Demint, Fred Thompson, Toomey are Conservatives, for example.
I’m not a RINO, matter of fact I’m not a even a Republican so I can’t be a RINO. I laugh at those who throw that term around as if it is offensive. Libertarian leaning Independent is a great place to live.
Mike Pence. Duncan Hunter.
Welcome to the world of extreme right wing malcontents. Nothing or no one (except Saint Sarah, that is until she starts actually going on the record with hard policy positions) is good enough. No good deed goes unpunished.
By the time they’re done with their torches, pitchforks and clubs, there will only be a couple hundred of them sitting around and grooving on the rubble, smirking in that self satisfied grin of the little boy who just toilet papered the principals house.
I reject several of your premises.
You write in such a way as to make it out McCain doesn’t deserve to be a ‘whipping boy’ - your term. First, do you even remember who John McCain is, and what he does to his own party? Do we have to rehash his history and how McCain feels about what’s wrong with the party and his views on conservatives?
Second you say ‘after Nov 6?’ Are you kidding me? We have been exposing McCain for who he is a LONG time before the day after he didn’t win. You think it’s only after that that we’ve been talking about his problems?
Third you appear to trivialize the genuine criticisms of people to other candidates with your whole ‘yada-yada’ whatever statements.
Fourth, when you are talking about certain criticisms offered by specific people (ie fox being lib, etc) and try to paint all of us here as being the ones that offered that criticism. The examples you mention aren’t known to everyone here. ANd we’re not just fricking robots that automatically agree with everything just because someone cries ‘liberal’.
Fifth, you say you can’t think of anyone you don’t have a problem with either on some issue. Join the club. Don’t get pissed people are discussing why they have problems with certain folks when you do too. Part of the discussion is to list the problems and then have debate about them and have people by this make up their own minds if the problems are big enough to make them not vote for them. It’s a winnowing process. we don’t want what happened in 2008 to happen again in 2012. We don’t want to be stuck voting for a candidate for the reasons we had to this time.
You gripe that if we examine all candidates critically we’ll have checkmarks in columns we disagree with them on. Well, sure, yes. The difference is WHAT CATEGORIES THOSE CHECKBOXES ARE IN. Are they deal-breakers for you, or not, THAT is what you need to figure out. If they ARE, you shouldn’t support them. If they ARE NOT, you can with a clear conscience, vote for them.
But why do you care what others think? They aren’t going to change how you vote. So what if everyone here says they want to support another candidate than you? So what if they rip your guy down? Defend him if you want. Make your case for him and then deal with the criticsm. You might wind up convincing some people if you have good reasons.
You ask how can we go and support people for positives, not negatives. People here put voter guides together where they discuss people’s positions and highlight their stated views and records. We link to a lot of different sites that offer these guides and people go there and read them.
You also could start a thread here with listing candidates and what you see as their positive attributes for people to discuss.
quit bitching
In the Texas gubernatorial face-off, Debra Medina looks like the Non-RINO.
so you ask who is not a rino?
The bottom line is that there is a battle for the heart and soul of this country. There are two parties in this country. The democrats spit on our values, crush our liberties, destroy our free markets and productivity, side with our enemies, piss on the military, and create dependency to ensue their everlasting power.
The assumption would be that the opposition party, i.e. the Republican party would fight tooth and nail to secure our constitutional rights, free markets, liberty, sovereignty, borders, military, etc. This is the purpose of the Republican party. Anyone who doesn’t get that is just preserving the Democrat party.
With that said, a real Republican is someone who is consistently on the side of freedom and not in bed with the enemy making a deal every time you turn around. Individuals make mistakes and nobody is perfect. Even a good conservative might make very specific mistakes, but they will always be fundamentally on the side of freedom and will fundamentally work hard to defeat the rats. There are a handful of Senators and a number of House members who fit that bill. Anyone who read Sarah’s book and life story knows that here whole essence is a living example of conservatives. Everyone makes mistakes from time to time but a true Republican will advance the “conservative football” down the field.
Rino’s are those who are constantly undermine the conservative agenda and help facilitate the Democrat’s destruction of the country. People like DeMint, and Cuburn in the Senate clearly understand the battle and our solidly on the side of freedom. This is not to say that they can’t make mistakes. These minor mistakes don’t make them RINO’s. But people like Graham, Christ, Bennett, Hatch and all the good old boys club who are constantly making deals with the rats are clearly moving the liberal football down the field. They are therefore Republicans in name only.
Personally, I consider RINOs to be folks who combine a (usually) leftward tilt with utter misery that conservative Republicans are not only considered part of the same party they are, but have managed to do a lot more and better with it than they have.
One thing the internet amplifies is negative feedback. The impersonal nature of the media makes it easy. Consequently, you see much more negative feedback than positive. In many cases, posting a negative doesn’t include an absolute refusal to support a candidate. To put in terms a liberal (used to be confined to liberals, now infects almost all it seems) would understand: to disagree or criticize does not make one a “hater”.....
hh
McCain was hated here long before he went down in flames last year.
I would support Palin or DeMint for president. I wish Inhofe would jump into the race.
Personally, I just tend to ignore the litmus test people. They make lots of noise, but they have little effect.
If it's any consolation, the left of center side is a mirror image.
Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Jim DeMint, maybe a handful of lesser knowns.
