Posted on 02/07/2008 4:18:27 PM PST by wagglebee
To all of you FRiberals out there, and that means all of you Rooty Rooters and Romneyites, it's your fault that the GOP is almost for certain stuck with McCain as the nominee. Now, I don't mean those of you who voted for Romney on Super Tuesday in an effort to split the vote, but the rest of you are culpable.
Conservative FReepers have spent the past year listening to the likes of you tell us that conservatives have "had their foot on the neck" of the GOP for too long. We were told that all that mattered was someone who was strong on terror. We were told that we needed someone with strong name recognition. We were told that generally the GOP decides whose "turn it is" and then nominates that person. We were told that we needed someone who can get independent votes. We were told that ANY Republican would nominate strict constructionists to the Federal bench. We were told that winning was all that mattered.
Now, some of you who said this were supporting Rooty, some of you were supporting Romney. But you were all pretty much saying the same thing: you preferred your candidates to a conservative. Some of you even got so upset with conservative FReepers that you ran away to start a RINO forum
Well, guess what? You were successful, though not in the way you thought you would be. It looks like it's McCain's "turn." But don't worry, McCain is a war hero and strong on terrorism (as long as we don't actually take terrorists into custody or try to keep them from crossing into the United States through open borders), he says he can get independents to vote for him, he says he will appoint constructionists, and most important, he has name recognition.
So, if your real agenda was to destroy the GOP, you very well may have succeeded. If your agenda was to create a "Democrat Light" party, you have almost certainly succeeded. If your agenda was to keep the Democrats out of the White House, you have probably failed.
But regardless of what your agenda was, you have harmed the United States of America -- I just hope it's not permanent.
Moreover, I think that FR’s strength lies in the fact that it is a (relatively) open and welcoming community. If it is to truly be a “Free” republic then you have to be prepared to accept that people who don’t think the same way you do will come here and post. Sometimes, some of these people have really, really good ideas. Most often, of course it’s moonbattery, but the source of an idea does not change the validity of it.
Excellent post, great writing.
Well said. There came a point in time when reasonable individuals had to come to terms with which candidate could and which candidates could not ever be nominated. The failure to do so in a timely fashion (and something we realized from Day One) has resulted in this disaster. We knew Mitt was the only guy who had the organization, money, message and platform to fight the Estabishment. We did what William Buckley suggested we do --- choose the most viable and electable conservative. He forgot to tell us that the very people who agree with what we agree with (other conservatives) would fail to see the wisdom in that advice and split the vote so many ways allowing McCain to win.
What Pete Hoekstra said today seems to apply:
"They're interested in their own particular ideology, not in winning," Hoekstra said. "They never find the perfect candidate. The only way they would find the perfect candidate is if they ran for office themselves. And if they did, they wouldn't win."
That’s the problem here. Defining ‘conservatism’.
***Start with JimRob’s definition.
From the front page of Free Republic:
Statement by the founder of Free Republic
As a conservative site, Free Republic is pro-God, pro-life, pro-family, pro-Constitution, pro-Bill of Rights, pro-gun, pro-limited government, pro-private property rights, pro-limited taxes, pro-capitalism, pro-national defense, pro-freedom, and-pro America. We oppose all forms of liberalism, socialism, fascism, pacifism, totalitarianism, anarchism, government enforced atheism, abortionism, feminism, homosexualism, racism, wacko environmentalism, judicial activism, etc. .... We are not connected to or funded by any political party, news agency, or any other entity. .... We aggressively defend our God-given and first amendment guaranteed rights to free speech, free press, free religion, and freedom of association, as well as our constitutional right to control the use and content of our own personal private property. Despite the wailing of the liberal trolls and other doom & gloom naysayers, we feel no compelling need to allow them a platform to promote their repugnant and obnoxious propaganda from our forum. Free Republic is not a liberal debating society. We are conservative activists dedicated to defending our rights, defending our constitution, defending our republic and defending our traditional American way of life.
Nobody I saw was defending “liberalism”. If Romney was pushing liberal positions, we would have disavowed them. THere was a concerted attempt to defend him against attacks about prior positions and misleading interpretations of single-sentence quotations from decades ago, but for example I don’t remember anybody here defending him when he did Robo-calls against McCain’s vote against the medicare bill, or when he was calling for 20 billion in spending for Michigan.
I don’t ever remember claiming Romney was “electable”. I remember saying I supported him. I remember saying I hoped people wouldn’t reject him because he has a solid conservative message.
I know some said he was electable. If I had thought that, I would not have pushed to get Fred Thompson in the race.
