Posted on 05/15/2010 12:57:52 AM PDT by The Watcher
I watched the video of Gov Christie talking to the reporter and it reminded me why I just can't be in the GOP. Or any party, it seems. I thought I'd post my thoughts on the topic, which I wrote separately in a moment of introspection.
I've never voted for a Democrat, just to be sure... But why can't the GOP be something besides simpering, terrified lapdogs, afraid of their own shadow? Seriously, why can't you grow some...something... and develop at least a minute fraction of the guts of Christie? Why is the RNC so utterly deferential to libs and to the press? I mean, grow a pair. Say "we're stopping this leftward lemming rush over the cliff of destruction, even if it means we fill the house, senate, and every office in DC with protesting Tea Party people and bring this government to a HALT! Either you're serious.... Or you're not. And presently, the GOP is about as unserious as those actors in Hollywood whining about global warming after flying around the world in thier jets.
Can't understand why the Tea Party sprang into being? It's simple, ordinary, non partisan people, have become SO frustrated at the Democrats stupidity, and the utter refusal of the GOP to be anything but terrified lapdogs who do not believe in the Constiution, law, or anything vaguely American. RNC... GROW SOME CONVICTIONS AND FIGHT FOR THE COUNTRY, instead of just playing silly games.
It seems that few people these days want to take the time to say what they really think. Perhaps, they don't want to really think, and just want to "feel" aabout things. Well, that's not me.
When the TEA Party people started their protests, and the protests gained strength, I realized why I identified with them. I have never publicly protested anything. I have never run for office. I would not want it, even if it were offered without the race, because I'm not one who really wants to be confrontational. If I were in office, I would have to be. After all, the mindless stupidity of being ten or twelve or fourteen trillion in debt, or whatever it is this week, is so beyond anything acceptable as "sane" it's no longer a matter of debating the merits of what's being done. It's simply calling "stupid"...Stupid.
Any individual or businessman who ran his affairs this way would be recognized as either a fraud...cheat...or mind bogglingly stupid. But, seemingly no politician can bring himself to say it.
Adding massive new entitlements, hugely economicly disruptive rules, laws, taxes, and regulations, and massive new controls on the marketplace in these times? Again, it's so many light-years from a position called "sane" there's not words to describe it.
Us ordinary people may have never approved. We just somehow, perhaps naively thought that eventually, as it does in every other aspect of our lives, reality would force the bozos who are playing government into rational behavior. But the precise opposite happened. And now, the last vestige of the sane and sensible, the ordinary schmucks, have realized that the inmates are running the country, not just the assylum.
Which brings me back to my original point. There's nothing even slightly radical about believing tens of trillions of debt, along with scores of trillions of redistributive governmental obligations is insanity, just NOT wise or prudent...Or even surviveable.
It's not even slightly insane to think that government should live within the clear, obvious, and, well, very, very plain boundaries of the Constitution. And that cleverly constructed blather to the contrary should simply be ignored as coming from unserious people. Nor is any of this "radical", either. In fact, it's, well, prudent.
So why can't the GOP even try? I mean, seriously. The opposition to Obamacare was so pathetic. Either it was wrong... or it wasn't. If it was wrong, it should have been stopped. And I mean, STOPPED. The left's perfectly willing to blackmail and disrupt, and all they're doing is just being obnoxious until you give them someone else's money so they'll go away... until tomorrow, when they want some more.
Why didn't the GOP open the doors to their offices and to the whole of Congress? Flood the place with protesters and bring the proceedings to a STOP??? And the, negotiated hardball. "Yeah, we'll ask them to leave when you promise in writing to pass OUR bill!".
It's not like we the people are trying to do anything but get the Constitution back in order and the government back into it's boundaries, and sanity restored to our nation's books. No, we're not trying to take over, become tyrants, inflict massive social upheaveal or any other such stuff. No, just plain old fashioned prudence and judgement and respect for our fundamental laws.
If the GOP can't bring itself to fight for that, without shame, without hesitation, without apology or excuse, when what good is it? The other side plays as dishonestly, as deceptively, as violently, as demandingly and plays desperate hardball... TO DEMAND WRONG, COMPROMISE OF THE CONSTITUTION AND THE RULE OF LAW. Why is the GOP so timid about doing the RIGHT ( and defensible in every aspect ) thing, and unwilling to do it with more determination than an overcooked spaghettie noodle?
