"Of COURSE you'll vote Republican, where ELSE are you going to go?"
Posted on 02/02/2008 1:57:13 PM PST by vietvet67
"We are at the end of the Reagan era." Or, at least, that is the claim of voices as diverse as Newt Gingrich and Ed Rollins on the right and Sen. Chuck Schumer and pollster Stanley Greenberg on the left. It is true the Republican Party is having difficulty retooling its message for the 21st century. But so is the Democratic Party.
Every presidential election is about change, and no more so than at the end of a two-term president's time in the White House. Parties have to constantly update themselves if they hope to remain relevant. The difficulty for both Republicans and Democrats is that our political system is at a point where more than the normal amount of party growth and development is needed. Both parties are suffering the consequences of seeing substantial parts of their 20th-century agendas adopted; both parties are struggling to fashion new answers to the new challenges of a young century.
But that's not to say that the Reagan legacy is exhausted. Ronald Reagan's legacy was not simply that he was "a campaigner and orator of uncommon skill," as Don Campbell argued last week in USA Today. President Reagan's gifts to the Republican Party were ideas: growing the economy through tax cuts, limiting government's size, forcefully confronting totalitarian threats, making human rights a centerpiece of America's foreign policy, respecting unborn human life, empowering the individual with more freedom. Those ideas endure. They give Republicans a philosophical foundation on which to build. The Reagan coalition has a natural desire to stick together. Fiscal, defense and values conservatives have more in common with each other than with any major element of the Democratic Party's leadership.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsweek.com ...
Perhaps the greatest irony of this election is that many of the people in both parties do not want any of their candidates. For this reason, when it comes to primaries, and they are asked who they support, their answer is “whoever is trailing.”
The rationale for this, again in both parties, is that if all the candidates can make it to the convention without a clear winner, then all it takes is just one vote by the delegates, and the party gets a “brokered” convention.
Now pundits will lose their marbles if such a thing happens.
However, in real terms, it means that all the delegates are now free to vote for whoever they want. If they don’t want McCain or Romney or Huckabee, on the Republican side, or Hillary or Obama, on the Democrat side, then they don’t have to choose them.
If there is a deadlock, then another candidate, called a “dark horse” can enter the fray. For the Republicans, it could be Duncan Hunter or Newt Gingrich or someone else; for the Democrats, it could be Al Gore or who knows who.
But the end result cuts through the mustard of the primaries and whoever is selected is what their *party* wants; not just who has the best machine to force the party to take them.
It would be a grand thing, and a democratic one. If it was bitter, than either party might be split by an aggravated faction, willing to lose the election instead of surrendering to a candidate they hate.
But the real winners would be the people, not the ego in the suit at the podium.
No problem. I think you both have a good point there.
The Bob Doles and the Trent lots took care of that soon enough.
Brought to you by the architect of the RINO Revolution...
"Of COURSE you'll vote Republican, where ELSE are you going to go?"
I have no confidence that John McCain is in step with any of these. He's not going to cut taxes to help the economy, he definitely won't try to limit the size of government, and he's not looking too good on proactively confronting Islamic terrorism - he's more concerned with giving terrorists constitutional rights. Lastly, he's not going to govern in a way that empowers individual Americans - because his actions as a senator show that, like a liberal, he believes that the elite governing body in DC is more capable of making most decisions for us.
You beat me to saying the same thing. He should just go away.
Well, you know Hillary’s not.
It's not over yet.
I'd say you're missing an "H." in there.
That is a lie.
Both the federal debt and federal spending doubled under Reagan. Neither had come close to doubling under either Bush.
Unemployment was far higher under Reagan than any president except FDR in the 1930s. It reached its peak at 12 plus percent in his first term. Now people are raising hell becuase it is 1/4 what it was under Reagan.
At the end of Reagans 7th year in office Unemployement was higher than when Reagan took office. Only in his 8th year did unemployment come down to the 4 percent range.
Interest rates were far higher under Reagan than they have been under Bush. And Job creation was far worse under Reagan than Bush.
You need to check your facts. Reagan looked good compared to Carter.. but not to Bush.
Karl Rove is almost single-handedly responsible for the current sad state of affairs in the Republican party.
Yep. I find it interesting that Rove points up consumer choice and individual reliance have impinged on the Dems. Flies in the face of "universal health care" crowd.
Use "real dollars" like the super-capitalist guys always do in other arguments about the economy.
Right on. Coming from a man who helped try to destroy about everything conservative this is a joke. Rove you magnificent fat bastard.
And you spent the last 8 years working for a man who supported almost none of those values.
Karl, go away.
Thanks for posting this!
Just who the heck that is conservative can win in a brokered convention?
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