Free Republic

WOAH!

Dude the large majority of internet posters don’t use their real name (Hi Phil! Merry Christmas).

And Billyboy’s “real identity” is not a secret. He’s run for local office, ran as a POTUS delegate in last year’s primary. Served on the board of the Illinois Center right coalition I believe.

Sadly.

Yeah, but, Sarah says he’s “cool.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YglP4clX0A

"BillBoy"

Did you even read our Voter Guide? Our pro-life question had nothing to do with judges but rather if the candidate would favor overturning Roe v. Wade. The question was intended to give voters a general insight into the candidate's positions on the issue of life, not the various and specific tactics involved in doing that.

As for Mark Kirk -- you obviously are woefully uninformed on this front too. As a private citizen I am very involved in oppossing his run for US Senate. If you were part of the solution you would know that.

What are you doing to promote the conservative message in Illinois? Have you produced a voter guide?

One thing is for certain, tearing down good organizations because you have a differring opinoin is certainly not helping the cause.

Also, why do continue to hide behind your user name "BillyBoy"? Why don't you man up and come out from behind your user name and reveal your real identity? Do you have something to hide?

Lastly, will you not admitt your error regarding Mr. Koppie's Iraq War answer>

Dave Smith
Illinois Family Institute

wa’n’t me

Mr. Smith, Clearly you don't mind "reporting" Sauerberg was "committed" to "strict constructionist" judges when he told Jeff Berkowitz the opposite (that he'd be willing to confirm avowdly pro-abortion judges), and that Sauerberg was "committed" to traditional marriage when he hired the leader of the gay marriage movement to speak for his campaign, that's your problem.

You may be reporting what a candidate says to get people's votes, but certainly not reporting the "facts" about the positions a candidate actually takes.

I'll stick to the "lies" provided by other conservative organizations that report a candidate's actual beliefs.

No doubt radical homosexual activist Chris Barron was pleased that you duly "reported" his candidate was 100% solid on pro-family issues. Thanks to "conservative" organizations like yours to rubber stamp Republicans in bed with liberals, you paved the way for the IL GOP to promote even worse candidates. Now we have Mark Kirk, who will be sure to tell you on your "survey" that he's absolutely 100% "against" cap and trade. I'm sure when you "report" this "information" about Kirk's "position" it will be most helpful to voters in choosing the right candidate.

You have only yourselves to blame when you prop up Republicans in bed with the left.

"BillyBoy,"

IFI held a forum for all the US Senate candidates (Mr. Koppie chose not to join us) on Jan 28, 2008.

Dr. Sauerberg -- when pressed on the issue, said yes, he was personally in favor of overturning Roe v. Wade. I invite FreeRepublic readers and you "BillyBoy" to listen to his answer HERE. He is in favor of overturning Roe v. Wade. Our Voter Guide reflects that answer -- and it is cited as our source in the Voter Guide. Dr. Sauerberg asked me at that event to change his answer to reflect his comment. You can read and listen to the entire forum at Illinois Family Institute

But our Voter Guide publication wasn't good enough for you as it did benefit your candidate or tarnish Dr. Sauerberg.

Moreover, I guess you do not want to address the answer provided by Mr. Koppie regarding the Iraq War -- even thought that was your primary objection to the IFI Voter Guide. As FreeRepublic readers can see -- IFI made no error in reporting Mr. Koppie's answers. It is a shame that you cannot admit it.

Dave Smith
Illinois Family Institute

Mr. Smith,

Thank for your posting the candidate's own responses. I invite FreeRepublic readers to view the survey's for themselves.

What it showed me is proof that Mr. Koppie was indeed the only U.S. Senate candidate who affirmed in writing that he would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade. According to your OWN survey you received back, Steve Sauerberg refused to answer whether he would overturn Roe v. Wade. He responded with a footnote claiming the U.S. Senate had no power to do so (I guess he's never heard of constitutional amendments?), and merely noted he would only confirm "strict constructionist" judges. Which, by the way, was the same "pledge" Richard Nixon made in 1968 ("only strict constunctionist judges"), before appointing 3 out of 4 judges that created Roe v. Wade in the first place.

Why did you not simply "report" the actual survey responses to pro-family voters -- that Mr. Koppie had gone on record in "SUPPORT" of overturning Roe v. Wade and that Mr. Sauerberg had "DECLINED TO ANSWER" whether he would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade?

It should be noted that Illinois Citizens for Life asked the same question to candidates, and concluded that Koppie was the only U.S. Senate candidate fully committed to oveturning Roe, and that Mr. Sauerberg was "Not Fully Committed". Were they "lying", or was your organization not reporting the same data correctly? I'll leave that to FreeRepublic posters to judge for themselves. Personally, I have to agree with Illinois Citizens for Life that a candidate who won't check "SUPPORT" on a question on whether he'd overturn Roe v. Wade is not "fully committed" to our side on that issue.