It's easy to see why the TEA Party is here. It's a last desperate plea from the final and last resort of the sane and sensible. So, when...Or should I ask, WILL, the GOP ever decide to get serious? If not, it serves no useful purpose and might as well not exist. It certainly isn't doing anything worthy now. As my daddy used to say "try" counts nothing, "Do" is all that matters.
I'd like to get an answer from Steele himself. From the "leadership" in Congress that's not leading. How ya suppose I get them to do it?
Answers from Steele?
Goanna be a very , very long wait for ya. Just don't hold your breadth that's all.
Why do you think it’s an accident? What do you think a RINO is? The Leftist movement hits both sides, Rat and Pub, Carrot and Stick, Angry Demanding Communists and Guilt Ridden Simpering Cowardly Saboteurs - neither side of which really gives a damn about anything but power over the “little people.” So don’t believe the acts - the Left isn’t angry, and the RINOs aren’t cowards. It’s all an act for liberals and “fiscal conservatives” to vote for, until enough power is attained that voting is no longer necessary.
Your answer isn’t serious, either. It’s just a cynical catcall from the sidelines. But, a little too typical from the late, once-great Free Republic. At one time, real patriots actually spawned from here and did things. Now it’s gotten to be a lot more of a lineup of unpublished punditry.
The question, as is the condition of our nation, is one of serious nature and one of almost incalculable importance and failure to address it is one of consequences almost beyond our ability to comprehend. Why can’t anyone be serious?
It's the only show in town.
So right so true!!!!!!!!
The GOP doesn’t believe in itself. It believes in liberalism because liberalism is what comes across in the media as the inevitable standard and media tells everybody that the GOP conservationism (stereotyped as greed and lacking compassion) sucks. Democrats are morally superior and cool. So everybody dances to that tune. Laura Bush even told George to cut out the “Wanted: dead or alive” because she was a liberal and it was too harsh.
What will stop the nonsense? Hard times like in Arizona. Being liberal is a luxury.
But the reason I left the Republicans was simply found in the bid for amnesty for illegal aliens which was (and is) pushed for by Geo. Bush and John McCain. It is in the form of a question which no one, to this very day, has provided a suitable answer for:
Republicans rely upon "the Southern Strategy," as perfected by Reagan Conservatism. Why would Republicans pimp an amnesty which is guaranteed to lose them the desert Southwest, and nearly all of the gulf-coast states of the South?
In doing so, they pretty much resign themselves to never holding power again.
As much as some would chalk this up to pure stupidity, in point of fact, no one is that stupid.
There is another game afoot, and they cannot be trusted. My own conclusion supposes this game to be globalism, and it has been confirmed to my satisfaction.
I resigned the Republican party in 2007, and vote/contribute now only for/to confirmed Reagan Conservatives of the highest caliber. Never again for that big, pretty rhinestone "R".
Ditto
I have five or six meaningful issues with pubbies while pretty nearly everything dems ever think about doing is some sort of an issue. Even worst case the difference is still real and large.
Republican leaders have gonads the size of dust mites!
I have never publicly protested anything. I have never run for office. I would not want it, even if it were offered without the race, because I'm not one who really wants to be confrontational.
I offer you a vanity of my own which I published months ago before the victory in New Jersey by a guy with real stuff, Governor Christie, which tells us why we got a Barack Obama and the answer lies as much in your remarks quoted above as in my vanity. You take your frustration out on Republican politicians who did exactly what you wanted them to do. I do not mean to pick on you personally, and I sympathize entirely with your frustration, but I ask you, is not the situation which obtains today the inevitable result of such fastidiousness as you're describe in yourself? I also ask, have you thought this through?
Here's the vanity:
Returning from church, "silent" Calvin Coolidge was asked by the press, "what was the sermon about?" "Sin," he answered, offering no more. "What did the preacher say about sin?" pursued the press. "He was against it."
