Posted on 10/21/2009 4:09:22 PM PDT by Stayfree
Third parties don't work, the Republicans are as bad as the Democrats, most of the existing politicians are universally corrupt. How and who is anyone going to plan, organize, determine new candidates and accomplish taking back our government from all of the corrupt bunch in Washington, D.C. I do not see leadership, organization or any serious effort to keep all of us going in a direction that will get us the candidates and the votes to win...any thoughts out there guys and gals?
sorry for the typos...long day
The Republicans are NOT as bad as the Democrats.
A BIG part of the answer to your question is about mid-way through Part 2.
Please DO NOT misunderstand my reasons for producing these two videos. If folks want to gather together to let “them” know that “we,” like Howard Beal in “Network” are “…mad as hell and not going to take it any more…,” it’s STILL – for the time being anyway – a relatively free country so we can do that.
All I’m saying here is that, especially in tough economic times, there are more EFFICIENT and EFFECTIVE ways to expend our FINITE RESOURCES.
It’s not as much fun as sweating on the Mall but there IS a better – and less costly — way to scare hell out of “them” — and you won’t even have to leave home.
ALL POLITICS IS LOCAL, PART 1: (UNDER 8 MINUTES)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fk1bGBY3BcE
ALL POLITICS IS LOCAL, PART 2: (UNDER 8 MINUTES)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ylFTOObbF0
Keep working within the party. Take out the rinos. Elect conservatives.
Let’s see how Hoffman does without the support of the “moderate”(RHINOS) . If he wins, we may yet have a chance of bringing constitutional values back to this country.
It needs to organize but the moment it gets a “leader” its all over.
The Republicans are NOT as bad as the Democrats.
::::::
I agree. Everything is relative, but there is no comparison, on the whole. For sure. Regardless, too bad they have lost their will to really fight and not just vote against DemonRat socialist legislation.
Absolutely, the repubs are not bad...just shed the party of the RINOS...This thrird party idea will guarantee O another term and rid both houses of congress of the very hard working conservatives...We have almost 100% repulbicans in Louisiana, with the exception of sister mary landreau and now melancon a congressman running against Vitter our Repub senator...and of course our star governor Jindal who is cleaning up this state. I listen to glenn beck but he tends to lump all of the congress as not worthy...this not true here in La. and hsi antics will lead to a third party the will NEVER win...
Hey, maybe we could split off into a third party and thereby insure that the democrats stay in power forever?
Think about it. That’s exactly what would happen.
>The Republicans are NOT as bad as the Democrats.
That’s right, they’re WORSE; at least the Democrats push for their stated platform-goals...
That's what I've determined to do as well.
>Hey, maybe we could split off into a third party and thereby insure that the democrats stay in power forever?
>
>Think about it. That’s exactly what would happen.
You’re wrong; look at the democrat party as-is; even though they have near-total control of the government they can’t get a lot of things done (health-care is stalled for the moment & cap-n-trade doesn’t look like it’s going to pass with flying colors), they’re splintering themselves.
I for one am not going to be voting Republican to keep Democrats out... I refuse the doom/gloom you project on all other options.
Quit looking for the perfect mass movement to submerge yourself into and do all you're big enough to do as an individual. Leave the Collectivist thinking to the Left.
It is a really good question. I agree that 3rd parties do not work in this day and age (even though I do wish it was possible).
I think we really need to communicate our displeasure with the GOP by attending meetings, sending back every request for funds with a note as to why they will not get them, and above all else....supporting true conservative candidates with money and time. Sooner or latter even a dunderhead like Steele will be able to put the pieces together.
I also think that we should start pushing the GOP to adopt a system like the the caucuses that the dems have in order to purify presidential primary results in open primary states. Allowing your opposition to choose your candidate in any way shape or form is just stupid.
They are worse. With the dems we know what we have. With the republicans, they campaign against the dems and then fall in step with them once elected
Your cunning plan has a problem in McCain, Snowe, Graham, and Collins. It’s a bona fide loser.
The way things are going my bets are on Snake Plissken.
I'd rather be supporting candidates with views and ideas I can vote for.
Which is not saying much....Let's throw all of the bums out and start over.
I must have missed that fighting part. The only pubbies I have seen fighting socialists were B. Goldwater, R. Regan, and the Chaneys. I know there were many in the RIF but they are not the face of the party.
