Posted on 11/05/2008 5:25:47 AM PST by VaBthang4
Now we get to endure all of the nonsense from the Libertarians.
They will explain how conservatives did this wrong, did that wrong etc, etc. They'll subtly and sometimes boldly undermine Conservative principles under the guise of bringing forth common understanding.
All while offering up their idiotic solutions cloaked in faux reason.
Dismiss them as quickly as you would the most ardent liberal...because in the end, their perspectives spring from the same well; Anomia.
Yo Paudio—OK, I’m on same page as you.
I agree that ultimately a sound bite describing conservatism must be created. Also, I agree that there is not a concensus among those who call themselves conservatives as to what conservatism means. Personally, I prefer being called a Constitutionalist rather than a conservative.
Dems have been allowed to redefine conservatives as red neck racists. Sadly, a significant part of the US population believes it.
The problem on our side is that we do not seem to have a central entity that effectively establishes goals toward winning back the hearts and minds of the American people— and then develops strategies and tactics to achieve those goals.
I have no idea what the so-called conservative “think tanks” have achieved or think they have achieved to date. Certainly the RNC’s efforts seemed aimed at getting RINOs elected and taking whatever crumbs the dems care to throw its way.
The left, as always, has been very effective at defining its goals and then achieving them. It’s taken the left 30 to 40 years to be able to run a half black Marxist and win an election. That is a significant achievement.
Conservatives will have to be similarly patient. But, the key is the creation of a body that can put together a game plan and then execute it.
I realized sometime late yesterday afternoon that I’m actually relieved that the GOP got slaughtered the way it did nationally. Sticking with that bunch was really experiencing death by slow cuts.
In any case, if conservatism cannot organize to reestablish itself, then it is irrelevent and deserves a place on the scrap heap of history.
To sell anything one must have a sales plan. I had always thought that the so-called conservative think tanks were out there to play that role. The “salesmen/women” for the plan was the RNC and the candidates it ran—I thought.
If anyone can explain exactly what these two entities have done with regard to the above I’d like to hear it.
So, if conservatives truly believe in their relevance they must be prepared to make the long term commitment necessary to achieve thier goals. The left has succeeded in getting a half black Marxist elected. That is a significant achievement and it didn’t happen by accident.
Essential to the success of the plan is education. Dems have had 30 to 40 years to propagandize our students from kindergarten through college. Presently, they’re pushing to extend that influence to day care. Republicans have been content to allow the dems this advantage. Heck, conservatives are not even permitted to speak on college campuses. Bottom line: Dem’s hard work finally paid off this election.
Of couse there is much more to it than just the two things I mentioned above—i.e. organization and education. But without them everything else is disjointed and wasted energy.
I’m so tired of the people who find all sorts of reasons to do nothing. After Republican political beatings there are always those of us who cry out for the creation of a new party. Each time we are shouted down and everything returns to the status quo. Result: Once again the GOP runs a RINO candidate and he gets slaughtered.
It would seem this time there is an opening for doing something different. Heck, if the Marxist Onada being elected president is not a wake up call I don’t know what is.
I would also point out the Bush ran as a conservative and got elected. Of course, he turned out to be something different and that is why is administration failed. I give him credit for taking it to the jihadis, but he quickly lost his way with the war on terror.
I give him credit for his two Supreme Court picks, but that achievement will be negated by at least two justices Obama will no doubt have an opportunity to choose. And I don’t expect the House and Senate RINOs to mount any serious opposition—even given the dems failure to achieve super-majorities.
Sadly, Bush’s seminal achievement may very well turn out to be killing conservatism. His face will be the face of conservatism for a long time to come. And it won’t matter on whit that he, in fact, was not conservative.
We can sit there and wring our hands and be defeated, or we can regroup.
Third parties don’t work as power blocks in the US. The best they do is generate ideas and concepts that the major parties adapt. Both major parties are coalitions of various groups who have to work together or none would have the power to get anything done.
This is a truth of American politics that cannot be denied.
We need to do several things. One is study how the other side did it from a techniques point of view, not throwing around the demonizing buzzwords that keep us from seeing how they did what they did. What they did was get a message out, get people enthused and willing to support it, and got their version of broken glass voters out and to the polls.
We can wring our hands and say our cause is dead, or take the goodness of our message, figure out how to reach people with it and win again.
We can suck lemons or do the lemonade bit.
We may have to think outside of the box. We may have to find different ways to appeal to people. But if our message is worthwhile, we can do it. Or we can choose to sit on our thumbs and whine how the other side is evil, and fade away.
I’m not into whining. I’m into winning.
To accomplish anything there must be a focus of ideas, energy and leadership. Of these three leadership is the most important. Obama, apparently, was someone all the dissaffected were able to rally around.
