Third party, or radically different GOP 2012

You can’t go any more to the middle than McCain and he was beaten. The hell with the middle...Republicans need to be almost exactly the opposite in every regaurd as the Democrats. They need to offer people a clear choice, not liberal light.

Look people--the cold hard fact is, party politics as we have known them, are over. The leftwing juggernaut which absorbed the 'rat party this last cycle has no more to do with democracy than the 'Ministry of Truth' had to do with truth.

We are confronted with a slow-mo coup detat and had better figure out a response, to protect what feeedoms we can.

The GOP is dead and will not / cannot help us anymore. Look at the cannibalistic attacks against Sarah Palin, the only national republican candidate this year who was worth a sweet sh*t-- attacks by fellow "republicans."

This defeat revealed the squalid, corrupt, diseased underbelly of the GOP, and the fact that McCain is in bed with them, given his dishonorable and unethical silence today.

Rush likes to trash the mushy middle, but they are the ones who win national elections

That makes sense, because the other day the mushy middle elected a hate-filled turd world socialist dictator in waiting...can't wait till all the "absentee" ballots are counted.

Exactly. We need a strong and conservative GOP, that is not JUST socially conservative but also espousing other tenets of conservatism like FISCAL conservatism (it is not just about abortion and stem cells). The party needs to be purged of RINOs and CINOs, and it REALLY NEEDS to start defining itself and coming up with an effective narrative rather than allowing others to define it.

However, if the party is split, with conservatives (be they social conservatives moving because of the presence of RINOs in the GOP, or fiscal conservatives moving because of being ignored for years and the presence of large amounts of CINOs in the GOP as well as the social conservative movement) then Conservatism is dead! What people should realize is that conservatives need each other. What we need to do is retake the party, not go and form a 3rd party and have a situation where a re-emergent Democrat party faces a fledgling party populated by either social OR fiscal conservatives (apparently the two are becoming more and more like oil and water, and a denuded GOP populated by a smaller number of people than before.

In war that is called divide and conquer.

Take over the party by throwing out RINOs and CINOs. Come up with a strong and effective narrative similar to what Reagan used to have, or what the Republicans came up with during Clinton's run. Have strong conservatives like Steele stand up. Ensure that whoever is selected as our nominee can TALK and just doesn't keep on repeating 'my friends' like it will work like Obama's tacit mesmerism. The infighting needs to stop (look at what is happening to Palin ...she is being used as a scapegoat, when the fact remains that for whatever reason McCain chose her, without her he would have lost by an even wider margin). People also need to be realistic and stop seeing the Democrats as stupid ...as I said a couple of days ago, there is the stupid left and there is the clever left. The clever left just dumped a perfect Rovian tactic on us, selected our nominee for us (McCain's selection was not even popular with the conservative base ....it was just hilarious, those guys won this from the very beginning), ensured that the media was totally on their side, and that any potent attacks (which would have destroyed any other candidate) did not even resonate with the voting public. They also came up with a very strong narrative (which FReepers were pooh-poing, when the fact remains that it was very effective even if hollow), and put together a campaign that was, quite simply put, one of (if not the) best run movements in American political history! Yet people here still want to believe that all Democrats are the spittle spewing retards over at DU!

Oh, and don't get me started on all the rope-a-dopes that kept on coming out. I said again and again ...the Ayers, birth certificate, Odinga stories were just wasting our time. They knew it, I knew it, anyone who looked at it would have seen it. It would not have changed the minds of voters ....for Ayers, most people don't remember nor care about him. For the birth certificate, I strongly believe that if the story had stuck, which it did not, a REAL certificate would have come out to humiliate us. It was a rope-a-dope from the beginning. For Odinga, which kept on coming up on FR, I told people that ...I am a Kenyan by birth ... that a lot of the stories regarding him were fake. For instance the memorandum of understanding with Muslims was shown to be fake months ago in Kenya, but people here kept running with it! Also, Americans don't care about 1,500 dead Africans ....if they didn't care of 900,000 dead Rwandans, what are a thousand Kenyans? It was continuous rope-a-dopes, and people wanted to believe that they finally had the 'silver bullet' so much they fell for it. Instead of coming up with powerful narratives for our side, and defining what we stood for, or even a mass GOTV campaign, we spent a lot of time chasing silver bullets that either did not exist, or would probably have not have penetrated the media aegis that Obama had going for him! The moment the guy survived Reverend Wright is when I knew that he was teflon coated ....he'd have to kill a kid of video while molesting his wife's sister for anything to stick! If Wright did not stick, there was no way Odinga or ACORN would have. If people were saying years back that Arnold Schwarzenegger should be allowed to run for president (even though he was born in Austria), there was no way people were going to go berserk over a birth certificate (although I still think one exists ....there is a reason why McCain never brought it up, and even if you take him as a wuss, Hillary Clinton never brought it up, and she is no wuss).