The burlesque in the 23rd Congressional District in New York State demonstrates beyond peradventure that the elites running the Republican Party are hostile to the interests of the conservative movement. It is also clear that unless the Republican Party can accommodate the Tea Party movement it will fail in the upcoming elections.
Reform now!
Judging from the intermeddling of the Washington elite on behalf of Charlie Crist in Florida together with their indefensible endorsement and financing of Rino, Dede Scozzafava in 23rd District of New York, it is probable that the establishment elites in the National Republican Party are covertly hostile or passively aggressive toward the Tea Party Movement. Possibly, these elites fear the Tea Party movement constitutes a threat to their personal power. Possibly, they fear the movement because it is unaccountable and likely to become a loose cannon. Indeed, is not inconceivable that the apparatchiks of the Republican Party would have secretly preferred a loss to Democrats than a win by the Tea Party Movement.
But let us not assay virtue exclusively on one side and only evil on the other.
At this point the Tea Party movement is a protest movement and not a reform movement. It is clear about what it is against. It is against taxing and spending, taxing and borrowing, borrowing and spending. It is also clear that it wants to throw out representatives of either party who trespass on these three taboos. But what does the movement stand for ?
The Tea Party Movement has no plank on whether to cut Social Security as a means to balance the budget because it has no platform and the movement has no platform because it is not a party. Would The Movement raise taxes to maintain Social Security at current levels and standards? Would it tax to maintain our national defense capabilities at their current levels? Would it tax to pay down the debt? We do not know and, revealingly, we do not even know whom to ask.
Clearly, The Movement as a general principle would prefer to reduce spending rather than raise taxes. Would the movement choose to reduce spending on Social Security rather than raise taxes? Would it cut Medicare to reduce taxes? To balance the budget?
These are questions that the Tea Party movement has not addressed and professional politicians, like those despised Republican elites in Washington for example, know that the trajectory for entitlements like Social Security and Medicare are such that if they are not reduced they will ultimately consume the entire federal budget and then bankrupt the country. Even Barack Obama himself has acknowledged this and, in an Orwellian triumph of illogic, has exploited this reality to justify spending more on health care reform to keep the already bankrupt health-care system from bankrupting the whole country. But it doesn't matter who says it, there simply is not enough room in discretionary spending, even if it we eliminated all military spending, to get the budget under control. Whenever you hear a politician say that he will solve a fiscal problem by curbing waste fraud and abuse, use one hand to cover your wallet and the other to cover your genitals because you will need to protect both.
"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves,
Why does the professional politician tell us that he will resolve these massive shortfalls by eliminating waste fraud and abuse? Because that's how he got to be a professional politician in the first place and that's how he remains a professional politician. The unattractive truth about us as voters is that we seek out those politicians who will pander to our eagerness to dodge reality. One needs look no further than the neck and neck race in New Jersey where Corzine is able to remain a viable candidate for just that reason. The very strength of the Tea Party movement is that there is no one in charge who must answer to this conundrum: Do we tax the people more or cut grandma's Social Security and deny her end-of-life Medicare treatment? The closer the Tea Party Movement gets to political power the less easy it will be for it to dodge these kinds of questions and the more political power will elude it. The more it answers these questions, the more it will fracture. That is simply the lifecycle for all political movements.
So long as the Tea Party movement remains in the "protest" stage, it is playing offense not defense, and it need not answer these questions. One might note that the Obama presidential campaign succeeded in riding protest right into the Oval Office without ever once being forced into the "reform" mode. It succeeded in this by exploiting media bias and presuming on the generous nature of the American people who wanted to settle the problem of race in America once and for all. Director of White House Communications, Anita Dunn, has recently revealed in a taped interview how the Obama campaign contrived through artifice to avoid confronting these hard questions. But in a larger sense, while we conservatives complained that Obama was an "empty suit," Obama confounded us with the race card. This was a classic case of a politician succeeding by misdirection. He did not say, "vote for me or you are a racist" far from it, as an accomplished prestidigitator he was more subtle, "vote for me" he intimated, "and receive an indulgence for your original American sin of racism." He chanted "reform" ("change") but it was only through inadvertence, as occurred by chance with Joe The Plumber, or when he thought the microphones were off when describing the "bitter clingers" of Pennsylvania to San Francisco fat cats, that Obama ever revealed the real radical nature of that "change."
