Posted on 09/21/2014 4:48:33 AM PDT by Kaslin
I know a lot of people are giddy at the prospect of Republicans taking the Senate this November, but that’s becoming less and less likely. It’s not because Democrats are rallying around a particular mission or set of candidates; it’s because Republicans and conservatives aren’t.
It seems like I’m always writing on issues no one wants to hear are mistakes, such as messaging or social issues. But I don’t care. These things have to be said. If these columns are received like a gaseous cousin on a long car trip through the desert, so be it. Crack a window…
If things continue on their current course, the GOP will not retake the Senate. Anyone telling you differently is selling something.
There are many reasons for this: tough primary fights, the “establishment vs. Tea Party” meme, stubbornness, arrogance, ignorance, ego. You name it, a segment of the center-right coalition suffers from it.
Too many people and groups on the right are content to take their ball and go home because their candidate lost a primary and/or the nominee doesn’t pay enough attention to whatever pet issue they care about most. They may vote, but their email lists sit idle and their wallets remain closed.
GET OVER YOURSELVES!
As upset as you may be, this election is not about any of the candidates you dislike. This election is about the following things, and the following things only – Barack Obama, Harry Reid and the Supreme Court.
I don’t care where someone lives or who their Senate candidate is … if you don’t support the Republican candidate, for whatever reason, with everything you have, you are voting to retain Harry Reid as Senate Majority Leader.
In spite of what you may have heard, the Senate is very much in play and too close to call. As unpopular as Barack Obama is, that isn’t enough to win. You have to be involved – through donations, volunteering, talking to everyone you know – or else Democrats will win.
I’m not making this up, I’m not trying to scare you; these are real numbers in real races that will make the difference. And they don’t look good.
The next two years can be spent either forcing an unpopular president to veto popular, pro-growth, pro-liberty legislation, acts that will harm his party for years; or spent with an unfettered activist president complaining about a do-nothing Congress while he initiates executive actions to implement a radical agenda and worse – packing the Supreme Court.
Live in Kansas and think Pat Roberts is a squish? Tough! Suck it up and support him.
Live in Kentucky and think Mitch McConnell is awful? Get over it and support him.
Live in Iowa and not a particular fan of Joni Ernst? Grow up and support her come hell or high water.
Live in Colorado and don’t think Cory Gardner is for you? Who cares? Support him or you are supporting Harry Reid.
Live in Arkansas and wish Tom Cotton wasn’t the nominee? So what? He’s the nominee, support him or lose more than that one race.
It doesn’t matter where you live—Louisiana, Michigan, Alaska, West Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, New Hampshire, anywhere—if you don’t suck it up, fight and work like your candidate won, you will be handing the Senate back to Harry Reid and the power to President Obama he has always sought – to fundamentally transform America.
It’s not the Senate that’s on the ballot this fall; it’s the Supreme Court.
In the last two years of his presidency, Barack Obama could appoint as many as three new justices to the Supreme Court. Would you like to see retiring justices replaced by young activist progressive nominees rubber-stamped by Harry Reid? Then work!
Yes, a Supreme Court nominee must overcome a filibuster according to Senate rules. But those are current rules and, as Harry Reid demonstrated for all other federal appointees, those rules can be changed at a moment’s notice and by a simple majority to fit whatever he and the president want at any time.
If you stay home, or if you simply vote and that’s it, you might as well be working for Harry Reid and Barack Obama. If the Supreme Court is lost, it will be lost for at least a generation. Then it won’t matter who you elect or who the next president is, the progressive agenda will be locked in as the law of the land for the foreseeable future.
You have a choice this fall: Sit on the bench or work to defeat whoever the Democrat is running for the Senate in your state. One choice is a vote for Harry Reid for Senate Majority Leader and more cover for President Obama’s abuses of power. The other will at a minimum apply pressure on the hemorrhaging wound from which our liberty is seeping.
The damage done to this country in recent years won’t be reversed by one election. No ship as big as the United States can be righted immediately. It will take time. But it can’t start being corrected until it stops getting worse. It can stop getting worse this fall if you vote and work to get others to do the same.