I'm not even going to get into an argument about how Sauerberg "committed" to upholding traditional marriage when the mouthpiece of his campaign was the biggest gay marriage advocate in the GOP. You only report conflicting answers in cases of incumbents, you say? It seems to me any sensible organization would be even more concerned about putting an "asterisk" next to responses of NON-INCUMBENTS since voters have no record to judge and can only guess a candidate's sincerity based on their actions in public. Would a radical gay rights group issue a "voting guide" telling their base that a Democrat who has Jerry Falwell as his campaign manager "supports" gay marriage because the candidate himself promised them that in writing (despite showing the opposite in public)? I highly doubt it.

I stand by your remarks that the "voting guide" you issued to pro-family voters did not accurate reflect the candidate's actual policies they had committed to, and was not in anyway helpful to me in making an informed decision on which candidates supported my issues. I had to careful research their track records on my own, since the IFI is not vetting candidates well enough.

Sorry if feel this is "slander" but I will be happy to point to numerous places where your "voting guide" was incorrect. I will happily subscribe to IFI's newsletter again in 2010 if you do a better job reporting the facts about pro-family candidates.

I say neither naughty nor nice, but just smegging stupid.

Or stewpid. Or stoopid. Take your pick.

The Rape Jokester...classy as usual.

I should have pressed the Post button a few more times!

You can say that again ; )

Franken’s treatment of Senator Lieberman was definately naughty.

Franken’s treatment of Senator Lieberman was definately naughty.

Here are the survey responses from Chad Koppie and Steve Sauerberg:

2008 Surveys

As you can see from the candidates' own surveys and their own signatures -- IFI did NOT falsely report the candidate's positions on the issues.

If the candidate made a mistake and failed to correct that mistake -- IFI is not to blame. Blame the candidate for failing to take the appropriate steps to remedy his own error.

Again "BillyBoy," I ask you to stop slandering good organizations with lies and mis-information.

David E. Smith
Illinois Family Institute
708-781-9328

"BillyBoy,"

You are woefully uninformed. Let me set the record straight, again:

• IFI does not rate candidates -- we merely report their survey answers in our voter guide.
  
  
• I called Chad Koppie personally -- at his home -- a number of times to solicit a response from him. (I even call Randy Stuffelbeam to see if he could get Chad to return the survey to us.) We finally recieved his survey after multiple conversations with him and AFTER our deadline. We went the extra mile to make sure his answers were included in our voter guide.
  
  
• Chad Koppie’s signature is on his survey. He approved his answers before he faxed it to us. His answers -- as he submitted it -- were published.
  
  
• If the candidate made a mistake, the candidate must submit an affidavit correcting it. If we do not receive an affidavit from the candidate, we cannot change the answer on our voter guide. We cannot take calls from just anyone telling us to change a candidate's answer.
  
  
• Every state and federal candidate received our survey by mail -- at the address they listed with the ISBE when they filed to run for office -- at their home! We follow up with every candidate with multiple phone calls to their campaign office (when available), emails to their campaign office (when available), and sometimes with faxes (when available). I've complained about the lack of response before.
  
  
• Incumbents who have a conflicting answer with a vote have an asterisk placed by their answer. The answer key clearly states that this means that their answer conflicts with that candidate's voting record.
  

You may want to get the facts before you disparage those of us who are simply trying to provide good information to the voters of Illinois.

"BillyBoy," please stop spreading false information about the Illinois Family Institute.

David E. Smith
Illinois Family Institute

I hope so. Sadly Ron Paul wants a a nuclear Iran driven by the desire for global conquest and not contained by the threat of mad. It is so sad when smart people become unhinged by ideology.

Ron Paul’s foreign policy:

“It’s our fault they nuked Atlanta!”

What’s that smell? Someone slaughter a goat in here?

Are sanctions a prelude to war? Or are they proof of lack of will?

It doesn’t appear that Iran just wants nuclear weapons put in the window to ward off evil neighbors.

You falsely rated Steve Sauerberg as the most conservative Senate candidate in the November 2008 election, "reporting" that Constitution Party Chad Koppie favored withdrawl from Iraq and Steve Sauerberg did not. This was incorrect, Chad Koppie had stated public and explained to your organization on numerous occas.ions that he did not favor a public withdrawl date on Iraq. I actually confirmed this with him twice, and reported it to your organization. Perhaps you choose to ignore this in order to help the GOP-endorsed candidate portray himself as the best choice for conservatives.

Several of the "positions" candidates answered on your survey clear conflicted with their voting record or their other public statements. If a candidate says one thing and does another, this should be taken into account by your organization while rating them.

