Posted on 02/02/2008 7:29:44 AM PST by Bubba_Leroy
More generally speaking: McCain’s ACU rating in 2006 was 48th out of 49 Republican senators.
Only Bridge-to-Nowhere Stevens was lower.
If not for Romney's personal wealth how can anyone possibly combat that?
Good. Let me say that I DO understand your point of view on this, and I respect it.
I just feel differently. I hope it doesn’t come down to that. Perhaps in the next Presidential election cycle, we as conservatives will be able to act in advance so we don’t end up in this situation next time.
Fight the good fight.
Yes, we all need to continue to do that to the best of our understanding and ability. We may squabble about the details, but we share a common goal of a prosperous and happy free people living in peaceful and industrious world.
Hang in there! Though it's going to be a long and trying journey, we will ultimately prevail.
Freep-mail me to get on or off my pro-life and Catholic List:
Please ping me to note-worthy Pro-Life or Catholic threads, or other threads of interest.
Sorry...I’m not freaked out about John McCain’s success.
I’ve thought for a while that the Republican party has gone down the tubes. This just verifies that thought.
Conservatives need to find a new home.
Taxes, immigration amnesty, and past comments about Evangelical leaders. That’s a lot of territory of interest to different conservative groups.
I’m very tired of the conservative blogosphere’s unfair mischaracterisations of John McCain. However, it’s clear that Free Republic and many of the other right-wing sites have lost their previousl level of influence in conservative thought, just as Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter clearly have.
‘Conservatives’ who have said that they will vote for Hillary Clinton rather than John McCain are proving that they are actually not conservatives themselves but have become simply irrational, disaffected rather strange people.
I used to hold Free Republic and other sites in high regard, but it’s clear that these sites are descending into self-marginalizing petty politics. This became clear to me in 2006 when in spite of vicious opposition from ‘conservatives’ in the blogosphere to Arnold Schwarzenegger in California, exit polls showed he got 93% of the Republican vote and 86% of the conservative vote in a state where Republicans are actually quite conservative. I believe that the same is going to happen nationally.
It’s time for Freepers to decide if they want to be part of the nation or simply a marginal fringe movement. The Freepers and other elements of the conservative blogosphere can’t deliver for Mitt Romney. It’s time to be pragmatic, folks.
Yeah. And Schwarzenegger has been soooooooo good for Kaleeeeeforneeya, hasn’t he?
Another point worth noting:
Why does Mitt Romney get such a pass on his horrific liberal record in the recent past (including making the top 10 RINO’s list by NRO in 2005), while John McCain gets no grace?
Let’s look at the facts:
Gay rights:
Mitt Romney infamously proclaimed in 1994 that he would be better on gay rights than Ted Kennedy (impossible) and even the other day reportedly told a CNN reporter that he always has and still does favor gay rights, just not gay marriage. He made some public outcry against the MA Supreme Judicial Court’s pro-gay marriage ruling in 2003 which was good, but his record is far from perfect and certainly nothing like Jesse Helms or an establishment conservative.
John McCain has consistently opposed gay rights in the Senate. He opposes pro-homosexual hate crimes legislation, openly supports ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’, he opposes the pro-gay ENDA. While he opposed the federal marriage amendment on federalist grounds, he supported Arizona’s anti-gay marriage, anti-civil unions, anti-domestic partnerships amendment so much that he even did a commercial for it. The amendment was so strongly anti-gay that it actually narrowly failed before the electorate.
Abortion:
Mitt Romney wildly flipped on abortion, saying as recently as 2002 that he was solidly pro-abortion and pro-Roe. We’re now supposed to forgive that position a mere 6 years later and assume that he’s totally trustworthy.
John McCain openly says Roe v. Wade should be overturned ( http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/Issues/95b18512-d5b6-456e-90a2-12028d71df58.htm ), something that even George W. Bush has been very shy about saying. With the exception of embryonic stem cell research, Senator McCain has a pretty solid pro-life voting record. In 2000, he called partial birth abortion an ‘abomination’. McCain also supports Roberts and Alito and stronly supported their nominations in the Senate.
Taxes:
Mitt Romney hardly has an exemplary record on taxes, having increased ‘fees’ as he calls them in Massachusetts.
John McCain has repeatedly reiterated his support for making the Bush tax cuts permanent and explained why he opposed them in 2000. Shouldn’t we give him a chance just like many want to give Romney another chance?
The list goes on and on but Senator McCain has staked out conservative positions on gun control and many other important issues.
My question is why don’t we stop being hypocritical by saying that Mitt Romney is such a wonderful conservative while we refuse to give John McCain a second chance.
