voted for Kerry and Obama. He developed a suburban agenda for the GOP that has been highlighted in the past. Kirk is not charismatic but he has impressed people by his intelligence, ability to work across the aisle, seriousness and his activism (he is a leader, particularly in national security, foreign policy).

He is in the reserves, speaks Spanish fluently (a chunk of the district is heavily Hispanic)and he has traveled to the home town of many of the residents), pro-business-to an extent,; he is pro-gun control, pro-choice, and a bit of an environmentalist. But he wins.

Kirk won by 5% in 2008, Obama carried district by 25%. 

If you think about it, Obama has a master plan. One dynamic that has always defused the class warfare issue is the fact that Americans felt they had the opportunity to get wealthy. America, the land of opportunity.

Obama is going to make it very difficult for entrepreneurs. Instead of economic opportunity, he will be paying for kids to go to college where they can get a fine grounding in socialism and learn about the evils of free enterprise. Never let a crisis go to waste.

Larrey Anderson sees the need to stake out a position for the coming hard times.

I don't know Rich.  I am world weary and stressed out to the max right now, but this doesn't seem like a reasonable answer to me. Feeling our way back with moderate candidates is, in my opinion, a bad short term answer to a long term problem.  We are headed for a train wreck.  There is little anyone on the right or in the middle can do to stop it.

It appears to me that America is headed toward a depression.  Plus, the MSM is imploding. (Not because conservatives are boycotting it -- but because the printed press is obsolete and even TV is not that effective. TV is bread and circuses rah rah political entertainment -- but in my view, in about 5 years there will be little to rah rah about.)

Right now, people have gas for their cars and heat for their homes, and perhaps because times are a little tougher, the masses are buying into socialism.

They will soon have it.  And they won't like it.  If Obama and the Dems get their way, in a few years (sometime after the start of BO's second term -- and he will have a second term) we will see energy rationing, and medical rationing and perhaps even food rationing.  and we (more likely Israel) will be in an all out war in the middle east. 

Iin fact, that may be the pretext that the Dems need to unite the country.)

Then Americans will have a choice.  And it will be an "in your face"  choice.

The MMGW hoax will be fully exposed at about the same time that hundreds of thousands of barely producing windmills are built (at vast expense and for no rational reason).

Reality will bite and bite hard.  The question is:  have the masses been so poorly educated that they will be duped into buying whatever horse pucky apologies will be sold to them to explain why they can't drive their cars or heat their homes or feed their kids?

The 30% of the population who are conservatives will get it.  They get it now.  Will a third of the 70% of the middle/left figure it out?  Time will tell. If not, we have a default fascism. If the masses do get it ... then we rebuild.

Missing in the discussion is leadership.  I think if a short term turn around has any chance, it will only happen because a leader will arise (like Reagan) and get the party energized. But I don't see who that could be.  Remember that even Reagan spent over 10 years on the local C of C luncheon circuit building his shot.

Who is doing that now in the Republican Party?  "No one" seems to be the obvious answer.

Palin isn't going to cut it in the big leagues in my opinion (I thought she might for awhile, but she can not handle the press.)

Romney is out because of his underwear (which pisses me off to the nth degree every time I think about it -- we need to stop the bigotry.)

Jindal is smart. Way smarter than BO.  But can he lead?  Doesn't look like it - not at this time at any rate (remember how long it took Reagan.)

So again, no short term answer -- especially without leadership.

Thomas Lifson writes:

The GOP must think beyond normal politics.  These are not normal times. Obama aims to be a transformative figure, and has already launched far-reaching programs altering the character of America forever. Terrible times lie ahead, with hyperinflation the most likely outcome. That will wipe out the middle class, as happened in Weimar Germany.

The Obama program is being sold to the public with a full bore media propaganda effort, as in Wednesday's 100 days press conference, which featured not one question on the stunning 6.1% shrinkage in the GDP the last three months. As what Marxists call the "commanding heights" of the economy are taken over by the state, the public hears Obama reassuring them he is fixing the problems he inherited from Bush.

