Posted on 08/12/2013 9:24:46 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Against all logic, some prominent conservatives continue to promote the absurd proposition that right-wing candidates who fail to win over GOP voters in Republican primaries would magically succeed on November ballots. This assumption enables them to retain a naive faith in the claim that "true conservatives" who can't mobilize their own base to win nominations will somehow triumph in general elections by drawing support from moderates and liberals.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has most recently voiced this idea. "You know, if you look at the last 40 years, a consistent pattern emerges," Mr. Cruz observed in a July interview with ABC. "Any time Republicans nominate a candidate for president who runs as a strong conservative, we win. And when we nominate a moderate who doesn't run as a conservative, we lose."
Really? In 1988, George H.W. Bush sought the presidency by promising to deliver a "kinder, gentler" America. Despite the opposition of most conservatives (who passionately preferred Jack Kemp, Pat Robertson or even Bob Dole in the primaries), Mr. Bush crushed Michael Dukakis in the general election and swept 40 states and 426 electoral votes—the last Republican candidate to win the presidency decisively.
Mr. Bush's son won the White House twice by running as a "compassionate conservative" who had worked amicably with Democrats as Texas governor. Pledging he'd be a "uniter, not a divider," George W. Bush favored increases in federal education spending, a Medicare benefit for prescription drugs and immigration reform that included a path to citizenship.
Richard Nixon's first term featured wage/price controls, the imposition of affirmative action, intensified environmental regulations, and compromise agreements with Communist regimes in China, Russia and North Vietnam. One conscientious conservative congressman, John Ashbrook of Ohio, challenged "Republican in name only" Nixon in the 1972 GOP primaries with the slogan "No Left Turns,"
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
America has taken a 100 year dumbing down trip. Of course there are hardly any conservatives out there. She gone.
Interesting....
Medved is a typical moderate manipulator. He tells you about the conservative failures he wants you to think about while carefully avoiding conservative successes. Even worse, he’s one of the clowns who posthumously converts moderates into conservatives and conservatives as needed.
I never hear much mention of Michigan tea partier Kerry Bentivolio who converted the moderate McCotter district against a hand picked moderate picked by the GOP. My own district went from McCain style “moderate” to conservative, to a 1 term liberal democrat, back to the conservative for 2 more terms. (Sounds like a gain to me)
The legislation Reagan signed in the spring of 1967 legalized abortion from the moment of conception with exceptions for rape, incest or the life of the mother.
This remained Reagan’s position as president.
Now the GOP-E has passed legislation in the House and deep red states only that allows every and any abortion to be legal during the first 20 week, then the exceptions kick in and they want us to believe they are good conservatives.
Yep. The Dan Balz book about the election pretty much confirms that that strains of class warfare out there were running hot and deep, and it was not very hard to exploit them to get Obama re-elected. People were willing to set aside any objective evaluations of his performance over that.
1400 pages of raw material from people who felt they were unfairly treated at work? America is really, really cheesed-off at its boss apparently. And under those conditions, laissez-faire capitalism becomes all but unsellable.
It boils down to the consumer, the voter. The one who convinces them he/she has the best product win.
[Of course, that does not mean the winner actually does have the best product.]
In the last several elections, the Republicans just have not fielded candidates who can ‘sell’ their product to the voters.
2012:
One forget which department he would eliminate.
One did sort of go flakey.
One couldn’t win either Florida debate, but somehow he would have been marvelous against Obama?
One got caught in old hanky-panky that turned out to be stories rather than story.
One couldn’t keep his senate seat so several years later he thinks he is ready for the big chair.
One kept promising revelations on the birth certificate issue, but that fizzled when he couldn’t produce.
The one who did get the nomination was actually the author of the precursor to Obamacare.
That was the best the Republicans had to offer. And they wonder why they lost?
Bringing up running against Dukakis proves nothing. He was a pitiful candidate. Like McCain and Romney.
The best strategy now, I feel, is to break away from the GOP to form an authentic conservative party, with the expectation that 2016 might be the last hurrah for the GOP in a vote splitter, then pick up the pieces and let the political spectrum re-align around leftist Democrats and authentic conservatives without this wishy-washy centrist third rail which has been mostly a short circuit in modern times. Bush (W) won more as a conservative than a centrist, and the elder Bush’s win as mentioned above was in expectation of a continued conservative administration that generally fizzled out. Otherwise, the record of centrist Republicans since 1976 has been poor with the electorate either staying home, splitting off or remaining unenthused to the point where any Democrat could win, even deeply flawed ones.
I think it’s time to abandon the GOP and back a new American Conservative Party. There may be something out there with the name and skeleton already. The platform should be libertarian enough to attract that wedge of support, then build from that base — small, efficient government, a strong military, cutting back the power of the state and the entitlement culture, intelligent economic policy, caution on climate and homosexual agendas that threaten to undermine America ... all the sorts of things that the RINO crowd will not touch and cannot understand.
It would be worth one term of Hillary Clinton to kill of the GOP, after all, there is no RINO much different from Hillary Clinton anyway.
Medved uses the election of the two Bush’s to prove his point.
He fails to recognize that Bush the elder (George H.W. Bush) may have won in 1988, when he did run as a conservative, but he lost in 1992 after he had failed to govern as one.
With respect to Bush Junior (George W. Bush) he did run as a somewhat wishy washy “compassionate conservative” in 2000 and he lost the popular vote to a very weak candidate and only won office because of the Electoral College. Had Ralph Nader not run under the Green Party flag, and siphoned a few thousand liberal votes from Gore, Gore would have beaten Bush in Florida and won the Electoral College as well as the popular vote. He almost lost his reelection bid in 2004 and likely would have lost if he hadn’t been lucky enough to face the patrician “no personality” John Kerry. The truth is the younger Bush was a moderate and his “compassionate conservatism” neither played well with real conservatives nor the moderates the GOP elites love to embrace.
I’m sorry to say I have listened to this surrender monkey in the past.
We cannot out democrap the democraps.
Our country needs to reform their social agenda past.
I can't stomach the guy.
Not impossible at all.
Mexico did it.
Well he’s right. There’s no way in hell if you can’t win the primaries you can win an election. Conservatives need to find a candidate who wins both.
In 1988, George H.W. Bush sought the presidency by promising to deliver a “kinder, gentler” America. “
Nope.
That line came up after he was elected.
How did that McCain / Romney thing work out for you, Michael?
In 1988, George H.W. Bush sought the presidency by promising to deliver a “kinder, gentler” America. “
In fact, now that I thik about it, and apparently I have in about sixty seconds thought more about it than Medved, Bush ACTUALLY ran as a brass balls conservative.
Ever heard of Willie Horton?
How about Lee Atwater?
Medved is simply wrong on his facts here.
I used to listen to Michael a lot and have recently been thinking of hunting him down again. This article convinces me to not even bother.
He conveniently doesn’t discuss Reagan’s 2 landslides by running as a staunch conservative and credits Bush I as winning on the GOP move to the left. The reality is that Bush I only won because the voters expected it to be a “third term” for conservatives.
Then I scan further down and he seems to be crediting Nixon as some great President. I would rank Nixon as one of the worst 5 Presidents, simply because he gave us the EPA and the WOsD. Both of which are majorly trampling on our individual liberty and freedom.
MM, I thought I knew you...I guess I was wrong. Maybe you’ve just seen too many movies...
Bush won on Reagan’s name. Nixon won on Vietnam. This Guy is an IDIOT
You don’t have to scratch him very deeply to find “big-government thug”.
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