Posted on 11/04/2008 10:20:52 PM PST by paudio
I know this view is not popular here, but we need to have an honest discussion after what happened last night. There has been many calls to throw 'RINOs' out of the party. Yesterday's results, however, show that we cannot do that. Like it or not, conservatism is a word with many meanings: social, economic, libertarian, 'patriotic' conservatism, etc. Recently, it's obvious that whatever coalition that Reagan put together has fallen apart. Dubya, ran as a conservative,managed to bring all factions together, but as a president, he gave privilege to one or two factions, and left the others cold.
Sarah Palin may be the darling of social conservatives, but not necessarily of the other conservatives. When we said 'she rallies the base', it seems now that we only meant 'she rallies the social conservatives'. It should be clear now that there are just not enough social conservative voters to win a national election. With her on McCain ticket, we cannot argue that 'the base' stayed home tonight.
The way I see it, in order to rebuild the party, we need to start from one of two assumptions: (1) there exists a conservative idea that encompass all factions of 'conservatism', or (2) Such idea doesn't exist, but we only had good communicator that managed to bring different people together. I used to think it was number one, but recently I started to doubt about it. It seems to me that the second one is much more important. Reagan, Newt, and candidate Bush (not the president) did a good job in their time.
So, in my opinion, in order to be able to compete with the Dims again, we need to find a person that can unite the whole factions back. Perhaps, we also need an issue to do so.
The other problem we have now is the tarnished brand of conservatism and Republican party that was caused by Dubya's inability or unwillingness to counter the media's narratives. At this moment, more than ever, we need to win the independents and moderates. Hoping them to vote for conservative candidates while throwing the 'moderates' in the party is really a misplaced hope.
Listen, noob, McCain was the big tent nominee. That didn’t work so well. Without Palin, he would have lost by even greater numbers. On the other hand, someone to McCain’s right, President Bush, managed to win two times, the second victory being especially important because half the country hated his guts.
Which is even more of a reason we need to get over this idea of GOP “black outreach” it’s a joke.
Yes, we need solid conservative ideas and effective communicators to articulate them. We also need leaders that will actually IMPLEMENT those ideas (or at least fight hard for them) when elected. That is part of what has damaged our brand.
We know that, when polled, around 60% of Americans consistently say they are either very or somewhat conservative. No, we don’t need wishy-washy, go along to get along moderates. Those types can vote with us if they want, but their watering down ideas are NOT welcome in our conservative movement.
Um, no. The conservative base came out. It was the wishy-washy, good for nothing elitist moderates who bolted for Obama. Elitists like Chris Buckley, Douglas Kmiec, and similar creeps because Obama comes off as one of them and not the common man.
The Republican Party doesn’t need to betray it’s principles, it just needs to live by them.
a Big-Tent Party Again?
what the heck has it claimed to be and worked for the last few cycles and for what? alienating a sizeable base, for starters. moderates aren’t worth the spit from a camel’s mouth, imo.
You know where you can stick the big-tent poles, eh? ;-)
You’re a RINO and I hope you burn with the tent that’s going to burn to the ground!
The Big Tent is what destroyed the Republican Party!
We starting a carnival?
The trend that concerns me is that various faction really started to point finger to each others, and accuse the other one of being 'impure'.
I think if you want a big tent, the party with the biggest big tent just got elected, and there is probably still room for you underneath. Their big tent is big enough to cover their entire island of misfit toys. Be sure to bring your earplugs, as the bleating of the assembled sheep will be deafening.
I agree with you to large extent. Palin excites social conservatives, but not every conservative is a social AND fiscal conservative. As I mentioned in a different post, I know a bunch of conservatives who are fiscal conservatives and were turned off by McCain AND very much by Palin who represented to them a kind of ignorant, Bible-thumping brand of American they can’t relate to.
Are these kinds of conservatives “RINO”s? I don’t know. They consider themselves serious political junkies and take elections seriously. We lost them at “bailout” with McCain and also with his choice of Palin rather than someone they would consider more serious and knowledgeable.
I know Palin got a bum rap and is intelligent and knows a lot about many issues. But let’s be honest - she would not win the presidency.
Bottom line is that we need to start communicating with our own people - call and do surveys about what the most impt issues are to people who consider themselves “conservative” and see what they don’t like to see/hear. We need to find the common denominator of conservatives and find a candidate who is YOUNG (a lot of the loss is due to McCain’s age) and presidential and represents a strong stance on these issues.
If you really look through these exit poll data (7 pages)http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results/polls/#USP00p1 you will see we lost in virtuallyevery category except 1) old people; 2) white males; 3) white protestnts; 4) weekly or more oten church goers; 5)gun owners. To me, this says we got the repub base all out to vote. But, are we really just white people clinging to guns and bibles? why did we lose EVERY OTHER category? Why did we lose these categories at the same time things like Prop 8 are winning? In some way Obamas comments came true as the McCain supporters were mainly gun and bible toting white people. Now - I’m one of these people, so believe me I’m not putting them down - it’s just disheartening to see this statistic.
We are losing every ethnicity except white. What is going on here? Losing Asians??? Hispanics?? We need to to get our ideas in order and find venues for them that are not talk radio and blogs. As much as the old media is dying, it actually still has influence and we are no where to be found. Esp. with the death of fox news conservativism.
Goodbye America, Welcome the New World Order.
Those who pushed this are Bush Sr. and his son. Goodbye Bush, and hope to never hear your name again.
Lousy Idea!
Your guy who was to prove the point that we needed to reach across the aisle got his head handed to him tonight.
Go back to GOP and conservative principles no more compromising our values so we can get the mythical intelligent middle-of-the road voter.
This isn’t the time to discuss any of the that. This is the time to step back and reflect.
You can however assume that there are defense conservatives, social conservatives, and fiscal conservatives, who can be drawn together by an effective leader, because they all share a common ground of traditional American values; respect for American exceptionalism; and devotion to freedom rather than whorehouse vanities such as "Fairness" and "inclusiveness."
I dont recall President Reagan ever talking about a "big tent." But he did all right didn't he.
Big Tent: Lincoln Chaffee, Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, Chuck Hegel, Arlen Spector, Peggy Noonan, Christopher Buckley. Tear it down.
Conservatism now waits to be re-discovered.
This election is not just an embarrassment, it is a ruthless rejection of fundamental liberty and capitalism, the foundation of our American success story.
This is no longer the country of "work hard and achieve success." This is NOW the country where the harder you work, the more you will be punished and the fruits of your labor will taken and given to others who are sitting around doing nothing.
go to any 2012 thread and you will find folks screamin Jindahl
now he is a fine fellow as much as I know about him but you will never convince me that much of his allure here with a forum that is probably 95% plus white is that Jindahl is percieved as non white.
everybody has been brainwashed into this trap
which is largely why Obama won
I can tell ya that here in nashville, professional upper middle class white liberals would seel their daughters to Obama’s harem
whites in America today have lost any sense of identity of how they got here and who wants their power
i have never seen anything like this
most blacks, liberal or the rare conservative are hardly so naive...ditto latinos
This is why I wrote this vanity. You believe 'small government' is the essence of GOP. What if we have a small government conservative candidate but is okay with Roe vs Wade? I'm quite sure there would be other 'conservatives' that are against him/her. The 'small government' used to be the mantra, but it's not enough any longer. Some social conservatives would prefer a moderately small government, but with the leader really fights agains abortion.
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