Posted on 10/26/2009 8:49:53 PM PDT by Kartographer
Bill Clinton, accustomed to speaking to cheering thousands at a hundred grand a pop, was dispatched the other night to a Deeds rally to set the throng on fire with one of his late-October stumpwallopers. The rally, such as it was, was held not at an arena or a hotel - not even a Motel 6 - but in a campaign office in the Washington suburbs. The "throng" was counted in the dozens, about the size of a PTA meeting. Not even Bubba could dispel the gloom of a wake.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
LOL! Thanks for posting. Wesley Pruden at the Washington Times is a good writer.
A Clinton stumpwalloper?
That sounds dirty.
burning toast LOL.
Alas a conservative apparently can not remain inside the beltway long without becomeing really stupid:
“They’re learning, painfully, that campaigning without George W. Bush is baffling, frustrating and scary.”
The “They” above is the Dims which is wrong, not the GOP which would be right. No matter how foolish one becomes inside the beltway, the facts don’t change:
1. The GOP won when Bush was running.
2. The GOP Congress blew 2006 not Bush. They kept spending money on pork. They showed weakness in the face of the attacks of the left. Bush did neither of those.
3. John McCain lost in 2008 not Bush. McCain not Bush had such bad instincts that he left the campaign to legislate and follow when the financial crisis happened.
To be a conservative comentator a part of the job should be that you are required to live outside the Beltway and the northeast every other year.
What the Dims are discovering is how scary it is to run with Obama as president.
Pruden cracks me up — love his articles. Guess Clinton has lost his aura — having a hard time typing I am laughing so hard at the thought of Bill not drawing a crowd.
“2. The GOP Congress blew 2006 not Bush. They kept spending money on pork. They showed weakness in the face of the attacks of the left. Bush did neither of those.”
There’s plenty of blame to go around amongst Republicans. Someone didn’t veto any spending bills during his term in office. We controlled the presidency and both houses of congress and spent like drunken dems—until Pelosi, Reid and Obama reset the bar for just how drunk a dem can get.
The hard lesson for Democratz to learn about Obama is the most obvious lesson.
It’s all about ME, ME, ME!
Presidents do not veto acts of Congress controlled by their party. They negotiate the best deal they can with Congress before Congress acts. Congress demanded to spend like crazy. But beltway Republicans have an incentive to protect themselves by blaming everything on Bush and Pruden who I often like is an idiot for buying into this garbage.
“A Clinton stumpwalloper?
That sounds dirty.”
—
He did Monica, not exactly Miss America, y’know?
The democrats have scored in the last two elections campaigning against Bush, due in part to the fact that Bush was not campaigning in the last two elections.
It isn't about Bush's mistakes, it is about their ability to smear him using their propaganda arm in the press.
Pruden's point is that the only thing they had to campaign on was their mischaracterization of Bush's record.
If Clinton normally gets $100,000 per speech, does that mean he can claim a $100,000 charitable contribution on his tax return for appearing at the Deeds event for free?
“Presidents do not veto acts of Congress controlled by their party. They negotiate the best deal they can with Congress before Congress acts. Congress demanded to spend like crazy.”
Then such presidents are bad presidents, in that regard. His duty is to the American people. Not to the hacks in his party.
In addition, from 2000 on, W made it his mission to convert the Republican party into the big spending RINO’s who ran the party into the ground.
I was there as somewhat of an insider from 2002 to 2006. I know some of the things that went down. Believe me, the reshaping of the party in W’s image was often enforced with serious hard ball. W’s party was NOT a conservative party and the White House did every thing it could to prevent conservative candidates from getting out of the primaries. The R’s are not just a “partly conservative” party. They are an anti-conservative party. This fish rotted from the head down.
Frankly, what I saw was pretty appalling and is the reason I stepped down from my position in 2006. There was noone leading any direction I wanted to follow.
Perhaps you should read my two rules above.
Many Republicans out here in the hinterlands couldn't, and still can't, admit the truth of this.
With the War on Terrorism, and daily attacks against Bush, Republicans felt pressured to defend the President against the regular Democrat attacks.
Well now Bush is not President, and the truth is that his policies (such as Open Borders, offshore outsourcing, visa workers out the gazoo, housing bubble, etc.) were designed to give the appearance of a sound economy, while millions of Americans were pushed out of the workplace and then out of the unemployment statistics.