Also do not get me started on PUMAs, who were NOT a rope-a-dope but might as well have been one. People kept shooting for numbers of 18 million ...PUMAs were never close to that. Just because 18 m people voted for Hillary does not mean they would move from voting for Hillary (a person whose liberal record is ALMOST as bad as Obama's, with the only redeeming grace being that she at least has more experience than he does and is a known entity) to voting for McCain/Palin. The issues that a core Hillary supported has run VERY contrary to what the Republican party espouses. Sure, there were quite a number of REAL PUMAs, who are people who were very strongly pro-Hillary and felt jaded, or simply did not trust the snake-oil Obama was selling, but thinking they would have a major difference in the election was a joke. Almost a rope-a-dope, apart from the fact that it was not done by purpose by the clever left.

We need to come out strong, retake the GOP, come up with a narrative that works, elect REAL CONSERVATIVES (meaning the entire gamut ...not just stem cells and abortion, but also property rights, adherence to the constitution, immigration reform, fiscal responsibility ....can any Republican say those two words without going into spasms ....etc etc etc).

Doing otherwise will just lead to another Liberal-lite, a lighter version of your standard Democrat. Which means the Clever Left wins again ...either people will reject the Liberal-Lite and vote for the 'real thing,' or they will vote for the liberal lite and the Clever Left still have a liberal! Win-win for them.

We cannot leave the GOP ...we have to reform it. Splitting it is suicide, and nothing would make the Clever Left happier! We also need to stop seeing liberals as fools ...up to a day before the election people here were still deluding themselves that all those people were lying to themselves, and saying otherwise got you a reprimand. Apparently they were not wrong. Many Democrats are not bright, but like a hive/swarm society (e.g. ants, bees, termites) a colony doesn't need the majority to be smart. They simply need them to move en masse. The brains/leadership is restricted to an inner core, which HAS TO BE smart enough for the entire colony. Underestimate them at your peril.

We've been hit! We can get up. This has happened before, i.e. Carter (although not to this level of coherence), and we ended up with Reagan. That can happen again ...a Reagan for the 21st century (many say it's Palin, but I don't think so. There are far stronger examples of 21-C Reagan-esque Republicans who are Conservatives across the ENTIRE SPECTRUM that is conservatism, plus are great orators as well as having rapport with people). We need to get together. We need to have faith. We need to be strong.

We will rise.

Exactly. We need a strong and conservative GOP, that is not JUST socially conservative but also espousing other tenets of conservatism like FISCAL conservatism (it is not just about abortion and stem cells). The party needs to be purged of RINOs and CINOs, and it REALLY NEEDS to start defining itself and coming up with an effective narrative rather than allowing others to define it.

However, if the party is split, with conservatives (be they social conservatives moving because of the presence of RINOs in the GOP, or fiscal conservatives moving because of being ignored for years and the presence of large amounts of CINOs in the GOP as well as the social conservative movement) then Conservatism is dead! What people should realize is that conservatives need each other. What we need to do is retake the party, not go and form a 3rd party and have a situation where a re-emergent Democrat party faces a fledgling party populated by either social OR fiscal conservatives (apparently the two are becoming more and more like oil and water, and a denuded GOP populated by a smaller number of people than before.

In war that is called divide and conquer.

Take over the party by throwing out RINOs and CINOs. Come up with a strong and effective narrative similar to what Reagan used to have, or what the Republicans came up with during Clinton's run. Have strong conservatives like Steele stand up. Ensure that whoever is selected as our nominee can TALK and just doesn't keep on repeating 'my friends' like it will work like Obama's tacit mesmerism. The infighting needs to stop (look at what is happening to Palin ...she is being used as a scapegoat, when the fact remains that for whatever reason McCain chose her, without her he would have lost by an even wider margin). People also need to be realistic and stop seeing the Democrats as stupid ...as I said a couple of days ago, there is the stupid left and there is the clever left. The clever left just dumped a perfect Rovian tactic on us, selected our nominee for us (McCain's selection was not even popular with the conservative base ....it was just hilarious, those guys won this from the very beginning), ensured that the media was totally on their side, and that any potent attacks (which would have destroyed any other candidate) did not even resonate with the voting public. They also came up with a very strong narrative (which FReepers were pooh-poing, when the fact remains that it was very effective even if hollow), and put together a campaign that was, quite simply put, one of (if not the) best run movements in American political history! Yet people here still want to believe that all Democrats are the spittle spewing retards over at DU!

