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.”
The "I can't wait"....part was 100% sarcasm...of course.
Take a look at my tagline. Mark Sanford fits the kind of leader you are hungering for. He just won re-election as SC Governor. Says he's not interested in the WH yet but I think with support from conservatives we might be able to recruit him.
http://www.petitiononline.com/msan2008/petition.html
I really don't see anyone better for the job out there right now. Congresscritters don't win POTUS elections from what I've heard so we, the grassroots conservatives, are gonna have to find our 'man of the hour' so to speak.
We lost because Senate decided to act like dems. Specter and Mccain and Kennedy bill.
I am in Italy right now, did Specter, Hutchison win?
I hunger for a leader who when confronted by the press and dems about panties on the heads of prisoners, says "It's war, sh** happens."
"Do Not Waste Time On Philosophical Introspection because the exit polls showed that's not what drove the vote. Get rid of corruption scandals, change nothing on any other issue at all, and we retake Congress."
Sorry, but your political analysis here is simplistic and naive. Corruption was but one small part of why Pubs lost in the mid-terms.
"The GOP needs to get behind Mike Pense."
Oh yeah, that's right, back another illegal alien amnesty proponent. Great.
So? There were still not narrow losses.
It doesn't matter why the Republicans lost. You better all start looking into NBC gear for the homefront. The Dems will cut the funding for the Iraq war next year. We have to leave then. Al Queda regroups and brings the fight here, with whatever they have gleaned from the WMD shopping spree over the last 5 years. We are in a WAR folks and the other side doesn't care who won they want the USA gone.
JFaron
Hutchison won. Specter wasn't up. Santorum lost - a real bummer!!!
I think you're onto something there. I'm sick to death of all this 'compassionate conservatism' crap. I've been griping about it since 2001, now the chickens have come home to roost.
George Allen did NOT run a bad campaign. He used one word that was jumped on by the MSM as being racist and then he was continually pounded into the ground by that same media on a daily basis. Other than that, you tell me how he ran a bad campaign. Give me some specifics. He was beaten by the media and by a faux conservative Dem candidate running against him, while Allen was excoriated for supporting Bush on the Iraq war.
Hayworth was defeated in AZ because again the MSM and Dem pro-immigration groups pounded him continually, ran another faux Dem candidate against him, and his district is changing due to the influx of liberal Californians moving to Arizona to get away from the mess they created by their leftist philosophy there, and exporting it to AZ so they can louse up that state too.
We're building a paintball field at my church, and the youth group is learning tactics from a local SWAT officer. just in time?
The dems won because the public has had it with the war and the only way they have to express their will is by voting Republicans out!. Bush had better listen to the public within 1 year or Republicans will have NO chance in the presidential election.
When you see the illegal immigration reform bill that passes the Democratic Congress and is signed by Bush, the Pense plan will be looking damn good. Pense put forward what he thought was the best plan that could actually pass.
"Pense put forward what he thought was the best plan that could actually pass."
Yeah, just another amnesty bill with a twist.
They were narrow losses in blue states.
Hillary took New York by getting 67% of the vote.
Hillary won by 34 points.
Rock solid?
He endorsed Specter over Twoomey.
He went waaay too far to the corporatist side of the GOP - being rabidly corporatist is not the same as being pro-business - corporations love erecting hurdles to competitors through government action.
He did stupid stunts like trying to get the NWC out of weather forecasting to benefit Accu-Weather.
And he only maintained a facade of living in his home state - his official residence was an empty house.
Those hardly sound like conservative traits to me - and especially traits that endear voters in his home state.
Throw in the fact that the Dems were smart enough to nominate a pro-lifer this time (taking away his main advantage in prior races), and he was doomed. But a large part of it was his own doing.
And Nelson twins won by 22 in Florida and 28 in Nebraska, both solid red states. Conrad won by 40 freakin' points in North Dakota. And your point is? As the president said, the GOP got thumped. You can try and put whatever spin you want on it if it makes you feel better, but it isn't going to change the results.
Couple that with the DBM/DNC focus on casualties only, no successes and Joe & Jane Sixpack that don't dig deeper will ask "why would we want to stay on this course?". Yes the President made some wonderful speeches to expand the topic. But they got 5% of the coverage of daily IED / car bombing.
I think that Arizona also has a higher percentage of AARP dinosaurs. Other than that, I think that you are probably right.
Many have voted straight democratic all their lives and continue the routine year after year after year... Because we have so many oldsters (who remember the good old days) they actually thought they were voting for Bob Casey (not Junior).
One of the first things I learned, when I first began to study National political alignments years ago as a teenager, is that Pennsylvania is a Political Anomaly -- "Pro-Life Democrats vs. Pro-Abortion Republicans" (Bob Casey vs. Arlen Spector, Tom Ridge, etc.).
Pennsylvania Democrats (at least the broad majority outside the Liberal hub of Philadelphia) are practically the essence of the old "Reagan Democrats" -- Pro-Life, Pro-Gun, Socially-Conservative blue-collars who nonetheless favor Unions, Protectionism, high Minimum Wages, "soak the rich" Taxes, and Government Welfare.
Sheesh -- Bob Casey, Sr., was practically a communist on Economic Issues; but he was well to the Right of Reagan on Social Issues (and we in Operation Rescue loved him for it). His son, for better or worse, inherits much of the same goodwill.
Santorum was identified as a blue-blood "Rich Man's Republican", completely beholden to George W. Bush (ties to Bush have been a clear and absolute negative in this Election). By comparison, Bob Casey, jr. could actually run to the RIGHT of Santorum on Abortion (and he "deceived" no-one -- the truth is, Bob Casey, jr. favors only the "Life of the Mother" Exception; whereas Santorum has previously supported "Rape and Incest" Exceptions, albeit as a compromise -- but moral compromises have a nasty tendency to bite you in the ass, eh?), while running to the Left of Santorum on all the Economic issues the old-line "working class" Pennsylvania Democrats favor.
Bob Casey, Pro-Life Socialist -- that spelled Santorum's doom.
Truth is, as long as the Casey Dynasty remains Pro-Life, Pro-Gun, and Pro-Socialism, anyone named "Bob Casey" will be very, very hard to beat in Pennsylvania.... honestly, I'm almost surprised that Santorum did as well as he did.
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