Posted on 01/18/2012 11:07:19 PM PST by Bratch
A blonde finds lipstick on her husband's collar. Suspicious that he's cheating on her, she heads to a local gun shop and buys herself a pistol. That night, she hides in her bedroom closet. Sure enough, the husband comes home with his redheaded secretary on his arm and leads her to the bed. As they began to caress, the wife jumps out of the closet and holds the gun to her head.
"Sweetheart," the husband pleads, "don't do it! Don't shoot yourself!"
"Shut up, Johnny!" she cries. "You're next!"
That blonde now runs the Republican Party. Hence, the GOPs dedication to their latest "it's-his-turn" candidate, Mitt Romney.
Let's examine for a moment just why Mitt Romney will likely win the Republican nomination. It isn't because he's conservative -- he's not. It isn't because he's supremely electable -- he's not. It's not because he's charming or charismatic or dazzlingly likeable -- he's not.
The Republican Party is about to nominate Mitt Romney because it is a party in crisis. Instead of focusing on the cheating husband -- Barack Obama -- Republicans are idiotically focusing on their internal differences. Unlike the Democratic Party, which is largely united around certain key issues -- gay marriage, comprehensive sex education, abortion, higher taxes, more spending -- the Republican Party is all over the place. The Republican Party includes high-tax deficit hawks, and it includes low-tax supply-siders. It includes high-spending compassionate conservatives, and it includes low-spending small government types. It includes pro-gay marriage libertarians and pro-traditional marriage religious voters. It includes hard-line, anti-immigration believers and open-borders free marketers. It includes Ron Paul isolationists, George W. Bush Wilsonians and everything in between.
These conflicts have defined the Republican Party since the end of Reagan's tenure. Each and every Republican presidential candidate since Reagan has attempted to paper over these differences. The result is that the Republican Party nominees have been remarkably similar in their political viewpoints: social conservatives who are for lower taxes, higher spending and a generally non-interventionist foreign policy (though that was changed by 9/11). George H.W. Bush, Bob Dole, George W. Bush and John McCain were aligned ideologically. Call them the Paper Republicans.
Mitt Romney is a Paper Republican. We don't know where he stands on anything because the Republican Party no longer knows where it stands on anything. That's why the Republican race for the nomination has been so schizophrenic. Rick Perry was unacceptable because of the DREAM Act, but Mitt Romney was acceptable despite his support for comprehensive immigration reform. Newt Gingrich was unacceptable because of his economic populism, but Mitt Romney was acceptable despite his repeated support for government bailouts. Rick Santorum was unacceptable because of his big-spending ways, but Mitt Romney was acceptable despite his implementation of Romneycare in Massachusetts.
The problem isn't Romney. The problem is the Republican Party.
Now this isn't a call for a third party. Third parties are doomed to failure; the system is geared toward a two-party system. But what the Republican Party does need is a housecleaning. Call it a purge, if you must. But do it.
That's what the Democrats did after their shocking defeat in 2004. John Kerry was a flip-flopper, a wishy-washy liberal who made liberals squeamish. So they responded by moving to the left, bringing in Nancy Pelosi to run the House and the anti-Kerry, Howard Dean, to run the Democratic National Committee. The result was a Democratic victory in 2006 in the House, and the victory of the most far-left candidate in American history, Barack Obama, in 2008.
Most Republicans protest that this isn't the right time for a purge. They hope that opposition to Obama will unite Republicans around a Paper Republican. The problem with this logic is that it always justifies a Paper Republican candidate, because the Democrats will invariably run somebody worse. And Paper Republicans don't help matters. The Republican Party has, for the last half-century, consolidated liberal gains and trimmed around the edges. The result has been an unstoppable juggernaut of government growth and the loss of traditional American freedoms. The Paper Republican experiment has been a dramatic failure for conservatives.
We are now at a crisis point. More Democratic rule is the highway to hell; more Paper Republican rule is the slow road to the same destination. It's time for the Republican Party to present a true conservative alternative. Anything else is suicide by inches.
BINGO!!!!
I now consider myself to be Independent - the Republican Party does not represent my core Conservative beliefs. I changed my voter registration 5 years ago. Prior to that, I contributed significantly on an annual basis to the party and was active in our state party offices. No longer. The party has been steered toward a limp-wristed acceptance of liberalism and moderation - they can go to hell. If a purge of the party can be accomplished, great, if not, I'm all for relegating it to the dustbin of history and starting anew.
This would allow for only R's (albeit not all Conservatives as we well know) to vote and would keep the Rats and so called "Independents" from messing up the results by being allowed to create mischief as they are wont to do.
What is Republican in the traditional sense? The nasty WHIG Mercantilist Lincoln that destroyed the Constitituional Republic or the Progressive Big Gov Manic-Depressive Teddy Roosevelt who kicked off the Empire or the EPA/Red China opening Nixon or the Bush Compassionate fools? The History of the Republican Party is mostly filled with the wrong type of people and really the anti-Tea Party Party as much as the Leftist Party.
BINGO!
For the GOP-E's current obsession about the Republican "brand," well the Republican brand just ain't worth saving.
“Ben nailed it. Time for a massive cleanout.”
This has been obvious since before the days of “compassionate conservatism”.
