Why Conservatives Lost

townhall.com ^ | November 9, 2006 | Chuck Colson

[Popman]

bump

[perfect_rovian_storm]

I don't accept the premise of the title of this piece. Conservatives as a whole did not lose here. Republicans did. Conservatives have suffered a setback, but nothing that can't be overcome.

[My2Cents]

Unfortunately, character only applies to conservatives. Liberals can be completely bereft of character, and their sycophants will always rally to their defense.

[outofstyle]

I agree.

[trek]

Colson, what a self-righteous dope. By his logic America should have stood down in WWII. After all the Nazis may have been murdering people by the millions, but after all, we had Jim Crow laws in the South. Who were we to speak of the morality of racial equality?

Sheesh! Fools like Colson are going to get us all killed.

[jackv]

oooh this rather hurts, but I definitely agree.

[kinoxi]

I don't think that Mark Foley caused this election result.

[cripplecreek]

I don't feel that I lost. We ousted an RINO and replaced him with a conservative. 3 of 4 ballot proposals went my way (Including the important affirmative action ban) I'm still stuck with the same democrat Governor and senator but I feel that I've gained in some ways.

[Balding_Eagle]

You're right.

[outofstyle]

I don't think he is suggesting that we stand down. He is suggesting that we stand up.

[Dreagon]

Conservatives didn't "lose". Conservatives have suffered a painful but necessary amputation of putrid flesh. We will have to wait and see if we need to cut out more.

[TheLion]

"I don't accept the premise of the title of this piece. Conservatives as a whole did not lose here."

Have got to agree with you. Had Republicans been conservative all along, they would have had no problem. This all started from the top of the Administration. It turned off a lot of voters, who just didn't bother to show up. The Democrats won nothing. They even ran as conservatives. Republicans have not been listening to their base for sometime. It cost them!

What will be interesting now is how the Democrats are going to govern. Will they expose who they really are?

[dcrider182]

Before you can fix a problem you must first admit the problem exists.. Like treatment in AA...

So...

Hello, My name is Matthew and I'm a Conservative Republican.. Lets start there,
Now lets think about what we did to get voted out of office and go from there

[Man of the Right]

You don't have to apologize for being a conservative, Chuck. Cunningham and Ney are thieves and Foley is a pedophile. Greed and lust know no party. I agree now is a brief time for soul-searching. In my case, never again will I assume a Republican leader shares my values or concerns. I will vote for some of them, but I will never trust them. That's what conservatism is all about: creating institutions that can minimize human weakness rather than allowing it to flourish. That's why our system divides and shares powers.

[Rembrandt_fan]

You wrote, "Conservatives as a whole did not lose here. Republicans did."

I suppose had the Republican Party held its own in the recent election, you would've been celebrating a conservative victory.

The Republican Party is the party of conservatism--or, better defined, the only means by which conservative thought may be implemented into national policy. Whatever else they might be, Libertarians are not conservatives, Pat Buchanan 'paleocons' are not conservatives, and those right-leaning third parties who garner maybe 2000 votes nationwide? Who knows, they may be conservatives, but are too inconsequential to matter.

[Bi-ped Carbon Unit]

Very true, however, there are more of us than there are sycophants on the left, and a good portion of our office holders left the Conservative farm. To me, losing the House and Senate is bad, but losing Santorum and Allen specifically hurts more. Not from a "nominee" standpoint, but because they are Conservative through and through. With any luck we can get more Tom Coburns and Mike Pences in office, going forward. They will stay Conservative.

[AaronInCarolina]

I don't think that Mark Foley caused this election result.

Certainly not the Foley scandal by itself, but it did give the MSM a huge club by which to clobber us incessantly, and to grind to a halt the momentum that the republicans were picking up. The irony is that kind of behavior (Foley and pages) is standard operating procedure on the democratic side, but when republicans are caught, its a much bigger scandal.

[The Worthless Miracle]

That was my take as well. By definition, the reason that we lost is that we were not conservatives.

[rabscuttle385]

Yes. The 'Rats have already started to take off their masks.