Posted on 08/21/2009 5:07:37 AM PDT by Jabrown
To sum up the state of the Republican Party in Illinois, just hours before the kickoff of "Republican Day" festivities at the Illinois State Fair, Andy Mckenna, the head to the state party resigned...
Just 8 short years ago, the Republican Party in Illinois remained a force to be reckoned with. The party maintained control of a majority of municipality and county governments within the state, along with control of the Governor's office, several State Officers positions and the State Senate. But today, despite a golden opportunity to retake control of key State Offices due the Impeachment of Rod Blagojevich, the party still can't manage to get it's act together. After nearly a decade of diminishing leadership, the party now appears in a perpetual state in which they have not provided a clear platform, have failed to build any name recognition or develop new talent and have failed to stand up against a government that failed to balance a budget in 7 years.
Only 11 years ago...
(Excerpt) Read more at examiner.com ...
You seem like a nice guy Parsy but you are living on another planet.
Blue dogs are not anything to close to actual conservatives.
Conservatives can join the democrats and “reform” them but the GOP is a lost cause?
Our problems need government to fix them and that “means the democrats?”
“The Dems at least got onto the welfare class to try to change it into workfare.” Republican Congress passed that my friend.
I see you have been here since 98 so I’d guess you aren’t a DU troll? But you are certainly seriously delusional claiming to be a conservative and saying these things.
Some freepers advocate strongly for third parties.
You are advocating for the rat party? You want one-party rule? You seem to believe the bs democrat labor union talking points about the GOP being “the party of the rich”. Let me assure you that corporations have great influence on your democrats as well.
Neither of those are solutions.
The only solution likely to bring conservative government to this country is by working to fix the Republican party. If that can’t be done then certainly “reforming” the rats is an absurdly impossible task. They are the enemy. It is only preferred to have them in power long enough so they can destroy themselves and turn the country against them and their polices and give a wake up call to Republicans to get them back on the right track.
Conservatives voting for democrats is like doctors voting for cancer.
How does he feel about successful women? He’s not here so I can’t ask him. ;)
So you think he’s a plant?
HUH??
( LOL!! I THOUGHT that is what we were!!??)
You are ABSOLUTELY correct abut this DEMOCRAT in RINO clothing!!
I don’t disagree with a lot of what you said. I wish there were a viable third party. I wish the GOP was capable of change but they are no longer conservatives. They have been infected with “libertarianitis” and unfortunately, that leads to mental breakdowns. (See Murray Rothbard, for example)
It is so bad that GOP can’t recover. For example, Lew Rockwell is not a post-able site for FR. Presumably because those people are nuts. (At least IMHO.) Yet, the infection can not be kept out. Von Mises org for example. How much von Mises stuff do you see on FR? A bunch. Yet, Lew Rockwell is the Chairman of von Mises org. You slam the front door, they sneak in the back.
That is why I challenge so much economic stuff on FR. I may save a few here and there. Pretty pathetic when a conservative has to become a democrat, I agree.
parsy, who wishes there was an option
It's time for a new viable party to take place of the GOP.
Unfortunate.
Oh well. I hope another Republican enters the primary for SOS.
Does the constitution party admit socialists to membership?
I think he’d be a so-con democrat like New York State Senator Ruben Diaz.
I conclude that what you call conservative is not the same as what we call conservative.
Might I enquire for whom you voted for President in recent elections?
Do you have an opinion as to what party William Jennings Bryan would be in today?
Most of the politicians promoted as so-called “conservative Democrats” are moderate at best, as the RAT party tends to be much more ideologically pure than the GOP — for example, it's almost impossible for a 100% pro-life Dem to get statewide office in most states (even Bob Casey had to wimp out on his “pro-life” values), whereas there are many examples of solid pro-abortion Republicans holding major office.
As a whole, the RAT party has been controlled by left-wingers and socialists since the 1890s, and that holds true at both the national level and the state level here in Illinois. There have been pockets of moderate and/or conservative Democrats in power since then (interestingly enough, this most often occurs in places with one-party RAT rule like Chicago today or the deep south until the 1960s, since the RATs had to incorporate a ton of different political interests into their fold), but they have never controlled the RAT leadership.
As I pointed out a couple weeks ago, there are a number of Dem legislators in Illinois to the right of Mark Kirk. This doesn't in any way make them as “conservative” as I am, it just shows how incredibly bad Kirk is. I'd certainly take someone who agrees with me 60% of the time over someone who agrees with me 40% of the time, but the one thing the Kirk supporters are right about here is that it's entirely unlikely one of the 60% conservative Dems will run for the U.S. Senate, let alone get nominated (that would require a fluke with the left-wing vote being split multiple ways), so it's pointless to speculate about which “more conservative” Dem could beat Kirk.
I really get tired of hearing freepers continue to spout delusions about how the Dem supposedly “used to be” the “honorable, patriotic, pro-American conservative party in America” until they supposedly “changed” 30-40 years ago. They yap about the good ol’ days of “Scoop Jackson Democrats” while ignoring the fact that the RAT party was controlled by McGovernites and LBJ supporters at the time, NOT “Scoop Jackson”. The same is true of every decade in the last century. Zell Miller was wrong when he said the RAT party “changed” and “left him”. The RATs didn't change their views, Zell changed his. He was perfectly happy with the LBJ and Carter crowd in their heyday when they were enacting all kinds of marxist anti-American policies, which he gladly lent his support to. I would say even Reagan was wrong when he said the Democrats “changed”, again I would say Reagan changed his political views, not the Dems. Reagan has even admitted he was a proud New Dealer, a bleeding heart who “bled for every cause”. In the late 40s Reagan began moving to the right and by 1962 Reagan no longer felt comfortable in the RAT party.
