Facebook A.J. Otjen: "Is progressive a bad word? Not if it means science and technology and playing by the rules. Lets make being a Teddy Roosevelt Republican mean equal rights, conservation, and free and fair competition."
Posted on 04/14/2012 7:42:03 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Republican politicians are fixated on culture wars.
New laws, or legislation now being considered, in the Republican controlled states of South Dakota, Virginia, Arizona, Minnesota, Indiana, Florida, Missouri, Kansas, Alabama, Idaho, and Georgia limit, restrict, or prevent women from obtaining various health services applicable to only females: contraception, mammograms, cancer screening, abortion counseling.
Before withdrawing from the presidential race on Tuesday, Rick Santorum had said that birth control is “a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”
Is this an example of Republicans wanting to limit the size of government? This presidential candidate wanted to crawl into our beds and chaperone consenting adults. Sorry, Rick. You’re not invited.
Both Santorum and Newt Gingrich indulged in theocratic presumptuousness, with bellowing commentary on the supposed religious errors of other political figures.
Santorum twisted John F. Kennedy’s thoughtful 1960 speech about religious liberty into an attack on religion, saying he wanted to throw up. Gingrich accused President Obama of attacking Catholics and Mitt Romney of attacking Jews.
Wasted opportunities
By indulging in divisive culture wars, Republicans have squandered opportunities to offer a more inclusive, hopeful message about creating jobs and growing the economy. How many times have they promised to focus on jobs and the economy and yet the very first item on their agenda has been none of the above.
For the 2011 Congress, it was abortion. Five states with Republican legislatures, including Montana, have introduced legislation for a personhood amendment or other bills that would call into question the legality of birth control and raise the specter of government imposing an unenforceable ban on contraception. This, despite 78 percent of voting Republicans being pro-choice (www.gopchoice.org/map.asp).
The 2011 Montana Legislature promised us it would concentrate on economic issues, but then embarrassed our state nationally with its crazy cultural agenda. I found myself apologizing to my friends across the country on Facebook. The extremists who support big government when it comes to personal matters spent more time fighting women’s rights, medical marijuana, and equal rights in Missoula than they did creating jobs for Montanans.
In Montana, the state GOP platform says that homosexuality should be illegal. In this, as with other cultural matters, the party is out of touch and behind the times. Almost one-third of Republicans supported legalizing same-sex marriage in a 2011 Gallup poll. More importantly, our future leaders are way ahead of their bed-snooping elders. Over 70 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds support legalizing same-sex marriage. This is up 16 percentage points from 2010.
I can remember when the Republican Party was a different party. In 1980, I was a delegate to the GOP Colorado convention and we were so proud that we were successful in keeping anti-choice zealots off the floor, knowing they would divide and destroy the party. The question for the state of Montana in 2012 is how much cultural distractions and the debacle of the 2011 legislative session decide this election?
Blocking action
The party has painted itself into a corner on cultural issues. Ideologues have closed the door and hung out “Not Welcome” signs blocking centrist or center-right candidates who can’t pass narrow litmus tests on cultural issues.
Even if such candidates could pass through the ideologues’ fine-filter mesh, could they win a general election, given the current cultural war that the Republicans have positioned themselves to lose? Do Americans want a Republican controlled Senate in Washington, D.C., to mimic the extremism and dysfunction of the Republican controlled House? How will this dynamic affect the Rehberg vs. Tester Senate race?
How many Montanans realize they were duped when 2010 Republicans with a strong economic message turned into 2011 Republicans stirring up fear and polarization? Will this finally be the end of the crazy Republicans and the return of the thinking Republicans? We can only hope.
*****A.J. Otjen of Laurel teaches business courses at Montana State University Billings. She is Montana coordinator for Republicans for Environmental Protection and was an unsuccessful 2008 GOP candidate for the House seat held by Denny Rehberg.*****
The writer needs to be a little more precise.
It's not clear from the article in which of those "Republican" states, it will now be illegal for a woman to get a mammogram. Maybe it's all of them. I'm just not. sure.
If she’d said Texas, I’d understand her prattle to mean de-funding Planned Parenthood. I think that’s where she’s going.
Well, THIS teacher says that the woman belongs in the Democrat party. The culture wars exist because the left wants them to- a heteronormative Christian society is the only successful model of civilization, and they tear at it for a reason:
http://www.uhuh.com/nwo/communism/comgoals.htm
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, healthy.”
The point she does not understand is that the “economy”, as she puts it, can only work in an environment free of con jobs like abortion and what not.