If you’re unhappy with your choices this fall, if your candidate didn’t win, you face a simple choice this November: Check your ego, pull your head out from where your hands are and get in the game. Or just quit. Which way are you going to go?
One of the unfortunate aspects of our political scene in this country is that a candidate's capabilities are often obscured by the mindless idiocy of a political campaign. In the case of Forbes, he was also fatally flawed by his lack of telegenic, charismatic appeal. In an age of radio and newspaper campaigns he would have been a superb candidate. He's not just a smart guy, but he has a modest way about him and has gained a lot of wisdom over the years because he's an avid reader.
You have demonstrated a penchant for making ad hominem attacks on any poster who dares disagree with your blind support for all candidates republican. You demean their intelligence, accuse them of being unable to read, and slather them with vitriol.
Your arguments are those of a school yard bully, FRiend. Because you cannot persuade you choose to berate.
It’s grown ineffective over the years - each election the GOPe fields a decreasingly conservative cast of candidates and berates the conservatives that they have no choice but to support those candidates. At some point, such tactics always fail. This may be that year.
There are some conservatives whose minimum qualifications for support of a candidate in the general election are above the level of “R by the name”.
LOL what’s a matter your arguments suck that bad....
Go take a running jump, a**hole!
The ESTABLISHMENT NON-CONSERVATIVES have cost us the senate should we lose it. Their DESPICABLE actions in Mississippi reverberated across the country. The shameful defense of incumbents by the RNC is an affront to democracy, and the uniquitous presence of perennial LOSER, Karl Rove, makes me want to vomit!
You wonder why people aren’t shelling out cash in this Obamaconomy to the Repubican Party? It doesn’t stand for anything!
I will support conservative candidates because THAT is what the GOP platform purports to espouse, conservatism. Mighty Mouse Mitch and his incumbent buddies can go suck eggs. They had no trouble smearing and crushing citizen legislators who sought to challenge their monopoly, they should have no trouble dispatching the rats.
You made your bed, GOP.
“Sitting at home or voting third party guarantees votes for them”
How?
If that person goes to the polls and votes Republican, that’s one vote for R and zero for D.
If he stays home that’s zero for R and zero for D, isn’t it?
Yet, you say if he stays home that zero for R and one for D.
So……..if that person actually goes to the polls and votes Democrat instead of Republican, does that meant it’s zero for R and TWO for D?
With your kind of thinking, no wonder we keep losing.
No disrespect intended, but that's one of the most idiotic things I've ever seen posted on FreeRepublic. Do you expect anyone here to believe that a Republican Senate is going to block an Obama nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court? LMAO.
This has been a very interesting thread, but I’m glad that I didn’t waste my time posting arguments. Spent yesterday with my one day old granddaughter, and the wisdom that comes from her was much better than reading this nonsense.
The common theme in all of this is a very simplistic argument that because the Republican Party is not ideologically pure and would prefer to win rather than go down to defeat supporting an unelectable candidate, they do not deserve our support. The convoluted logic is that another two years with Harry Reid as Majority Leader is a better outcome and will teach those wishy washy Republicans a lesson.
One of the most striking aspects of these comments is what is missing. Elections are not about individual races, or even the political philosophy of individual candidates. Elections are about political power and power is exercised through the two major political parties. Nothing else counts. As the Democrats have demonstrated, you don’t need to have a majority in your party to exercise control. Most Democrats aren’t the lunatic lefties who control the Congress and the White House, but they go along with the leadership and the Democrats advance their agenda. This is what the conservatives need to do and they can achieve this by electing conservatives to both local and national office and seizing control of the party leadership. That is done with a few quality candidates, not a full slate of self selected knuckleheads who are never going to win an election.
Also missing is any mention of how power is exercised in the Senate. The most powerful people in Washington are the Chairmen of Senate committees. They are appointed by the Majority Leader which is the number one reason why we need a Republican Majority Leaders. A number of those committee chairs will be rock solid conservatives and they will have real power to advance a conservative agenda. That’s why the pledge of the purists that they will only vote a real conservative is a self defeating behavior. It fails to recognize how power is organized and applied.
