good analysis.
I am not voting for John McCain. Few conservatives will.
Thanks.
I suspect that the Limbaugh types will join the cheerleading team before November even if McCain is the nominee. Most of the talk show types like Limbaugh don't have the guts to be out there on their own without a party. Limabaugh didn't even have the guts to endorse a conservative in this election.
Is there room for two or three more Michael Savage types? I don't think so, unless they want to become short wave talk show hosts in Idaho or some such.
The Hannity and Limbaugh types will stay mainstream.
“When Buchanan left the party, most Republicans breathed a sigh of relief. As a whole, the party decided that it was better to have Buchanan outside the house throwing rocks, than inside.”
And guys like McCain and Huckabee have picked up the house, moved it fifty yards to the left, and started chucking rocks at those of us left behind. At least Romney and Giuliani were somewhat deferential in asking to be allowed in — which is why I and a lot of other Republicans don’t have quite as much distaste for those particular RINOs.
Anyway, I’d rather start chucking rocks back than move. If we need a new house, then so be it. Parties dying and being born is something that’s happened before and will happen again...
If hitlery is the democrap and McCain the pub, then I will vote AGAINST HER, not FOR him.
If McCain is the pub and Obama is the democrap, I just might stay home.
BTW. I have voted conservative in every election starting in 1976. 9 years in the USMC. I owe nothing to anyone.
McCain will never convince the conservative base (or at least enough to win an election) because of these issues:
1. McCain-Kennedy Immigration Amnesty Bill
2. McCain-Feingold Anti-First Amendment Bill
3. Gun Grabbing history
4. Gang of 14
5. Keating Scandal
6. Homosexual marriage/civil unions
7. Embryonic Stem Cell research
8. His 2000 outburst toward the Christian Right
9. His Giuliani-esque philandering while married
10. His hot uncontrollable filthy-mouth temper
If segments of the Republican party abandon conservatives they will do it at their peril. Not because conservatives will turn their collective backs on what is left of the Republican Party - though they will - but because their moderate/liberal policies will be their ruin.
You speak of these constituent parts as though they were sports team competing against each other and what decides the outcome is the skill level and athletic abilities of the players. Maybe that is true during elections. But when it comes to actually running the country the McCains, the Clintons, the Obamas, even the Bushs, will fail.
So let the ignorant masses make yet another mistake i.e. Carter, Ford, et al. Conservative principles will out again. Hopefully for a more sustained period of time. This one was too short.
I agree with you and once again, the key is culture war and immigration. McCain will never be forgiven McCain - Kennedy. Fortunately, Peter Brimlow is not yet a prominent force as he was beginning with his Alien Nation in 1995.
I can't see McCain winning and look for, most likely just now, Hillery or Obama to win.
Thanks.
Many conservatives have tried to avoid criticism of Bush because he was at least nominally Republican. They have been polite. If elected, I doubt that McCain will receive such consideration. Both the right and the left will be after him from day one.
This time I'm voting McCain, no matter what - I can't take another 8 years ...
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That's my sense of all this too. They think they've figured out how to win without us. We'll see.
I was a fan of Pat Buchanan’s for a few months. But it gradually became more and more evident that he was a nut case. In fact, I first began getting the clue when I had lunch with an associate editor of First Things around the time of the New Hampshire primary. I learned that they had looked at Pat. They were troubled by the accusations of antisemitism and went to their Jewish connections, who are not ADL types but sensible conservatives who work with Catholics and Protestants toward restoring religion in the public square. Not one of them was willing to support Pat, and it turned out that they were right.
I don’t think that can be said of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter and James Dobson in their comments about McCain. They are NOT nut cases, although occasionally they can go astray (but Rush does so very seldom). What they have said about McCain, however, happens to be true.
If anyone is a nutcase here on the order of Pat Buchanan, it is McCain.
This is factually incorrect. Turnout for conservatives was fairly high.
If voting were mandatory and John McCain were the only candidate on the ballot, I still wouldn’t vote for him.
I think what will happen is that we will spend some time, perhaps a decade in the wilderness, and this will be our punishment for buying into the argument about nominating “electable” candidates rather than sticking to principles. The great conservative House of 1994 started acting like nothing more than hawkish pork barrel democrats with a share of scandals thrown in. We never won the senate and we allowed the Arlen Spectors of the world to defeat the likes of Pat Toomey. Politicians like McCain have not had any compunctions about claiming to be conservatives while governing as liberals. Mainstream America is now very confused about what a conservative is, and it’s our fault. (President Bush and his deals with Ted Kennedy didn’t help any.) Supporting McCain merely precludes us from being able to run an effective opposition against the socialists from within a major party.
So what should we do? Stick to first principles, educate the next generation, and throw rocks from outside and inside if we need to while making the case for the same policies successfully advanced by Reagan. Americans will ultimately recognize sincerity and a clear vision. So far in the last decade we have given them insincerity and inconsistency.
And remember, any time someone from inside to GOP uses the “electable” argument, whether at the local, state or national level, that is the first clue that they are 1) not conservatives and 2) liars to boot! Always remember that Reagan was “unelectable”.
I’ll be at CPAC next week, and both McCain and Romney, as well as President Bush (his first time) and VP Cheney (his third or fourth time) will be there. It will be very interesting to see what the pulse is.
Vice versa.