Many of us have said something similar.
I have said that conservatives could and should build a party-within-a-party, hold its own conventions, have its own structures, have its own fundraising mechanisms.
There were a number of feasible conservative candidates, but they chose not to run.
You forgot her $$$$ gig at FNC. Pretty good work if you can find it.
I disagree. I think that we need to keep this going.
However I am frustrated by all the sneaky bills being floated in by Obama during moments of buzz in the primary.
I am NEWT first, but I actually don’t care if he becomes president. I just want his voice to last.
I want Santorum to clean his act up, he is fumbling constantly. He may become really sharp in the next few months, if he is the nominee he needs it.
Romney.. jeez I don’t even know where to start other than to say I hope we get a brokered convention and his liberal agenda gets the dump right a long with his partners coulter and drudge.
I’m not so sure. There are many conservatives who are closet liberals
Don’t blame me
For falling in love with you
I’m under your spell
But how can I help it
Don’t blame me
I was for Attila the Hun, but what could I do?
#9 is the main reason. Voters got distracted by a fiscal socialist (Rick Santorum) who is in it solely to plunder the country. The Tea Party was not solely about abortion to the exclusion of economics.
The Tea Party was mainly about the economy but also opposed abortion in Obamacare. Then came RINO Santorum who changed the message. He has shifted the focus to the usual stuff - abortion and homosexuality to the EXCLUSION of economics. So the rhetoric will focus on this and make it an election like any other.
The Tea Party anger was due to TARP, Auto industry bailout, various handouts like cash for clunkers, the economic stimulus program AND Obamacare (this includes the abortion clause in Obamacare as well). It was not just the stuff in parenthesis in the previous sentence like Karl Rove stooge Santorum is making it out to be.
Better Obama than McInsane.
Right?
If Obama is re-elected it will be the fault of the GOP not conservatives.
Actually, conservatives are united -- in support of Newt Gingrich. These are Constitutional conservatives. Their agenda is simple, it is Constitutional, and needs no deception.
People who want to establish a religious tyranny are united behind Rick Santorum. There is nothing conservative about this bunch. Ask them, "exactly what is it you are trying to conserve?" You won't get a straight answer. They can't be honest about their agenda, which is why Santorum can't clearly articulate what the heck he stands for.
Liberals who are masquerading as Republicans are united behind Mitt Romney. Their agenda is the same as Obama's, only with different beneficiaries.
3)As in the past conservatives have simply not exercised their power of numbers to tip the scales towards a conservative candidate being chosen by the GOP. The facts are generally in each state primary/caucus from 3/5 to 2/3 of all voters (including independents and Democrats) tell exit pollsters they are conservative, the rest being liberal or moderates.
What you fail to realize is that you don't own the definition of the word "conservative." You and others sit here in your little echo chamber telling one another that a conservative has to agree with you on every little point to be classified as a conservative. When you see exit polls of a majority of people self-identifying as conservatives, you then jump to the conclusion that all of those people agree with you on each point of your definition of conservative. You think that someone just needs to gather them all together to win elections.
The whole situation would be funny if not so sad. You don't own the definition of "conservative." Plenty of people out here in the real world will self-identify as conservatives without agreeing with your defining points. These people couldn't care less that you think they are wrong to define themselves as conservatives even though they don't agree with you on what a conservative is. They are not your allies in your quest to have everything done your way. We all have to face this reality at one time or another. I'm just surprised that you and everyone else on here writing these rants hasn't faced this reality sooner.
9)And then there are the conservatives in the movement who are ready and willing to sell out their values and political principles and convictions in 2012 while forgetting the lessons of 2010 where the conservative enthusiasm gap was sky-high due to the conservative movement advocating conservative ideas and ideals.
