Posted on 01/29/2008 11:55:19 AM PST by Sideshow Bob
“I’m hoping Romney will . . .save us from the RINOs.”
LOL. That’s funny. Be like cannibalism on his part.
I don’t think that is what he said.
I would accept a court order as a reason a lot more readily than I accept that Romney raised taxes and signed in Romneycare because he faced a democrat legislature.
If the governor is responsible for everything, even court orders, then Romney is directly responsible for Gay marriages in his state. Another reason I don’t like Mitt.
I think we need to rebuild the conservative movement from the ground up with candidates at the lower office levels. The National Review, Free Republic, Human Events doesn’t provide leadership or a connective force anymore because the coalition is so diverse and disconnected; neither does the Republican party . . . so we need to retake the party. I think that conservatives that don’t have major black marks such as scandals and arrests should realize the simple power that a clean reputation has . . . and run for office . . . and so begin to retake the party.
I think we are getting outworked by the liberals who do have the courage and conviction to run, set up 501(c) after 501(c), get various and bogus grants, unions with their paid protestors, and the whole mechanism of the left which continues to grow. We haven’t seen the full power of it yet because they’ve been out of power at the national level since 1968, with only the disaster of Carter in that period during full control of the Federal Government by the Dems. But if we lose this one . . . we’ll see it. The far lefts international billionaires are much more active than the wealthy on the right as well.
We have to work from the bottom up because the top down will get us the choices of the elites — who are basically open borders, don’t make waves with social issues types. Rockefeller types that wouldn’t mind Romney . . . or McCain . . . at all. Better to run for city council than post! You grab a smidgen of power; a chip that can be played in national races with whatever lists, campaign workers and structures you can build at the local level.
So ends my bloviation.
Why not just nominate the one who could win?
Maybe it's just as well it is not your call.
This is childish name calling. Dr. Paul is a pacifist. Now maybe you believe all pacifists are kooks but at least then perhaps you could just say that he is a pacifist. When you say he is a kook, then you imply that all of his fantastically urivaled and principled stands on social and fiscal issues are also kooky. If you really think he is a kook all around, then conservativism is just a style to you and not an ideology.
Unfortunately, Dr. James Dobson and a few evangelical leaders decided to cut off their nose to spite their face (Mistake #35). You see, Fred's not a Bible thumper. Neither was Ronald Reagan. And like Reagan, Fred is a bona fide, all-around, federalist conservative. That wasn’t good enough for Dobson. And when Fred refused to kiss Dobson's ring of evangelical purity, Dobson went shopping for a candidate he thought he could control.
You can bag on Dr. Dobson all you like, but you are just insulting me and other Evangelical Conservatives who greatly respect but have never followed him. BTW we were listening to Dobson on the radio 20 years before we could even start listening to Limbaugh. Dobson never asked Thompson to "kiss his ring". All Dobson did was to offer political analysis that was very reflective and not determinative of reality. The race was Thompson's to win, but his tardy, anemic, non-engaging and uninspired bid is squarely to blame for his failure. Dobson didn't owe him an endorsement anymore than Limbaugh does.
I've got news for you, we Evangelicals don't need a Messiah in the Presidency, we already have one. We will love the Lord our God and our neighbors as ourselves whether we are slaves or freemen, in war or peace, in prosperity or resession, under conservatives or liberals. We will do what is right regardless of what it costs us. Which means that saving unborn babies comes before:
We think that any President or Presidential candidate that is not right with God has much much bigger problems than being right with evangelicals, conservatives or any other part of the electorate!
Psalm 2
1 Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?
2 The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, saying,
3 Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.
4 He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the LORD shall have them in derision.
5 Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure.
6 Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion.
7 I will declare the decree: the LORD hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee.
8 Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.
9 Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel.
10 Be wise now therefore, O ye kings: be instructed, ye judges of the earth.
11 Serve the LORD with fear, and rejoice with trembling.
12 Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him.
Focus on the Family founder James Dobson appeared to throw cold water on a possible presidential bid by former Sen. Fred Thompson while praising former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who is also weighing a presidential run, in a phone interview Tuesday.
