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A winning conservative platform for 2008?
Opinion | Jim Robinson

Posted on 02/19/2007 1:14:04 AM PST by Jim Robinson

Edited on 02/19/2007 2:20:11 AM PST by Jim Robinson. [history]

I was told earlier this evening that it's impossible for a conservative to win the general election against Hillary Clinton. That the socially liberal Rudy Giuliani is the ONLY Republican who can (a) beat Hillary and (b) win the war.

How many FReepers actually believe this hogwash? If we have no faith in our own conservative principles and values why do we call ourselves conservatives? How can we possibly hope to advance our conservative causes if we tuck tail and run when we should be fighting as if our very survival as a free people depends upon it. Because it does.

We cannot advance conservatism by running a social liberal for the office of chief executive. If you want proof, ask Arnie, the socially liberal Republican governor of California. No thanks. You can have him and the socialist horse he rode in on.

We cannot defend life, liberty or nation (see below discussion on securing borders) with a social liberal at the helm.

I'd like to build a winning conservative platform with a dozen or so hard hitting no nonsense points that we can all agree on that would help us focus on our best potential primary nominee and one that can defeat Hillary, et al, in the general.

Here's a starter list and it's open for discussion, cutting, consolidation, expansion and detailing:

  1. Win the war!
  2. Secure the nation!
  3. Secure the borders!
  4. Stop the illegal aliens!
  5. Rebuild the military!
  6. Deal with growing threats! Iran, Syria, North Korea, China, (and an increasingly Muslim Russia and Europe?)!
  7. Cut government!
  8. Cut spending!
  9. Cut taxes!
  10. Allow the free economy to expand!
  11. Return control of states issues to the states!
  12. Defend life, liberty, property and individual rights!

Would a conservative platform focusing on victory in the war, national security, national defense, securing the borders, deporting illegal aliens, sound fiscal policy and defense of life, liberty, property and individual rights be a winner over Hillary's treasonous platform of surrender, weakness, open borders, socialist fiscal policies, "abortion rights," "gay rights," global warming, continued government abuses and subversion of our rights to freedom of religion, freedom of speech, right to keep and bear arms and private property rights?

Expanding on one issue, for example, I'm pushing for increased border security. I used to be in favor of some sort of temporary worker program, but not one that has a fast track to citizenship. I'm now coming around to the point of view held by the majority of Americans regardless of political party affiliation and that is we MUST secure the borders immediately. It's obvious that this war against Islamic fascism is going to grind on even after we put down the nasty business in Iraq. We must secure the borders against terrorist intrusion and infiltration. We must tightly control ALL immigration to the US.

It's also becoming more and more obvious that Americans are not happy with illegals taking jobs in an ever growing number of industries. They're no longer just doing field labor and or menial low paying tasks. They're creeping up the uskilled labor and union scale, only they're competing unfairly by accepting low wages and under the table payments.

We also need to seal the borders against drug smugglers, weapons smugglers, criminals, terrorists, etc. Catch them, try them and lock them up.

Americans are also tired of footing the bills for illegal alien health care, education, welfare, auto accidents, crime, disease, etc.

It's way past time to call a halt to this nonsense. I say we catch them at the borders and deport them. If we catch them again, place them in a work camp. If they want to work, fine, let them work in a work camp for their keep. Nothing more. And no illegal families or children or anchor babies. If it takes additional laws on the books, fine let's get it done. If it takes a constitutional amendment to stop the anchor babies, let's get the process started.

We should also catch and deport them when they show up at the DMV, voter registration or voting booth, unemployment line, bank, building permit office, welfare department, social security office, hospitals, free clinics, schools, jails, auto accident or traffic stops, etc. If they can't speak English and they don't have valid identification, then we need to hold them or call in the INS.

If we're going to secure the nation we must secure the borders, control immigration and stop pandering to the illegals or their enablers. Employers who willingly and knowingly hire illegals should be punished. If they pay their workers under the table and fail to withhold taxes or social security, they should be dealt with as felons.

So, we win the war, secure the nation, build our defenses, return to a sound fiscal policy, cut spending and taxes, and defend our rights.

How many states would go for this platform as opposed to Hillary's that is exactly opposite?

I think we'd even pull in California.

What say you?