Our system is broken.
Perhaps we need a new Continental Congress?
A modern George Washington?
A modern Thomas Jefferson?
John Adams?
Build a time machine and bring our founding fathers to the present day and time?
Yeah, I’m fed up with voting for the lesser of two evils-—or choosing between dumb and dumber.
Here’s the problem with the GOP. Even if we had total control of all the branches of government, who actually thinks the Republicans would actually get anything done to roll back the unconstitutional socialist welfare/regulatory state that Democrats and Republicans have spent the last 100 years creating????
In twenty years... would be will still have
- Social Security
- Medicare
- Medicaid
- Income taxes
- Corporate welfare
- Farm subsidies
- 100,000,000s of regulations justified by nothing in the Constitution except for a bastardized interpretation of the Commerce Clause
- Departments of Education, HHS, HUD, etc?
The Democrats seem to have no problem campaigning on and trying to create MORE SOCIALISM whenever they win... but when was the last time the GOP even campaigned on ROLLING BACK THE SOCIALISM WE ALREADY HAVE, much less actually doing it after we’ve won?
If the answer to this questions is... NEVER, then it seems like we have some work to do before the GOP even deserves to win again.
Don’t waste your time looking for answers on FR. This place is packed with glassy-eyed GOP True Believers who are convinced that the next time around the Republicans won’t suck as bad as they have for the last twenty-five years.
Did you ever see one of those arrest videos where the cops are hauling away the shirtless hillbilly in cuffs while his tearful wife (with a black eye and a bleeding mouth) insists “He’s a good man! I kin change him!” The hillbilly is the GOP and the abused wife represents the GOP Believers.
Yeah, but if they disenchant Republican voters, they can successfully end the Republican party...
Yeah, the party does need weeding.
October 21, 2009
Divide and conquer
By Steve McCann
The 2010 will be the most important midterm election in the history of our nation. The coalition necessary to vote out of office those members of Congress who are supporting President Obama’s effort to turn the country into a socialist utopia is still fractured and pursuing individual agendas.
It is part of the Democratic Party strategy to keep the electorate divided and at odds with each other.
In today’s world of sound bites and miniscule attention spans, a simple sentence — “There isn’t a bit of difference between Republicans and Democrats” — has become embedded in the nation’s lexicon and the foundation of the strategy to split what is a right of center country into many factions which assured the election of the present left wing government in Washington.
History has shown that with our representative republican form of government combined with the effect of 50 individual states and an independent executive branch only a two major party arrangement is viable.
Throughout the history of the United States the tension between the major parties has generally been the degree to which the central government is involved in the day to day activity of the citizens. That gulf has never been wider than it is today.
The current Democratic Party is overwhelmingly made up of interest groups that believe a powerful central government is essential to guarantee what they have determined to be equitable outcomes.
The Republican Party membership, in even greater numbers, is dominated by those who believe government (per the founders) should be limited and the rights of the individual paramount.
Virtually all polling done over the past twenty five years confirms that the majority of Americans believe in limited government and are loath to grant too much power to Washington. Yet in 2008 the country elected a President and Congress that is the most radical in our history and the antithesis of what the preponderance of the people claim to want.
In the 1992 presidential election Ross Perot ran on and promoted the “Perot Doctrine”: there is no difference between Republicans and Democrats. That theme resonated with sufficient numbers of voters to give him 19% of the popular vote, the highest level ever achieved by a third party candidate, assured the election of Bill Clinton and established the basic game plan on how to split the coalition that had handed the Republicans the presidency in three previous elections by landslide proportions. There has been no such margin of victory for either party since.
Over the past 17 years the Perot Doctrine has been repeated ad nauseam by many conservative and libertarian talk show hosts, become a consistent theme for a myriad of columns and articles and confirmed by some so-called conservative intellectuals claiming the Era of Reagan is dead and we must all become socialist light.
Using this backdrop the left has seized on the ideal strategy to divide the right of center vote and give the Democrats control of all the levers of power despite the wishes of the majority of the citizens.
There are four distinct factions among the groups that make up the right of center majority.
The first are the single issue voters. The Democrats quickly learned that mere words well delivered would successfully affect these voters. For example, in the most recent election, Barack Obama, an unabashed promoter of unfettered abortion rights and gun control proclaimed himself to be a Christian seeking to make abortion rare and against all gun control legislation.