The GOP has to educate the public, and speak over the heads of the media by making news they cannot ignore.  This demands a willingness to be confrontational in the federal legislative branch, and on the streets as well. The base is eagerly awaiting House and Senate members willing to speak out clearly about the peril into which Obama is placing the country, strategically and economically. Lay out for the American people the danger of hyperinflation. Make an issue of the fact that the Treasury is having a harder time selling its long term securities at auction, and is going from four auctions a year of 30 year bonds to twelve. That means the Fed will be creating money out of nothing, and that means inflation.

The grass roots were energized by the Tea Parties, and would respond to a call for demonstrations in front of Federal Reserve Banks, for example, or other street theatre tactics, should a major GOP figure call for them. Already, protestors are being seen when Obama travels. The Obama media will ignore these protests as long as they can, but in the end they will be forced to cover them if they are ubiquitous. July 4 has the potential to help this along, but a national voice is required.

The GOP must, in short, become the opposition to Obama's program to create a "new foundation" (his words are ominous) for America. In the short run, those who take this position will be demonized, and probably shunned by the liberal Republicans. But they will light a fire in the grass roots, and as the economy deteriorates and the international situation worsens, we will begin to reach Obama supporters no longer willing to put up with the consequences of his policies.

Barack Obama shrewdly plays the role of an affable, intelligent, aware , capable, and caring president. But I perceive an arrogant, rather cool, even cold-blooded, persona underneath, flashes of this visible when he is spontaneous, untethered to the teleprompter.

The first Republican president taught us, "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time."

The magic will wear off, and then opposition to Obama will grow rapidly. There will be a backlash to Obama, and the GOP must be prepared to lead it. The GOP liberals will unite with the conservatives in opposition to the unfolding Obama disaster, and so will many voters who gave Obama the benefit of the doubt as long as they could.

Barack Obama could get his transformation of American politics, but if the GOP has the guts to play hardball as the opposition, it could be the discrediting of liberal ideology.  By 2010, if we are starting to have serious inflation, we could get a pick up of House seats, and do better than Rich's prediction of doom in the Senate. I remember well the Carter years and stagflation.

The media is already discredited and in economic peril to boot. Their power will continue to fade, especially as the excuses for Obama's screw ups pile up.

It is time to play offense. Obama is creating a crisis, and the GOP should not let it go to waste.

[ZirconEncrustedTweezers]

"Obama is creating a crisis, and the GOP conservatives should not let it go to waste."

Fixed. :)

[infidel29]

Apparently Republicans and Conservatives are different enough to be different parties.

I wonder how the GOP would fare without us. I'm betting they'd be the third child of American politics.

[Kent C]

The ‘big tent’ writer puts down Club for Growth, then tells how the Dems succeeded doing the very same thing that Club for Growth is doing - targeting. And it isn’t the CFGers in Congress that are selling out the Republican Party (check the voting records)...it’s the ones who the CFG is targeting that are folding like cheap chairs at the chance of any MSM interview so they can get a pat on the back for their ‘bipartisanship’ and ‘reasonableness’ (as defined by liberals).

[calcowgirl]

Richard Baehr argues for the big tent approach:

What a temper tantrum! I guess we know Frum and Baehr will be out to destroy Toomey.

[ken21]

“let’s all be nice, and do bipartisanship,

and we’ll be loved by democrats,

and we’ll win elections.”

john mccain.

[bill1952]

The grass roots were energized by the Tea Parties, and would respond to a call for demonstrations in front of Federal Reserve Banks, for example, or other street theatre tactics, should a major GOP figure call for them

There it is. We are waiting for a leader to call us to arms.
Where is our modern day Thomas Jefferson with a call to refresh the tree of liberty?

If there is none, we had best make other plans, make them timely, and make them bold.

[exist]

the debate over the GOP's mission: a conservative party vs. a big tent coalition including liberal Republicans

How come one of the options isn't: "Attract new voters by articulating conservative values and explaining why conservative principles help advance and preserve liberty"?

[cripplecreek]

I wonder how the GOP would fare without us. I'm betting they'd be the third child of American politics.

I suspect you're right. The NeoWhigs.

[Batrachian]

This is really quite simple, IMO. The Republicans will not regain power until enough people are sick and tired of the Dems and have forgotten their hatred of Republicans, which is very strong right now.

The Republicans won't win back again because of anything they do, but because of what the Dems will do. It will be a generation in the wilderness, but that's what losing on such a grand scale means. In the meantime, never give the enemy a free ride.

