Posted on 12/10/2006 10:04:01 PM PST by neverdem
The republicans had control of the house, senate, and white house. What more could you want? Geez. I'm so tired of the excuses people make for the repubs turning into big-government nanny-staters the last several years.
And....according to the some of the hyper anti-Libertarians here, so powerful that they singlehandedly cost the GOP the last election.
AMEN
The candidate who best qualifies for that distinction is Chuck Hagel (pro-gun, anti-McCain Feingold, right on Iraq, and pro-tax cut) but I suspect that conservatives are so wedded to nation building and Wilsonianism that they will never give him a second look.
The candidate who best qualifies for that distinction is Chuck Hagel (pro-gun, anti-McCain Feingold, right on Iraq, and pro-tax cut) but I suspect that conservatives are so wedded to nation building and Wilsonianism that they will never give him a second look.
The candidate who best qualifies for that distinction is Chuck Hagel (pro-gun, anti-McCain Feingold, right on Iraq, and pro-tax cut) but I suspect that conservatives are so wedded to nation building and Wilsonianism that they will never give him a second look.
The fact that Libertarians cause the anti-liberal vote to split, helping to elect Democrats to the U.S. Senate isn't news. In 1992, the first time Diane Feinstein ran for the U.S. Senate, she won with about 47% of the vote. The Libertarian got about 5%, and the Green Party candidate got about 3%. In 1996, in a special election, to replace Sen. Packwood, of Oregon, then-Congressman Ron Wyden won with 49% of the vote. The Republican, Gordon Smith, got 48%. The Libertarian got 2%, and the American Independent Party (like the Constitution Party) candidate received 1%.
Why does this usually happen in the West? In the rest of the country, voters who dislike the democrat U.S. Senate candidates usually unite against the Democrat well.
Please do tell us how the GOP has pandered to the libertarian voters in every election.
bump
"Libertarians don't vote for Libertarians?"
Well, libertarians don't vote for Libertarians.
The Libertarian party is a bunch of whack-a-doodles.
But, yeah, nanny state measures like Frist's anti-Internet gambling, the ephedra ban, and the coddling of Insurance companies, etc. very nearly kept me home. (I voted, but my usual to-the-legal limit campaign donations dwindled to near zero and will stay that way until actual conservatives start running again.)
It's not close to the same, it's exactly the same outcome.
Right, the Libertarians are abandoning the Republican Party, in favor of the Democratic Socialists, because they are younger and better educated. Give me a break. Zogby will have to come up with a better explanation than that.
Just as I hit the post button, I thought of a possible explanation for the Zogby opinion that the younger, better educated Libertarians are favoring the Democratic (Socialists).
What Zogby means is that these younger voters have spent more time in the unionized public school system and institutions of higher education, and are thus more thoroughly indoctrinated into the anti-capitalist economic theories, but they still retain libertarian label because they support gay marriage and oppose the war on drugs.
I really hate to point out the obvious, but did you ever consider that it might be "You" who is misreading the tea leaves????
Eh?
I never would have guessed. Can't they make a common cause?
Having to pander to them also costs the GOP a huge number of social conservative votes in every election.
How were libertarians ever pandered to? It wasn't by making the No Child Left Behind law, Medicare Part D, Campaign Finance Reform, an obscene number of earmarks or GWB's promise to renew an Assault Weapons Ban, whatever that was. What are you smoking?
Then get used to being a minority party.
Here's the fact: It was the majourity of the voters who rejected the Republicans. If a party does not appeal to the majourity of the voters it will not succeed.
The Pubbies should quit bitching about the libertarians, and the Libertarians, and fix their own house. There's too much information out there these days (as the MSM is beginning to find out), and the voters aren't so fast to buy into campaign lies from career politicians who mouth the right slogans and buzzwords every two years, yet vote in an entirely differnet manner when in office..
Never happen. The sad fact of the matter is that the so-called "Religious Right" are actually Democrats at heart, and I don't mean that in a derogatory sense. They're staunchly values conservatives, but fiscally moderate-to-liberal. Their party abandoned them as the political center is continually redefined to the left, just as the Republican party has abandoned small-government conservatives who are more socially moderate.
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