"Everyone knows he's conservative and has come out strongly for the things that the pro-family movement stands for," Dobson said of Thompson. "[But] I don't think he's a Christian; at least that's my impression," Dobson added, saying that such an impression would make it difficult for Thompson to connect with the Republican Party's conservative Christian base and win the GOP nomination.
Mark Corallo, a spokesman for Thompson, took issue with Dobson's characterization of the former Tennessee senator. "Thompson is indeed a Christian," he said. "He was baptized into the Church of Christ."
In a follow-up phone conversation, Focus on the Family spokesman Gary Schneeberger stood by Dobson's claim. He said that, while Dobson didn't believe Thompson to be a member of a non-Christian faith, Dobson nevertheless "has never known Thompson to be a committed Christian someone who talks openly about his faith."
"We use that word Christian to refer to people who are evangelical Christians," Schneeberger added. "Dr. Dobson wasn't expressing a personal opinion about his reaction to a Thompson candidacy; he was trying to 'read the tea leaves' about such a possibility."
Thompson has said he is leaving the door open for a presidential run and has won plaudits from conservatives who are unenthusiastic about the Republican front-runners. A Gallup-USA Today poll, released Tuesday, showed Thompson in third place among Republican and Republican-leaning voters, behind former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Arizona Sen. John McCain.
While making it clear he was not endorsing any Republican presidential candidate, Dobson, who is considered the most politically powerful evangelical figure in the country, also said that Gingrich was the "brightest guy out there" and "the most articulate politician on the scene today."
Gingrich recently appeared on Dobson's daily Focus on the Family radio program, carried by upward of 2,000 American radio stations, where he made headlines by discussing an extramarital affair he was having even as he pursued impeachment against President Bill Clinton for his handling of the investigation into the Monica Lewinsky affair.
Dobson's phone call to U.S. News senior editor Dan Gilgoff Tuesday was unsolicited. It marked Gilgoff's first discussion with Dobson in over two years, since the magazine's political writer began work on The Jesus Machine: How James Dobson, Focus on the Family, and Evangelical America are Winning the Culture War, published this month by St. Martin's Press. Dobson had agreed to answer only written questions for the book.
Dobson's comments yesterday about the 2008 presidential race appear to be his first to a secular news organization in months.
Dobson recently sat down with former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney at Focus on the Family's Colorado Springs headquarters, marking his only meeting to date with a top-tier Republican presidential candidate. While Dobson would not comment directly on the Romney meeting, he stood by comments he made late last year that many evangelicals would find it difficult to support Romney because of his Mormonism.
"I still think that might be an impediment for him," Dobson said. "There are conservative Christians who will not vote for him because of his Mormon faith. I'm not saying that's the correct view or my view. But [presidential nominees] lose elections by 5 or 6 percent of the vote, so you don't have to lose much of the conservative Christian vote" to make a difference in the election.
Dobson said that neither of the two other Republican presidential front-runners Giuliani or McCain has attempted to contact him. "I do not believe that the current excitement over Giuliani will continue," Dobson said.
Dobson was a major force in the 2004 election, giving the first public presidential endorsement of his career to George W. Bush. Bush got nearly 6 million new white evangelical votes in 2004 that he didn't get in 2000, accounting for about twice his margin of victory. Dobson's national activist network led an unprecedented effort to get conservative evangelicals to the polls. Its greatest impact was likely in Ohio, the lynchpin to Bush's re-election, where Bush won by fewer than 120,000 votes.
Dobson, who turns 71 years old next month, has been the subject of recent rumors that he would retire from his position of Focus on the Family chairman and possibly step out of the political spotlight in the next couple of years. In the interview, however, Dobson said that he no intention of doing either.
"I have 10-to-12-hour-a-day energy," Dobson said. "I feel that God has asked me to do what I'm doing. I have no intention to stay away."
And Rush Limbaugh didn't directly endorse Fred Thompson, either. He merely said that everyone else wasn't a conservative.
Dobson and his peers did leak the "Fred is not a Christian" smear and made their preference for a real "evangelical" known.
Hmm. let's see. Romney is Mormon, McCain's not an evangelical. Ron Paul is loopy and Hunter is barely treading water.