As for this debate of conservatives versus Republicans, I think it's foolish. The only home for conservatives is the Republican party. We can't kick out all the RINOs, no matter how much we want to, but we should at least be in a position where they don't hurt us, and where it's understood that the Republican party is a conservative party, and the RINOs are just padding used to fill such places as Maine or Washington State, but have no voice.

[expatpat]

I think we need a two-prong approach:

1. We need to begin a long-term major effort to educate people on why conservatism is important to US governance, and increase the number of conservative-thinking voters. The leftist policies of the Obama government should make this easier, but we need someone like Reagan to articulate it.

2. In the short-term we need to recognize two facts: (a) we are currently in the minority, (b) the Dems have gone leftward and left the center open. The standard political strategy for this event is for the other side to move toward the center and pick up more moderates to form a majority.

In summary, we need to go big-tent now but work long-term to move the political spectrum more to the right.

[jeltz25]

its amazing how doom and gloom some folks are.

I could post tons of stuff from nov 2004-may 2005 about how the dems are finished, how they need to ditch all the liberal issues like abortion, get tougher on defense, how they’ll never win again, etc...

so much for that. All they needed was for the country to go into a recession and the worst economy in years and they were fine. If the economy had been good last year, McCain would have won, just like Bush won in 2004 when the economy was good. If the markets had stayed the smae from labor day to election day and Lehman/AIG/Fannie/and all those other banks and companies hadn’t collapsed, McCain would have won. Basically the economy went in the tank and the voters punished the incumbent party and turned to the alternative. Just like what happens in every democracy in all of history. When the eocnomy sucks, the voters vote out the current leadership and vote in the other guy. It’s not that hard to analyze.

I mean, really. The GOP got 46% and won 22 states running as the incumbent party in the teeth of the worst/longest recession since the depression, the worst market performance ever leading up to an election, the worst unemployment #s in a generation, etc... Add in having the most unpopular President in US history as an anvil and being outspent by the largest margin in US history, and taht’s not a bad showing.

Look at what other incumbent parties did running during recessions. Look at Hoover in 32, Carter in 80, Bush in 92, etc... Hoover and Carter won like 5 states. No party has ever won during a recession. It just doesn’t happen. Go back to when the dems and Grover Cleveland broke the post-Civil War GOP dominance and won in 1884 because of a recession. Than in 1896 the GOP came back with McKinley because of another recession. Look at what happened in 1932, 1960, 1976, 1980, 1992, 2000, 2008. Everytime there’s a recession or economic downturn leading up the election, the incumbent party loses. usually by a much bigger margin than happened last year.

And this year was worse because the recession literally exploded in the 6 weeks leading up to the election. I dont think there’s ever been a worse period from labor day to election day economically in terms of the markets, gdp growth, unemployment, etc... in all of US history. Remember the Crash happened in 1929 and the election wasn’t until 1932. What do you think would have happened if the Bush/Dukakis election was in Nov of 87 instead of 88 and that huge crash happened a few weeks before the vote? And the market drop last year in late Spet/Oct was much worse than what happend in 87. A 30% drop in a matter of weeks. That never happened before.

Add on being massively outspent, the not even trying to hide it support of the media, and the impact of Bush’s unpopularity(worst ratings in US history) and it’s no surprise they won.

But lets not throw in the towel.

As we saw recently things can change very fast. In May of 2005 the GOP was riding high having won the last two WH votes and the last 2 midterms. Had a majority in both houses.

Im sure you can google similar pieces like this written by liberals around that time and see all their handwringing.

We don’t need to abandon social conservatives or anything else.

If GDP growth continues to suck, if unemployment gets worse or doesn’t get better, if inflation comes(which it will), if Obama looks weak on foreign policy and Iran gets the bomb and there’s another terror attack or the withdrawal from Iraq ends up making things worse and therrorists return(which they will), things will look very differernt. Just as they did for Carter. In May of 77 he was high in the saddle, By Novemeber of 80 he was finished.

It’s only been three months. Did people expect the country to turn on Obama like that. Look how long it took them to turn on Bush.

