Heh! Don't think so.
Posted on 09/27/2014 6:56:32 AM PDT by cotton1706
Political pollsters have a tough job. They have to create formulas to determine if the person they are interviewing is likely to vote, and it is within this calculation that their reputations are made.
Typically, those who are likely to vote in an off-year election are pretty set. They are the people who always vote in elections — with some motivated by specific issues.
In a wave election, the number of those motivated by specific issues escalates, changing the electoral landscape as the candidates who are beneficiaries of this increased participation sweep to victory.
The 2014 election is rapidly looking like something new and different. Democrats are reportedly demoralized by the failed Obama administration and general fatigue.
Republicans, in an orgy of expectations, believe the key to taking the Senate was getting "electable" candidates nominated.
And get them nominated they did.
The establishment got their candidates. Now they're looking at a potentially disastrous election where their chosen ones dramatically underperform all reasonable expectations, the result of attacking their own party's base to cement primary victories.
One state party chairman has privately bemoaned that social conservatives in his state openly question why they should bother voting at all. Given the national party's desire to kick them out of the big tent to make room for a hoped-for influx of pot smoking hipsters, who can blame them?
Across the nation, Tea Party conservatives question the wisdom of being tied to a Republican Party that wants them to just shut up and vote for whomever the establishment decides, and it is this indecision on whether to vote at all that is at the heart of the GOP's polling woes.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.investors.com ...
Republicans:
Their only principle is to have no principles.
Their only strategy is preemptive surrender.
Their only plan for victory is to tick off their base as much as possible.
In the past I voted for McCain, and Romney nationally, and for Scott Brown in Massachusetts. But I guess it depends on your belief in how far gone this nation is, and what it will take to restore it, assuming that is even possible at this point.
Personally, I now believe that the only way to save America at this point (assuming such a thing is still possible) is to put conservatives in political offices and enact an agenda based on free markets, limited government and the rule of law. As long as we have a Republican party that actively opposes those ends (and we do, obviously), then I believe our only (slim) hope is drastic action.
As long as the Republican Party establishment believes that it can continue to survive by being Democrat-lite, and that it can continue to maintain power while actively fighting against the core principles of liberty, free markets and Constitutional law, it will never make the necessary change of direction.
Only when the Republican party understands that it must change or die can we hope to turn this country around. Our too-long-serving entrenched establishment politicians can still enjoy their comfy lifestyles, their wealth, power and prestige as members of a minority party. So why should they bother to change direction?
Surely a John Boehner (or an Eric Cantor -- had he not been defeated -- or a Mitch McConnell) would be just as happy to be minority leaders if the election cycle didn't go their way. Yes, they would prefer to be majority leaders, but what good would it do them if a conservative Republican Party won the majority and then threw them out of their cushy positions and all those perks, replacing them with real conservatives?
Ask yourself -- which do you think Mitch McConnell would prefer -- a majority Republican party in which he was stripped of his position by a conservative majority, or a minority Republican party in which he could remain Senate minority leader because the majority of Republican senators were RINOs?
You may argue that we have no time to wait for the Republicans to realize that their only choice is to change or die as a viable party. But if we don't have time for that, then what makes you think we have time to wait for the RINOs and the GOP-e to pursue a "moderately marginal" course of action designed only to maintain their personal fiefdoms at the expense of a free America operating under the rule of Constitutional law?
The GOP had majority power in the House and Senate, and occupied the White House, 10 years ago. What did all that power do to move the agenda of liberty forward? Answer: nothing.
A GOP that cannot even sell liberty, limited governments and free markets to the American people is worse than useless. It is a party of tyranny enablers, and I will have none of it.
Unbelievably, today we once again face the stark choice between liberty and death.
Once again, these are the times that try men's souls. Conservatives need to be waging aggressive war against the totalitarian leftist tyrants on all fronts -- in the branches of government at the federal and state level, in academia, in the media, through public demonstrations, and in the voting booth.
Many argue that we must continue to vote for "the most electable conservative," which means "vote for the RINO if no conservative is running." But I respectfully disagree with that choice. I am done enabling.
If we really are to lose the greatest country in the history of the world, then let's at least be fighting for it when it goes down.
And who knows, maybe -- just maybe, if we show sufficient resolve and conviction -- divine Providence will once again provide the support that gave our founders their unlikely victory in 1776, and grant us once again the "new birth of freedom" that Lincoln called for a century later.
If you reward bad behavior, you get more of it. The RINOs have managed to own the Republican party because they know that conservatives have nowhere else to go.