Would you "report" that Obama's health care plan does not cover abortion or fund illegal aliens, because Obama claims that, or report the actual policies of the legislation? Based on your logic here, the mere fact Obama claims it, therefore makes it so and you have a duty to "report" inaccurate "facts" about Obama's plan based on his statements to voters.

I also confirm numerous candidates have told me they would have answered your survey but were not aware of it. Perhaps you sent one copy and it was lost in the process but there was certainly no follow-up attempt, nor any attempt to research conservative candidates who had stated their positions on your issues numerous times publicly. This flies in the face of your claims the IFL attempted to contact candidates through numerous faxes and phone calls but were ignored.

Feel free to post your 2008 general election guide "voting guide" and I will happily back up my post with numerous examples showing where your rating process was inaccurate and flawed about the candidate's actual positions.

In before keyboard commandos and generals.

Heads up.

"BillyBoy",

You are absolutely wrong and I challenge you to prove your bogus accusation that IFI's Voter Guides were "laughably inaccurate" last election cycle.

To correct your inaccuracy -- IFI does not rate candidates -- we merely report their answers or public votes on specific policy proposals.

If candidates failed to return their survey and our multiple calls, emails and faxes to get them to partipate, I would suggest that it speaks volumes about their campaign and political ablities.

I put these Voter Guides together with the help of a small dedicated staff. Steve Sauerberg answered our survey and signed off on it. Are you suggesting that we should not have published his responses? Are you suggesting that he was lying? Or are you suggesting that we should have mis-represented him to assist your perfered candidate?

BTW -- I am not hiding behind a "user name" to snipe at others.

David E. Smith
Eecutive Dir. of IFI
708-781-9328 (office)
www.illinoisfamily.org

Sauerberg does not lie. I heard him speak on several occasions. He conveniently qualified his positions with phrases such as “at this time” or “with the information currently available”.

Eg I oppose X at this time. I support Y with th information currently available.

One reason for that phrasing is the DOCTOR’s newness to politics. The first 3 times I heard him speak he was unable to be articulate on HEALTHCARE. But by the 4th speech a couple month’s later he had become somewhat articulate on that issue.

Billy boy, I suspect my opponents answered truthfully, I know I did.

Did Steve S. lie on his survey??

I learned the Illinois Family Institute "voter guides" were laughably inaccurate during the last election cycle.

According to them, the hand picked RINO Senate candidate, Steve Sauerberg, was rated 100% on pro-life and pro-family issues (making him the "best" candidate in the race, even better than the Constitution Party nominee!) despite the fact he had hired a radical Bush-hating gay marriage advocate as his campaign spokesman and said abortion should be allowed in certain circumstances and he "qualms" about overturning Roe v. Wade.

Several other RINOs with medoicre records were listed as "100% pro-family", while a great deal of vocally conservative candidates (who had held those views for years and were quite clear where they stood on their webpages) were listed as "unknown" on the issues simply because they didn't return the IFI "survey" on time.

If the IFI institute ever used to be a reliable social conservative organization, they're not anymore. The Illinois Federation for Right to Life is also pathetic... they too, had no problems endorsing the likes of George Ryan and Steve Sauerberg but refused to endorse Jonathan Wright in 2004 when really did have a 100% perfect pro-life voting record. Freepers complain about the NRA endorsing marxist Democrats who happen to be pro-gun, but at least they stick to their single issue. If the NRA behaved like the IFI and the IFRTL, they'd be telling us candidate who favor assault weapon bans are "100% pro-2nd amendment"

Today EVERYBODY is a CONSERVATIVE!! My 2 Illinois Primary opponents swear they are Conservatives! You cannot find anything able social issues on their website.

Thanks to the Illinois Family Institute for their voters guide!!

Now we know were they stand.

We report, YOU decide who is the Conservative in this race!!

Supreme Court Guts Due Process Protection

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2009/12/supreme-court-guts-due-process-protection.html

Watchdog files complaint over Facebook ‘privacy’ settings

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12/17/epic_facebook_privacy_complain/

http://sppiblog.org/news/is-the-european-police-state-going-global

But perhaps, we can agree at State level what we want to accomplish.

"Decentralised GOP with a conservative takeover - Yes. "Tea Party" Party splitting the vote - NO.

I think that the right to go third-party is a little like the right to bear arms (to resist government tyranny). The "third-party threat" must always be there to motivate action within the Republican Party -- even when one has no immediate intention of a third-party takeover.

Many political Parties have come and gone over our country's history. But over the last decades both Republicans and Democrats have enacted laws that basically stilt the game in favor of their own two-party system, and make it incredibly difficult for a winning third Party to emerge to replace either one of them.

Some think that "maintaining this 2 Party status quo" is a good thing for the sake of national unity, but in fact what it has done is make all our R/D politicians too comfortable and easily controlled by outside interests -- and it also makes R/D politicians virtually indistinguishable from one another.