Except for Gov. Palin, consevatives have no viable leader. I understand about coalitions, compromise and all the rest.
However, the GOP only wins at the presidential level when it runs conservatives—or those who are perceived to be conservative. Reagon was the last truly conservative president. Both Bush I and II were RINOs for all practical purposes, but ran as and were perceived to be conservative. Palin generated the excitement she did because she was new, young, not from the Belt Way crowd and is a conservative.
My point: Unless control of the RNC can be wrested from the RINOs by conservatives nothing will change. That requires a small group of people dedicated to that result.
Yep, we have a couple of things going on:
Those whose primary loyalty is to a political party not from a belief about what it means, but as a structure to get and keep power. It’s how we tell them from the democrats.
Then there are conservatives. We normally rally behind the GOP, because that’s the biggest coalition to get us in power, but we aren’t Political Party Only republicans. We believe in things.
I knew the Political Party Repubicans were going to screw us after the 2004 elections. And they did, mostly from being too concillatory and willing to compromise on things that mattered.
Mediocre voices get lukewarm response, and stifle the voices we need to hear, that people will rally around.
Now that we are the opposition, maybe we can find people with guts enough to let their voices be heard.
“The only people around here stabbing conservatives in the back are the RINOs.”
And those on FR who convinced many of us to vote “party over principle” and pull the lever for candidate we KNOW is no conservative. And look at the result!
The TRUE wasted votes were for McCain. If we had voted for the third-party candidate, who actually espoused our limited government values, at least we would have sent a message to the GOP (and to each other, fwiw).
The GOP offered us George Bush and John McCain, neither of which is a conservative. They became drunk with power after we put them in control in 1994....they have BECOME what they ran AGAINST, only worse.
Eff! the GOP.
I will vote party over principle no longer.
The republic may rise again or it may fail altogether, but you will never again find me supporting a candidate whose platform includes weakening the Constitution. War hero or not.
And as for those who so desired to see Democrats defeated that they were willing to vote (and convinced other conservatives to vote) for “Socialism-lite” John McCain...may history be kind to you and your treachery against the founding principles of the once-great nation.
All along you have been working for the enemy.
Eff! you, too.
“So you set us back 25 years to work out of this hole. You are an selfish idiot.”
I beg to differ. Those who voted for Socialist-lite John McCain instead of voting for a candidate who actually BELIEVES in the Constitution have betrayed the founding principles of the nation.
You voted party over principle because you were cowards. Afraid of the Democrat party.
“Third parties don’t work as power blocks in the US. The best they do is generate ideas and concepts that the major parties adapt.”
Apparently both major parties are adopting their ideas from the same groups, and they aren’t the groups with the “smaller government” ideas, that’s for sure. Or even the ones with the “Hey, let’s follow the US Constitution!” ideas, either.
A vote for McCain, when one didn’t agree with his policies, was a wasted vote. At least a vote for a third-party candidate would be vote on principle, and it may have sent a message to the GOP that we won’t tolerate candidates of McCain/Bush ilk.
“No, he is not president-elect this morning because he defied the Republican base for 20 years, then sent a chick in at the last minute to try to get it back.”
I can’t disagree with that, though the “chick” was as far to the right of McCain as McCain was to Obama.
I voted to give Sarah Palin a chance at being VP. I don’t consider it a wasted vote at all. Better than not voting and giving Obama the nod like a whole lot of GOP voters seem to have done by the number of people who didn’t vote.
Personally rather go down fighting for half a glass of water than die of thirst, myself. Might still die, but if I won, there would be less damage to undo later.
Don't blame your failures on us. Try NOT being a RINO and see how that works for you...
Maybe next time, the GOP will fight to WIN instead of trying to "reach across the aisle".
The only time a Republican should "reach across the aisle" is to bitch-slap somebody on the other side.
Sorry for replying late. Have been avoiding FR as part of the healing process... LOL
I’m glad we’re on the same page.
The problem is that ‘conservative think thanks’ actually also use different approaches and some of their positions may conflict with each others. Cato is much more libertarian. Federalist Society is more about what they think was the founders’ intents, so outside what’s in the Constitution, I don’t know if they can say much. The religious-base groups (Family Focus, etc.) are obviously from their own view, and not necessarily coherent with those in Hoover, or AEI.
I agree about rebuilding for long term, not short term only. One point that I think need to be highlighted is it’s time to take back social sciences and humanities. We’ve been neglecting them too long, and have been mocking them too much without realizing that they are dominating young people’s mind.
Amen. And why don’t we see more of this happening? Fist fights, brawls, hell... bring back the Duel. Let’s see what happens when these liber-tard jackass have to actually bleed a little to get their way.