It’s the character, stupid.
THe Smithonian Channel had a hit piece on economies of scale and they called the victory of the West with Stalin against Hitler’s overengineered machines as the “spirit of the gulag allied with Detroit manufacturing genius”, I kid you not.
Some people’s “economies”...
:)
Ya, so many to choose from. This is a good one.
“the extremism and dysfunction of the Republican controlled House?”
Yet no examples are cited. The only two budgets Obama has ever put forward received zero votes from Democrats, first in the Senate and most recently in the House. Paul Ryan (one of those extremist house Republicans) has put forward a budget that includes some of the ideas from Obama’s own debt commission.
Just who are the extremists here?
Before withdrawing from the presidential race on Tuesday, Rick Santorum had said that birth control is “a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”
Is this an example of Republicans wanting to limit the size of government?
This wasn’t stated in the context of government. The writer is either stupid or evil (maybe both).
Either she just repeats Democrat talking points or this is what she is getting from the GOP-e. Sadly, I believe she fits in comfortably with the initial 30% that made up the Romney base; those that believe once they’ve killed off Mitt’s opposition, the “stupid” social conservative base will have nowhere else to go because Obama is destroying the future of their country and they will vote for the nominee to stop his 2nd term. I guess she has a spring in her step today. The tone of this piece suggests it. How stupid to spit in the face of the base even now.
She certainly isn’t a conservative Tea Party supporter.
The healthy wealth of Abraham, ie. honoring family, children and growth of the flock is not what she has in mind apparently. For some people it’s spending selfishly until broke and without any legacy or entity after that, completely aborted.
What is the point? There is no point in such animal farm life, but many embrace it.
I just cannot understand what it is to these people they do not understand that my higher values in no way should be seen as a threat to the economy, unless she talks about an economy of slaves she aims to run herself?
That’s not a country let alone a world, it’s a plantation they want. Fine, let it be, let them run my plantation while I run my own things my own way, but you see, that is a nono in her book because she was to impose that instead of letting it be, because OUR wealth and view of the economy embarasses them as their slaves all of a sudden realize there is a better way out there.
In any case, the RINOs could care less about the economy, because, all they care about, is pulling their pants down for groupies and foreign embassies, and not supporting their local families and districts as they are hired to represent.
This is not about the economy, this is a CYA operation to hide the fact that they are BOTH ECONOMIC AND MORAL COWARDS who hate themselves for “being of a family as opposed to be ‘genuine’ communists of the streets”.
Nuff said...and might I add...what a damned snob...she considers herself a a "thinker"?
and the rest of us are what ...stupid?
A few years ago, I probably would have agreed....but social policies and economic policies cannot be separated from each other. The breakup of the traditional family has tremendous ramifications for the economy.
Gotta be in it to win it!
Newt.org
Let’s roll!
I think your post #9 is not only well written but right on.
Left wing liar. Probably a slut, too, from the sound of it.
For a lot of RINOS, this is an incredibly alien concept. They want ‘gay marriage’, believing that gays are somehow restricted from marrying. They aren't - there's no sexual orientation test - simply a compliance with the meaning of a word that has existed throughout our cultural history - marriage is a union of a man and a woman. Fine, make a homosexual shacking up law, whoopee. But changing the meaning of something to fit the liberal trend of the moment is a shockingly bad idea.
My world has risks - as it stands now, an OSHA inspector can walk into virtually any business, pick some random government regulation, arbitrarily fine the business, and inform them that if they do not fix that problem, next time it's a higher fine. It is completely counter to the central tenant of our judicial system that you are innocent until proven guilty, and you can't be proved guilty unless declared by your peers. No judge, no jury, just some government drone who can bankrupt a business with the scribble of a pen.
ADA act is open season for any lawyer who wishes to attack a business. Do you have braille on your keypad for entering a pin? Nope? Here's your lawsuit. Does this store have a counter at the right height for a wheelchair bound customer? Nope? Here's your lawsuit. And all of these lawsuits come with automatic class action status - it's not just the complainant's ‘rights’ that they're suing for, and punishing for, it's every single one that may or may not have entered the business.
Worse is the billions we've spent making every single school have an ADA compliant playground, every school bathroom be wheelchair and walker compliant, every classroom door adjusted for a mythical wheelchair student. A school near me which has never had a wheelchair bound student spent 1.7 million dollars in making the school compliant with ADA regulations. Result? Playground equipment that goes half unused, a quarter of the restrooms lost, and a drastically increased maintenance budget of more than $80,000 per year, just to keep those ‘upgrades’ working.