Free Traitors can go straight to hell, in my not-so-humble opinion.
http://www.bobmcdonnell.com/ for Governor
http://www.billbolling.com/ for Lieutenant Governor
http://www.cuccinelli.com/ for Attorney General
It’s get out the vote time.
“Perhaps you should read my two rules above.”
I did. They are not very good rules or even rules at all. They are observations about the results of two campaigns in two years, 2000 and 2004. Here they are:
JLS’ universal rules of elections: “Bush run. R win. Bush no run. R no win.” The natives then grunt and dance around the fire in the moonlight.
Heck, those rules are so universal, I guess we should just amend the constitution and let W run forever. He certainly would have won had he run in 2008, don’t you think?
Your “rules” have nothing to do with governing responsibly, which includes vetoing bad bills that have R written on them. If you govern badly, you will eventually get thrown out of office along with the bums who governed with you.
“Well now Bush is not President, and the truth is that his policies (such as Open Borders, offshore outsourcing, visa workers out the gazoo, housing bubble, etc.) were designed to give the appearance of a sound economy, while millions of Americans were pushed out of the workplace and then out of the unemployment statistics.”
His fault regarding the housing bubble (actually a huge asset bubble) was in not addressing it. He inherited an asset bubble that had been exponentially inflating for at least ten years. It peaked in about 2002 and has been popping ever since. The housing bubble was just part of it.
He just did what his predecessors did—kicked the can down the road by continuing cheap credit policies and fiscal irresponsibility of the past. He did not move to wean America off it’s addiction to borrowing money to buy cheap stuff in China. etc etc. Except for inflating the federal deficit, his sins were ones of omission in this regard.
Bit him and America in the butt in 2008. But it would have bit us sooner or later. It will continue to bite for years to come.
Sorry, I had the wrong thread in mind. On one of the threads on NY 23 I basically said it depends on:
1. How leftist is the GOP candidate.
2. How did the candidate get chosen.
3. How leftist is the district.
The GOP probably has to support the pick of the voters if there was a vote. Every voter disagrees with every candidate. The question is how much do you disagree with the candidate and does the candidate match the electorate.
So you might not support the GOP candidate in NY 23 since she was picked by the state party or convention [I believe], she is very left and the district is fairly conservative, while at the same time supporting the GOP nominee for NJ govenor even though he is pretty squishy because NJ is not a place conservative is likely to win. The perfect should not be the enemy of the good or even the best you can do.
So to me the question your post raises was is your claim that the Bush GOP was against running conservatives in conservative districts or did the favor the GOP candidate in primaries that had the best chance to win in the general? The former would be what you called anti-conservative, the latter is pramatic governing.
The GOP Congress by 2006 was becoming squishy not because of Spector in PA, etc. It was becoming squishy because somehow the GOP failed to win senate seats in Nevada or other conservative states.
The dimwits couldn't have run "against" Bush if he had stayed the course and acted conservative.
Of course it won't, and that's what makes the Virginia race so scary for the president's men. Voters will use whatever club is available to "send a message," and sometimes, as any number of pols could tell you, the club is big, rough and means business.
Ping
I must have responded to a completely different post. Sorry.
You asked “So to me the question your post raises was is your claim that the Bush GOP was against running conservatives in conservative districts or did the favor the GOP candidate in primaries that had the best chance to win in the general? The former would be what you called anti-conservative, the latter is pramatic governing.”
I agree with your analysis that you have to consider the district—for example, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe are intensely irritating. But probably no real Republican could win there. So I’ll take ‘em. The downside is they give a lot of “bipartisan” cover to very bad legislation. The one good side is they vote against Harry Reid as the leader of the Senate. And that’s the best we can expect from their state.
Where I get really annoyed is when the state or national party takes sides and tries to install a liberal in a district or state that is conservative and could be won by a conservative.
I’m in CO. It has happened over and over again here. The money in the primaries, even in very conservative state races, goes to the RINO. Always. Frequently true in congressional and senatorial elections also.
There are stories I could tell (I won’t) about how the Pete Coors/Bob Shaffer debacle came down in 2002. A whole lot of money and party influence went into preventing Bob Shaffer from getting out of the primary and that originated directly from the White House. The big picture, we got a bad candidate (a good man, Pete Coors but not a good candidate) and probably lost a solid conservative US Senate Seat to Salazar because of White House meddling.
