If we vote for and elect one of the RINOs, we are demolishing the house that Reagan built. The Republican Party is a coalition. If we vote for Rudy we are throwing Social conservatives under the bus, if we vote for Huckabee we are throwing economic and national-security people under the bus, and if we vote for McCain we are throwing them all under the bus. If we throw any of them under the bus our coalition is shattered and we will be relegated to minority status for the foreseeable future. We may sqeak this one out, but for what?
So we can elect McCain, who opposed the Bush tax cuts, led the Gang of Fourteen along with his buddy Ted Kennedy in opposing conservative judicial appointments, would not authorize the torture of Islamonazi terrorists even if they had information that could save millions of American lives, and was a MAJOR sponsor of the Amnesty bill that everybody here fought hard to defeat last summer?
Or Huckabee, who helped the Mexican government build a consulate in Little Rock to give documents and services to illegal aliens, who wanted to extend state benefits to illegal aliens, who threatened to sue the Federal government over rules requiring states to verify the legal status of people applying for driver's licenses, who pardoned more criminals than all the neighboring states combined, who wants to close Guantanamo Bay to kiss ass to the rest of the world, who wants to apply the golden rule to Iran and North Korea, who called Bush's foreign policy "arrogant" and a "bunker mentality", who raised taxes by a net half-billion dollars, and who opposed Bush's veto of SCHIP?
Huckabee and McCain have all of Bush's worst attributes and none of his best, and I needn't mention Rudy, as you all know about him.
It would be FAR better to lose the election.
People like you were saying the same thing in '76 when Reagan challenged Ford in the primary. "HOW DARE YOU CHALLENGE A FELLOW REPUBLICAN! Do your duty and line up behind the annoited one!" It cost us the election and gave us four years of the worst president in US history. But you know what else it got us? EIGHT years of the BEST President of the twentieth century, who brought an end to the economic blight of the '70s, ended the Soviet empire, and restored greatness to an America that was damaged almost beyond repair.
I choose to lose the battle but live to fight again if our choices are Rudy, Huckabee, or McCain.
I could possibly hold my nose and vote for Mitt (although his dirty tricks against Thompson, his flip-flopping on social issues, his gun-grabbing, and his health insurance mandate would make that very difficult for me), but I will NEVER vote for Huckabee, Rudy, or McCain. If any of those three receive the nomination I will vote third-party or write in Thompson-Hunter.
If you want ALL the dealbreakers, go ahead.
Well said. Conservatism is difficult. It requires serious thought from factions that seemingly have nothing in common on the surface other than a fear of history repeating itself...Gubmint to use their monopoly on raw naked force to crack down on whomever they please (whether it be religious folks, libertarian folks).
Leftists and progressives don't have that problem. They are just a ragtag collection of special interest groups looking for big government to cowtow to their agenda of control.
Another thing about that, I'm not so sure that GW Bush didn't like the idea of this gang taking some of the pressure off him to elect a conservative. His choices might have ended up okay, but I'm not so sure that Bush wouldn't have wanted more liberal choices if he could get away with it.
If we consider that the "gang" might have been a Bush ploy to take the matter out of his hands, then the envoy chosen to be the go-between is important and a proxy member of the gang. That was Thompson.
Either way, it should be asked of Thompson during the debates if he thought McCain's undermining "gang" was a legitimate political ploy. Everything in these debates seems to be calculated towards preventing Thompson from mixing it up with McCain, though it should be the natural duty of the conservative in the field to destroy the rats.