Constitution says ‘limited time’ - congress interprets this to mean ‘a lifetime plus seventy years.’ Yet the 2nd appears to be the only part that the drones want to interpret as narrowly as possible.
It is not chaperoning adults in the bedroom when you say ‘no’ to corrupting the meaning of marriage. It is not an invasion or over-regulation by government when you say that ‘if you want condoms, go buy them.’ Overturning Roe v Wade is correcting judicial activism, not invading someone’s womb.
And taking the side of liberals on all these issues and then whining when the few conservatives in the GOP actually act like conservatives, that they embarrass you in front of other liberals, means you're in the wrong party.
“I just cannot understand what it is to these people they do not understand that my higher values in no way should be seen as a threat to the economy, unless she talks about an economy of slaves she aims to run herself?”
Such people don’t see your (and my, I think) values as higher. They have swallowed some notion that license is the same liberty, when it is in fact anarchy and will have the same result anarchy always does. They buy Marx’s notion of religion being nothing more than the ‘opiate of the masses’ and consider themselves somehow enlightened and above such things. They sort of ignore how all of that always ends in disaster, which history clearly points out.
Ahhhhh......Montana......where a judge can plead guilty to felony bribery charges and get probation......rotten right to the core.
It might be helpful to let others know just who you’re calling a liar and a slut .... :-)
I saw the title and excerpt as well as a few of the replies before clicking, and was almost certain it was written by Megan McCain, it’s that vapid.
Why do individuals who are so impressed by “thinking” have such problems with it themselves? Is it one of those grass is always greener sort of things?
It’s worse than that based on the information below!
Nov 19, 2010
http://montanafesto.wordpress.com/tag/ken-miller/
“Gubernatorial candidate Rick Hill picked up an endorsement from liberal Republican Agnes Otjen this week. “AJ” Otjen ran unsuccessfully (as a self-described “Teddy Roosevelt Republican”) for Montana’s GOP nomination for congress earlier this year, gathering just 6% of the June primary vote.
Otjen may be best remembered for her 2008 vote for Democrat Barack Obama. She agreed that this was the very same reason she voted for Barack Obama, who ironically enough has been described recently as “too far left” by European leaders.
Hill has told friends that several Democrats have been encouraging him to run for Governor in 2012, because he “would be the moderate in the field”, although Hill’s more recent statements have attempted to court conservatives. About Hill, Otjen said “I believe Rick will build a broad coalition and focus on the things with which we can all agree.” Hill has joined former state senators Ken Miller of Laurel and Corey Stapleton of Billings in what is expected to be a crowded field for the open seat. Democrat Brian Schweitzer is barred from running again due to term limits.”..
Facebook A.J. Otjen: "Is progressive a bad word? Not if it means science and technology and playing by the rules. Lets make being a Teddy Roosevelt Republican mean equal rights, conservation, and free and fair competition."
Post 21 and 22 supports it.
Romney should bravely run right up the center now! The door is wide open! The thinkers are in charge! Ideology is out! The litmus tests are gone and the golden age of an olympically run economy is waiting for it's champion!
A teacher who can't spell.
LoL that was my goof!
Newt is keeping Mitt after class -- making him repeat over and over conservative ideals....
I hope that the thinking Republicans will speak up in response to the non-thinking side of the party represented well by Ms. Otjen. What is she complaining about anyway? The non-thinking wing of the party got their man apparently. Everyone knows that Romney’s conservative stands are for show only and not to be taken seriously. Certainly, he doesn’t take them seriously.
Lie.
You nailed it right there. There are plenty of men and women out there who have families just for the celebrity status of it. THen enters a pop artist in the bar, and, all of a sudden, everyone hates wife, kids, husband and all that, ready to trash it all and show boobs for 5 min of fame with a con job - who sometimes feels disgusted and appalled by the behavior of his or her own fans by the way.
These people of the media, these woodstock hyppi worshiping artists HATE , and they HATE themselves first and foremost for being "part of the family" and not some groupie ring circus of celebrity.
Karl Marx was such individual. THey will moan and cry as to why they do not have the best wife, but, yet, they are totally "bored" and unresponsive to the kind of values that bring up humbly such wealth.
It's totally amazing how the "narcissistics of satanics" works. It's as if Satan enters the room and looks at himself through the eyes of fans possessed by him or her in the bar. It reminds me of the character in Red Draggon who puts mirrors in the stead of their eye balls before killing them for not admiring him.
