Posted on 01/26/2008 5:57:27 AM PST by fightinJAG
[snip]
On the pundit civil wars, Rush Limbaugh declared on the radio this week, "I'm here to tell you, if either of these two guys [Mr. McCain or Mike Huckabee] get the nomination, it's going to destroy the Republican Party. It's going to change it forever, be the end of it!"
This is absurd. George W. Bush destroyed the Republican Party, by which I mean he sundered it, broke its constituent pieces apart and set them against each other. He did this on spending, the size of government, war, the ability to prosecute war, immigration and other issues.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
It is my understanding that Baptists are the denomination from which Mormons draw most of their converts, unless the individual is previously unchurched.
Do I get the extra large belt buckle?
You got it. On several different levels.
I agree that Peggy fumbled the chance to make her point.
That said, I don’t see how Bush can be blamed for what’s happening on the GOP side in this election. Conservatives came forward and offered to be the nominee, but the grassroots did not rally to them.
Neither the MSM nor the Party nor the President could keep a conservative leader from catching fire as the nominee if the conservative rank and file rallied to him. But they didn’t.
So. Here we are.
How did “the suits running the party” keep conservatives from coalescing around Fred Thompson or Duncan Hunter?
These days a candidate can even get started on the internet, just like Howard Dean did. Yes, he ultimately crashed and burned because he was . . . Howard Dean. But he came out of nowhere, with no party support; he just caught fire in the Democrat base.
About the same thing happened with Obama. He wasn’t the “party candidate;” Hildy was.
I call BS on any theory that “the suits” or the MSM can do one thing to keep conservatives from supporting a conservative candidate. For sure, the MSM may be instrumental in defeating that candidate, but they are not the reason the conservatives (or those who were more conservative than the front-runners now) in this race never got out of the very, very, very bottom tier.
Agreed.
But the question is why didn’t conservatives across the nation rally to the conservatives who offered to be the GOP nominee?
Who could have possibly stopped them from supporting, say, Fred Thompson or Duncan Hunter if they wanted to?
Even Ross Perot got 19% of the vote, for goodness sake.
But we the people got that fixed. Why? Because we had some influence in the Bush administration.
That won’t be the case if the Rats win in Nov.
search only works if the posters use the original headline, which according to search, they did not!
Here’s my take on why Bush is the blame for this:
A broad base of conservatives supported him both in 2000 and 2004. (In 2004 he extended his appeal to independents and Reagan democrats.)
He took that support and tossed it in the trash can on a number of issues. He gave the finger to the people who supported him and he did it with almost a fine-tuned instinct for what would piss us off the most. Remember Harriet Myers? That wasn’t even an act of bad-principles (such as illegal amnesty) but just a sort of idiosyncratic stick to poke us in the eye with.
And he is our leader! He is the leader of the coalition of economic conservatives, social conservatives and military conservatives. And he shafted each one of those groups in his own way. Including the military conservatives. In these terror-times, what else is border control but a military issue? Including the social conservatives; what else is CFR but an establishment lock-box on the ability of social conservatives to challenge the status quo? And of course, the economic conservatives, with his huge increases in spending and his six year inability to veto a single bill, and his eight year inability to open up any new drilling in Alaska or offshore.
And he is our leader! And he led us to a point where we are fighting amongst each other.
It’s not all his fault. But he is our leader. And he led us into RINO swamps where we were doomed to fight and bicker amongst each other.
Have to give it some more thought, but it seems to me that the base of a political party can and sometimes does change over time. To me, it looks like more of “natural” process, not one influenced all that much one way or the other by a president.
Because, by definition, a base is a group of people who really have nowhere else to go politically.
Agreed.
Good point.
My point exactly.
This situation isn't Bush's fault. How in the world did anything he did prevent conservatives from rallying around the more conservative candidates in the presidential race?
It didn't and they didn't. I'm not sure why in all particulars, but the conservative candidates, who as politicians had at least the same skills as those who are front-runners today, never made it out of the bottom tier. Who is responsible for that? Well, conservatives.
Either there are not really as many conservatives as there are said to be, or conservatives aren't as conservative as they say they are, or "conservatism" is taking on a new meaning in practical, political terms . . . or . . . or . . .
The point is that whatever is happening, whatever it means that conservatives are not rallying to conservative candidates in numbers sufficient to make them viable, it is happening within the rank and file.
George W. Bush didn't keep people from supporting Fred Thompson or Duncan Hunter, for example. Neither did the party, nor the MSM.
When the base becomes a loose group of single/handful of single issue groups, rather than an association of persons interested in advancing some core ideals, the base will break.
Even if it’s true that W was a disaster, I’m still looking for how to pin the blame for the state of the GOP race on him.
I agree with you.
One thing I find troubling about this whole enterprise is that, of all things conservatism is, it's about personal responsibility. It's about the "can do" attitude. It's about realizing and acting on the fact that one makes one's own success.
Yet when we as conservatives, for whatever reason, fail (yes, fail) to rally to conservatism, quickly the search is on to blame someone else.
As I have said in numerous posts, did George Bush, or the party, or the MSM keep one person who wanted to from supporting, say, Fred Thompson or Duncan Hunter?
No.
Did either of those more conservative candidates even get out of the block?
No.
Who's responsible for that fact?
Well, it has to be that "we" are. By that I mean, "we" the people, conservatives as a whole.
I guess people will come back with something about who is and is not a "true" conservative. But then what they are saying is that there really aren't enough true conservatives to make a difference politically.
If that's the case, is that George Bush's fault? Did he force each person to adopt or reject a particular political ideology, or did each person reach his own conclusions?
Good point.
1. Permanent tax cuts
2. Reduced government spending / balanced budget
3. Social Security privatization
4. Destruction of Al Qaeda
5. Border security (fence)
Excellent post.
WHY, YES HE HAS
Seems to me that voters are more informed than ever. The candidates can't get away with half the crapola they used to, with the internet, YouTube and so on being used to show their lies. And the MSM can't control the information, either.
So my question is: if it's not information (in fact, voters have more information than ever), what explains the fact that the more conservative candidates got practically zero support among conservatives? Or does conservatism not really exist among voters? If the base is voting in the Republican primaries, is the base proving to be conservative or not?
These are some fundamental questions, but they have nothing to do with George W. Bush, I think.
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