To continue voting for RINOs is to play right into that strategy. The RINOs have become so certain of your vote that they actually believe they can continue to stay in power by declaring outright war on the conservative base.
And when they do that, they are actually declaring war on core American principles -- war on liberty, war on free market economics, and even war on the Constitution.
The RINO Republicans cannot even make an appeal to the traditional American love of those principles, because they have lost the credibility and historical awareness to articulate them, let alone promote them.
Yes, having Harry Reid continue as speaker is a horrific scenario. But having RINO Republicans win that office is only a marginally better short-term outcome.
And in some ways it is even worse, because as the RINOs “reach across the aisle" to promote marginally modified Democrat policies, they give the Democrats cover from the well-deserved blame that they have unleashed on our country for the last five years.
America is out of time now. We cannot continue on the current path. And as things continue to deteriorate, who do you think the voters will blame if the Republicans are in power when the 2016 elections come around?
You think Mitch McConnell's senate will repeal Obamacare? You think it will take the right position on immigration? You think a Republican Senate will vote against Obama’s left wing Supreme Court nominations?
America needs clear, passionate and articulate voices to advocate and defend our founding principles, to secure our borders, to preserve our nation, and to take legislative and administrative steps to turn this country around, assuming it still can be turned around.
Majority leader Mitch McConnell will NEVER provide that voice or leadership. He is not the guy to turn things around for our formerly blessed nation.
But in 2016 a newly terrified Republican party will be forced to court instead of alienate the conservative base, and come 2017 will be in a position to put the party and our nation on the proper path. Such a duly chastised party has a real chance of nominating a Ted Cruz, instead of a Mitt Romney who, according to last night's panel on Fox News, is at this point the likely Republican presidential nominee.
So in November, for those whose only choice in the mid-terms is between a RINO and a Democrat, I urge them to stay home on election day, or vote third-party -- anything to prove the RINOs wrong in thinking that they can stay in power by literally declaring war on conservatism.
Think about it.
No we don't.
The GOP view of its base is not the same as the FR view
What does the GOP stand for? Does anyone have any idea?
Its a soulless party with no convictions.
MEMO TO REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE: Strap on your political backbone and do this or suffer in November.
You encapsulated my thoughts very well, as well of those of my family members.
I like to refer to the GOP-E as Hydra. If you’ve seen the Capt. America movies, you know what I mean.
I’m voting against Democrats.
It stands for itself.
The late Howard Phillips said that “GOP” stands for “Gang Of Prostitutes”.
Heh! Don't think so.
>>The GOP view of its base is not the same as the FR view
Absolutely right! We are their “plantation voters”, not their base. The Chamber of Commerce is their base and it wants Common Core, Amnesty, Gun Control, and a desperate working class who will take a job at any pay. It is ambivalent about Climate Change, only because it hits their bottom line. If the gov would find a way to only hurt consumers and workers with those two things, the Coc/GOP would be onboard with that too. Basically, they are Democrats who are against abortion.
Why would you think they’re against abortion?
We fought the good fight, did our best. Yes Gop e are evil bastards. We have more in common w them that the real evil bastards the dems. That is who we must defeat now. Haven’t we learned how much worse life is under dem rule?
>>Why would you think they’re against abortion?
Its a divisive issue to keep the plantation voters on the plantation. This is an issue that makes many people blind to the Progressive nature of the modern GOP.
Vote your conscience Maceman. You’ll SHOW them.
It seems to work for Huckabee...
It is indeed exasperating. I used to have at least a ‘generic’ sense that the Republican Party represented both my values and my beliefs. That’s something that has been entirely obliterated in the past few years. From the backstabbing of Palin to the leadership’s obsessive push for amnesty to the loathesome shenanigans recently in Mississippi, my lifelong affiliation with the GOP was totally wiped out.
Only bona fide ‘tea-party’ candidates get my vote nowadays. Already started with that policy in 2012, in which I left most of my ballots blank. And frankly, I don’t know if I really even trust anybody anymore. The candidates, the electorate, the system, the culture, or much of anything that’s left of this country. There’s so little of America left that even seems worth salvaging at this point. It makes the whole topic of ‘politics’ and elections seem laughable moot at times.
>>It seems to work for Huckabee...
It works for all of them. Very few of the GOP politicians want to ban abortion. They just want it to be paid for more indirectly by government (e.g. by funding Komen instead of PP, etc). They say that they can’t shut that door now that its open, but lawmakers have no problem with making coal too expensive to use, or banning hi-cap magazines, or changing bankruptcy laws so that student loans can’t be discharged.
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