Posted on 02/12/2008 7:25:36 PM PST by Kaslin
When asked about the 29 Republican-held seats that will go up for grabs this fall, National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., gently corrected this reporter.
"As of today," Cole said at a breakfast briefing for reporters. He didn't say that further retirements are expected, but he wasn't exactly ruling them out, either.
Cole then recalled how one unnamed GOP leader recently said to him: "Cole, you and I better get out of here before all of the good jobs are gone."
It was a joke. Sort of.
One election cycle as the minority party and Republicans are stampeding to the exits. While at least five of them are trying for higher offices, most are opting to simply quit. They are one retirement away from the record number.
Cole put the best face on the situation Tuesday, telling reporters he did not take the job to preside over the "dismantling" of the party. There's no reason why the GOP can't beat the odds this fall, he said.
"The biggest problem I have, and the Republican Party has, is morale," Cole said. "We went through the worst defeat since Watergate (in 2006), and yet there are still 10 more (GOP House) seats than Ronald Reagan had on his best day."
On Monday, Rep. John Shadegg, R-Ariz., a contender for GOP leader in 2006, became the latest Republican to drop out. By contrast, the Democrats have a mere five open seats going into the fall election
(Excerpt) Read more at ibdeditorials.com ...
I will STAY at home and not vote for any of them. I am tired of being taken for granted and used like a bit%h by the republicans. When they get serious about stopping illegals and building a fence, get back to me.
I left the party Super Tuesday. If mccain is the face of the Republican Party, count me out.
The lack of conservative LEADERSHIP on the part of elected office holders has ruined the Republican party. I lay this failure at the feet of President Bush, since he’s the Republican president and the leader of the party by default.
Only time will tell whether this ruin is long lasting. Right now it looks like it’s going to be...
Whose many? That is yet to be seen. Most people do not pay attention to the election until a few months before it. I guarantee you most Americans do not know what Obama’s stands are on the issues now. When people see what Obama Bin laden is about they may turn out in droves to see that he doesn’t get close to the WH. There is too much time before here and November and too much can happen. In fact one month is an eternity in politics and can dramatically change any race. It’s just like prognosticating the Super Bowl and just as uncertain.
If you disagree with McCain on only issue, do us a favor and stay home. Nobody needs your vote for the down ticket RINOs.
Your history is incorrect.
Reagan signed the Kennedy amnesty in 1986 which gave 3.5 million illegals citizenship because the previous Carter, Nixon,Ford, and Johnson administrations didn’t even know who was in the country. The bill was passed with strict enforcement measures which Reagan wanted in there. Teddy Kennedy and the rest of Congress PROMISED us there would never be another amnesty.
Then nobody enforced the law. Bush the Elder, Clinton, Bush the younger, nobody, including Congress, for 20 years.
That wasn’t Reagan’s fault.
Now,we are just keeping them at their word. No more amnesty.
Reagn wasn’t soft on illegals. This was the political reality at the time. In fact, the number of illegals was only supposed to be 1.5 million, but it was more than double.
That’s why when they say there is only about 12 million illegals, the real number is more like 25-30 million.
I nearly did this too. It was so tempting just to vote against Hillary. As a matter of fact this was my intention while driving to the polling place, but when I got there I changed my mind at literally the last second.
I turned out in MD this morning - for the last time as a Republican. When I left the polls, which were almost deserted (more conservative area in northern MD), I immediately headed to the post office where I dropped a voter registration form in the mail to go "I" and drop the Repug party after 25 years.
I keep seeing people using the term "RINO", as if that means a non-conservative Republican. Not so anymore. The new party base and presumptive nominee is now left of center, meaning conservatives are the new "RINO". I don't use the term anymore, since it's not really accurate.
“You didn’t read my entire comment I made. It’s not just the White House we would lose, but we not get Congress and the Senate back for decades to come”
*************************
I thought that in 1974 (Watergate Landslide) and 76 (Carter). In 1977 Republicans looked doomed to wander in the wilderness for decades (Dems had the Senate 61-39 and the House 292-143 and Carter in the White House.