Your conspiracy theory about the RNC and MSM pushing Hunter out is silly. Same with Fred. Hunter never got the votes of the conservatives he appealed to. Thompson actually HAD the support of those conservatives but squandered it in the month after he joined the race (look at the polls, and you will see a man go from front-runner to also-ran before he really got started).
The primary exists so we can see who is electable. It’s not for the candidate’s haters to proclaim.
The fact that Romney couldn’t beat a Southern Governor/Pastor in the south is not really surprising. The fact he couldn’t beat McCain may be more surprising, but frankly the fact that Thompson couldn’t beat McCain in South Carolina was the most surprising of all.
Except that McCain had name recognition from his run 8 years ago, and from non-stop MSM coverage over the past 8 years.
Anyone still unoffended?
***Yeah, us Hunter supporters. We always get overlooked.
Anyone still unoffended?
***Yeah, us Hunter supporters. We always get overlooked.
FR is an interesting and entertaining website, but it doesn’t determine the votes of millions of people.
I find it very interesting that a lot of conservative ideas get hashed out, discussed, occasionally accepted and more often sent down in flames on FR. FR is often times the place where (it seems) that influential political thinkers get their stuff. It’s a cutting edge website. But to give FR credit for turning an election one way or the other is to exaggerate it’s influence.
It took too long for too many conservatives to realize, Mitt was it. The talk show hosts jumped on his bandwagon too late, and when they did they put McCain down more than they talked up Mitt...NOT the way to go.
Timing is everything and when it's all wrong, there's almost nothing more frustrating.
Yup. Rudy was so incredibly electable that his followers inundated FR with the inevitability strategy.
I note that at least the McCainiacks didn’t do that at the time several months ago. Now that he has the lead, the inevitability strategy is actually more effective. I suppose we could thank tootyfruityrudybots for getting us practiced in dealing with that electability canard.
I'm not even sure a brokered convention will do any good. If no candidate wins on the first or second ballot, Huckabee will throw his support to McCain in exchange for VP. All of his delegates may not go with McCain, but enough probably will to put him over the top.
It would have been nice if your man had declared a year ago and begun to raise funds in earnest and campaign hard. However, given that he didn’t, he never got much momentum. Romney unlike McCain, admitted his mistakes in the past and embraced conservatism. Neither Rudy nor McCain nor Huckabee have done that.
Don’t call those of us who supported Romney liberals or else I’ll have to take you out to the Russell Kirk woodshed and teach you a thing or to.
A second reason is that the media, particularly the Republican media, anointed Rudy Giuliani too early. Strangely enough, they not only ruined other campaigns, but they ended up ruining Giuliani’s campaign by this premature coronation. If Rudy Giuliani hadn’t seemed poised to take the whole thing in early 2007, many of us would have waited much longer to start looking for candidates to support. I dind’t want to think about presidential politics in early 2007, but I began following those threads because I wanted to stop Rudy Giuliani. Once I started following the threads, I started picking candidates. If the whole process hadn’t been rushed, maybe someone else would have had time to join the race.
***That strikes me as true. I picked a candidate much earlier in this cycle than I ever would have before. I think it was for the reason you pointed out. And I was surprised to find that Hunter really did fit my conservative checklist. That’s never happened before.
Any thoughts?
***It’s the PRIMARIES. Vote for whom is closest to your viewpoint, regardless of who the leading candidate is or even if the candidate has dropped out. You can compromise later.
social liberalism has penetrated the Republican Party.
***And Free Republic, in turn. Thanks for supporting Hunter.
No, while Hunter languished, and Romney put together a national strategy, you abandoned Hunter AND Romney and went looking for the NEXT conservative.
***I never abandoned Hunter. I was even logging onto a thread where we wanted to draft him when he endorsed Huckabee, quashing that hope. Hunter was the best of the bunch, and the invective aimed at him was surprising because most of it was from RINOs. RINOs have co-opted Free Republic.
“Somewhere, McCain got a lot of money and PR real fast.
Wish I knew from where.”
Now Hillary’s trolling for cash. Do they like each other? Could they have made a deal? How about the Trilaterals, or the Counc. on For. Relations? That Prez of Mexico? Just whose pocket is/is not Mc-ky in?
Dang, he looks vengeful. I’ll bet you wouldn’t want him to know your license plate number.
Oh, and I think the Hunter people will be attacking those of you “so-called conservatives” who rather than supporting a solid conservative like Hunter, went out and drafted a guy who had not expressed any interest in the job, Fred Thompson. If ANY conservatives have a right to scream bloody murder about back-stabbing and malfeasance, it is the Hunter supporters who had to put up with people EVERY DAY saying “Hunter’s a great conservative and a fine candidate BUT”, while they were all sending money to a guy who wasn’t running trying to talk him into it.
***That’s how I see it. Thanks for nuthin’, Fred.
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