All this stuff about building leaders and organizing and fundraising and new ideas is all well and god, but the MOSt important factor in who wins elections is the performance of the economy and the issues that the candidates have little control over.

if the economy recovers Obama will win easily in 2012, just as Reagan did in 84, just as Clinton did in 96. If it doesn’t recover or gets worse, he’ll lose, just like Carter did in 80. If it stays the same as it is now he’ll probably lose. If there’s another terror attack or some big foreign or military debacle or Iran gets the bomb, he’ll lose. If we leave Iraq and things go great and there’s no terror attacks and we cut a deal with Iran, he’ll win. Politics isn’t that hard to figure out.

But all thsese folks saying the GOp needs to radically change are totally off base. Unfortunately the economy is undergoing its worst performance since the Depression and Republicans are bearing the brunt of it politically as they held the WH when it happened. They also suffered from the massive unpopularity of the Iraq War and the massive unpopularity of Bush(which also has to di with the eocnomy) Nothing more, nothing less.

[jeltz25]

good post. Idon’t think it will take that long, though. Look how fast it happened from Bush’s reelection to now. Look how fast it happend to Carter.

[papertyger]

The future of the Republican party is no longer of any interest to me.

[dajeeps]

Who says we need RINOS?

Ronald Reagan never thought that we needed to compromise our values simply to swell our numbers. What we need to do is work on articulating our values, as Ronald Reagan did so well, so that they enter into pop culture and substitute the notion that the government is responsible to cure evey ill with the ideals of liberty and inalienable rights and what happens when they are finally eaten away. If we are not free, we are not free.

That is why Reagan was so popular. He knew exactly the way things should be and why. He believed these things so steadfastly that he never compromised his vision for the shining city on a hill. It drew people to him and toward his way of thinking in so much as to revive the party and form the conservative revolution.

We got away from that as time went on, and politicians were more concerned about winning elections and power than the affects of the governing bodies on We the People. This is how we ended up with the crap that caused the mortgage mess and all the permissive kinds of regulations that accomidated the GSEs need for funding and ultimately resulted in this crisis, with no one willing to address the persistant economic warnings about this until it was too late.

It really is no wonder that some are confused about what Republicans really stand for, and more so what the conservative movement is all about from the point of view of the general public.

Our ideas are what America has been all about from the unrest that started the revolution until now. They cannot possibly be so wrong, or so defective that is deserving a subtancial transformation of America that Obama has promised, except a complete revisit of founding principles where the government gets out of our hair, out of our pocket books, and stops destroying our livelihoods.

[neverdem]

2. In the short-term we need to recognize two facts: (a) we are currently in the minority, (b) the Dems have gone leftward and left the center open.

Obama went left, but to get Congress they went after social conservatives with prolife and pro Second Amendment candidates starting in 2006.

[Fraxinus]

The big problem with those who claim that they are for a big tent:I say good riddance to Toomey and the Club for Shrinking.

Question for these morons when was the last time you demonstrated that there was room in your tent for principled small government conservatism?

[Man50D]

The OP(formerly the GOP) has no future for the conservative cause.

[expatpat]

Yes, but these people are now very vulnerable if we go big-tent in the short term. They can be easily branded with Pelosi and Obama.

[Vigilanteman]

Club for Growth is one of the most reliable groups out there for doing good candidate research and backing winners. They don’t just do it at the national level. Here in southwest Pennylvania, they helped elect a conservative state representative in our district, one which has been in Democrat hands ever since its creation in 1969.

[GrouchoTex]

“The reality is the GOP has lost the suburbs around all major cities in the East, Midwest, and West. This is because those voters grew more fearful of GOP’s social conservative agenda than of the Democrats’ big spending.”

I disagree. It lost its way when it started to mirror the “Democrats’ big spending.”

[neverdem]

Yes, but these people are now very vulnerable if we go big-tent in the short term. They can be easily branded with Pelosi and Obama.

The Future of the GOP - a symposium (Posted as a blog.)

"The only effective resistance to the Obama juggernaut is to nationalize the upcoming elections."

nathanbedford and I agree that we need to nationalize the upcoming election, and that Newt Gingrich is the most effective statesman we have.

I don't know how Newt Gingrich does this while out of office.

Michael Steele has been a great disappointment so far.

Ditto John Cornyn who is the head of the National Republican Senatorial Campaign looking for moderate opponents to run against Toomey in PA. The rats held their noses to recruit Casey to go against social conservative Santorum in 2006.