Because of his ability to deliver a speech and sound convincing, Mr. Obama won the Catholic vote and a much higher percentage of the evangelical and gun voters than any of the previous six Democratic nominees for president. After all, since there is no difference between the Parties, he couldn’t possibly be so bad.
The second faction is the fiscal conservative, but social liberals. Recall during the campaign Senator Obama’s move to the center by pledging not to raise taxes on 95% of the people, and to control spending. There was nothing in his background to substantiate these promises and these lies were deliberate. As there is no difference between the parties, these voters went with the candidate for the House, Senate or the White House that said the right thing well.
The third and fourth groups are even more easily manipulated. These are the ideological purists and leave-me-alone fundamentalists. These factions are constantly on alert to any real or perceived drifting from their established set of beliefs, be it behavior or policy.
If a Republican member of Congress or the President strayed from any of a series of tenets, then the entire party rather than the individual is blamed. The key for the Democrats is to get these folks to stay home or vote for a conservative sounding Democrat to punish the sinners.
Thus we had the campaign to portray the entire Republican Party in Congress as corrupt, spendthrift, not responsive to the people and with President Bush, an illiterate, bumbling, incompetent fool thus besmirching the Republican brand. Again, with the Perot Doctrine ringing in their ears the purists and leave-me-alone fundamentalists simply threw up their hands and stayed on the sidelines leaving the playing field to the left.
As a corollary to the manipulation of the ideological purists the left soon realized an effective way to intimidate the elected Republicans or the party leaders was to find individual examples of corruption, misspoken words, perceived insensitivity and false charges of racism.
These accusation, with the help of a sympathetic media, were projected over the entire party in essence claiming all Republicans were (fill in the blank). Unfortunately many within the conservative press unwittingly promoted the same world view instead of actively refuting it.
Among the Republican Party leadership, there has been a lack of spine to stand up to this game plan and counter the misperceptions promoted by the Democrats and their sycophants in the media, thus tacitly admitting whatever accusations were made had an element of truth.
There has also been an eagerness to spend too much, appease the left on social issues, foolishly hope to garner the blessing of the Washington media and stray from the principles that gave the country 25 years of economic growth (1983-2008). This need never happened if these elected representatives had been opposed at every election cycle.
The public has now begun to wake up to long term effect of the policies by this left-dominated government headed by Barack Obama. Many are becoming more optimistic that the mid-term election in 2010 can result in these actions being curtailed or potentially overturned. This can happen but only if the right of center coalition can be reinstituted to benefit the Republican Party.
To our conservative and libertarian pundits, talk show and television hosts: swear off the promotion of the Perot Doctrine even if it means lower ratings. Rush Limbaugh and others saw the danger in this approach and did not participate while still criticizing individual Republicans in Congress and the White House.
What is needed is the education of the populace to become active within the party, reject the elected members who stray from Reagan principles and nominate those who embrace them, as only a unified party can defeat the Democrats.
To the folks organizing the tea parties: these gatherings, while allowing the participants to vent, should have a purpose and an objective. That objective should be the nomination of true Republican conservatives to run or challenge in every district in the country; particularly those that recently voted for faux conservatives. More importantly support the winner of the nomination.
To our libertarian friends: the ideological purists and leave-me-alone fundamentalists, please understand what is happening in our country will directly affect you. It is no longer our choice to simply dismiss what is happening will only impact others or future generations. You must now get involved in the political process within a major party.
The promotion of third party candidates, which the Democrats are trying to manipulate you to do, will only keep the radical government in Washington in power and make permanent the massive changes they are proposing. There is not the time for a third party to achieve sufficient power to influence events. Ask yourselves would the overwhelming majority of Republicans be proposing the policies now under consideration in Washington?
To the fiscal conservatives but social liberals: you have seen what the Obama Administration plans to do with your taxes and government spending. Which would you rather have — a bankrupt economy and your wealth destroyed or to stop believing in the absurdity that Republicans want to impose their religion on you?
To the current elected members and leaders of the Republican Party stop believing in the canard that you can compromise with the radical members of the Democratic Party in Congress and the White House or that the mainstream media will ever be “fair”. There is no room for concessions with those out to re-make the country into a socialist utopia. Understand that your jobs are and will be at stake.