The state party here has been controlled by the same folks and they are just as bad. They have consistently pushed conservatives out of races that would have been won by any R that could speak without drooling. When a conservative gets past their barriers, they then form Republicans for [insert democrat name here]. It happened exactly that way in two important races here last election that I’m acquainted with. The conservative had the gall to win the primary over the RINO party designate. And then a substantial chunk of the party did their best to defeat the conservative.
The same pattern is reprising in NY23 and in the Christ/Rubio race. The national or state party frequently chooses sides and when they do, it’s always the RINO side, regardless of district. Conservatives usually have a fight on their hands to get over a huge mound of money contributed by the party to their primary opponent and, even if they succeed, they often get lukewarm support from the party in the general election.
The source of the problem is fairly self-evident. There is a big split between the money in the party and the voters in the party on some fundamental issues. The money does not care about abortion or balanced budgets. On budgets, they are far more interested in making sure the money spent has contracts for them. The money also cares passionately about having cheap labor from Mexico.
What that means is that conservatives need to start donating money to conservative candidates or to explicitly conservative PAC’s. The party cannot be counted on to do the right thing. We need to develop a funding apparatus that is independent of the folks who run things now. We have the manpower to walk precincts—conservatives are great at that. But we don’t have the money. Until we have it, nothing much is going to change.
I am not forgetting either.
1. Bush did indeed sign the conservative TARP bill. Conservatives afterall clean up their own messes.
2. I dealt with the lack of vetoes above. When the Congress and President are of the same party they negotiate in advance and work out the best deal. So Bush likely negotiated down the spending he could not get them to pull back on all of it and he of course needed votes on war spending.
Bush apparently was much more conservative than you since you did not want to clean up the mess made by our representatives but rather apparently wanted to dump our mess on others?
The Ovmitons are revving up the voter fraud machine as we type..........they know losing will cast a very dismal shadow over Ohaha.
Just in case-----Rahm is stocking up on valium and vodka to fortify themselves when the returns start coming in.
Mmm, mm, mmm........that is good news. Very few to none of the candidates Clinton campaigned for has ever won.
“The Ovmitons are revving up the voter fraud machine as we type..”
This is what has me the most worried.
“Immigration policy does not break by party so I would look more at broader categories if I were you. As I said to start, in every election most voters must vote for someone they disagree with on some issues. I would look at categories like defense, social issues, etc.”
Immigration breaks within the party, which was my point. Money on one side and voters on the other.
As to your point about name recognition, perhaps true in some cases at the beginning of the race. But then why does the national or state party need to take sides? The candidate with the better name recognition ought to show he can ride that to a primary victory. In any event, have you EVER seen the national party endorse a conservative over a credible RINO because of name recognition? Ever?
The national party prevents a real primary and prevents lesser known candidates from making their bones in the primary. Mostly, they do it by the threat of spending money on the moderate—that suffices in most cases to clear the field. When the conservative makes a race of it, they weigh in with $500,000 here and $500,000 there and it’s usually a slaughter as a result. Additional pressure on local pols to endorse the moderate etc etc etc.
But, again, have you ever seen the national party endorse a conservative over a credible RINO in an open primary? I don’t recall it. The money in the party does not want a conservative congress. They want congressmen who sound conservative enough to pull in the base but who ask “how high?” That’s how obscene deficits and earmarks and special tax code exemptions and so on happen when R’s control Congress. And how amnesty almost occurred depsite the opposition of about 70% of the American public when R’s controlled Congress.
It’s not as if the national or state parties have done a very good job holding onto power by dictating the results of a bunch of primaries. Maybe it’s time to try another way.
Well, Liz? It 'tis the season.
"The Ovmitons are revving up the voter fraud machine as we type..."
Hmmm, where'd I hear that just yesterday? steph, you know? LOL
"...they know losing will cast a very dismal shadow over Ohaha."
They know losing will confirm their empiricals. More than hobgoblins, reality can do that season or not.
IF they can turn this around, fine.
If not? THEN the fun starts.
The rout'll be on, reminiscent of the old Johnny Horton song, "The Battle of New Orleans".
Y'all remember that one, by any chance? LOL
"Just in case---Rahm is stocking up on valium and vodka to fortify themselves when the returns start coming in."
Yes & I hear overdosing while mixing such crap's an ever present & real danger.
I'm sure Rahm knows his handlers won't be happy so he knows it, also.
As they say Rahm, suicide's painless.
BTTT
Landru and I were discussing voter fraud on the phone yesterday. I still maintain that it is a continuous worry for us, as Obama has his “posse” ready to steal all important elections.
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