I don't have a problem with the big-tent when the rats want to take us to hell in a handbasket.

[Kent C]

They don’t just do it at the national level.

Well, they do Congressional targeting as well and had some good ads against Kerry in 2004 (weather vane on flip flopping). Jeff Flake (anti earmarker), Paul Ryan, Lamborn, Broun, Tom McClintock, Pearce, Pence, iirc, and a bunch of others were CFG supported.

scorecard

[neverdem]

“The reality is the GOP has lost the suburbs around all major cities in the East, Midwest, and West. This is because those voters grew more fearful of GOP’s social conservative agenda than of the Democrats’ big spending.”

I disagree. It lost its way when it started to mirror the “Democrats’ big spending.”

I thinks it's a combination of your big spending critique and the demonization of social conservatives for a number of reasons, e.g. not believing in evolution, gay rights, embryonic stem cell research, etc.

[goodnesswins]

The economy will NOT come back for Obama....IMHO....he’s screwing it royally....

[nathanbedford]

Here is a portion of a post which I published immediately after the election in response to a Politico article calling for Republicans and conservatives to move left to fill the big tent:

As we conservatives drag the remnants of our movement into the wilderness with no idea how we will emerge or whether we will ever emerge as an electoral force in America which is recognizable by my generation, we must inevitably engage ourselves in the most soul- searing inquiry of what went wrong. This will be an agony but equally it will be effective only to the degree that it hurts. It will not succeed without bloodshed. There must be finger-pointing and bloodletting. We must carve to the bone. The process must be Darwinian. Those whose ideas are false must be bayoneted on the trail.

The object is to find our soul - nothing less. In a come to Jesus sense we must get absolutely clear what it means to be a conservative. Only at this point do we look to the tent flaps and open them. Those who cannot subscribe to the hard-won consensus, to a confession of faith as to what is a conservative, should walk out through that flap. Those who are attracted from the outside to the core message of conservatism should be encouraged to walk through the flap and enlarge the tent. What the left wants us to do is to expand the census in the tent prematurely and thus turn a movement into a menagerie. The Soul-searching must be conducted by conservatives without the earnest ministrations from liberals like those of Politico. This article, of course, has nothing whatever to do with explaining why Republicans lost 2008 election across the board, it has everything to do with first efforts by the left to sabotage the rebuilding process on the right which must be done exclusively by the right.

We have not lost the 2008 election because we were excessively partisan while Obama was enlightened and transcendental. We actually lost the election because George Bush and Karl Rove betrayed the soul of conservatism. A party without its soul is like an army which does not believe in itself, it cannot win the next contest. A party which had abandoned its principles and so lost the last two elections and frittered away both its power as the ruling coalition and its status as the majority philosophy of the nation, cannot expect to swell its ranks by recruiting to a lost cause. The party must first know what the cause is and only then can it recruit. To again borrow the military analogy, a party like an army disintegrates without a mission. Armies are assigned missions but a political party finds its mission only through soul-searching.

As this process occurs we will be told by the left that only a big tent party can win and that to become a big tent one must move to co-opt the center. That is not how it works. That is the reverse of the way it works. The center is not peopled by voters with fixed notions about the exercise of power who wait for one of the great political parties to surrender their values and embrace the tempered and resolute opinions of the middle. That happens with splinter parties but not with the mushy middle. When an unaffiliated voter bestirs himself to enter the polling booth he is confronted with one of two options: right or left. He does not consider who has moved the farthest geographically from right to the left or left to right any more than he commits because of his own long held political beliefs. He votes for the fella who best tickles his fancy at the moment. Put more charitably, he votes for the candidate who persuades that he is the best, and has the best to offer.

If we as conservatives do not believe that we have the best to offer we should get out of the business. A candidate, like a party, who is centered on his philosophy has integrity and is persuasive. And that philosophy must first have a vertical spiritual component which finds expression and out working in a horizontal governing philosophy.

Because of his race, Obama was asked only to demonstrate that he could walk and talk like a president. Obama has won the middle, not because he pandered to them, which he did, but because he had the wind at his back.