Oh, and don't get me started on all the rope-a-dopes that kept on coming out. I said again and again ...the Ayers, birth certificate, Odinga stories were just wasting our time. They knew it, I knew it, anyone who looked at it would have seen it. It would not have changed the minds of voters ....for Ayers, most people don't remember nor care about him. For the birth certificate, I strongly believe that if the story had stuck, which it did not, a REAL certificate would have come out to humiliate us. It was a rope-a-dope from the beginning. For Odinga, which kept on coming up on FR, I told people that ...I am a Kenyan by birth ... that a lot of the stories regarding him were fake. For instance the memorandum of understanding with Muslims was shown to be fake months ago in Kenya, but people here kept running with it! Also, Americans don't care about 1,500 dead Africans ....if they didn't care of 900,000 dead Rwandans, what are a thousand Kenyans? It was continuous rope-a-dopes, and people wanted to believe that they finally had the 'silver bullet' so much they fell for it. Instead of coming up with powerful narratives for our side, and defining what we stood for, or even a mass GOTV campaign, we spent a lot of time chasing silver bullets that either did not exist, or would probably have not have penetrated the media aegis that Obama had going for him! The moment the guy survived Reverend Wright is when I knew that he was teflon coated ....he'd have to kill a kid of video while molesting his wife's sister for anything to stick! If Wright did not stick, there was no way Odinga or ACORN would have. If people were saying years back that Arnold Schwarzenegger should be allowed to run for president (even though he was born in Austria), there was no way people were going to go berserk over a birth certificate (although I still think one exists ....there is a reason why McCain never brought it up, and even if you take him as a wuss, Hillary Clinton never brought it up, and she is no wuss).

Also do not get me started on PUMAs, who were NOT a rope-a-dope but might as well have been one. People kept shooting for numbers of 18 million ...PUMAs were never close to that. Just because 18 m people voted for Hillary does not mean they would move from voting for Hillary (a person whose liberal record is ALMOST as bad as Obama's, with the only redeeming grace being that she at least has more experience than he does and is a known entity) to voting for McCain/Palin. The issues that a core Hillary supported has run VERY contrary to what the Republican party espouses. Sure, there were quite a number of REAL PUMAs, who are people who were very strongly pro-Hillary and felt jaded, or simply did not trust the snake-oil Obama was selling, but thinking they would have a major difference in the election was a joke. Almost a rope-a-dope, apart from the fact that it was not done by purpose by the clever left.

We need to come out strong, retake the GOP, come up with a narrative that works, elect REAL CONSERVATIVES (meaning the entire gamut ...not just stem cells and abortion, but also property rights, adherence to the constitution, immigration reform, fiscal responsibility ....can any Republican say those two words without going into spasms ....etc etc etc).

Doing otherwise will just lead to another Liberal-lite, a lighter version of your standard Democrat. Which means the Clever Left wins again ...either people will reject the Liberal-Lite and vote for the 'real thing,' or they will vote for the liberal lite and the Clever Left still have a liberal! Win-win for them.

We cannot leave the GOP ...we have to reform it. Splitting it is suicide, and nothing would make the Clever Left happier! We also need to stop seeing liberals as fools ...up to a day before the election people here were still deluding themselves that all those people were lying to themselves, and saying otherwise got you a reprimand. Apparently they were not wrong. Many Democrats are not bright, but like a hive/swarm society (e.g. ants, bees, termites) a colony doesn't need the majority to be smart. They simply need them to move en masse. The brains/leadership is restricted to an inner core, which HAS TO BE smart enough for the entire colony. Underestimate them at your peril.

We've been hit! We can get up. This has happened before, i.e. Carter (although not to this level of coherence), and we ended up with Reagan. That can happen again ...a Reagan for the 21st century (many say it's Palin, but I don't think so. There are far stronger examples of 21-C Reagan-esque Republicans who are Conservatives across the ENTIRE SPECTRUM that is conservatism, plus are great orators as well as having rapport with people). We need to get together. We need to have faith. We need to be strong.

We will rise.

We stacked the deck against ourselves. We lost the middle because of one issue, and will continue to lose the middle because of it. We cannot seem to “get it” that the net result of being so determined to legislate morality instead of teaching it is the Obmamination. We have tossed out the baby with the bathwater. The Republican party has been hijacked by those who want to use political office to impose religous views. We are(were?) a Christian nation, God belongs in the pledge, In God we Trust on our currency, the Ten Commandments on the court house wall and in the schools. How much more good could have come if all the time, money, and energy spent on the right to life issue had been spent Teaching..in the home, Church, and just plain ‘ol advertising. Would a Republican be preparing for an Inaguration on Jan 20, 2009 IF we had kept things in their proper place? I think so. Instead WE have by our single minded stubbornness brought upon ourselves the Obamination.