The membership of the Republican Party is overwhelmingly conservative-leaning, the Democratic Party socialist. As our political system can only function efficiently with two major parties, all of us must make certain the Republican brand is the right of center alliance. We no longer have the luxury of arguing among ourselves to determine ideological purity and fall into the web constructed by the Left.
If we want this to remain the country of freedom and independence as founded 233 years ago then all of us must act now to put aside differences and unite on November 2, 2010 to defeat the most radical government in the nation’s history.
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/10/divide_and_conquer_1.html at October 21, 2009 - 08:14:57 PM EDT
Back in 2002, it was thought that the Dems were dead forever. Republicans had gained control of the Senate, to match their control of the House. The President was incredibly popular. There was talk about Democrats being so scarce in the future that they would lose status as a national party!
Dems rebuilt with a “50-State Strategy.” For years, they had concentrated all their financial support on those seats which they felt certain to win. They wouldn’t even bother to run a Dem in a heavily Republican district! The more Liberal wing of the Dems hadn’t wanted to use the party structure to rebuild, feeling that the party heads were too willing to compromise Liberal values. But they ran their own candidates in the primaries, and defeated the more moderate Dems. Howard Dean became head of the party and made sure Dems ran a candidate in every district.
Unhappiness with Bush translated into electoral victories, because there were alternatives to the traditional Republican candidates on the ballot.
I’d suggest that this is the way Conservatives would be able to win again. Sticking to winning through the traditional 2-party system may seem impossible, but it’s obviously not. Plus there is a lot of campaign money and machinery already in place if you use the two-party system.
He’s a good man! I kin change him!” The hillbilly is the Third Party and the abused wife represents the Third Party True Believers.
Read post 29 for the truth
Don’t you think if incumbants are not re-elected and new people are seated in Congress in January, 2011, that those who are left will get the message that they are next? We can take the Senators out, one-third at a time.
Thanks for your input...some really good replies which I am now going to pursue!
So true. Look what the Gang of 14 did to B. Frist when he tried to get Bush’s judicial appointments to the floor of the Senate.
My response to Mr. McCann’s essay in the American Thinker:
1) There is no point in having a majority in Congress if it’s made up partly of moderates and liberals that will vote with the Democrats anyway. We’d be better off with a unified, disciplined, and determined minority that the American people KNEW would stand up for liberty and the Constitution... and then we could use our new found credibility to spread our message and work toward electing a useful majority in the future.
2) Ross Perot’s 19% was not the best ever result for a “third party” candidate.
Teddy Roosevelt in 1912 (Progressive Party) = 27.4%
Millard Fillmore in 1856 (American Party) = 21.6%
Stephen Douglas in 1860 (representing the northern half of the Democrat Party) = 29.5%, while John C. Breckinridge (southern Democrat) who finished second won 72 electoral votes (11 states) with 18.1% of the vote
If I came across that way, I ask forgiveness.
Fortunately, you've gotten some good answers, or hints at direction, anyway, already. So I mainly came back to offer a quote from the masthead of a newspaper in Texas called the Hood County Tablet, back seventy years ago when it was being run by the one-eyed grandson of Davy Crockett, the Hon. Ashley B. Crockett. He had on his masthead on the paper's front page for decades the following simple advice, "Be sure you're right, then go ahead," which seemed simple enough at the time, when all his readers could be counted upon, generally, to know right from wrong.
For the qualification of this statement, "A.B." had another slogan altogether featured on his editorials, each week, which he called, Formula for avoiding controversy:
"Say nothing, do nothing, be nothing."
Let me know your thoughts after the replies have petered out.
You can’t equate what went on with tens of millions less Americans. NO TV, Radio. Also Women were not voters.
You need to get out more.
Teddy Roosevelt running as Bullmose gave us Wilson a walking disaster.
I am a Conservative Republican who worked for Reagan when he first ran for gov.
If you make your decisions in a world of wishful thinking vs. reality, you will continue the Obama agenda.
Need to get out more? Just because I pointed out that in a few instances third party candidates have been competitive doesn’t mean that I think it would work today... I’m just in a cranky mood and don’t like it when people write stuff to make a point and don’t even bother to get their history right.
On the larger issue, though, I’ve come to the conclusion that we’re better off losing in the short term if it actually helps transform the GOP into a real opposition party to the Democrats. IMO it doesn’t do any good to elect Republicans (as the GOP is currently constituted) if the best they’ll ever do is temporarily put the brakes on the march to total socialism when they win.