TOPICS: Breaking News; Free Republic; US: California; US: Texas; Your Opinion/Questions
KEYWORDS: adminlectureseries; aliens; amnesty; borders; conservatism; duncanhunter; elections; fredthompson; giuliani; illegalimmigration; immigrantlist; rfr; tancredo; turnrighttosanity
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To: nopardons
You are the one who is being rude; not to mention boorish.

You're the one who is supporting someone who supports the murder of unborn children.

It's not rude to point out facts.

L

381 posted on 02/20/2007 1:22:04 AM PST by Lurker (Europeans killed 6 million Jews. As a reward they got 40 million Moslems. Karma's a bitch.)
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To: Lurker
Circular, muddled posts, wherein you are delighting in venting your spleen and stating falsehoods as fact, are not debate.

It's a very strange kind of conservative, who would rather have whomever the Dem candidate is to be, elected and who delights in trying to trash anyone and everyone not in complete lockstep with you.

Have you a preference, or are you waiting, with bated breath, for some perfect CONSERVATIVE CANDIDATE, writ large, to descend from the skies, deus ex machina, to "save the day"?

382 posted on 02/20/2007 1:24:03 AM PST by nopardons
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To: Lurker

And actually, he really doesn't! If you knew political history, you would know that recent history shows that is not accurate to the degree you claim.


383 posted on 02/20/2007 1:25:53 AM PST by nopardons
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To: Lurker

Baiting, flaming, lying, personal attacks, and using foul language, even when using an * or other sign instead of a letter are rude; these things also used to be against the rules here.


384 posted on 02/20/2007 1:27:48 AM PST by nopardons
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To: nopardons
Ok, enough game playing. You are trying desperately to justify your support of the socially liberal Rudy Giuliani without admitting your betrayal of your own supposed conservative values. You will twist and turn and make yourself sick but you will not be able to convince me and you are only kidding yourself. Might just as well admit it. Spit it out and get it over with. He did. And he's ok in his own socially liberal skin now. You can do it too and regain your composure and self dignity.

Repeat it after me:

I, the poster known as [state your screen name] do readily admit that Rudolph W. Giuliani is every bit the social liberal that he himself admits he is, but I, a person who claims to be more conservative than thou, openly, willingly and wholeheartedly embrace and support his liberal positions on abortion, gay unions (also known in mine own conservative circles as "gay marriage"), gun control, open borders, etc, even though it is an act of betrayal to mine own true conservative heart and soul. As all of FReeperdom is my witness, I declare this to be so.


To thine own self be true.

The truth shall ease your pain and grease your slide into the socialist Utopian pits of oblivious darkness.

Go forth, my lass, and kid thy self no more.

385 posted on 02/20/2007 1:38:37 AM PST by Jim Robinson (It's "originalists" not "constructionists.")
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To: nopardons
And actually, he really doesn't!

Actually he really does. Here's Dame Guliani in his own words:

I've said that I'll uphold a woman's right of choice, that I will fund abortion so that a poor woman is not deprived of a right that others can exercise, and that I would oppose going back to a day in which abortions were illegal.

Now I don't know what things are like on your world, but here on Earth that's pretty unequivocal support for murdering unborn children. And by the way when he says he'll fund abortion he doesn't mean he'll dig out the Guliani family checkbook and cover it himself. He means he'll force, and I do mean force, me to pay for it.

He not only supports it, he said he'd pay for his own daughter to have an abortion. Once again here's Madame Guliani in his own words:

But if the ultimate choice of the woman - my daughter or any other woman - would be that in this particular circumstance [if she had] to have an abortion, I'd support that. I'd give my daughter the money for it.

So we are stuck in a bit of a quandry. Whom are we to believe? We can believe you who says Dame Guliani doesn't support abortion or we can believe Madame Mayors own words on the subject.

Now I hate to be harsh but in short dear lady, you're lying. In fact you're lying your ass off.

So is Rudy for that matter.

L

386 posted on 02/20/2007 1:38:50 AM PST by Lurker (Europeans killed 6 million Jews. As a reward they got 40 million Moslems. Karma's a bitch.)
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To: Jim Robinson
Go forth, my lass, and kid thy self no more

Personally I don't care if other people kid themselves. That's their right.

But it really chaps my hide when they want to pee down my back and then try to tell me it's raining.