An important lesson of 2010 is similar to an important lesson of 2006, 1998, 1994, and numerous other mid-term election years. Many Americans don't think in terms of ideology. They get a vague sense that things aren't going as well as they'd like, so they vote for change. They get a sense that those in power are going too far in one direction, so they try to turn the wheel to another direction. One of the great contrasts of 2010 was the difference in the Florida and Delaware Senate races. In Florida, Marco Rubio stayed on message. He presented a reasoned, intelligent image of a man who knew how to identify the important factors and focus on them. We knew in a general sense that he is pro-life and pro-gun, but he wasn't a sputtering, angry ideologue. In Delaware, Christine O'Donnell wasn't on message. We learned that she had strong opinions about masturbation. We learned that she wasn't a witch. She seemed to represent the angry ideologue. I have no doubt that the media played a huge part in keeping her off message, but that's the field on which we play. If we are going to win, we need candidates who can stay on message and whose past will not seem odd to the average voter (who may claim to be conservative but still doesn't see the world through your eyes).
Since the Arizona and Michigan primaries at the end of February... Think about it: Wouldn't the race look a lot different now if Santorum had eked out wins in both of these states?
Rick Santorum was clobbered in Arizona. He lost by 20 points. Even if all of Newt Gingrich's votes had gone to Rick Santorum, he still would have lost. You're talking about eking out a win in a state where he wasn't even in the game. That kind of talk is delusional.
Rick Santorum was a little more than 3 points behind in Michigan, but he was that close only because the Democrats encouraged their people to vote for him because he's the weakest GOP candidate. Talk of eking out a win in Michigan is a little more realistic, but Rick Santorum is still a candidate who had only 2% base of support at the start of the campaign. Two percent of the GOP voters really thought he'd be a good president. The rest of his voters are just looking for an alternative to Mitt Romney. Even with these negative, anti-Romney votes, he's consistently losing.
And conservatives like sheep vote for the establishment candidate even though there are clear examples where this strategy did NOT work: Dole (1996) and McCain (2008).
In addition to being "establishment" candidates, Bob Dole and John McCain have something else in common. They were both senators. Senators do not defeat sitting presidents. Even conservative senators like Barry Goldwater do not defeat sitting presidents like LBJ. I can't remember a senator beating a sitting president in the past 100 years. In spite of that, some people actually want to run Rick Santorum against Obama.
Who does defeating sitting presidents? Governors defeat sitting presidents. Bill Clinton defeated GHW Bush. Ronald Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter. However, conservatives insist that we can't nominate the only governor left in the race.
1)The conservative movement failed to rally around Sarah Palin after the midterm election and embrace her as its white knight after her mighty contribution to the midterm results.
This one is silly. See the comparison of Marco Rubio to Christine O'Donnell. While I admit that Sarah Palin had a better resume than Christine O'Donnell did, she wasn't good at staying on message and her past made staying on message harder. In the public eye, she didn't represent the reasoned, intelligent, competent leader. Instead, she represented the boiling passion of extremists. That image of her wasn't entirely fair, but that image wasn't going away. Furthermore, posts like yours make clear that many of her supporters embraced that image specifically. A majority of Americans were not going to vote for that image regardless of whether they held generally conservative views on the individual issues.
10)And the last reason I believe the conservative movement has self-destructed lies in the steadfast belief of the movement that it does NOT need one leader or at least a leadership council to represent all conservative, evangelicals and TP supporters in the nation.
In earlier paragraphs, you want us to remember the successes of 2010, but in 2010, we succeeded without a designated leader or organization. TEA Party was a term that described a disconnected movement of people of various backgrounds and interests. In some areas, "TEA Party" people were religious conservatives. In other areas, they were mostly libertarians. The movement's first success was the election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts. Scott Brown is a very different senator from Marco Rubio who is different from Rand Paul who is different from Christine O'Donnell who was a little too similar to Sharon Angle who is different from Mark Kirk. If we'd had a single leadership who gave us Christine O'Donnells and Sharon Angles in every race, the Democrats would still have about 58 Senate seats. If we'd had a single leadership who gave us Marco Rubios, Rand Pauls, and Scott Browns where necessary, we'd probably control the Senate, but you probably wouldn't be happy with our senators.
I'd love to see this country move in a conservative direction, but your "strategies" are not going to get us there.