You're right there was no explicit endorsement for Huckabee there.
Whis is it so hard for all conservatives to simply step forward and say, "Geez, we really screwed up and we're going to have to work together better in 2012!"
(The "bible-thumpers" comment wasn't mine, but I wanted to include it to preserve the flow of your reply).
I agree that calling people names isn't helpful, but as a non-evangelical conservative, I look at the name calling Dr. Dobson engaged in as a key reason that a true conservative isn't on the ballot. Saying repeatedly that Fred Thompson was not a Christian hurt FT badly, IMO.
Evangelicals may be our allies, but their leaders are not right when they trash decent candidates for their own personal reasons.
I used to support FOTF because I thought they did good work, but after those incidents, do not do so any more.
Credibility-flush. Writer has personal issues. I stop reading...
... Thereby illustrating the truth of the writer's charge.
You seem to think that wearing your Christianity on your sleeve makes you immune to flaws such as lack of humility and over-sensitive defensiveness.
I am a Christian and have done my share of "bible thumping" on Free Republic, as I believe that Christianity and Christ hold the salvation for all mankind. But I applaud Sideshow Bob's use of the phrase "egotistical evangelicals" because it is so heartily ACCURATE.
The real problem is the left wingers controlling our schools and the MSM
All the rest of the analysis is secondary
And if Hillary or Obama win there won’t be a USA left in 4 years for a conservative candidate to save
The biggest problem facing this country is STILL muslim terrorism —They aren’t going away and you can add the growing Chinese menace as well —But the average dumbed down American is too brainwashed to see it
PING for later read.
Romney has economic/fiscal conservative credentials.
I think Mitt Romney’s 1994 campaign platform is quite telling, since it indicates where Mitt Romney has been consistent for his entire political career -
http://www.freerepublic.com/~UnmarkedPackage/#mittnolib
“In the 1994 Senate race, Mitt Romney held the solid conservative position for 23 of the 24 issues listed; the only exception being the pledge to maintain the status quo in Massachusetts regarding a woman’s right to choose. A pro-choice position in Massachusetts in 1994 was a socially moderate stance accommodating the large majority opinion of voters in the state. In hindsight, it was wrong for a conservative to accommodate a pro-choice, status quo public policy despite his liberal constituency.
Romney freely admits now that he was wrong about the government’s role in protecting the life of the unborn and has changed his position on this issue to a pro-life stance as public policy consistent with long-held pro-life beliefs in his private life. However, it’s understandable how a first-time candidate in 1994, and former businessman, running a crusade for fiscal conservatism with solid conservative positions on crime, welfare, the economy, foreign policy, school choice, health care, and congressional reform might accept the status quo on a social issue respecting the liberal constituency he would represent.”
Excellent analysis. Better than the pundits.
You lost me with the “bible-thumpers” comment. I’d expect that kind of junk out of the KosKidz, but not from a conservative who knows that Evangelicals are our political allies and alienating them is a sure way to lose a national election.”
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Ditto....juvenile
Well, I know that Dobson didn’t endorse anyone because I hoped that he’d endorse Hunter. He didn’t endorse anyone. I don’t think Dobson has as much power as you credit him with (and I listen to Dobson on family trips and like him). If Thompson wanted the evangelical vote he could have spoke in the Iowa churches and homeschooling groups and so forth like Huckabee did. Same goes for Hunter. They all missed the boat and ignored the winning group in Iowa.
“Romney’s actually the second worst choice. “
Well the race is really now down to two candidates, Mitt Romney and John McCain. With Rudy and Huck trailing in FL, they are both out. So technically, you and Sideshow Bob are *both right*.
Vote Mitt Romney ... at least he’s not pro-amnesty John F***Y** McCain.
Hey, hey now....don’t be interjecting facts into this emotional issue!
***
So, leaving (insert social issue here) to the states on the craven basis of political calculation instead of on the basis of principled federalism is better? Huh?!!
Wow!
Standing “O” for you! That was a great post, well said, and hits the mark.
Thanks.
I honestly think letting it go to the convention is the best route.
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