Four years later we had Ronald Reagan, and Republican Senate 55-45, and with conservative Democrats a woring conservative majority in the House.
This will be a bad year, but Obama or Hillary will make Jimmie Carter look like Lincoln.
Just make sure we have the right guys ready to take the lead in 2010 and 2012.
Yikes, I’m new here, but I like very much what I see!
I agree, maybe conservatives need to hit rock bottom so we can become a mighty force once again. We have ‘settled’ far too much for far too long til we have been diluted. I will write in at the top of the ticket because I cannot in good conscience support McCain, but I will work like heck for conservative federal, state and local candidates.
He and other RINOs have taken the wind out of the Republicans’ sails. Even with the nomination clearly in hand, there is virtually no excitement in the McCain campaign. They are starving for money. The Democrats are tearing themselves apart along race lines. There's a possibility to completely fracture the black base away from the Democrats, but arrogant RINOs stand firm, thinking they actually know how to win. \ And all along this arrogant bastard, McCain, refuses to see the truth on this issue. Unless the Republicans find a strong voice to flatly argue against any form of amnesty as the basis for support in the upcoming election we can start writing the closing chapters, both for the Republican Party, and for America.
Reagan also stated that granting the ‘86 amnesty was the worst decision of his presidency...
Why do you think there are all those retirements from their cushy jobs? The handwriting is on the wall for the Republican party. Once they legalize all the illegals and allow them to bring their relatives in, this is the end of the line for the party. They know it and anybody with good sense knows it.
WHAT TO EXPECT WITH OBAMA ...
“Obama is our Ronald Reagan and he is going to obliterate everything that Reaganism stood for. Yes he will raise taxes, but the wealthy will still be paying less than when Reagan took office. Yes he will increase spending on the poor, the homeless, the sick, the elderly and students, but it will still be less as a percentage of GDP than under Carter. Yes he will get us out of this silly “war on terror,” bring the troops home, slash the size of the military, and restore peace on a global basis. And if he reinstates the “fairness doctrine” and gets that conservative hate speech off the air, so much the better. Obama is going to return us to the peace and prosperity that we enjoyed under the Kennedy Administration and the nay-sayers should just get over it. Only Obama can unite the country and it is high time that it be done. My only regret is that he has not said that he will prosecute Cheney and Bush for their war crimes, for illegal wiretapping, and for gross incompetence.”
http://www.usnews.com/blogs/capital-commerce/2008/2/12/is-obama-really-the-liberal-reagan.html
I get it, and I’m not going along with it, and neither should anyone else. I will most certainly not be staying home on Election Day.
One view ...
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/02/time_to_unite_behind_mccain.html
February 12, 2008
Decision Time for Conservatives
By Oliver North
Just four hours after former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s pragmatic decision to suspend his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, Sen. John McCain stood before the annual Conservative Political Action Conference and asked the assembled activists to support his bid for the White House. The “maverick” acknowledged differences he has had over the years with many in the room, offered a spirited defense of his 24-year record in Congress, and made an eloquent, self-effacing appeal for conservatives to unite in the “urgent necessity of defending the values, virtues and security of free people against those who despise all that is good about us.”
Reaction was swift — and predictable. Both Sens. Clinton and Obama, locked in a slash-and-burn contest for Democratic dollars and delegates, quickly dispatched dueling news releases, each claiming dominance over the presumptive Republican nominee. Earlier in the day, Howard Dean, their party’s chairman, warned that delay in choosing a standard-bearer could jeopardize Democratic hopes in November: “The idea that we can afford to have a big fight at the convention and then win the race in the next eight weeks ... is not a good scenario.” Regrettably, some of my conservative friends seem unwilling or unable to grasp that the same applies to the GOP and appear disposed to squander an obvious advantage.
