GOP leaders: Don't 'Bob Dole' us again

WorldNetDaily ^ | March 13, 2007 | Mychal Massie

[DakotaRed]

March 13, 2007 1:00 a.m. Eastern

[The] "Hustle" may have been a line dance we did back in the days of disco, but today it's what GOP leadership and a complicit media are trying to do to the voters responsible for the Republican Party's successes since Ronald Reagan.

Realistic chances of winning notwithstanding, there are no fewer than 13 Republicans in the contest for the 2008 presidential sweepstakes. But to hear party leadership and the media spin promote the candidates, one easily gets the impression that John McCain, Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney are not just the only candidates, but that McCain and Romney are the opening act for Giuliani as he awaits his coronation.

This is a ruse, a con, and in brief, an attempt to hustle the voters. GOP leadership is trying to "Bob Dole" us. They have, in effect, met in the smoke-filled back room of a private club and decided amongst themselves who they want in 2008. Their problem is how to deceive the voters into believing that said pick is of the voters' choosing.

[freedomfiter2]

Actually Bob Dole almost won.


So would Rudy.

[freedomfiter2]

The people who insist on Rudy, knowing full well that many are opposed to him, will be the ones responsible for a Hillary win.


Exactly, and then we'll have to listen to their crying and telling us it's the conservatives fault for not supporting Rudy. We conservatives have been supporting the establishment candidates since '88. It's time to run a real candidate.

[The Pack Knight]

As a result, we passed up dynamic thinkers like Steve Forbes whose ideas galvanized the nation. I am not saying that Forbes would have won, but his loss would have meant something. It would have brought in an entire new youth interested in ideas. What did we get out of Dole's loss? Nothing.

I was a Bob Dornan man in those days, who was basically his day's Duncan Hunter, albeit slightly better known. Of course, I was also 16 and didn't know better. Looking back, Steve Forbes might have not have looked or sounded "Presidential", but even in defeat he would have been a much better candidate than Dole, one whose ideas might have put some momentum back into the stalled 1994 revolution.

[Antoninus]

Help vanquish Rudy McRomney...



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[Antoninus]

Bob Dole was ... exactly the opposite of Rudy.

Right. Dole was at least nominally conservative. Rudy is a flat-out liberal.

[Gatún(CraigIsaMangoTreeLawyer)]

No, you are not going to get flamed.

With the exception of Reagan, the Republican candidate will be chosen by the power brokers once again and not by “we the people.” Should the chosen one become president, and the chosen one appears to be Giuliani at the moment, he will spend his years in the White House paying back the favor to the power brokers at our expense and at the expense of our country if there is anything left to give away after Bush leaves.

We have 20 more long months with Bush.

I’m not afraid of Hillary. I think she will be fun to watch should she be the Democrat candidate.

I've got to dash to the veterinarians. I'll catch up in about an hour.

[dforest]

Exactly, and then we'll have to listen to their crying and telling us it's the conservatives fault for not supporting Rudy. We conservatives have been supporting the establishment candidates since '88. It's time to run a real candidate.

Its time. You see the tables can be turned. How about a candidate that we no longer are holding our noses to vote for? Maybe that would help a lot in the level of enthusiasm.

Rudy people can't even use the argument that conservatives lost in 2006. Are they telling us that they didn't hold their noses and go out and vote anyway? Even though they despise conservative candidates? Maybe they didn't vote for them. I know the party didn't support many of them them as well. Maybe this was preparation for a Rudy Lib candidate to follow.

I do see one thing, as long as you are a Republican who is no longer worried about principles, Rudy is the man. No WOT argument works with me either. There are conservatives out there that will do a fine job at that also.

[taildragger]

Pack,

Yes Forbes would have been quite a better candidate than Dole. I held my nose and voted for Dole, gosh that was awful. The funny part of it is, I actually sent money to the Forbes campaign.

But in the grand scheme of things he would have never pulled a Lewinsky and may have actually gone after Bin Laden in that regards if Dole only did it for 4 years, he would have been a good President.

