Posted on 11/05/2008 2:33:07 PM PST by Presbyterian Reporter
Some interesting comments from David Frum, as the GOP soul-searching and finger-pointing begins: Republicans face fraught choice between two roads to revival.
A generation ago, Republicans dominated among college graduates. In 1984 and 1988, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush won states like California, Pennsylvania and Connecticut – states that have been “blue” for a generation. (America’s least educated state, West Virginia, went for Michael Dukakis in 1988.)
Those days are long gone. Since 1988, Democrats have become more conservative on economics – and Republicans have become more conservative on social issues.
College-educated Americans have come to believe that their money is safe with Democrats – but that their values are under threat from Republicans. And there are more and more of these college-educated Americans all the time.
So the question for the GOP is: Will it pursue them? To do so will involve painful change, on issues ranging from the environment to abortion. And it will involve potentially even more painful changes of style and tone: toward a future that is less overtly religious, less negligent with policy, and less polarizing on social issues. That’s a future that leaves little room for Sarah Palin – but the only hope for a Republican recovery.
This argument makes sense to us, and we’ve been holding forth in our comments on this very topic. If the GOP decides to go in the Bobby Jindal direction (fundamental Christianity, creationism, hard-line anti-abortionism, aggressively anti-gay rights), it will be committing political suicide. As much as anything else, this election was a referendum on the social conservative agenda, and the social conservatives did not win.
Progressives have taken over the schools,colleges and media and government jobs. The rest of the country will catch hell. Watch.
“by the way gay marriage failed in three large states.”
We should take this to heart. When voters (even in liberal-land Calif.) get a chance to vote specificly on issues like gay-marriage and taxes they vote the conservative position by a wide margin.
ROTFLMAO!!!!!! Charles Johnson is on crack if he genuinely believes anything even remotely along those lines!
"Moderate" Republicans were given carte blanche opportunity to demonstrate, once and for all, that they knew how to win at the national level, this year.
They got exactly the candidate they wanted. They got exactly the party platform they wanted. The campaign was run exactly the way they wanted it run.
How'd that end up working out, again...?
Frum is a RINO. He thinks we’ve become more conservative on social issues? I don’t think so. It’s just that killing babies is not something to negotiate.
No way on EARTH that conservatives can win without social conservatives. And religion is not incompatible with being in college, or at least it should not be. I believe Newman Clubs and other organizations are doing pretty well in many places. Not, certainly, among leftists, but among Young Republicans.
I’d be sorry to lose Little Green Footballs. They have often been useful, and do a lot of good stuff.
As for Huckabee, he is not conservative at all. He’s a snakeoil salesman. I think Evangelicals would have figured that out, eventually, but they tended to take him at his word when he appeared on the national scene.
If fiscal conservatives, constitutional conservatives, and social conservatives can’t work together, then forget it. The conservative movement will be dead. That’s why liberals and the MSM always try to drive wedges between them. Conservatives should not be helping them do that.
“by the way gay marriage failed in three large states.”
You are so correct. Family values matter.
Frankly, it is beyond my comprehension how a GOP that did not have “family values” as a key component would be any different from the Democrats.
White religious conservatives are a shrinking minority.
Calling Jindal a fundamentalist is about as wrong-headed as one would expect for a country-club Republican to get.
I see Palin as more libertarian than anything. The GOP can probably retain many social conservatives while making room for social libertarians by placing an emphasis on the government letting us alone to live our lives as we see fit. The way the GOP wins back college educated voters making good money is to be steadfast economic and fiscal conservatives while advocating the rights of all to live and pray as they wish. In general, the GOP is already there. But it’s done a piss poor job of communicating this.
The country may well have been founded with those principles, but that isn’t the USA today.
Any attempt to return to those virtues and principles will translate into real blood-spilling.
The cause? What schools are teaching. The curriculum.
We conservatives have been asleep or hypnotized for almost two generations.
“””ROTFLMAO!!!!!! Charles Johnson is on crack if he genuinely believes anything even remotely along those lines! “”””
Until today I have regularly read Charles Johnson’s commentary. Early this year Charles started ranting about Creationism and Intelligent Design. He had apparantly seen the light and found the dark side more enlightening.
They hate Sarah because she is a christian.
If this guy is right about social issues, explain why California went for marriage ban?
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I honestly can't see why people want to toss social conservatives under the bus when gay marriage was the only aspect of liberalism the voters rejected.
We should return to the basics of individual liberty, personal responsibility, limited government, and free markets. Couple that with social conservatism.
Yes. The ‘moderates’ - also have been the biggest spenders. The people CONSTANTLY voting and pushing smaller gov’t and less taxes are the dreaded SoCons - Like Jindal, Hunter, Pence, Sessions, etc.
Contrast that with a Mccain who wants impose cap and trade over a fairy tale and voted AGAINST the Bush tax cuts using class warefare rhetoric fit for any leftist.
Contrast that with Mitt Romney whose RomneyCare is a socialist boondoggle worthy of Obama.
Contrast that with Bush whose stinkin “bailout” is the worst case of socialism since FDR, but who still hasn’t slashed his 40 billion in African Aids $.
It’s pathetic.
charles johnson is a hippie, kumbeya singing traitor.
Many lizards are jumpin ship. Hey charley, God did create the universe and everything in it, so sell your anti-creationist tirade to the moonbats.
Also, don’t forget, the people over at LGF thinks creationism is nuts.
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