“Yeah. And Schwarzenegger has been soooooooo good for Kaleeeeeforneeya, hasn’t he?”
I think he’s been too liberal, yes, but we always knew him to be the left of McCain. The point is, though, that most Republicans and conservatives supported him because the alternative was far, far worse. The same will be true, I believe in November for John McCain.
Plenty of loyal republicans are voting based on who they think can win, not on how much they'd like.
The republican party is not a church with an inflexible code and priests hurling anathemas at any who deviate from it. It is a practical institution that elects half of the successful pols in the country. Many of those pols are far to my left, and no doubt yours. I don't control them, I don't own the party, I couldn't read them out of it if I wanted to. And neither can you.
When is the GOP going to stop this notion of voting for the lesser of two evils. A McCain presidency would ruin the Republican party, and especially the conservative wing of it.
The reason McWhacked won those early primaries, was because of crossover Demonkat and so-called Independent voters in the states that allow that, trying to pick the best candidate for us to lose in the general election. In Florida, it was the senior vote that gave McWhacked the edge over Romney.
Why do you think the left-wing media wants the GOP to nominate McCain?? It is certainly not because they want him to, or think he can win. They want us to nominate him because they know he is a sure loser to either Democrat. None of the Left-wing media will support McWhacked in the general election, in fact, they will tear him to pieces as soon as the primaries are over.
Go ahead and drink the McWhacked kool-aid, and vote for him if you like. I am indifferent. But you will NOT convince myself and others on this forum who have made up our minds otherwise, to vote for a Democrat with an R after his name. I live in Arizona, and I have never ever voted for McCain, and I never will, because he is a Liberal, and belongs in the Democrat party.
I will vote for Ron Paul as an independent before I vote for McLame as the GOP nominee. At least I know Paul respects the constitution (part of the POTUS oath by the way).
The alternative was Tom McClintock.
Firstly, to call Free Republic a "right-wing" site, is to talk as an outsider. Free Republic is Conservative, not "right wing".
It’s time for Freepers to decide if they want to be part of the nation or simply a marginal fringe movement.
I'd rather be right and kicked out of the party than go along as a fool. That's the way I was in high school. It served me well then when dealing with cliques. It continues to serve me well now as I deal with unprincipled political hacks.
The Republican Party took a left turn, and you right along with it.
You can't seem to grok the idea of objective analysis. You aren't alone, but it is surely a sign that you also aren't engaged in it.
It is very likely that the Dems will win the presidency in the fall regardless of who we choose to put up.
If McCain loses, as is quite possible, if will not mean "no one can win without the conservative base". Omaba isn't going to have the conservative base, is he? Hillary isn't going to have the conservative base, is he?
The country might be better off if no one could win the presidency without the conservative base. But men can and have won the presidency without the conservative base. They have also won the presidency with votes from conservatives without actually delivery full fledged conservatism in office.
In fact, the only pol in my lifetime to even offer real conservatism as a presidential nominee of either party, was Ronald Reagan. (I was born right after Goldwater offered it, but of course without success).
Bush pere ran on continuation promises but had been the liberal republican standard bearer as long ago as 1980, and people should have known what they were getting. They got it. He did win anyway, with plenty of votes from conservatives. He was a hawk, but otherwise a typical liberal republican, readily swayed by the liberal press and a democratic congress.
Clinton didn't get a lot of conservative votes. He won twice.
Bush junior ran as an activist big government methodist do-gooder, and he has delivered typical Teddy - Wilsonian methodist do-gooder government. That has coincided with conservatism in a few matters - hawkish foreign policy, reasonably conservative judges e.g.
When there has been exactly one real conservative president since the 1920s, pretending no one can be elected without a by your leave from us is, well, pretending.
I am pretty sure seniors will also vote in the general election. I am pretty sure moderates in Ohio, and a handful of the more liberal upper midwest states, will decide who the next president will actually be. I am pretty sure the scale of turnout of true blue conservatives in Utah or Montana or Texas, will not matter a hill of beans.
As for Arizona, I'd lay dollar to donuts the Republican nominee can win it, whoever it is. And pretending that a state that has sent McCain back to the senate forever will swing the election by dropping him, is delusional.
I'd rather it were true that all republicans were Reaganite conservatives, but in fact only about half of them are. I'd rather it were true that three fourths of all voters were convinced republicans, but in fact we can barely get half in a good year with a centrist squish.
You don't have to like this for it to be true. I don't like it, but it is true. And I for one consider is decidedly conservative to live in the real world and face facts, and decidedly hysterical and silly and childish, to instead live in a fantasy of pretended special indispensibleness.
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