So what's the solution?

IMHO, it comes down to coming up with a list of priorities that we can agree on to unite us, and for which we will accept no substitutes -- and this priority list has to be based on more than just being "anti-Democrat" and "anti-socialist". It must be based on positive values that are brokered from within as a matter of compromise and must be Constitutionally anchored. Because, if we can't agree on the basics, then we WILL get seduced by whatever pap that the RNC or any other political group is willing to feed us.

Am I optimistic that an agreed list of priorities will ever materialize? I'd like to be, but I can't say that I am.

“The current system is extremist. The status quo is not normalcy. We represent a return to normalcy and moderation, which means less government and more freedom.”

I think this is a great idea but most people are not ready for it. Heck, you can’t even find a majority of people on FR who are willing to embrace freedom if it means that we will have fewer laws which are used to control others.

The current system is extremist. The status quo is not normalcy. We represent a return to normalcy and moderation, which means less government and more freedom.



Libertarian ping! Click here to get added or here to be removed or post a message here!
View past Libertarian pings here

Decentralised GOP with a conservative takeover - Yes. "Tea Party" Party splitting the vote - NO

I'm with ya. :0)

What would you say to the LRs being a strong contingent, like a caucus, within the GOP so that we don't splinter our political infrastructure just when we need it most?

If they still have that "R" after their name, then they're just dirty stinkin' RINOs!!!1!!! They need to all leave and join my Third Party immediately, like, right now!

Just kidding, of course.

I'm fine with them forming a caucus. Just as the Republic ought to be more decentralised than it is, so should the Republican Party. It's the tight, unitary control that the RNC and allied national elements have established that allows them to get away with a lot of the junk that they do, since, hey, who's going to stop them? That's why 80% of Republicans can think their own leaders are radically out of touch with the base, and yet nothing ever changes. The GOP system is designed to insulate people like Steele, Jesmer, Cornyn, et al. from the consequences of their bad decision making.

That needs to stop - but the only way it will stop is for conservatives (true use of the term, not the phoney definition used by the author of this article) and libertarians and whatnot to get together, get involved at the county and district level, takeover the Party at these levels, and work their way up, identifying "true believer" elements within the ranks of those who are already elected officials, etc. (since, let's be honest, they aren't actually ALL bad).

Decentralised GOP with a conservative takeover - Yes.
"Tea Party" Party splitting the vote - NO.

All joking aside, good article. I've advocated for quite a while that liberty-lovers need to take over the GOP and kick the RINOs out. Break that horse and ride it to victory. One sentence I think he misdefines,

It doesn’t help that many call the pro-freedom movement “conservative”, which implies that we aim to conserve the big government status quo.

I don't think many folks on either side of the aisle think the term "conservative" means "conserving the big government status quo", at least as far as today's political context is concerned. Aside from this libertarian self-conceit, he's pretty much on the mark.

If the Liberty Republicans don’t IMMEDIATELY leave the GOP and go Third Party, then they’re all a bunch of RINOs!!1!!!!1

What would you say to the LRs being a strong contingent, like a caucus, within the GOP so that we don't splinter our political infrastructure just when we need it most?

If the Liberty Republicans don’t IMMEDIATELY leave the GOP and go Third Party, then they’re all a bunch of RINOs!!1!!!!1

fyi

Ron Paul delivered thousands of babies :) and he is most definitely pro-life. :)

I really hope Sarah Palin and him get to have a chat sometime.

I hope his son, Rand Paul wins the KY Senate seat!

.

Go to The Obama File by our own FReeper, Beckwith.
Read the sections, ‘Islam’ http://www.theobamafile.com/ObamaIslam.htm
and ‘religion’ http://www.theobamafile.com/ObamaReligion.htm.
The evidence is overwhelming.

.
__________________
Please help keep the fantastic, ‘The Obama File’ up and running. Remember Beckwith is a 70 year old gentleman living on Social Security.

/
The United States Library of Congress
has selected TheObamaFile.com for inclusion in its
historic collection of Internet materials
http://www.theobamafile.com/LibraryOfCongress.html

.

Good point, MNJohnnie! Just as "victory" doesn't seem to be in their foreign policy vocabulary, so too "solution" doesn't seem to be in their domestic policy one. Leftists don't really achieve victory (sic) or solve problems (sic) until they've addressed the issue by expanding the government radically. As for the fact that this only makes the situation worse -- they don't care. And the answer for all the new and terrible problems created by them, they think, is even more Big Brother!! :-(

You have to understand, in the Leftist group think hive of Academia, talking about an issue is "solving it".

Therefore for faux intellectuals like Dear Reader, they think that because they "discussed the issue" they "solved it". These faux intellectuals are completely incapable of cause and effect thinking or quantitatively measuring accomplishments.