Conservatives have been much more successful in this cycle nominating electable candidates who can win races in the General Election. The weak ones did not survive the primaries. Are there establishment types still in play? Of course, you cannot dismiss the power of incumbency or the plain fact that die hard conservative purists do not represent a majority in the Republican Party. See how the Democrats handle that same dynamic and use it to win. Those establishment types are much more likely to support a conservative issue than any Democrat will ever be.
It is the fault of establishment Republicans.no let me put it bluntly it is the fault of rich Republicans and rich Democrats. They live in their own world and by their own word are’working together to get things done. The control of the media by the Dems is as much the fault of Rich Republicans as it is gentry wealthy Dem’s(who seem to run the country. The GOP wealthy voters(I’m not just taking about party politicians I’m talking about the entire class of Republican business types. They are not contributing like their counter parts in hell are doing. They do not buy media and the allow their trust fund kids to run the foundations that they set up. On top of that they are out of stupidity or greed supporting the Democrat take over strategy by helping them promote amnesty. Since they are only conservative when it comes to their wallets. I think we should oppose all tax cuts and business legislation until the borders are secure and the media is fair and they start contributing what they need to like their dem counter parts do. Why should they not get any tax cuts? Because, what is happening in this country is their fault, that’s why.
Its not good enough to be a crybaby complainer--anyone can do that,its easy. You need to have a plan to get rid of the commies! There is too much at stake. No plan you are just another complainer....
It’s kind of funny. You accuse others of waiting for a “magical 100% pure” candidate (quoted from memory - wording may be slightly wrong) in order to set up your straw man.
Then you act as if someone identifying that hyperbolic flair is failing to make a valid argument.
It’s almost as if you don’t want to defend the basis for your attack, FRiend! ;-P
How do they figure that it’s okay for them to mock and actively undermine conservatives, but those same conservatives MUST turn around and support them or be blamed for losses? It is like expecting pity for being an orphan after murdering your parents.
I’ve been listening to this same damn argument for 14 years. For the longest time, I went with it. I did my best in the primaries, then fully supported the candidate that made it through.
And what are we getting for it?
They eat their own. They treat the constitution conservatives as if we’re an inconvenience. They aren’t doing their jobs. The ones who really are trying are slapped into the dirt by their own part.
Compromise = we lose and the democrats keep advancing their socialist agenda.
The centralists are arrogant and, if our opinion means so little to them, then so does our money. I’m not listening to the RNC any more. I’m not giving them my money any more. (We a monthly donor for years.) I’m not taking their phone calls and I am not supporting them.
And I flat-out refuse to play the ‘lesser of two evils’ game with them. It doesn’t work.
What are you talking about? Just because you have nothing to contribute don't try and reword my posts.
Its funny he seems to think that Obama won’t be able to get SCOTUS nominees through anyway. Look at some of the libs that Repukes have supported for the nomination!
bttt
Thank You A.C... I always was fond of him, the flat tax and Rush’s famous line that prolly got him trouble with the EGOP back then and that was “I really like Steve Forbes”. I actually sent a millionare $25, my first ever donation and have an un-used bumper sticker of his to boot, that I hang onto proudly.
The plan must come from GOP leadership.
There is no plan, no message no vision coming from GOP leadership
other than democrats bad, Harry Reid evil.
And that will not be enough.
So, it is not really the entire picture is it?
++++
Of course not. But look who shows up at the top: Mike Lee and Ted Cruz.
And no surprises at the bottom either in the GOP column.
“Although I have noticed that the Tea Party candidates frequently don’t win in the general elections.”
If you opened your eyes a little wider, you might see that establishment candidates have a higher rate of losing.
Tommy Thompson, Denny Rehberg, Linda Lingle, all the guys who lost in 2008, Rick Berg, George Allen, Connie Mack, the list is freakin’ endless
On the limited point of the following statement I agree with the writer:
Getting rid of Reid is more important than getting rid of Obama and IF it comes down to supporting a RINO or supporting a democrat (by not voting) then we must all hold our nose and vote for the RINO ! At least we can almost certainly count on that RINO vote against Obama SC nominees.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.