Indulgences free for the taking, just pull the lever marked "Obama"
Axelrod contrived a political campaign of genius. Barack Obama ran as a white, black man so that he could govern as a pink Manchurian Marxist. If Obama had run as what he was, a radical redistributionist, he would surely have been repudiated at the polls. But his race gave Axelrod the running room to avoid telling the voters the truth and the media provided the downfield blocking. Now the tea party protesters are furious. They are indignant. They sense they have been duped. They have been seduced and betrayed and they are mad as hell. Curiously, they take a good portion of their wrath out against the Republicans whose sins in comparison to Obama's can only be described as venal.
To Govern is to Choose.
Now that the real nature of that reform has become evident, the Tea Party Movement is aroused in full cry, and rightly so. That is not to demean the Tea Party Movement but simply to acknowledge that this protest movement is consistent with the best in the American tradition. It is naïve (as well as heretical) to believe that Obama is the Messiah. Equally it is naïve to believe that any protest movement does not carry with it the seeds of its own corruption which must eventually be reformed in its turn.
Let us return to what we know the Tea Party Movement is against: taxing, spending, and borrowing. We have noted that the movement has not been compelled to say what it is for apart from a return to constitutional principles of our founding fathers. But what are they for when they have to choose between raising taxes or cutting grandma's Social Security check? Between borrowing and cutting grandma's Medicare and denying her a desperately needed hip replacement?
These are difficult decisions and a party might be able to finesse these questions without answering, as Barack Obama succeeded in doing by exploiting his race, but by the next election cycle both the press and the voters will demand answers to these questions.
We conservatives have been betrayed literally left and right. Elected Republicans to our dismay and to the injury of the party and the country have finessed the hard questions by telling us lies; they said, let there be new entitlements, let us borrow, and for God's sake, keep the party going and the Devil take the hindmost. If the Tea Party Movement dodges these questions as the Republicans have done, or lies blatantly about them as the Democrats have done, it will betray its soul and it will be either discarded or reformed in its turn. But if conservatives have been lied to, Independents who largely populate the tea party movement have virtually begged the politicians to lie to them about grandma.
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; … A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; ~Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
If the Tea Party Movement keeps its integrity and answers these questions it will have to make very hard choices. More immediately, it will have to have the architecture in place by which those choices can be made. That means it will need an organization which in turn implies the need for a Constitution to provide for orderly procedures for voting etc. It implies that the movement will have "leaders." These leaders will have to be empowered to speak for the Party . They will in the fullness of time unavoidably become elitists who will seek to retain their positions and enjoy the perquisites of office. They will begin to play the political game. To protect their sinecures they will find ways to dodge hard answers to hard questions. In this they will ultimately become indistinguishable from the elites who inhabit the Republican Party today. Eventually the cry will go out, "Reform The Tea Party Now!"
There will be those who will declare in disgust, "no do not try to reform the Tea Party, it is hopeless, the party is too corrupt and cannot be reformed. It must be replaced with a new party." The ruling Brahmins of the Tea Party will at first ignore the reformers and then denigrate them. Ultimately the reformers will either be absorbed into the establishment Tea Party, as most reform movements of substance historically have been, or the reformers will evaporate away into the American scene, as movements on the fringe have done, or, most unlikely, the reformers will become the dominant party of the right, an unlikely achievement which only the Republicans themselves have managed to do.
This is not to denigrate the Tea Party movement or the reform spirit which animates it. A harbor cannot be cleansed but by the changing tide. It is the reform spirit that contributes to making America what it is. Without it we would all be living in Chicago.
Rather this is to provide perspective, hopefully an adult perspective, which empowers conservatives to shoulder their generational responsibilities like grownups. We conservatives are charged with a generational duty to both past and future generations to pass on the unspeakably precious legacy bequeathed to them by the generation of the Great Depression and World War II; who got it from the immigrants, the Doughboys and the pioneers; who in their turn received it from a great generation that fought the Civil War; who owed it all to the Founding Fathers and the Winter Soldiers.
To be worthy of the name, Conservatives know that we must conserve that which was bequeathed to us in blood and toil, leavened with no small measure of God’s grace, and render the next generation at least as good as we got. We are conservators of a sacred trust. Therefore, what Obama is doing to this legacy is not just ill advised, it is profane .
