Posted on 11/08/2004 4:43:57 AM PST by opocno
We can crack the cultural code, because we've done it before. When Bill Clinton offered progressive ways to solve problems that Republicans only talked about -- like crime, welfare and family values -- he got through to millions of middle-class Americans who'd been tuning out Democrats for years.
We can't let those hearts close to us again. We need to bridge the trust gap on national security by spelling out our own offense against terrorism, not letting Republicans portray us as the antiwar party in the war on terrorism. We need to lead, not follow, in the family values debate, by pressing our own ideas to give parents more tools to protect their children from a coarsening culture, hold absent fathers accountable for support and enable parents to spend more time with their families.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I said in an earlier post when Trent Lott was given the boot as majority leader that this country is basically moderate to conservative and that, as long as the Pubbies didn't shoot themselves in the foot, they would run things for a very long time. I stand by that assertion today.
Do you have a password for the W.P. that you will share?
"We need to lead, not follow, in the family values debate, by pressing our own ideas to give parents more tools to protect their children from a coarsening culture, hold absent fathers accountable for support and enable parents to spend more time with their families."
Their "own ideas" have been quite visible for the past 40 years. They continue to believe that by redefining cultural views, parsing language to corrupt it, and creating a cultural divide, they can win.
What they did in the 60's to overturn centuries of culture, I see happening again. I also look for an antiwar movement becoming very vocal. We have to be on guard for the same tactics to be used again. If it worked once, they will use it.
That's going to be a tough job. Kinda like Bonnie and Clyde championing the case for bank reform.
... by pressing our own ideas to give parents more tools to protect their children from a coarsening culture
Hmmmm. One such "tool" might be refusing to architect such a culture. It is liberals and their "license = liberty" mentality that CREATES such coarseness.
... hold absent fathers accountable for support
More state-sanctioned male-bashing.
... and enable parents to spend more time with their families.
More class warfare rhetoric. (Seems only yesterday that Democrats were cheering for women's rights, you know, the necessity of women to find their self-worth in the marketplace rather than the home?)
In other words, the Democrats are going to try to reach a totally new crowd with the same stale ideas that have failed so often before.
God grant me stupid enemies.
-"by pressing our own ideas to give parents more tools to protect their children from a coarsening culture, hold absent fathers accountable for support and enable parents to spend more time with their families."-
More band-aid problem-solving. Liberalism is the cause, not the solution. They simply don't get it.
The guy gets it wrong in the first sentence. What crime, welfare and family values problems did Klinton solve?
The only trouble is - when they engage in family value discussions, they either lie or point at entitlement programs. If they tell the truth, they are dead.
Family values to Clinton: Oral sex, perjury, sexual harassment, rape, corruption, murder, fraud, etc.
Go to WWW.bugmenot.com, click on FAQ and get the instructions. It works with many articles, not all.
Well, a good place to start, Dems, is to support school vouchers to get the children in the worst schools into better ones...but your huge NEA support would crumble then, wouldn't it? You could oppose the gay marriage cancer to our basic institution of marriage, but that would make the gays and Hollywood furious. You could oppose the murder of babies, but that would make your feminist covens explode. Special interests like that will keep you from ever convincing the Christian heartland and South that you are sincere and can be trusted with the future of the USA.
Let me sum up the article. Bill Clinton was great. We can do it again with another Bill Clinton. The democrats are LOST in the woods...
I do think the Democrats can win if they are center to center right. Just look at Phil Bredesen in Tennessee, a Democratic Governor in a Red State holding down government spending and opposing a state income tax. That's the direction the national party should move in. But it won't because it doesn't care what Red State America thinks.
Republicans need to use these words everytime the democrats try to talk about the Democrat Party values. Democrats supported this slug, AND his wife. And yet the democrats have the nerve to complain about Richard Nixon and make fun of Dan Quayle and family values.
Does anyone remember what happened to Dan when he talked about tort reform and family values? Hollyweird made a movie to spoof him. Name one democrat who applauded Dan for his courage to speak out against Murphy Brown. Yet, the Republicans never use this against democrats.
hey, Dems...wanna reform your party and become the 'loyal opposition party' ? .... kick out the Marxists as a start...
I sent him the following e-mail:
I rarely respond to this sort of thing, but as I considered you to be one of the more thoughtful advisors to President Clinton, you might be receptive to a critique from an ardent Bush voter in New York City.
You decry Bush as a "bad President" and give your party credit at having run a "good campaign." Do you not understand that by calling Bush a "bad President" you alienate a vast swath of the "stupid rubes" you wish to persuade? You and your compadres may go on and on about how you don't think red state voters are stupid rubes (I watched a lot of the post-election panels on C-Span -- Peter Fenn may be the worst offender), but you invariably say they vote "against their interests."
You believe your spin that only the wealthy benefited from President Bush's policies. WRONG!!!!!
I had been able to persuade many of my co-workers (urban "rubes" to you -- people making close to or less than $50,000/year) to vote for President Bush by stressing how Kerry has opposed 401k accounts. 401k accounts have enabled a significant percentage of "pink collar" SINGLE WOMEN (i.e., secretaries) to be able to look forward to financial independence. That is the next demographic your party will be losing!
You think that you can appeal to "values voters" by offering government handouts and programs to cosset them from cradle to grave. Guess what? There are "values voters" who simply want the tools to provide for themselves. You pat yourself on the back for offering all sorts of government programs for college attendance. My co-workers are funding (through President Bush's wonderful policies) college accounts for infant grandchildren. Since they started these accounts when the children were newborn, the parents will not be voting for your party to get bennies and freebies but will have saved on their own. Needless to say, your party opposes tax deductions for IRA increases (even opposed IRA creation), 401-k increases (opposed 401-k accounts to begin with), and tax-free education savings accounts. Not to mention health savings accounts.
So you say the middle class has not benefited from Bush's tax policies? You are so wrong. And I look forward to convincing even more of my New York City co-workers to vote for the Republican candidate in 2008 so they can continue, through wise Republican tax policy, to provide for themselves and their families in the future without the need to depend on the Democrats for freebies and bennies.
Why not just cease enabling the coarsening culture? Why not eliminate welfare dependency and high taxes, so nuclear families with stay-at-home mothers are once again feasible? Why not go after the problem at its source, rather than simply offering band-aid solutions to problems that liberals have created themselves? The coarsening culture is the liberals' fault. The absent fathers are the liberals' fault. So is the breakdown of the family.
Their idea of "offense" is to pretend the terrorists isn't a problem
We need to lead, not follow, in the family values debate, by pressing our own ideas to give parents more tools to protect their children from a coarsening culture
We are sick of your "tools" .. your party has done nothing but taken parents rights to raise our children away from us
Soooooooo ... in the words of Terri Kerry .. "Shove It"
I have just had a thought...about the democrats through the years...
Remember Caroline Kennedy screaming about President Bush invoking her father's name? Well, truth is...President Kennedy was moderate. He cut taxes and he was strong on defense. He bears no resemblance to today's
democrats.
On the other hand, Bubba tried to sell the idea he was just a good ole boy...moderate etc. He changed the face of the nation...and political correctness had a brand new meaning. However, compared to Hillary, Bubba seems moderate.
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