**PING**
You can try to figure out where the votes are, and position yourself there, or you can try to persuade the voters. To do neither is a losing strategy.
Oh please, spare me this deranged spew. If only the GOP were more "far right" and ideological. If they were, we wouldn't have had massive spending and unsecured borders. And somehow I doubt voters would send a message about being against "instransigent ideologues" by voting for the worst ideologues ever to populate Congress in the form of Pelosi and her far left extremist pathological, stand for nothing, agendless, visionless caucus.
But this writer knows damned good and well voters voted the way they did because the media portrayed for them one side of American's condition domestically and its position in the world and on Iraq, all of it negative, while reporting nothing about a record economy or the success we've had fighting terrorism and rebuilding Iraq. That is the long and the short if this election and this writer knows it because he/she/it helped to brainwash voters into voting against the president and party who helped give them the best conditions they've enjoyed in a long, long time. It's hardly as this delusional idiot claims that voters were voting against partisan extremes by voting for extreme partisans. Give me a break.
"On the contrary, we would say that it is both a sign of leadership and a necessary asset to realize the wisdom in compromising on 10 or 20 percent of the issues in order to achieve success on 80 percent of the others."
You know, moderate Republicans love to tell us conservatives to compromise on that 10 to 20% in order to get 80%, but they never deliver even 10 or 20% of the 80% they promise. I'm looking but I don't see no stinking 80% of fiscal restraint and small government ANYWHERE.
Oh by all means let's do follow the mob. After all, there's no way all those people could be wrong is there.
And besides, it's not the job of elected leaders to, well, lead. They've got to follow the whims of the majority and make sure they get what they want.
Then they've got to see that they get it good and hard.
L
It never fails to irritate me to see the tendentious use of "moderate"--as, for instance, in "moderate Republican" or (as used here, the obverse) "Republican moderate."
In such expressions, the writer (or speaker) invariably considers the noun to be something of disrepute; the adjective "moderate" confers upon it an aura of semi-respectability.
It is, of course, enormously condescending. Better to be openly despised than to be treated as a credit to one's kind...such as it is.
As has been illustrated ad nauseam for the past six years, nearly every attempt at bipartisanship by the Bush White House has been met with cries that it wasn't nearly enough (prescription drugs, No Child Left Behind, etc). Ironically, the one compromise that Bush did that was truly Solomonesque -- allowing Federal funding of embryonic stem cell research for the first time, but only on existing lines -- has become a rallying point for the Democrats because Bush refused to allow human beings at their earliest stage to be treated like rats bred for lab experiments.
If the question is "'Are we where the voters are?'" why don't YOU, Luis, tell us where YOU think they are -- and what the GOP has to do to meet them. And none of this bullschtuff about not being ideologues or being open to dialogue, because that's the kind of nonsense that led to that worthless Iraq Study Group report. Be specific, if you actually have issues that pique you. Let's see if you're up to the task.
LOL, I couldn't get past the first line, which was, of course, a baldfaced lie.
By their own yardstick, the Republicans did not achieve their objectives. The remedy available to voters was to put the other fellow in - many of them were lulled by the fact that "Blue Dog" Democrats claimed to share their values. It was a lie, of course.
Regards, Ivan
Which ones?
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus
This piece is a load of crap. Conservatism didn't lose, the Republican party lost. Want to see where Liberal Republicanism gets us ? Take a look at California, Illinois, New Jersey, New England. The party continues to slip away there because there is little to nothing to distinguish them from the 'Rats, either ideologically or ethically.
The person/people that wrote this article don't have a damn clue as to what they're talking about. Instead, what they've written is merely what they wish to be true.
This article isn't even close to what these elections were about....geez!
Wow, the editorial board of a newspaper wants to help out Republicans. I can believe that. Not.
When did you cross the border?
The irony is that the Republican party is neither "far right" nor full of "intransigent ideologues" at all. The MSM never stopped repeating the mantra that the evangelicals were running the GOP. Of course it's a lie, but it succeeded in getting independents to run away from the GOP as fast and as far as possible. The fact of the matter is, the evangelicals, ie the theocon Falwell/Dobson types, are the party fringe. Bush and the Republicans gave them almost nothing they desired. Essentially we have regular folks voting Democrat because they naturally fear the theocon GOP, yet the theocons have practically no influence on the party whatsoever, which is why the theocons stayed home on election day.
Right ,we want moderates ,But dont forget dont say the N word , Dont say Merry Christmas,Dont forget Separation of Church And state ,Do something to prevent Global warming ,do send your child to school everyday 90 minutes each way so he or she can look at a child of a different color,ride a bike to work dont drive an suv,dont smoke ,dont eat meat ,dont say homosexuals are not normal,do allow people who storm our bordrers to stay and by all means dont call them illegal aliens you might offend themand by all means dont question the smartest among us ,you know from Hollywood like Babs ,Alec Baldwin and the rest .
I call BS on the article.
Yes; "rigid ideologues" like Jeb Bradley, Charlie Bass, Jim Leach, Mike DeWine, Nancy Johnson, etc.