Posted on 05/14/2008 9:31:24 PM PDT by The_Republican
Tuesday's election results highlighted challenges for both Democrats and Republicans.
Republicans received a hard shot in Mississippi. Greg Davis (for whom I campaigned and who was a well-qualified candidate) narrowly lost a special congressional election in a district President George W. Bush carried four years ago with 62% of the vote. Democrats pulled off the win by smartly nominating a conservative, Travis Childers, from a rural swing part of the district who disavowed Barack Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and hit Mr. Davis from the right.
This blow to the GOP came after two other special congressional election losses in recent months. Republicans lost former House Speaker Denny Hastert's Illinois seat and Rep. Richard Baker's Louisiana seat.
Both of those losses can be attributed to bad candidates. But that only shows the GOP can't take "safe" seats for granted when Democrats run conservatives who distance themselves from their national party leaders. The string of defeats should cure Republicans of the habit of simply shouting "liberal! liberal! liberal!" in hopes of winning an election. They need to press a reform agenda full of sharp contrasts with the Democrats.
Why is it tough sledding for Republicans? Public revulsion at GOP scandals was a large factor in the party's 2006 congressional defeat. Some brand damage remains, as does the downward pull of the president's approval ratings. But the principal elements are the Iraq war and a struggling economy.
Gallup's 2007 report found that fewer voters identify themselves as Republicans now than at any point in the past 20 years – despite the fact that less than a fifth of Americans agree with Mr. Obama's call to rapidly withdraw from Iraq. And while many Americans are concerned about the economy, most are satisfied with their own finances.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
“The string of defeats should cure Republicans of the habit of simply shouting “liberal! liberal! liberal!” in hopes of winning an election.”
Hell, that’s a bragging point and battle cry for some, like Tom Davis, who think they’re losing elections because they aren’t far enough left!
And to think, they’re considering replacing Cole with Davis as the NRCC chairman.
Uh... and then there’s immigration ‘reform,’ Carl. Remember that?
Karl, with all due respect, maybe there is a big lesson in this for the GOP.
Yeah, there was a dog trapped in that car, too, and it went down with the bridge.
WOW! Outstanding recital of the facts as they relate to where we are all at now! This should be posted on every McCain/GOP thread.
..used real good by this so called magnificent pejorative
..and now FOX is parading him day & night to chastise the base for defecting.
GO POUND SAND, KARL!
Wish I had said that... ; )
IMHO, would’nt matter. In my mind, I keep coming back to what happened to Tom Delay.....
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1802383/posts
Washington is so jammed with parasites looking for a teat...that ANY organized opposition-IOW any Conservatives-will be run out of town . Period. This, folks, is a far BIGGER problem than just one with the Republican leadership.
there’s also the profound feeling based on the reality of neighborhoods filling up with illegals that the republicans are selling out the country.
Karlos “LaRaza” Rove huh!? Amazingly stupid. Crawl back under your rock. Blackbird.
Karl “The Wrecking Ball” Rove suffers from cockiness.
>How did we get to such a dismal selection?
You can thank rove, who championed abandoning all principles for short term electoral gain.
Awesome post. The one thing that I would add to it is the importance (at least it was for me) of the Harriet Miers fiasco. Just like the Democrats are starting to realize that we were right all along about the Clintons, the Harriet Miers thing sure made it appear that they were at least a little bit correct about W’s administration being full of crony’s and partonage.
Great post. I think you can add to the list the most recent policy of hyperinflation and deliberate distortion of true inflation statistics in order to bail out a banking system that pays its own executives and traders enormous bonuses while driving the banking system and the country into third-world impoverishment.
You need to think hard about that one. Miers was not an atypical Bush appointee. Personal loyalty counted for far more than intellectual astuteness, experience running things and energy of execution in all of his appointees. We came together to make a fuss about Miers, but a large number of his other appointments are equally uninspiring.
What was most frustrating is that many of these situations were unforced errors, and almost seemed designed to alienate part of the base. Many of them also seemed to be designed by Democrat strategists. Could you have come up with a more effective ad campaign for Republican largess than the "bridge to nowhere?" Were there any two things that could have undercut the security issue more than southern open borders and the Dubai ports deal?
The Harriet Miers thing only blew over because Miers pulled herself from contention. With both Dubai and Miers, Bush put the Republicans in the very uncomfortable position of having to fight their own party leadership. OTOH, on spending, it was a congressional thing and Bush went along.
Unfortunately, the horse is out of the barn, now, and I don't think there's much Republicans can do to prevent a blood bath this fall.
Here's what we SHOULD have done:
1. Reign in spending. Freeze entitlements and let economic growth help reduce their impact on the total budget. We should have reduced taxes instead of giving earmarks to industries.
2. Continue to push for personal retirement accounts. The GenX and Yers would have loved this. Keep the commitment to the older people who are too vested in SS to get out.
3. Enforce existing laws on immigration while pushing for more realistic visa policies. IMHO, the refusal to enforce existing laws created a huge backlash by the base. A push for more visas for legal immigrants would have gone a long way towards picking up the hispanic vote.
4. I wouldn't scrap free trade, but I would have gone back to Reagan's policies of watching what other countries were doing, and when they were engaging in dumping policies to kill US industries (basically violating US anti-trust laws), enacted tariffs, as Reagan did on Japanese motorcycles when they were trying to kill HD.
5. Most social conservatives don't want a "Theocracy" as many claim, they're simply tired of the government mandating immorality. I would do whatever I could to stop the alienation of the Boy Scouts and other morally straight organizations.
The Republicans have a problem in that Democrats will continue to vote in individuals no matter how crooked. William Jefferson and Barney Frank are still in office, despite Jefferson being caught red-handed with bribes and Frank was found to have an underaged male prostitution ring running out of his office.
While conservatives shouldn't go that far, we have to quit throwing people overboard because someone makes a charge against them.
Note: this topic is from May 14th, 2008. Thanks The_Republican. ...in Mississippi. Greg Davis (for whom I campaigned and who was a well-qualified candidate) narrowly lost a special congressional election in a district President George W. Bush carried four years ago with 62% of the vote. Democrats pulled off the win by smartly nominating a conservative, Travis Childers, from a rural swing part of the district who disavowed Barack Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and hit Mr. Davis from the right... the GOP can't take "safe" seats for granted when Democrats run conservatives who distance themselves from their national party leaders. The string of defeats should cure Republicans of the habit of simply shouting "liberal! liberal! liberal!" in hopes of winning an election. They need to press a reform agenda full of sharp contrasts with the Democrats.
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