I apologize for the length of this post, but I’m rather torn on this matter myself. To be frank, as fond as I am of this place, sometimes there is a bit too much vitriol here for my tastes. I don’t complain - I keep my mouth shut because I feel that honest people are entitled to honest opinions and often need an outlet. There is a lot of valid frustration going around, and that frustration is compounded by the feeling that honest representatives of conservatism are few and far between.
I think at times we lose sight of the fact that conservatism is not a monolithic view. While we do have clear and definite views on certain issues, we lack the overarching orthodoxies that define the socialist left in this country.
The problem, unfortunately, is that over the course of the last eight or so years, the left has dramatically ramped up its assault on conservatism. They were absolutely furious that Al Gore, their first “anointed one”, lost the election back in 2000. Conservatism has been under vicious assault and, sadly, when a group is under attack it is natural to wonder who exactly are its friends and who exactly are its enemies. The trouble has been compounded by conservative-leaning moderates who consider themselves conservatives.
I’ll draw criticism on this but I frankly believe that such people are conservatives. The problem, unfortunately, is that quite a few of such individuals have shown a tendency to compromise vital conservative values in the face of the leftist onslaught. Conservatism is ultimately about ensuring that government is limited to the scope laid out by its founders. It is about protecting the character of our civilization - our language, our culture, and the Christian heritage that has enabled us to be free in the first place. It is about taking pride in our country and realizing that what has been built here is substantially different from what has been built in other lands; that it is better and that it is worth preserving. Finally, it is about recognizing the value of human life at all stages of development and ensuring that it is preserved and respected as far as possible without extending the role of government. Insofar as one might go wobbly on these principles, their position on that particular matter is not conservative.
Unfortunately, there are times when we lose track of the notion that there are more ways than one to pursue these ends. There is a very human tendency to assume that a difference in means is necessarily the pursuance of a different end. I’ve seen conservatives who support a proactive approach towards world issues and conservatives who support neo-isolationist ideals - while both might adamantly disagree on how it needs to be done, at least both certainly agree that there is value in securing the protection of our nation from outside threats. There is little point in disparaging individuals by denying them the title of “conservative” when, on deeper inspection, their core values are quite the same as your own.
And then there are people who might simply be misguided or flat out wrong on an issue or two. There are individuals who adamantly believe that abortion should not be legal yet mistakenly believe that government solutions to aid single mothers and poorer families might help prevent it. On the flip side, you have people who believe that pro-life legislation involves an expansion of government power that encroaches on individual privacy. Both views are certainly misguided, but I think there is folly in dismissing people who hold such views as “liberals” instead of building around the conservative values they do hold and framing the debate around that.
I believe that most Americans are conservative. The problem is that many Americans do not hold conservative values clear across the board when it comes to their beliefs and, because we’ve been on the defensive in maintaining the essence of conservatism, we’ve basically told them we don’t want them. We’re telling the hardworking guy who supports the troops and knows he’s getting squeezed on his taxes that he’s a liberal because he might happen to argue strongly in support of legalized abortion or gay marriage. For the sake of maintaining purity on one issue we’ve pushed away a potential ally on two others. While those are certainly very important issues that are very clearly defined within conservatism by fundamental principles, the fact remains that we do ourselves harm by pushing people away in such a manner.
I think that an insistence upon orthodoxy is going to kill us. While support is down for Obama, that does not mean that support is magically rising for conservatism. We’ve spent too much time telling people that they’re not conservative enough for that to happen; instead, they’ll simply go on to support the sort of milquetoast Republicans that liberals absolutely adore. While we certainly need to continue to present clear principles, we also need to remind the American people that they really do agree with those principles. There will be disagreements. Those disagreements, however, ought not stand in the way of promoting the majority of principles upon which we do in fact agree.
I believe that telling people with strong conservative positions on a number of important issues that they are liberal because of their views on a few others is a terrible mistake. If someone feels strongly enough about conservative values to identify as a “conservative” then they are a conservative in my book as well, despite the possibility of substantial disagreement on certain issues. We’ll focus on our agreements and go from there. Likewise, I think that our current tendency to focus on certain individuals who are orthodox yet do not resonate with large segments of the public is going to be a terrible mistake as well. I would rather have a candidate that I mostly agree with who highlights that on which we agree than a candidate with whom I agree 100% around whom the highlight becomes how everyone else believes differently. Movements that focus on the latter rarely achieve anything substantial regarding their goals.
We like Jim Robinson, Rush, Mark Levin and Sarah. There prolly are a few more.
I’ll put in a good word for my Representative, Blaine Luetkemeyer.
If you want those type of candidates then please go over to DU, the dimwit party is full of them and the constituents will all vote for them.
If you ever want to see the frickin' communist throw out of our government you had better start supporting people like Sarah.
You dumb a**es say that conservatives won't support anyone, the truth is YOU won't support them, you want the same old BS RINOs back in office, you want big government, huge spendiing, no freedom type of government.
If the last two elections didn't teach you anything about RINOs and their intent to help destroy America then you had better check into a hospital for a brain transplant.
FR is an open forum with thousands of posters.
Somebody is going to hate anybody. Just because you see somebody blasted does not mean they are generally disliked.
We don’t engage in group-think. We don’t schedule Two-Minutes-Hate for every morning at 10:00. That’s a Democrat thing.
That said, I think most here like Palin, Pawlenty, Cheney (Dick and Liz), Dubya, and Mark Sanford (before he went hiking on the Appalachian Trail). I could name about a dozen others. Boehner and Cantor, perhaps. Maybe Dick Armey.
But, I guarantee, somebody on this board will have nothing good to say about every name on that list.
:’D Thanks TH.