Posted on 12/14/2006 8:12:49 AM PST by jmaroneps37
Since the day after Election Day we have heard pompous platitudes from cut and run conservatives bleating about how they are the true conservatives in the GOP’s big tent. They have talked about how the GOP’s rinos had disappointed them and they needed to clean house and “teach rino Republicans a lesson” Some have now proudly wrapped themselves around the title of “dumb asses” as a rallying point for those who were “way too smart and way to conservative” to turn out or vote for Republicans.
This argument, if left un-examined, sounds like it makes sense. Nevertheless, like the classic syllogism it is, it really can’t withstand the light of day. These self appointed saviors of America’s conservative movement are engaging in the kind of re writing of history that would make Bill Clinton proud. The Dumb Ass crowd now wants to have things both ways. They want us to laud them for their “courage” in either not voting or actually voting Democrat, AND they want us to attach no blame to them for delivering a liberal dominated congress led by people who have no regard for the safety of America. The D.As want us to believe that they were way to smart to use primaries to thin our rino heard, bleating about the Bush Whitehouse interfering with primaries around the country. The truth is that when they failed to win in the primaries they did work in, they sucked their thumbs and stayed home at best or voted Democrat at worst.
Let’s take a look at some of the “rinos” these brave “oh so much more conservative than you are” Dumb Assess kicked out.
Well first up is Jim Leach of Iowa. Leach has a 43 life time American Conservative Union ( ACU ) rating. That’s a great start!......
(Excerpt) Read more at collinsreport.net ...
Yes, the "Dumb Asses" did a number on what was really the conservative core of the Repubs. Some of the best and brightest patriots are now gone.
Nice job.
That article reads like a constipated 16 year old wrote it.
What that SHOULD tell people is that it wasn't "Stay-at-Home" conservatives that caused the rout.
It was a combination of two things:
(1) The bungling of the war in Iraq, and
(2) Economic hardship in those manufacturing areas of the country hammered by excessive free trade and left out of the rising tide of the financial economy.
These two things were enough to (a) Cause people opposed to the war or the handling of the war to vote, or to abstain from voting for Team Bush, whom they (rightly) blame for the bungling, and (b) cause Reagan Democrats...mostly in industrial areas hard hit but the ongoing and accelerating collapse of the American industrial sector, to vote Democrat again.
Those conservatives who DID stay home were of two types:
(1) BorderBots, who are disgusted by the GOP's open-borders-and-amnesty position (President right down through the Senate), and who feel betrayed by the Republicans, and
(2) Pro-life religious types heartbroken by the succession of events: Specter to Schiavo to Miers to the failed nuclear option to get the pro-life judges seated to Bush's new FDA guru supprting stem-cell research. Pro-life religious types, in particular, tend to otherwise be very middle class or working class, and not very political. They are religious. Since 2004, they have the feeling that they compromised with the world, but that the world didn't respond in kind, and many have probably retreated into their families and their churches and lost interest in politics.
I doubt there were very many Republican calculators out there deciding to vote for Democrats or to stay home "Just to show 'em" in Washington. People who changed their votes, or didn't vote, did so for legitimate reasons. Republicans can't win again unless they get some of these people back. Yelling and screaming insults at them is not a way to get them back. They are just not as PARTISAN as you. They are committed to certain issues, and when they don't see progress on their issues, they get disgusted and leave the scene. Then the party-uber-alles types lose power (inevitably) and scream.
Want power back, then do all of the following:
(1) Do something aggressive in Iraq to win it and reverse the errors and bungling.
(2) Close the damned border.
(3) Do mea culpas on Schiavo and the FDA nominee's remarks on stem cells, and
(4) Do something about the export of the whole manufacturing sector to China.
Then you can win again.
Insulting imaginary strategic voters who allegedly betrayed you but who probably don't really exist isn't going to get you back in power. The pro-warriors, BorderBots, pro-lifers and fair traders are not wrong. Embrace them and give them what they want to get power back.
You left out, are they can rant and rave and call people dumb asses and then wonder how many more they drive away from the next election, but they will never accept the blame.
No one will forget the heavy handed attempt by the Feds to interject itself into a State matter and into the private family affairs of a citizen of FLa. The 70% of people who opposed federal involvement in the case may accept mea culpas for Congress's overeaching stupidity but I doubt it. It cost Gallager, Harris and Clay Shaw in Fl. Luis is right. The independents spoke loudly in this election. Schiavo was one of their beefs.