L

387 posted on 02/20/2007 1:42:51 AM PST by Lurker (Europeans killed 6 million Jews. As a reward they got 40 million Moslems. Karma's a bitch.)
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To: teldon30

Eating popcorn and enjoying this seminal thread....free speech is such a great thing :)


388 posted on 02/20/2007 1:48:04 AM PST by teldon30 (disgruntled 2nd class)
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To: teldon30
free speech is such a great thing :)

And it has the added side benefit of making it easier to spot idiots.

L

389 posted on 02/20/2007 2:00:18 AM PST by Lurker (Europeans killed 6 million Jews. As a reward they got 40 million Moslems. Karma's a bitch.)
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To: nopardons
"I'm well please with the platform as it stands. You're the one imagining that you can change it."

Oops. I missed that on my first pass through your posts. Please tell me which of the planks that I listed above you believe to be changes to the GOP party platform. That would be good to know.

I don't think I'm changing the platform at all. I'm not the one trying to rip out the pro life and liberty or defense of national security, national sovereignty planks. I do believe that would be you, Rudy Giuliani, his accomplices in the press (and the Democrat party) and his supporters whether they claim to be conservative, moderate or full blooming liberal.

Thankyouverymuch.

390 posted on 02/20/2007 2:02:04 AM PST by Jim Robinson (It's "originalists" not "constructionists.")
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To: Valin; hosepipe; Jim Robinson; Alamo-Girl
In picking some candidate to support I am always reminded of the W F Buckley quote "I support the rightward most viable candidate." Viable being the operative word here.

While "viability" is a good word, a wonderful contemplation, and indeed very important to such things as birth into the mainstream, people choose to define what makes a person viable in ways that deny rational consensus. I believe Mr. Buckley would say the operative word here is "rightward." For example, read this NRO article from Feb. 16, '07, in which William F. Buckley, Jr. slays the "establishmentarian scientific position" and posits an Intelligent Designer - surely in today's conversation one can't get more rightward than that -

So Help Us Darwin. An excerpt:

It seems an ancient controversy, and of course it is. Fifteen minutes after Charles Darwin explained his theory of evolution, his disciples—apostles—ruled out any heresy on the subject of the naturalist explanation for human life. Young people are educated to think of the question in the grammar of the Scopes Trial, Clarence Darrow vs. William Jennings Bryan. That trial made for great naturalist theater. Mr. Bryan was not born either to become president or to explain how God could tolerate chicken pox, so Clarence Darrow wiped him into dust.

But the contention continued, and has been explored from time to time under heavy lights. My own forensic involvement took place nine years ago as host of Firing Line. The two-hour, nationally televised debate on the topic “Resolved: that the evolutionists should acknowledge creation” featured seven professors. Four of them took the establishmentarian scientific position. It is, essentially, that not only is naturalism established as verified science, but any interposition into the picture—of inquisitiveness, let alone conviction that there might have been design in the evolution of our world—is excluded.

...But the intelligent liberal community should not impose on anyone a requirement of believing that there is only the single, materialist word on the subject, and that only contempt is merited by those who consent to appear at think tanks composed of men and women prepared to explore ultimate questions, which certainly include the question, Did God have a hand in creating all of this? Including the great messes we live with?

Representing the affirmative that night on television, one debater closed with this: “I’m taken with the reply of an elderly scientific scholar to an exuberant young skeptic. ‘I find it easier to believe in God than to believe that Hamlet was deduced from the molecular structure of a mutton chop.’”

He even mentions McCain in the article, as you do in your post. It is significant to me that Newt Gingrich has also weighed in on this topic, clearly taking his stand on what Mr. Buckley refers to as the liberal side of the argument.

I don't have to wonder which candidates Mr. Buckley has already culled from his primary voting prospects.

391 posted on 02/20/2007 2:23:59 AM PST by .30Carbine (Conservative is as Conservative does.)
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To: Jim Robinson
I don't think I'm changing the platform at all.

You're not. Pop on over there and read it for yourself.

L

392 posted on 02/20/2007 2:34:28 AM PST by Lurker (Europeans killed 6 million Jews. As a reward they got 40 million Moslems. Karma's a bitch.)
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To: Jim Robinson
Lead by example and via the bully pulpit for starters. Hire and or appoint only capable men and women of high moral character to government positions. Appoint originalists to the judiciary. Fight for the conservative small government (constitutional) position on all issues. Secure and defend the nation and our national sovereignty. Defend life and liberty for ourselves and our posterity. Pull in conservative members of congress on his coattails. Leave the nation in much better shape than it was when he came in.

