Posted on 11/08/2006 4:50:12 PM PST by Aussie Dasher
Republicans lost control of the House, and perhaps the Senate, because they abandoned their conservative principles and in the end stood for nothing, Rush Limbaugh said today.
In his Wednesday broadcast, America’s top talker said that until Republicans begin asking themselves what’s wrong with themselves they are never going to fix their problems.
When things go wrong, Rush said, "you must look inward and ask first, ‘What did we do wrong? What could we have done better? What mistakes did we make?”
Commenting that although Republicans lost, "Conservatism did not lose, Republicanism lost last night. Republicanism, being a political party first, rather than an ideological movement, is what lost last night.”
The Democrats, he said "beat something last night with nothing. They advanced no agenda other than their usual anti-war position. They had no contract — they really never did get specific. Their message was one of ‘vote for us; the other guys have been in power too long.’”
Rush further admonished, "There was no dominating conservative message that came from the [Republican] top and filtered down throughout in this campaign.”
He added that if there was conservatism in the campaign, it was on the Democratic side: "There were conservative Democrats running for office in the House of Representatives and in a couple of Senate races won by Democrats yesterday.” He cited James Webb as an example.
He also said it was conservatism that won fairly big when it was tried yesterday, but it was Democrats who ran as conservatives and not their GOP rivals. He added that the Democratic leadership had gone out and recruited conservative candidates because they knew liberals could not win running against Republicans in red states.
Rush quoted Thomas Sowell as explaining that the latest example of election fraud is actually what the Democrats did — they nominated a bunch of moderate and conservative candidates for the express purpose of electing a far-left Democratic leadership.
"The Democrats could not have won the House, being liberals,” Rush said. "Liberalism didn’t win anything yesterday; Republicanism lost. Conservatism was nowhere to be found except on the Democratic side.”
The root of the problem, Rush said, is that "our side hungers for ideological leadership and we’re not getting it from the top. Conservatism was nowhere to be found in this campaign from the top. The Democrats beat something with nothing. They didn’t have to take a stand on anything other than their usual anti-war positions. They had no clear agenda and they didn’t dare offer one. Liberalism will still lose every time it’s offered.”
Republicans, Rush said, allowed themselves to be defined. "Without elected conservative leadership from the top Republicans in the House and Senate republicans are free to freelance and say the hell with party unity.”
That leads, Rush said, to the emergence of RINOs — Republicans in name only.
Republicans in Congress, Rush explained, were held captive by the party’s leadership in the White House. They were put into a position of having to endorse policies with which as conservatives they disagreed.
"The Democratic Party,” Rush went on to say, "is the party of entitlements; but the Republicans come up with this Medicare prescription drug plan that the polls said that the public didn’t want and was not interested in. That is not conservatism. Conservatives do not grow the government and offer entitlements as a means of buying votes. But that’s what the Republicans in Congress had to support in order to stay in line with the Party from the top.
"It is silly to blame the media; it is silly to blame the Democrats; it is silly to go out and try to find all these excuses,” Rush said. "We have proved that we can beat them … we have proved that we can withstand whatever we get from the drive-by media. Conservatism does that — conservatism properly applied, proudly, eagerly, with vigor and honesty will triumph over that nine times out of 10 in this current political and social environment. It just wasn’t utilized in this campaign.”
Rush also blamed the failure to embrace conservatism on Republican’s fear of being criticized from those in the so-called establishment. Republicans, he charged, go out of their way to avoid being criticized, fearing they will be characterized as extremists and kooks.
As a result conservatism gets watered down, and the GOP loses the support of the nation’s conservative majority Rush stated.
Anything can beat nothing, Rush concluded, "and it happened yesterday.”
I don't think Bush and the Republicans ever made a strong, concerted effort to counter the 'Rat and MSM message of "disaster" in Iraq. If we don't learn that lesson from this defeat, we're just going to lose again.
Exactly right. Given a poor execution of the war, out of control spending, an open gangway to illegals, massive new entitlements, no exposition of conservative principals, 24/7/365 pummeling by a lying, distorting press, and piss-poor campaigns by most repubs its amazing the losses weren't much greater.
