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.
Thanks for the kind word. I obviously didn’t have the same aversion to late conversions in all cases, but Rudy was too much for me as well, and I simply trusted Romney, while others did not. My greatest regret is that Romney won’t get a chance to prove that my trust was well-placed, although his CPAC speech, given after he dropped out, give another indication that he isn’t just blowing smoke.
I hope that over the next 4 years we get a lot of chances to see more of the same.
Post #220 was actually meant for rgiabs. Sorry for the mess up.
I worry about the “name recognition movement”, if for no other reason than, as the Fred Thompson recruitment showed, we don’t have any solid conservatives with great name recognition to call on.
What we need to do, and what we needed to be doing for the past 15 years, is finding good conservatives who nobody knew about, and grooming them through the process so that they were available.
But in a majority, the goal is often to preserve that majority, not find new blood. So the democrats did all the grooming and finding, and we were stuck with whatever we had in office.
Now we get a chance to find some good conservatives and run them. In my 11th district of Virginia, our incumbent is gone, and I hope we can get a conservative to run for the seat. But I see the push to talk some good person already elected as a delegate in the state to run for the office, because of “name recognition”. I’d rather groom a new candidate, so we had more, than recycle existing candidates.
Unfortunatly, as part of that process, conservatives have to be willing to support some pretty non-conservative candidates in the general election if our conservatives can’t win the primaries. Otherwise, our talk about “party loyalty” to the moderates when we want them to support our conservative candidates that they don’t really like will be seen as crass opportunism.
The point of a party is you battle in the primary, and together you promise to support whoever wins, in the hope that it will be mutually beneficial.
If conservatives abandon all the nominees that weren’t our pick, well be no better than the “RINOs” we have screamed about who said they were republican, voted in our primaries, but when they didn’t win would run off and be 3rd-party candidates, or stay home, or even endorse and work for the democrat.
Until a majority of the people in this country are conservative, we are going to have to vote for some moderate republicans in the general election.
Can’t pass the buck on this one, bucko. Enjoy McCain. You and the Romney bashers deserve him. (and no, Duncan Hunter NEVER had a hope in hell, and everyone who wasn’t sipping kool aide here knew it).
I know, wagglebee. I was trying to find a little humor in a very depressing day!
“Can’t pass the buck on this one, bucko.”
Blame everyone else for your candidate’s failure—how liberal of you. You poor baby, didn’t you now that blaming and whining isn’t a conservative trait? Go whine and cry with your friends at WA. They must be drowning in tears now that their top two liberal candidates (Rooty and Flip) have bit the dust. Give them our sympathies while you’re there.
RINOS don't run on a Reagan, pro-life conservative platform. Mitt Romney was no Rino.
I know. There MIGHT be a “silver lining” in all of this, but I don’t think we’ll know what it is any time soon.
Give me a break. John F. Kennedy was hated communism and believed in cutting taxes and the 'Rats have been running as the next JFK for 40 years.
Romney didn't run on a pro-life platform, he ran on an "I had an epiphany, please believe me" platform.
I don't know what they have to complain about, one liberal RINO ought to be just as good as the next.
No Sir! It is the fault of so called Republicans who participate in the party only to the extent of voting in primaries having allowed us to get stuck with a nominating process which allows a candidate with less than 30% support amoungst actual Republicans to become our nominee!
“RINOS don’t run on a Reagan, pro-life conservative platform.”
Oh, they try. They know that’s the only way they can become the republican nominee by pretending to be a conservative. It makes no difference what Flip SAID, what matters is his record. And that my friend, says everything.
“Mitt Romney was no Rino.”
That’s like saying, “Jim Robinson is no conservative”. Ahhh, but then there’s a record that would prove otherwise. Mitt’s record proves you wrong. He lost, time to move on.
DO NOT PING ME TO YOUR DREK. EVER.
The public schools have been very successful in dumbing down society.
Look.
Someone has a god-complex.
You are correct. Even now, people are looking for the reincarnation of Ronald Reagan...and you are correct. Conservatives lost their power by not backing the one guy who could win....Mitt Romney.
As a result, we got the most liberal guy in the race.
You can thank the media and the conservatives.....
Being fractured only weakens conservatives.
Evangelicals voted the Huckster and reallly screwed us....
Indeed.
Explains Mitt.
Realistically...when has a Congressman ...unknown ever become President?
And ...why did Fred wait so long to enter the race?
Could Fred have taken one blue state?
No
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.