Create and promote an independent, Constitutional Conservative voter’s organization, and publicize the heck out of both the candidates receiving the approval of this organization, and those who do not. And, furthermore, why.
This would extend from purely local to national. Republicans would be supported where support is deserved, independents where deserved and even the odd “blue dog” when the opposition is severely wanting.
It would be a means to make local politics national, and to direct monetary support to Constitutional Conservative candidates from a nationwide pool of contributors.
Subjecting the campaign speeches and claims of candidates opposed to the Constitutional Conservative-approved candidate could be put through the wringer in public commentary on a forum, much as what already occurs on Free Republic.
Come to think of it, Free Republic has all the right ingredients for such an organization, but it’s a private, for-profit entity. A new entity would need to be created to work within the legal requrements.
Excellent videos, D.B. Lots of good ideas. Many thanks!
Many thanks.
When you say the Republicans are as bad as the Democrats you throw away your own credibility, it is like saying a bee sting is as bad as a black widow spider bite. The Republicans have been a disappointment but they are not plotting to take away every last shred of freedom and dignity the way the Democrats are. Maybe three or four come close to being as bad as Democrats.
Now THERE is is winning platform if ever I heard one. I think the RINOs should adopt it for their own.
To quote another freeper, "We don't need a third party, I would settle for a two party system" if only we had one. The GOP will not get a single peso from me.
Losing in the short term is a statement that a person
Lacking in history and international affairs would make.
Time is not on our side.
With Obama, we will be lucky to have a 2010 election let alone 2012.
What Obama is doing is in most cases is irreversible.
Having several relatives in the Military and living in San Diego with the largest concentration of military, I hear first hand what the enemy is like.
Obama is all but giving the enemy a green light to hit us
again.
Nice try, but I don’t care if the Democrats win every election from now on. Better an enemy I can see than a “friend” who stabs me in the back. There are no true conservatives in the GOP; a true conservative cannot be elected in this country.
The next election will make about as much difference to the future as the Pro Bowl has on the following football season. However, if cheering for the Elephant team over the Donkey team makes you feel better, by all means do so. Nothing significant will change no matter who wins, because the United States as a political entity is doomed. Representative government doesn’t work in the real world, and the USA is no exception. The inevitable consequences of our civilization’s 500 year experiment in self-deification cannot be delayed forever, and all the R’s in the word won’t spare us those consequences.
No nation that allows abortion, euthanasiam contraception, and divorce will survive the coming crash — nor deserves to. My strategy is to build my family into a cell of Christian civilization strong enough to ride out the inevitable collapse and survive to see the dawn of a new day, when it will be possible to create a Christian commonwealth on these shores.
Your views are typical of a malcontent.
The dems won an election, and now we're acting the way they acted when Bush was in charge.
I suspect most of the people who are talking revolution don't vote regularly, or, if they do, they don't donate time or money to candidates.
Obama's election won't destroy the country--not voting conservative in primaries and Republican in November will. But people act as if this great country will be completely destroyed in a matter of a few years.
What's wrong with this country isn't Obama, he's just a symptom--what's wrong is the mindset that made his presidency possible.
We don't need a revolution, as romantic a notion as that seems to some. We need something a lot more difficult--it's called the hard work of living in a participatory system.
Guilty as charged.
‘Stephen Douglas in 1860 (representing the northern half of the Democrat Party) = 29.5%, while John C. Breckinridge (southern Democrat) who finished second won 72 electoral votes (11 states) with 18.1% of the vote’
You are misleading, Douglas was 2nd in popular vote, Breckinridge was 2nd in electoral vote, Lincoln was first in both:
ranked by electora vote
Candidate Popular vote(a) Pct Electoral vote
Abraham Lincoln 1,865,908 39.8% 180
John Breckinridge 848,019 18.1% 72
John Bell 590,901 12.6% 39
Stephen A. Douglas 1,380,202 29.5% 12
Trying to form a 3rd party will probably not work. At present the prospective candidates for office are largely picked from the top down. Reverse this, & organize around whoever you think would be a good candidate. If you can get enough people together then you can end up telling the RINO’S that this person will be the candidate to field. Formulate the positions to take, don’t let the RINO’s do it. The whole idea is to marginalize these RINO’s and, in the process, remake the GOP. Beware of becoming a RINO yourself.
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