I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am, let's face it. It was you, Charley.
Liberal media observers profess to find "Teabaggers" angry and they find that anger to be off-putting. Let them stand in our moccasins and judge us. A mountebank has presumed on the good nature of the American people to secure office by false pretenses where he has revealed himself to be a Manchurian Marxist. This, in the wake of a "compassionate conservative" who was long on compassion and spotty on conservatism. Small wonder tea party people are angry at both sides. We are angry because we know that we will not be able to pass on to our children that which was given to us by grace because we were in effect betrayed and made "bums" by those in whom we have placed trust. Every second the national debt clock ticks and every second our current chance to do something for our kids diminishes. Nevertheless, in the discharge of our responsibilities we must not forget, "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves,
As The Book says, as there is "a time to break down" there is also "a time to build up" and as there is a time to "cast away" there is also a time to "keep."
I say to those who would cavalierly abandon the Republican Party, you will have an obligation to put in its place as good as you took.
They must denounce such Tyranny and repudiate it unapologetically. Socialism, however well-meaning its adherents claim to be, is PURE EVIL, and must be labeled as such.
War must be declared against authoritarian collectivism, in all its forms, and this war must be fought on all fronts.
If these un-American ideas are not defeated, civil war will inevitably result, and the cost will be countless lives of both Patriots and Tyrants...
They belong to the same country club, whadda ya spect?
IMHO, most people were, "going along to get along". They were comfortable with their lives. There wouldn't be a Tea Party were it not for the discomfort the recession has caused.
As far as the Republican Party, it should dissolve. The progressive Republicans have done nothing but hurt conservatism. When conservatives complain about a socialist program Democrats will forever point at Republicans saying, "Republicans voted for it too." We need a new party. Not a third party, a new one. A party that stands for America and Americans, not every third world cesspool country. A party that's not ashamed to stand up and say they are for America first. I'm done with this, "we're all one world" crap.
If you want change from Republicans then fight to put ones in office which can effect change. It's the closest you're EVER going to get to limited government.
Stop pissing up a rope!
You said: “I say to those who would cavalierly abandon the Republican Party, you will have an obligation to put in its place as good as you took.”
If I put NOTHING in it’s place, I will have fulfilled that, as of now. You’re not understanding my point at all. My point is that nobody, apparently, in the GOP leadership is willing to lead. AT ALL. If the leftists can mob a bank until the bank agrees to make bad loans, lead by taxpayer funded “activists”, then why are we on the right limited to “nice dialog” and “symbolic gestures”?
I came home one day to find that we had a serious financial crisis, one which would have caused a serious family crisis on top of that. So, we “fixed” the problem. As in, identified what had to be done, determined the course of action, and did it. It’s no more complex than that. It required making choices, taking some actions, and yet, it wasn’t actually anything particularly controversial.
So, I’m not understanding why the games, and no action. We ARE broke. The course is unsustainable. The actions to be done are not even any longer a matter of debate, other than minor matters at the fringes. The consequences are world changing if we do not, not to mention both the moral condemnation and our own sullied future history if we don’t. So, what’s the issue? Why play games? Why sit in DC and do diddly? The obvious course of action is to just...win. And it’s time to do that. So why is the GOP so desperately afraid?
The TEA Party phenomenom is defined as a protest. Obviously. The people can’t propose legislation, vote on it, or argue in Congress. Our “role” here is to be the parent who sees the baby trying to climb the drawers to get to the cookies in the top shelf and say “NO!”. We cannot, by design, “lead”. Nor should we be.
Nor should the collective responses be manufactured into a political party, just so it can play footsie games in DC.
Rather, I want an answer from the guys who claim to be on my side in DC... “Why won’t you get off your duffs and do something???” instead of playing the parlor game?
I agree completely and have been passing the Christie video around. I left the Republican Party precisely because they have neither the inclination nor the abilitiy to fight back.
Steele is a perfect example of what the Republicans do. They boxed themselves in by picking a black man to counter Obama and be politically correct. Now they are in trouble if they fire him and in trouble if they keep him
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.