That's a thoughtful way to debate the points of the article.
Do you think that article sets the tone for a "thoughtful" debate?
Two of the Congressmen mentioned, Ann Northup(Tenn.) and J.D. Hayworth(Ariz), were conservatives in majority democrat districts. Henry Bonnilla's district was rural south Texas. Richard Pombo(the only Republican with a district that had parts of the San Francisco Bay Area) was targeted by the national democrat party and his district has become home to many commuters who work around the S.F. Bay, rather than the farm and ranch district it has been since gold was discovered.
You really think the explosion in Federal spending was a non issue?
Schiavo was one of their beefs. Right. Bush's and the republican poll numbers went down after the Schiavo debacle, and have not gone up since then. I for one do not want the feds passing laws to deny my right to not be a vegetable.
Then the GOP cannot be saved.
Because pro-lifers cannot compromise on a sacred duty from God to protect life. Terry Schiavo's horrible death during Easter Week was a confrontation between good and evil at its most dramatic. Evil won.
It may be true that those who support the agenda of death outnumber pro-lifers. In fact, we know it is true: abortion was straight up on the ballot in red-state Souith Dakota, and abortion won.
Which means that the pro-life cause cannot defeat the Devil, at least not until there are more Catholics and Evangelicals and Orthodox Jews in the country to tip the scales...if that ever happens.
But pro-lifers can't compromise: they are obeying their God. Which means that they can either the GOP supports them and loses because most people want death-on-demand for convenience sake, or the GOP figures out a way to dupe them for their votes without causing the pro-death majority to turn on the GOP, or the GOP loses forever, as the pro-lifers stay home. Without the pro-life vote, the GOP is a severe minority.
You might start by cleaning the evil out of your own various Church's anyway and there is much evil there...before you start advancing the notion of piety among politicians, or sanctimony in Government.
We really are becoming just like Democrats. Yea!
Schiavo was one of their beefs. Right. Bush's and the republican poll numbers went down after the Schiavo debacle, and have not gone up since then. I for one do not want the feds passing laws to deny my right to not be a vegetable.
It's even simpler than that - I do not want the Feds to interfere in private family medical decisions.
Some "conservatives" didn't realize that they were trying to set a precedent that could be easily abused, or they knew and just didn't care, or they knew and that's exactly what they wanted.
Yes......the 100% demands led to 0% success.
I'm too old to let this happen again, so I pledge to never reform that coalition again. I worked too hard back in the 70s and 80s to achieve majority status, only to have the effort trashed from within.
If the republican party is now dead, then so be it...If not, then so be it, but the base of the party, or those claiming to be the base is gonna change, or it's not going to continue.
Sure, and without the secular right, the same is true.
politics is about compromises, and if any segment of the coalition brings with it uncompromisable convictions dressed up as politics, it cannot stay together.
It would be best, IMO, to build a coalition that puts 100%'ers in the wagon, and not pulling it. This is the way it was during the Reagan years, and the only way it will ever work.
If we don't return to this way of looking at things, I won't participate and neither will anyone in the middle. It turned out to be just as dangerous to the country as the far left. That is the annoying fact revealed to anyone who cares to look at last election and also the last two or three years of attempted and passed legislation out of the House..
The vast morons of the middle can't remember what they had for breakfast, but their 15 minute short-term memory held onto the Schiavo action for months so the could vote out her defenders.
The voters got their marching orders from the media that hammered the Repubicans on the war, corruption and incompetence nonstop. That's why we lost, an unpopular president, an unpopular war and a perception of widespread corruption and incompetence in Congress.
Pro-lifers have never forgiven the GOP for letting Schiavo die, and they never will. It's why Jeb Bush will never be President. Many, many, many pro-lifers won't vote for a man they considered to be playing the role of Pontius Pilate.
GOP poll numbers went down after the Schiavo debale both because pro-euthanasia folks were incensed AND pro-lifers were heartbroken and furious at the outcome.
It may be that the coaltion is broken and can't be put back together again. And that means Democrat dominance as far as the eye can see. For folks for whom abortion and right-to-die are key issues (more important than, say, low taxes)Democrat dominance is a godsend.
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