THese people are not normal. It is scary and they are all around. Hollyweird works like that, maintaining a fan base while keeping them away with whips, and the fans love the "not worthy" crap.
I think the Romney strategy will be to occupy a political position slightly to the right of Obama thinking that people will vote for him because he is smidgen more moderate than Obama.
But Newt said republicans don’t read.
As the indians say, “She smoke too much kinikinik and colon back up into head.”
“ADA act is open season for any lawyer who wishes to attack a business”
And just who was the Senator who was most responsible for its passage?
To quote ol’ Will:
“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars — it is in ourselves”...
It is surprising this collosus of brilliance was unable to win her congressional race.
Also, as has been commented lumping all those states together is also inaccurate. The Idaho law for instance, simply required the women to have (not even look at) an ultrasound. It had nothing to do with mammograms or contraception.
If states doing this action are evidence for ‘unthinking’ conservatives, shouldn't Romney be the most ‘unthinking’ conservative of all since in his state the state government completely controls the health-care system. Are we only unthinking for standing for morality, but thinking if we stand for more government control as long as we let the unborn be murdered?
Indeed, it’s a bait. Hitler invented the term the “thinking german worker”. This is horse crap fascist socialistas language.
From the get go the Tparty was all about economy and how Obama and the cooperating Vichy GOP RINOs were supporting its destruction.
Now their Romney steals the talking point and they reduce us to the pre-Obama election falacy that liberals are RINOs are much in touch with the economy and that people associate bad economy with conservatives.
This is the same propaganda mind shaping horsecrap.
FROM THE GET GO we had economy on the issue with the Tparty, and this is what Breitbart was all about.
In the end, this is another screed of “Obama or a strong government and leader fascist” is going to fix it. THis is BS.
Right... That explains Thailand, India, Japan, China, South Korea, Israel, Turkey, etc.
Rolls eyes.
See what voting for the (R) candidate can bring you?
“Thailand, India, Japan, China, South Korea, Israel, Turkey,”
I would submit that the US is more successful than any one or all of those, and we are the penultimate achievement of Western Civilization, even in our current decayed state.
No doubt. But to say that they aren’t successful is not right. And their mere existence puts the thesis you advocated in doubt.
“And their mere existence puts the thesis you advocated in doubt.”
And all of those have had sufficient exposure to Western Civilization (which is underpinned by Christian thought, values, and mores) in order to be where they are at today. If there had been no Western Christendom, then the world at large would be little better off than it was circa the year 1200 AD. That may not be the politically correct, multicultural thing to say, but it is the truth, nonetheless.
Except that Israel is the foundation of western civilization, so they made western civilization great, not the other way around.
And China and India were exceptionally rich and powerful over the ages. It was only around the 1800’s that they went to pot.
Technology is the edge that made modern western civilization dominant. And that comes from science and the scientific method. Which comes from rational thought. And rational thought is one of the gifts that came from Judaism (see Israel).
You are correct in stating that ancient Israel and Judaism are wellsprings of the west; in your earlier post I assumed wrongly that you referred to the modern nation. The eastern civilizations, though, had stagnated well before the 1800s, actually- China somewhat further back into the 1600s, India in the 1700s. And neither contributed greatly to the development of Western Civilization. It is worthy to note that the scientific method and other appurtenances of the 1600s are due to Christian acceptance that reason came from God, which Locke noted when writing of government.
What's your point? Ronald Reagan was divorced and signed a sweeping pro-choice bill in California and you know what kind of president HE was.
“”The Republican Party is a managerial party that doesn’t like to fight, doesn’t like to read books,” Gingrich said Wednesday before a group of tea party leaders in Delaware. “That is why the tea party was so horrifying. Tea partiers were actually learning about the Declaration of Independence. They wanted to talk about the Federalst Papers. It was weird.”
I was having a bit of tongue-in-cheek fun with the title of the article - The Return of the Thinking Republicans - who can’t be doing much thinking when Newt says they don’t even read.
Newt’s point is that the Tea Party is more informed than the Republican Party, and that it represents a real threat to them. And I sure hope it changes the party or supplants it.
This election is the republican party’s last chance. I really believe that, and I think Newt does too. The House right now can’t do much because of Reid’s Senate graveyard and Obama’s veto pen. But if the republicans prevail in this election, they have to show some real change and read up on what this country was founded for.
I revere Ronald Reagan. He was our modern day George Washington. My comment had nothing to do with Reagan. It was a jab at the future of the republican party using Newt’s own words.
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