I keep coming back to the polls of last spring where the TEA party support came from a large contingent of folks who didn’t want Obamacare to interfere with their Medicare.
That’s not really an indicator of a conservative groundswell - opposing one socialist program because it would interfere with expectations for another.
I’m afraid that’s where we are - while the TEA party is decidedly more conservative than the GOP, where it really matters in government - cutting government spending, including the many socialist programs, I don’t think the TEA party represents that. That’s why the GOP continues to hang on decades past it’s last hint of Reagan conservative principle.
Until we get a groundswell that advocates with significant enough numbers to fundamentally alter what government does, conservatism is going nowhere - because it’s not a viable alternative to the status quo.
So we get the GOP, we get Romney, we get the status quo.
They tried to “clean house” with term limits. How did that work out?
The answer: “We don’t need no stinking term limits.” So, we go on and on and on with Republican dynasties that offer a line of special “family” members handed down from grandfather, to father to son to carry on the old family tradition of self-enrichment, power and the preservation of the motto “we go along to get along.”
The Republican party should be the third party.
“He wants the GOP to be more like Nixon and Ford. Unfortunately for us, that combination was able to win in a landslide.”
When did Ford win a landslide? Agnew was Nixon’s running mate in 1968 and 1972. Ford’s claim to fame was losing to Jimmy Carter in 1976 as an incumbent. Some landslide.
You have to have a third party to siphon money away from the RNC until it siphons enough to get rid of it.
I could understand supporting a RINO candidate if there was a moderate dem in the whitehouse. But for someone as extreme left as O, if they won’t support a conservative candidate now, they never will.
RNC is done for me. The more people that start thinking that way, the more a third party becomes viable and eventually replaces the junk one.
If that does not happen, if a third party does not thrive, then I simply know that I am an extemist and perhaps I should reconsider my views.
The TEA party has already done the noble step of trying to work within the RNC this go around. As you can see, it’s not working. They need to abandon the “work within the party concept” and head out on their own.
If it fails, so be it. But they should at least give that a shot. If not, we are doomed to the current status quo of a degenerating america.
The democratic party was hijacked 50 years ago.
Today, most of the Republican Party's elected officials are no longer conservative. And the party leadership in Washington? I dare you to find one explicit conservative among them. Party members however, who comprise the rank-and-file, are still largely conservative, especially primary voters and activists.
And there is your fault line - not between competing groups within the party, but between the leadership and the base. They can't purge us, unless they want to become a members-only club and a small one at that. Instead, we need to replace them. And while we're at it - let's find a leader.
“If people really want to change the GOP, then get involved locally.”
Bingo!
I was involved in local politics for 20 years.Trying to get a conservative to show up at local council or county government meetings was like inviting a vampire to a sunrise cross service.
For some reason, still unknown to me, conservatives find it either trivial or loathesome to get involved in local politics.
This is despite the fact that the Founders built the American individual freedom movement through local politics. The necessity of first cleaning out your neighborhood of rats and Marxists just flies over conservatives’ heads.
For 100 years, Progressives have labored to erode both Constitutional adherence and Western legal principles, leading to an immense growth of government power and influence. The Left has enjoyed an equally great advantage in the process because they believe in government, actively promote its expansion, and frequently benefit politically and financially from government largess.
But the Left has also labored to destroy those competing institutions that stand in the way of their vision of Progressive social utopia, institutions that conservatives and traditional Western society depend upon for their survival: families, neighborhoods, churches, synagogues, membership organizations and charities.
So now, we conservatives must engage the battle directly, especially since we lack a national leader or a party that uniquely represents our interests.
The GOP Elites are not stupid. They know exactly what they are doing. They are masters at getting the rank-n-file Republican rubes to vote for them year after year while stabbing them in the back year after year. The Republicrat/Dumbocan Party has about a 5% approval rating and a 95% re-election rate. These are no dummies.
Pictured: CONgressmen laughing about how easy it is to fool the public.
This country doesn't need a third party. It needs a second party.
If people really want to change the GOP, then get involved locally.
Needless to say the reason most of them want the positions in small town government is because it makes them think of themselves as important, and the reason they get them is because any one worth their salt don,t want them.
I get a kick out of reading this sort of asinine plastic saber-rattling every election cycle.
If you want to “purge” the party (Stalinist much, Mr. Shapiro?), then how are you gonna do it from the outside, tough guy?
If you want to change the party, you have to get involved locally. I did. I’m only one person, but I do what I can.
I am tired of living in a country that makes somebody feel like a criminal for starting a business, paying exorbitant taxes and following the law while the lazy and the stupid get rewarded. If the Republican would just say that they get that it would go along way to restoring the republic
I am tired of living in a country that makes somebody feel like a criminal for starting a business, paying exorbitant taxes and following the law while the lazy and the stupid get rewarded. If the Republican would just say that they get that it would go along way to restoring the republic
Absolutely.
http://www.maricopagop.org/precinct-committeeman/what-is-a-precinct-committeeman/
Let’s join together and take over the Republican Party from the inside. Turning tail and registering Independent solves nothing.
Right...right. Ford was Nixon’s VP after Agnew resigned but he wasn’t his running mate. But Agnew was also a Rockefeller so it does seem to indicate that 2 Rocky Rino’s can win.
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