Posted on 11/07/2012 5:56:55 PM PST by Libloather
Conservatives lambast Romney, vow to take over Republican Party
By Erik Wasson - 11/07/12 02:43 PM ET
Conservative leaders on Wednesday lashed out at Mitt Romney, saying his attempts to paint himself as a centrist and hide his principles cost him the presidency.
They vowed to wage a war to put the Tea Party in charge of the Republican Party by the time it nominates its next presidential candidate.
“The battle to take over the Republican Party begins today and the failed Republican leadership should resign,” said Richard Viguerie, a top activist and chairman of ConservativeHQ.com.
He said the lesson on Romney’s loss to President Obama on Tuesday is that the GOP must “never again” nominate a “a big government established conservative for president.”
Jenny Beth Martin of Tea Party Patriots said Romney failed to make the kind of strong case for conservatism that would have won the election.
She described Romney as a “weak, moderate candidate hand-picked by the country club elite Republican establishment.”
“They didn’t see a clear distinction so they went with what they know,” she said of voters.
“It should have been a landslide if Romney had run as a true conservative,” said Brent Bozell of the Media Research Center.
“Romney took all the right stances, no question. The problem was not communicating them on the national stage with President Obama,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, the head of the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List.
Martin argued that there was no repudiation of the Tea Party by the electorate because Tea Party values were not firmly articulated.
“This is not the death of the Tea Party,” Martin said.
“Tea Partiers will take over the Republican party in the next four years,” Viguerie said.
In the meantime, conservatives will work to ensure that congressional Republicans do not compromise their principles in fiscal talks with Obama, he said.
“Conservatives and Tea Partiers are just sick and tired of Republican leaders compromising on the state and national level with Democrats that grow the size of government,” Viguerie said. “We are going to hold their feet to the fire.”
Bozell said conservative groups need to up their financial pressure on GOP lawmakers unless they agree to a series of demands, including again vowing to approve of no tax increases for anyone.
AND ya know what, I don’t care if he was a 10% conservative, he was one R closer to a senate majority that we now don’t have.
“I would characterize him as being -100% on the issues of most importance to me (not going by his talking the talk recently, but we he did in his elected capacity in the past).”
He was 100% on the most important issue for me and that is taking out Obama. I guess that wasn’t important enough for many conservatives.
Whatever. They gave the same speech four years ago. Didn’t stop romney’s nomination. The establishment will make an alternative good choice toxic or the grassroots will either pick someone toxic or divide between several candidates. End result the establishment will get their choice and then conservatives will fall in line, well some of them anyway, like they always do and we’ll be told the survival of the republic depends on us holding our nose...again. And as for “Tea Party” candidates holding the line...LOL Get back to me when they stage a coup against Boehner. Until then it’s all talk.
Yeah, I’m cynical. Used to be passionate and optimistic. the GOP destroyed that and quite honestly so did conservatives. Just as many conservatives have sold out as the GOP operatives. Four blasted years, or 8 if we go back to Bush, and conservatives still are screwing around and can’t select a credible conservative alternative to unite around? It’s all about petty bickering and one’s pet issues with no regard to the wishes of as many conservative coalitions as possible
Just substituting one personality disorder for another.
Romney-McCain 2016
Obamacare is what really got people fired up for the 2010 midterms. Unfortunately, Romneycare made it impossible for our candidate to exploit that dissatisfaction.
It shows how important it is for Republicans to control the state legislature when the time to redistrict comes around. It's a shame the rats were able to screw West with their redistricting.
Wait. What?
Your ilk, eh? Perhaps you should stop attacking Conservatives and go back and read FR's mission statement:
As a conservative site, Free Republic is pro-God, pro-life, pro-family, pro-Constitution, pro-Bill of Rights, pro-gun, pro-limited government, pro-private property rights, pro-limited taxes, pro-capitalism, pro-national defense, pro-freedom, and-pro America.
Now that you have done that, you squishy party-first moderates can't say that you were not warned about what would happen with a GOP-E engineered Romney nomination. By screwing over TEA party delegates and Paul supporters at the RNC love fest in Tampa, and banishing Sarah Palin, the GOP-E secured the result with which it was perhaps most comfortable.
Now it reap the whirlwind.
Mourdock ran 10 percentage points behind Romney and 4 percentage points behind Pence (gov winner)
I agree.
Yup!
According to another thread posted to FR, Zero was elected with significantly fewer votes than '08. If more Repubs had turned out to vote for Mitt, he'd be President-elect today. But their single-minded ideological purity that told them there was no difference between Romney and Zero, so they stayed home and we now have four more years of a dying economy and job losses to look forward to.
The media was in on this, too. They were waiting for Mitt to go Obama on Obama (mean mud-slinger) and would've pounced on him like a cat on a mouse if he had, wailing about how low the campaign had gone (forgetting, of course, that Obama ran a low, dirty campaign from day one). Notice how everyone was astounded by the Romney they saw at the first debate. Everyone saying how Mitt had changed things around, but he hadn't. People were finally seeing Mitt as he really was and not as the media reported him. Romney had to fight Obama, the media, and the unaccepting ideologically "Republican" purists. All three proved too much.
Apparently Rainstorm Sandy filled your head with sh*t. Fact is, Obama got about nine million fewer votes than he did in 2008. Ronmey got over two million fewer votes tham McCain did in 2008. The margin of victory in 2012 was provided to Obama by the republicans who stayed home instead of coming out for Romney. Lot of religious bigots in that crowd.
And just how many were those? Care to give us some numbers since you're making the statement?
What conservatives sat out the election? How many of them do you know, because I sure haven't met any that did that? All the conservatives I know got out and voted.
That's an understatement.
It was a close race and had a conservative ran and energized the base i.e. conservatives, conservative turnout and 3rd party voters would've been more than enough to win.
Liberalism did this, not conservatism.
Jackass.
Really? Who did you vote for, bigshot, texan panty-waist?
I don’t know how Obama got elected, to paraphrase Pauline Kael (I think), I don’t know anyone who voted for him!
Mitts pro CHOICE record.
I thought Romney was supposed to attract all those moderates
and independents from both parties. That’s why u didn’t need the conservative vote. That is why the GOPe’s
wanted him. What did all you moderates and independents do on
election day?
Cause you moderates, and independents on both sides didn’t show up.
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