As an aside, the press has not been this venomous since the days of Nixon. Given that both Nixon and Bush did more or less what the left would do, (clean air act, educ. dept., OSHA, medicare D, etc.) it is odd that it seems to infuriate them when this stuff is done by a Pubbie.
Here in CT the republicans basically wrote off our senate candidate and campaigned for Lieberman. I almost drank the Lieberman Kool Aid because the only thing I knew about Schlessinger was he used a fake ID at Foxwoods. Finally, on election eve the local paper ran a side by side comparison on all the issues. Lo and behold there wasn't a dimes worth of difference between Lamont and Lieberman so I ended up voting for Schlessinger. Bottom line, if the republicans treated other races like they did in CT, its no wonder they got spanked.
You have to wonder how many of these close races the GOP would have won had only they stood for something.
Those weren't the reasons why they lost.
No, not true enough.
ACU Rating lifetime
Allen 92%
Burns 91%
Santorum 88% Talent 93%
ACU Rating 2005
Allen 100%
Burns 100%
Santorum 92%
Talent 84%
Rush is partly right, but conservatism doesn't sell everywhere, and instead of sneering "RINO," we need to recognise that in a lot of seats, our choice is between an R who votes as we would like 30% of the time, and a D who gives us 0% support.
That being said, the problem was far less not running on conservative principals, as not governing by conservative principals. You had too many candidates who could neither run on what has been happening in Washington, because conservative don't like it, nor run against what has been happening in Washington, because Rs have been in charge. They were left with the weak tea argument of "as bad as I've made things in Washington, they will be even worse if you don't send me back there for another term." We won't have that problem in 2008, but a whole bunch of "moderate" Ds will.
The War is neither popular, nor appreciated. Wars should not be popular, and when they are not, the public has to understand very well why we are fighting, and why, bad as body bags and maimed troops are, not fighting the war will be even worse. Bush has, by and large, done an awful job the past few years, of getting that message home to the public. Sure, Freepers who get news on the internet can lecture on this issue, but the average voter has spent the past few years hearing nothing but bad news. Even those who oppose cut and run are mad about the War.
And don't even mention how the MSM is working hand in hand with the D leadership to make the War unpopular and unappreciated. We all knew that was going to happen. It is just one more thing that Bush should have plugged into his calculations before this ever began.
The real reason is that the Republicans in the Senate gave them no good reason to vote for them except, "we suck less than dems." That worked in 2002 and 2004. It finally ran out of steam in 2006.
Look, I voted. In fact, I ran the GOTV effort for the southern half of a big county. Last night was the first night I have had more than three hours sleep for about a week.
The point is, I stayed involved. But, honestly, I can't blame the folks who didn't vote. Blaming voters for staying home is scapegoating the wrong folks. You need to blame the politicians that took power and then, instead of advancing the interests of their constituents, used it to shovel pork for four years and take payoffs from Jack Abramoff.
Even with that, the R's suck less than the dems. The dems are beyond awful, even if they were honest. But you want a big turnout? Give your base a reason to vote.
Then those who stayed home because of one or two issues that seemed to bother them have no one to blame but themselves.
Why? Because the House ain't likely to be Republican for a very long time.
The party as a whole, starting with the President, did abandon many of (what many of us thought were) its principles, notably the idea of limited government, even if there are some guys who are exceptions.
Add to this a war in which a decisive victory has not been achieved, and you've got defeat.
He just meant that the Dems followed Pelosi's strategy to achieve a Dem majority by running moderates (e.g. Jim Webb) instead of true liberals in key states.
As Thomas Sowell wrote Tuesday,
Democrats have learned to avoid admitting to being liberals and this year are running a number of moderate candidates. If these new moderate candidates are elected and give the Democrats control of Congress, that control will be exercised by senior Democrats who will hold leadership positions -- and all of them are liberal extremists, whether people like Nancy Pelosi in the House or Ted Kennedy and John Kerry in the Senate.Getting people to vote for moderates, in order to put extremists in power, may be the newest and biggest voter fraud
It worked in Virginia...
Yep, and sometimes the margin between liberals and conservatives is that fine...but don't worry, folks will remember your accomplishments for what they are.
Wow...for once Rushbo earned his pay this week and is right on the mark.
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