Paudio—For purposes of taking our country back from the Marxists these think tanks are irrelevent. Without the formation of a single entity, with the charter to draw up a plan to take back America, everything else is a waste of time.
To fix the humanites and social sciences issues one must fix public education. The left controls it. I see this as the biggest challenge in the battle for America.
First, if you are not a Republican voter, you cannot accuse others of being “RINOs”. It like an atheist preacing on piety. If you want to fix the GOP, step #1 is COME BACK TO THE PARTY AND START VOTING FOR OUR CANDIDATES.
Second, the candidates that were ousted were good pro-taxpayer conservative candidates in our local area. SO WHAT YOU ARE SUGGESTING IS WHO THEY ARE. This is NOT about McCain so stop beating that dead horse. This is about the fact that the Libertarian Party deliberately targetted GOOD conservative candidates in our local area and delivered the election DELIBERATELY to socialist liberal Democrats. Try running conservatives? Well, the LP runs a guy against you ANYWAY and you lose the moderate voters AND you lose the idiot LP voters who dont realize they just helped elect a tax-and-spend Democrat socialist and build the Democrat majority. The LP were arrogant and counterproductive to freedom. The people voting for them were misled fools who just shot freedom in the foot.
It’s a simple rule in politics: UNITED WE STAND, DIVIDED WE FALL.
Are you for dividing the pro-taxpayer vote and letting Obama rule over us unhindered and letting Democrat socialist locusts get majorities in states so they can ruin them?
I HOPE NOT.
It’s gonna get ugly in the Obama nation ... and we will NEED to stick together:
http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/warner-todd-huston/2008/11/07/obama-already-broken-two-promises-will-media-reporthttp://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/warner-todd-huston/2008/11/07/obama-already-broken-two-promises-will-media-report
The first broken promise was the one where the candidate of “change” was going to bring a new tone to Washington. This one has been broken by Obama’s choice for Chief of Staff: Rahm Emanuel. Representative Emanuel (D- Illinois) is a hard-core, far left, liberal as well as being an old Clinton hack. Not only that, but Emanuel is not a “new tone” kind of guy but is a Pit bull of epic proportions.
“Are you out of your stinkin’ mind?!”
The biggest enemy of free markets and low taxes was elected President - by 53% of the vote! ... OF COURSE the take home is that “economic libertarianism is not the winning issue”... and btw, the Obamedia will shove that down our throats in order to destroy the conservative coalition.
Folks on the right were tired of voting for the ‘lesser evil’? Fine. WE JUST GOT THE GREATEST EVIL OF OUR LIFETIME.
NOW WHAT?
Your point on the bailout was well-taken. McCain could have had a very different result if he took a different approach there ... but then ... that’s who mcCain is, the centrist maverick guy. how can we expect to get our guy elected when we are calling him “McLame” and the other names? the fact is, Obama’s panderings **worked**. $800 billion in new spending.side is practically worshipping their guy, warts and all?
We have a completely different set of standards/expectations. It’s fine to want Ron Paul policies, but he got single digits from the GOP primary voters, and was not the nominee.
We can clash and fight all we want amongst the scraps of the 55 million voters who voted for McCain. Some were social conservatives, some voted on guns, some on pro-life, some were fiscal conservatives, some were libertarians, some were moderates, some supported the war hero over the inexperienced marxist. Our turnout was a bit lower because of the lack of GOP energy and that was due to Bush’s unpopularity (Iraq etc) and McCain’s maverickness; thankfully Palin energized the base enough to avoid a worse bloodbath.
It would be insane to say that one single issue lost the election or one single issue or viewpoint could create a majority GOP party.
The real question is:
WHAT POLICIES WILL GET 51% OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE TO VOTE GOP AGAIN?
I certainly would put “get back to being fiscal conservatives” at the top of the list, but that’s just the start. And let’s not be blind: Hardcore libertarian and capitalist ideas are adhered to by only a fraction of voters. Lop off social conservatives and the GOP is a permanent minority.
Also, don't blame the LP for the GOP's RINO failings. Try energizing the base by running actual small government/Constitutionalist types to energize the base. You'd rake in the Goldwater conservatives by the droves.
Paudio—For purposes of taking our country back from the Marxists these think tanks are irrelevent. Without the formation of a single entity, with the charter to draw up a plan to take back America, everything else is a waste of time.”
This is correct. The ONLY vehicle to advance pro-freedom policies effectively is the Republican party.
if you see it going in the wrong direction, the answer is to help steer it in the right direction, not drive it into the ditch, let it burn and try to walk.
We got 55 million votes for McCain/Palin, 7 million short of the 62 million that Obama had. .... how do we flip that around?
So the question for folks here is:
WHAT WILL YOU DO TO DRIVE THE GOP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION?
Here’s a place to talk about your answers:
http://www.rebuildtheparty.com/
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