My “colleagues” in the so-called mainstream media gladly roll their cameras and recorders for those who assert that “McCain is not a real conservative” or who say, “I can never support him,” and the ones claiming, “I just won’t vote this year.” It is, for me, a disheartening display because I have, as we say in the Marines, “been there — done that.”
After I won the 1994 Republican nomination for a U.S. Senate seat in Virginia, I naively assumed that all in the GOP would pull together behind my conservative candidacy. I clearly don’t know much about politics. If I did, I’d be writing this from my U.S. Senate office instead of my home in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains. But at the trade school John McCain and I attended in Annapolis, Md., they did teach me how to count. I lost by a narrow margin in a three-way race. Some of those who were with me then are among those who now say they won’t support John McCain.
Worse still, since this election cycle began last year, the Democrats have raised more money than the GOP, and in the primary balloting that began last month, Democrats have turned out more voters. These numbers matter because they reflect the energy and commitment of the opposing parties in this year’s presidential contest.
Neither John McCain nor anyone in his campaign asked me to write this column. But I cannot sit silently while my fellow conservatives do to John McCain what GOP “moderates” did to me. Today the stakes for our country are far higher, and the implications for the future are far greater than who sits in one of 100 U.S. Senate seats. Now our nation is at war against a vicious foe. We need a president who has proved how to win it.
During the course of the past six years, I have made a dozen protracted trips to cover U.S. soldiers, sailors, airmen, guardsmen and Marines defending us against a jihad hostile to all that we hold dear. In the dark days when Iraq’s Anbar province was the bloodiest place on the planet, John McCain was one of the few in Congress brave enough to venture into that cauldron. I know because I saw him there.
During those trips, he listened to bright, brave young Americans wearing flak jackets and flight suits and became a steadfast supporter of a winning strategy for ending this long and costly conflict. But the senator’s commitment goes far beyond political rhetoric. One of his sons is a student at our alma mater; the other is a Marine Corps lance corporal serving in harm’s way. Thanks to John McCain’s vision and resolve, a few weeks ago, my cameraman and I walked in shirt sleeves down streets in Ramadi and Fallujah, where we used to dodge bullets, IEDs and RPGs.
The election in November will determine how we proceed on the most profoundly important matter confronting our nation: the crucial outcome of an unprovoked war being waged against us by radical Islam. All other issues, as important as they are, pale in comparison to achieving victory over those who seek to destroy our very way of life.
Sen. McCain has pledged to win this war. We must do so, for the consequences of failure would be staggering. But as he has acknowledged, he cannot do that without the support of conservatives who man the phone banks, raise the funds, walk the precincts and turn out the vote on Election Day. I hope my fellow conservatives will decide as I have: We need John McCain as commander in chief.
And if it's the dem it will be the same. It's over for conservatism. Smell the coffee.
we CAN win the presidency, but more importantly, fiscal conservatives have got to stay close to power...
the Rats will try to push thru all kinds of junk and a strong minority can make enough noise to stop it....
It is not only the end of the party, but also the end of the sovereign United States. We cannot afford the trillions of dollars these low-skilled workers and their extended families will be entitled to thru benefits, healthcare, schooling, etc... We will lose our culture as well...remember “wherever there is a Mexican, there is Mexico”. The 47 Consulates on American soil are pushing this idea as well as the Matricula card, provided by the Mexican government, ignored by our State Department. It is defacto amnesty, allowing illegals the same rights as legal immigrants.
Amnesty will turn the U.S.A. into a third world country for our children and grandchildren.
“They know it and anybody with good sense knows it.”
Sad to see the direction we’re heading. I’m starting to wonder if we’re not looking at a “watering the tree of liberty” scenario.
John McCain wants to close Guantanamo and do away with water-boarding. However, water-boarding was used successfully against Khalid Sheik Mohammed who confessed to a number of ongoing terror plots and led to the arrest of 6 major terrorists. The ACLU was vocal in their support of John McCain.
I don’t trust McCain!
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