As John McCain reverts from titular head of the Republican Party to United States Senator, it falls to the rest of us to contrive a governing philosophy which he, unfortunately, did not own and therefore could not bequeath to us. We had such a legacy from Ronald Reagan but we squandered it. We must construct our own. We must do it in the wilderness. We must do it unaided by intermeddling liberals. Their's is the serpent's way, the easy way, a pander to the superficially popular, the accommodation to the middle. The bed of birth has always been a bed of pain. The pain must be embraced if we are to receive a new life.

[Once-Ler]

I wonder how the GOP would fare without us. I'm betting they'd be the third child of American politics.

Both conservatives and moderates would live to enjoy liberal domination. Moderates and liberals have already heard conservative philosophy espoused from Rush, Hannity, O'reily, Beck, and Newt. Most of them reject conservatism and that is too bad because they are the majority.

I have less respect for conservatives who prefer rats in power.

[slapshot]

growing up in the ‘70’s and serving in the Carter era USAF gives me a feeling of deja vu

Until Boehmer and McConnell, the lamest, dullest, most clueless “leaders” go away, we are toast on a national level. The key is building locally and taking all precautions to prepare for the worst which, unfortunately will come.

We have a bunch of p^*%*#s in charge. Until we start taking it to the other side and basically “dropping the gloves” we are going nowhere fast.
\
Can anyone tell me when a R “leader” stepped up and called out the other side to say “lets go”?- hockey term

Go Hawks

[Luke21]

The four wings of the conservative movement are:

A) Fiscal

B) Foreign Policy

C) Social/Religious

D) Libertarian

Those four wings have got to learn to disagree on specific issues without knifing each other in the back. The liberal wings of the party need to quit telling the conservative wings to go away. We voted for their McCain's and Dole's. I certainly did. But they need to support candidates to their right also.

We have to devise a strategy for unity, and everyone needs to be on board. The minute somebody picks their ball up to go home, we all lose. The minute somebody criticizes another portion of the conservative movement, the Dems win.

There aren't enough of us to accomplish anything without building a unity that supersedes our factionalism.

[Diverdogz]

I think you have it exactly right. Good post.

[EternalVigilance]

The Future of the GOP

[roamer_1]

Where is our modern day Thomas Jefferson with a call to refresh the tree of liberty?

They have been there all along. Republicans don't want to listen.

[bill1952]

Here is a portion of a post which I published immediately after the election in response to a Politico article calling for Republicans and conservatives to move left to fill the big tent:

NB,you should post a link to that post or repost the entire post.
I am interested and, would like to read it all.

[nathanbedford]

High have a practice of saving my replies if I think they might be worth quoting later to a remote hard drive. This gives me a date for the saving of the reply but does not give me a citation where it might be found on Free Republic so I googled the first sentence or so and came up with this citation:

http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-backroom/2128537/posts

Evidently, what I published today is a composite of two or three posts and the one about the big tent, I think, was written before the election.

I would be interested in your reaction to the larger post.

[staytrue]

An excellent article with various well represented viewpoints.

Also, all comments so far have been the same. Well thought out comments, no personal attacks, nice discussion from various points of view.

Bravo FR, job well done.

[infidel29]

Both conservatives and moderates would live to enjoy liberal domination.

How does it change when the GOP moves to become more like the libs? If we elect liberal republicans merely to have a majority then what good are they when they block legislation or join the libs on social issues anyways? The problem with the GOP is they don't stand their ground firm and "reach out to the other side".

We see what happens when the GOP candidate is squishy on conservatism, McCain get's his ass handed to him.

[dragnet2]

The GOP is done. It's filled with traitors, leftist, those willing to sacrifice principles for party, open border freaks, free traitors, wealthy insiders, ignorant party groupies, those willing to negociate with communist, and big government liars.

Anyone capable of critical thought, saw this long before the 2004 elections.

[GrouchoTex]

I would concur with your analysis.

When a Miss USA contestant gets harsher question asked of her than the POTUS does, we are in trouble.

When a host on MSNBC can call said contestant a “Nazi” for having a different point of view, we are in trouble.

Social conservatives are allowed to believe whatever they want, just as liberals are. You are correct that it is the demonization of those beliefs that is the problem.

I long for the day when both parties will agree that the government is too large and simply argue fiscal policy on how to spend the (hopefully small) amount alloted to them.

Well, one can dream.....