As someone from NR said, the GOP didn't loose in 96' they committed political suicide. Let us not do this again. It is all about beating Hillary (Who I don't think is going to get the nod, her corrosiveness will have her melting before the convention in my opinion) If the only tough guy to do it is Guiliani (conventional wisdom), then he is the "acceptable Newt". The heck with, run Newt, and go mano-e-mano with da Hilldabest in the debates and let the chips fall were they may. If then we have to rebuild the party like we did after Goldwater, then so be it.

[ajolympian2004]

The only so called "Bob Dole" candidates currently in the '08 Presidential race for the GOP are John McCain and Tom Tancredo. It either one wins the GOP nomination it's an automatic loss and by landslide proportions.

[Calpernia]

Duncan Hunter Bump!

[montag813]

As a result, we passed up dynamic thinkers like Steve Forbes whose ideas galvanized the nation.

Steve Forbes would never have won. He is a brilliant man, with a bizarre facial appearance that makes him look like either a retard or a psychopath.

[The Pack Knight]

When I think about it, I actually have trouble seeing any Bob Dole-ing going on here. Judging by the number of endorsements, if there's a GOP establishment candidate, it's Mitt Romney. It's more the media than the Republican "back room" pushing Rudy.

Bob Dole, like George H.W. Bush, Gerald Ford, and Richard Nixon before him, was nominated largely because it was his "turn". The man whose "turn" it is this time around is John McCain, but he's managed to alienate most of the party's activist base.

The good news is if we're being Bob Doled, it's with three different men. If all the primary frontloading is a push by the party establishment to take the nomination back from primary voters, as Massie suggests, they're shooting themselves in the foot by letting the campaigning start now. There's no George W. Bush this time around, and none of the three "annointed" candidates is bulletproof. If a viable candidate comes along who can appeal to conservative primary voters, he has plenty of time to let the "big 3" savage each other and turn the voters against them. Then, with the "moderate" vote safely split, he can walk into a brokered convention with a near-plurality of the delegates or even with the nomination sewed up outright. If we have three "establishment candidates", they are weaker collectively in the primaries than Dole or either Bush was by themselves.

It could be Newt, it could be Fred Thompson, or it could even be Duncan Hunter if he addresses the weaknesses in his campaign, but there's a better chance of conservative voters getting a candidate that appeals to them this time around than there's been in years.

[Rodney King]

Steve Forbes would never have won.

I know, I specifically said he would not have won. But he would have lost on principle and done us some good instead of the electable Bob Dole.

[LiveFree99]

I, like Rush, have decided to stop carrying water for the GOP just because they're marginally better than the Rats. If the GOP wants my support then they had darned well better accomodate themselves to me, not the other way around. Rudy in his current form is completely unacceptable and will not get my vote.

[LiveFree99]

By March of 1996 Bob Dole had the GOP nomination in the bag and I had resigned myself to another four years of the Stain Master. Lord, what a pitifully weak campaign he ran! How bad did it get? How about perky little Katie Couric pushing old Bob around on the issue of tobacco. And Al Gore running rings around Jack Kemp in their debate was another lowlight.

[Paul Ross]

(interesting how they said all the same things about W. also)

Actually, they didn't. They simply said he was dumb. And they still do.

And Bush's willful fracturing of the Party coalition... all over his demented quest for Open Borders and Illegal Amnesty, while unilaterally disarming and slashing Defense Strategic Procurement in the middle of a war, and constant China Appeasement while abetting its vast armaments buildup... certainly puts the issue into real contention...albeit from the opposite end of the spectrum.

And as far as smears goes...its more interesting to me how the "W" crowd and his direct upper echelons...have smeared Pat Buchanan (Nazi) and Alan Keyes (selfish).

Yet W has gone way out of his way to protect the Clintons...and their agents (Hamburglar, etc)... from the fruits of their criminality. Some sort of knee-jerk objection to the "politics of personal destruction"? Funny he doesn't practice that same deference with conservatives...

[Paul Ross]

I would support Mit Romnie as VP in Duncan Hunter's administration. He has a lot to learn about national defense. By all the evidence, W had even more to learn...and hasn't learned a thing.

[freedomfiter2]

Yet W has gone way out of his way to protect the Clintons...and their agents (Hamburglar, etc)... from the fruits of their criminality. Some sort of knee-jerk objection to the "politics of personal destruction"? Funny he doesn't practice that same deference with conservatives...

I've noticed that as well.