Once the Republicans were a 3rd Party. We need a new party The National Conservative Party. The very threat of the party might urge the Republicans to change.

I hear you, unfortunately recent history hasn’t been very favorable for 3rd parties. I think many of us have just finally reached our limit and want to do “something”. We have to carry a lot of weight for the Republican party; I think its time we get their attention. I know

“Did you type this “(This is pointless. The base was intact and we were hammered.)” with a straight face?
ROTFLMAO!”

I did type it and yes, with a straight face. The base in and of itself can’t do bubkus. The base was voting and the base was energized and the base was largely alone. When a conservative candidate wins, so many run out and shout with glee that they were right all along and that it’s the base this and the base that. When we lose the mantra is simply reversed. We didn’t please the base so the base stayed home. It’s really just a character flaw or avoidance/abdication of responsibility. I’m tired of the infighting and I’m tired of the school of thought that a small percentage of the population can somehow win an election on their own. Influence perhaps but when several groups vote for something they all participate in the outcome. I have zero patience for those who if they don’t get it their way, take their marbles and go home crying to Mom.

IMO an important bit of perspective is missing here: it’s very difficult for any political movement to achieve a permanent majority national status in the US – or for that matter anywhere that government has to be to be reasonably responsive to the voters.

The post WWII conservative movement in the US has followed the usual arc of political movements: a trek in the political wilderness, then starting with Ronald Reagan initial success and increasing popularity as it corrected some of the excesses of previous Democratic administrations and introduced some useful new (or at least rediscovered) perspectives of its own, gradual descent into ideological posturing and overshoot, increasing complacency and sometimes actual corruption, further and further drift from focus on the concerns of typical voters, and now a loss of influence as the pendulum swings.

And that’s how electoral politics works: political decay is the eventual fate of any dominate political movement and party.

In this regard I often mention the Conservative party in the UK here because it’s easier to accept the process if you are viewing it from a bit of an emotional distance: the party achieved great popularity and success under Margaret Thatcher, crashed and burned in the name of ideological principle, and emerged rebuilt and reengaged with the voters a decade later not as a party attempting to turn the clock back to 1950 but as a party attempting to look ahead to 2050.

In order to do this the Tories had to accept programs such as national healthcare which were anathema to Thatcher’s “There is no such thing as ‘society’, only individuals and families” worldview but which were demanded by voters unwilling to accept that society lacked the ability to protect individuals and families willing to play by the rules from bad luck - and UK conservatives are making their electoral way back by asking how to make society more efficient without making it more cruel.

IMO, that’s the political challenge of the US conservative movement: how to come to terms with the fact that electoral success at a national level means coming to terms with a portion of the US electorate which does not question that market capitalism is the most efficient engine of economic progress but also increasingly believes that some government interference in the market is necessary if a market economy it to work reasonably well for most participants.

Now, as politics actually works, that’s a complicated process and one that can only be settled by experiment and experience: you try things, some things work out, some things don’t, you embrace and improve what does, you discard or radically redesign what does not - always keeping in mind that what works today may not work tomorrow, if only because human beings have an enormous ability to “game the system”.

So it seems to me that Conservatives - like Democrats since Reagan - really have only two choices to deal with this situation:

1) Opt for sufficient political purity to please the 35-40% of the electorate who reliable vote conservative, and hope that the opposition screws up so spectacularly that the rest of the electorate will repudiated them. (Ex: Democrats playing identity politics, and convincing themselves that surely the next election will be the one where the voters open their eyes to Republican malfeasance – we all know how well that worked out for the Democrats)

Or

2) Compromise your principles to the point where you attract an additional 10-15 % of voters, in which case you win national elections.

Actually, of course, no political movement has much choice: eventually any political movement or party (be it of the left or right) gets tired of losing elections and comes up with a version of itself that can win elections (Ex: The national Democratic party backing pro-life candidates in places where that’s what it takes to win ).

Now, I’m not saying anyone has to like this process.

But as long as the voters retain the ability to elect people to perform the experiments, judge the efforts by their result, and pass their verdict at the ballot box to swing the pendulum one way or the other, I’m pretty optimistic about the eventual outcomes.

We need to find a real issue and get help from divergent groups—Like the ones that defeated Gay Marriage out in California Land. We need something with the same power as Slavery had with the Republicans—How about Anti-Abortion? Rights for the Unborn? Adoption Freedom? Save the Babies?
This issue would cut across the religious boundaries—Its a moral issue and one that could unify many. Don’t Kill Your Baby! This has the same power in our day as Slavery had as an issue in the 1850s.