Posted on 02/02/2008 7:29:44 AM PST by Bubba_Leroy
It is a straw in a whirlwind. In four days, you won't have even that to grab at. But you can delay facing reality that much longer if you please.
CONSERVATIVES are freaking out.
The party is not where either man is positioned, alone. I wish it were right where Thompson is positioned. But he didn't get the votes. It is quite clear there are plenty of people in the party who aren't where McCain is - Thompson among them. That is exactly why VPs get chosen - to balance a ticket. (See Bush senior for Reagan e.g.)
MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE!!!
You lead off with that, and then follow with this:
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.
It certainly seems it is you who is being delusional. Ohio does not decide Republican candidates. The South, Midwest, Rocky Mountain West, and Southwest take that decision.
If McCain causes those regions to go from red to purple, it won't matter a damn bit of difference what "Ohio and a few upper Midwest liberal states" want.
To return to your first statement, if yours is to be the template for objectivity, especially when failing to consider the South (which no Republican can lose and still win the presidency), then "objective analysis" is not all it is cracked up to be.
Having said that, there is no candidate running that can carry November for the Republicans. Not because the Dem field is so strong, but because the Pubbie field is so weak, and because the base is so utterly pissed off.
If the base stays home, which I am comfortable predicting to be the case this year, no Republican will win. That is just a fact.
If McCain were elected, we would no longer even have a viable opposition party wage a credible challenge to the Democrats. We would be forced into a position of leaving the Republican party, or working against its leadership from within. Better to take our lumps in the election, promote an new generation of able conservative leadership within the GOP, and fight the good fight against the liberals to minimize damage in the short term and win a landslide in four years.
McCain stayed in the party and acted as a fifth column, marginalizing the conservative base and George Bush at every opportunity, with vindictive, self-aggrandizing actions and legislation.
But it doesn’t really matter because he won’t win, anyway. Yes , the country is headed in a leftward direction, the radical left is winning, partly through their monopoly of the public schools and higher education and the media. That doesn’t mean that conservatives should give up, smarten up maybe, but not give up. In a way, it’s a good thing for the Republicans to be in the minority for a while. It will mean that the McCain type of legislators will be marginalized within their own party. They won’t be able to hold the rest of the party hostage any longer.
Nope.
Indeed, I agree that we are unlikely to win in the general election.
In my mind, the biggest difference between you and me, is that you seem to be rooting for a loss. Perhaps I read you wrong?
If the Dems govern very badly and conservative policies are clearly needed, then conservatism might increase in strength - but just losing an election will have the opposite tendency. Parties tend bid higher, more to their "wing", when they are winning easily, not because they lose. This can be counteracted by bad enough governance by the other side, is all.
We can lament this, but it is the way it typically works. Pols seek the median voter, and read electoral loss as a reason to move toward the electoral winners, not away from them.
Ah. Okay, I take take all the bad things I’ve thought about you!
No, if McCain is not supported by the conservative base, (actually McCain is not being supported by very many Republicans, period. His support is coming mostly from independents and cross overs.)even if he wins the nomination, he will lose in the general and he and his gang of fourteen will be marginalized in the Senate because the rest of the party won’t be held hostage to their ridiculous posturing. They can leave the party if they like.
This is not the Republican’s year for the presidency. It just isn’t going to happen, so why should we bother to support someone who has worked to undermine our values for the past ten years? The most important issue for me is homeland security and the war on terror and McCain is terrible on those points.
No, Tom McClintock ran for lieutenant governor and lost.
If you really must vote for McCain, please do yourself a favor and find a more substantive reason to do so. I served in the military - same branch, in fact - and have not even the slightest inclination to give that unmitigated ass my vote.
Sorry, it is all a hissy fit. If I can't have everything I want (and we can't), I will take my ball and go home. Fine, be a sissy, go home. Nobody stopping you. But I'm not going with you, because it is a betrayal of our men in the field, objectively treasonous, and politically immature.
Obama isn’t better, but he’s a Democrat. We will be able to say, don’t blame us. If McCain won (which he won’t), they would all be pointing to the Republicans and saying, see, the Republicans aren’t any better on security than the Democrats.
End of that argument.
Also, McCain will be worse than we would like on immigration and many domestic issues, but it is not the war he is going to screw up.
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