There is only one candidate in either party who has demonstrated, through prior executive experience, that he is capable of doing most of these things, and in the teeth of hysterical leftist opposition, to boot.

Only one candidate who has left his area of operations in better shape than when he was first elected.

Only one.

I grew up in New York, and my whole family is still there. It's clear that I and others cannot convey here the scale of the profoundly conservative changes that occurred there from 1993-2001, but they were real, they were profound, and most of them endure despite the maladministration of Bloomberg.

I'm going to bow out of the Rudy threads, but suggest that those of you who still have an open mind on this topic not sign on to anti-Rudyism just yet.

Liberals don't do the things he did in NYC. They just don't.

393 posted on 02/20/2007 4:09:17 AM PST by Jim Noble
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To: nopardons

"I *was* a CONSERVATIVE before either of you were."

Key word here being *was*. Is that what you are *now*? Your posts indicate otherwise. Isn't it time to face the reality that you simply are no longer a conservative that you once *was*? As Jim said, "To thine own self be true."


394 posted on 02/20/2007 4:58:46 AM PST by dmw (Aren't you glad you use common sense, don't you wish everybody did?)
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To: Jim Robinson

You are talking about "planks." People don't vote for planks. They vote for candidates. The Republican Party does not need to change its planks. However, it does need a candidate who has the ability, the possibility, of winning a National Presidential Election in 2008 for any of the various "planks" to be realized.

I think we are headed towards a disaster in 2008. I want to slow the bleeding in hopes of stopping it later by going with someone who is most likely to succeed even if less conservative. You want to wager big and "double down" on a more conservative lesser known candidate.

The problem with your strategy, is that the card table is completely tilted right now. The cards are stacked against us and, further, the cards are being marked and counted as time goes by.


395 posted on 02/20/2007 5:46:01 AM PST by TSchmereL ("Rust but terrify.")
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To: Kevmo

He is the freshman class president. The Rinos are still mad. This is a outspoken, conservative, VERY principled guy.


396 posted on 02/20/2007 5:48:16 AM PST by Delphinium
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To: editor-surveyor; Kevmo
Duncan Hunter could get a big cover story in Time or Newsweek: "Is America Ready for Duncan Hunter?!" I was being sarcastic. Obviously, the media will portray Duncan Hunter as a right-wing nut job. The problem is that millions of Americans will buy it. Giuliani will get puff pieces. The problem is, it matters. And the result matters.
397 posted on 02/20/2007 5:53:43 AM PST by TSchmereL ("Rust but terrify.")
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To: Jim Robinson
It comes much closer to being a mirror of right wing conservative America, with enough of the Christian right, veteran and RKBA voters to measure the pulse of how they feel about sacrificing our precious God-given freedoms on the altar of socialist electability.

A Big portion of Republican primary voters.
398 posted on 02/20/2007 5:57:45 AM PST by Delphinium
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To: .30Carbine; Jim Robinson
[.. I believe Mr. Buckley would say the operative word here is "rightward." ..]

As far as I can tell many people(here at FR) generally have lost the ability to determine right from left.. Anyone with hard right credentials many think are wingnuts.. And they ARE coming from a hard left attitude.. If that can happen "HERE" on FR.. What then does the public at large think?..

Public brain washing by the News outlets, MsM and MsP, Hollywood, and federally controlled academia must very great.. Even more extensive than I have believed..

399 posted on 02/20/2007 6:27:05 AM PST by hosepipe (CAUTION: This propaganda is laced with hyperbole....)
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To: nopardons

I see the baiting game was played last night. It's pretty clear that every single person who likes or endorses Rudy is a RINO or a liberal. /sarcasm

The people that some freepers are willing to throw under the bus is growing every day. Michael Reagan. Rep. Sessions. Sen. DeMint who said at the GOP meeting yesterday that although he endorses Mitt, he thinks Rudy would make an excellent president. It's a much longer list, but you get the idea.

And you know, in over an hour's speech by Sen. DeMint yesterday about what conservatism means, not one word was said about abortion or guns. He just has got to be a liberal. (can you see me rolling my eyes)


400 posted on 02/20/2007 6:41:25 AM PST by Peach (The Clintons' pardoned more terrorists than they ever captured or killed.)
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