Personally I think the only significant thing the RAT party “changed” on in the last 50 years is they stopped being a bunch of openly racist and sexist pigs once “keep the negro in his place” rhetoric was no longer fashionable to get votes. (awww...how nice of them to stop being bigots once public opinion forced them to)They certainly didn't change their pro-socialist/blame-America first/government by the enlightened few academia mindset that they've promoted for a century.
As for William Jennings Bryan, my guess is he'd still be a good little RAT in today's Dem party. He may have held a few socially conservative views but there's plenty of room in the RAT party for tax-and-spend, big government, pro-socialist anti-war Dems who hold a couple of traditional views on moral issues. I don't think his creationist views would even be a problem, I recently read an article on FR saying more Dems support creationism than Republicans. How it got to be associated with the GOP I'll never know — probably because of the heavy “religious” influence. Still, Bryan could just be a demagoguing member of the “religious left” in good standing — plenty of room for more Jeremiah Wrights and Andrew Greeley's in the RAT party.
I think all this rhetoric about how we're gonna form a new third party and take over the GOP ala the way the GOP did to the Whigs in the 1850s is pretty far removed from being anything but a pipe dream. Still, I think there's a place for third parties when the GOP runs candidates so incredibly bad they're indistinguishable from a typical RAT. I cast a write-in for constitution party candidate Randy Stufflebeam over Topinka in 2006 and I'm proud of it. I think the ideal situation would be like New York in the 60s when you have third parties as part of a fusion ticket that get elected with the GOP. It would be easy to weed out the RINOs that way. A left-wing douche-bag like Mark Kirk would have no prayer of getting the Conservative Party nomination, and in NY that's required of any Republican who wants to win statewide office.
I would guess that William Jennings Bryan would probably be a Republican today (as would Grover Cleveland and John W. Davis). Frankly, the Democrat Party has veered so far to the left since 1965 or so that few prominent Democrats from a century ago would remain in the party.
No. I think the GOP has been infiltrated by LICE. The conservative position has been usurped by LICE. Until the GOP and conservative get around to de-lousing the LICE, they will be impotent as a political party or movement.
I switched to the Democrat party back on March 15,2001, after 30 years in GOP. I couldn’t bring myself to vote for Obama (or Kerry) so I just stayed home.
FWIW, LICE is a term I invented. It stands for:
Libertarians Infiltrating Conservative Entities.
It kinda fits, too. Pesky little parasites that make you itch and carry diseases.
parsy, who believes in de-lousing
re: the RAT party “changed” ... openly racist and sexist pigs once “keep the negro in his place”
Not much has changed. As was highlighted pre-civil war by Uncle Tom’s Cabin, there are two types of Democrats:
1) Be a mean, nasty plantation boss who beats his people for no good reason.
2) Be a nice, progressive plantation boss who treats his people with compassion and assigns one of them to be in the main house and run the plantation.
Chicago’s 19th Ward Dems are in category 1. Emmanuel/Axelrod Dems are in category 2.
And I grew up with Scoop Jackson as my Senator. He was big government on everything. He was big government on defense contracts because Boeing was the biggest employer in my state. Scoop was machinist union through and through.
Scoop had no use for amendments to the constitution, not the 1st, not the 2d, not the 3d, 4th or 10th. Repeal of prohibition was probably the only one he truly supported.
Cleveland and Davis the last conservative democrat nominated for President would be Republicans. Maybe Al Smith too.
But that pinko Bryan I have trouble imagining. I see him as the father of the modern rat party.
So we have a split decision 2 R 2 D and 1 Constitution Party. Interesting.
You have to wonder if 90% of people who lived so long ago wouldn’t be offended by the current democrat party.
I’d say they’d be very offended... especially the religious ones. That’s why I believe Bryan would’ve left it, there’s no one that would champion his religious values in the Democrat party (indeed, Democrats lampoon the GOP for the values Bryan attempted to wed to the left 113 years ago).
Me too. They are simply ignorant of the facts. It doesn't help when you have so many conservative pundits and writers wax on about the "honorable" democrats of the past like the liberal proto-Joe Lieberman Scoop Jackson. Many freepers and Republican pols seem to have a perverse affection for the unpopular during his time in office Harry Truman who sounded in his stump speeches a lot like Al Gore and was not qualified to be President. If FR had existed during the Truman years he would be loathed. Not qualified, the child of a corrupt political machine, sounds familar.
I recently read an article on FR saying more Dems support creationism than Republicans.
Really, hmm. Well I am not a creationist. But I wouldn't have expected that. I guess that means a lot of Blacks and Hispanics holds those views. Which I take as more evidence that many devoutly religious socially conservative people have no problem being in the party that's ascribes to extreme social liberalism.
I think the ideal situation would be like New York in the 60s when you have third parties as part of a fusion ticket that get elected with the GOP. It would be easy to weed out the RINOs that way
I was thinking that too. Put we'd have to do better than the NY conservative party. They rubber stamp plenty of Republicans that aren't that conservative and some democrats too on Staten Island and in parts of Upstate NY, places where the rats have infiltrated the party. They would have backed Rudy for a third term after 9/11 if he could have ran. And they backed Pataki after he started tilting the wrong way.
I must conclude though that they wouldn't back Kirk though, since they oppose the slightly worse female version of Kirk, Dede Scozzafava.
I did not want to become an independent because I don’t the GOP ever thinking I might vote for them. Now, would I? Yes, if the circumstances dictated. I did not vote this last year. If I had I would have voted for BO because I think the GOP has got to go. So, rather than go and vote for a flaming liberal, I just stayed home.
______________
Oh really? But since you didn’t vote for him, you now just defend his policies 24/7 on FR. You disgust me.
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