Posted on 11/20/2008 4:19:51 AM PST by NCDragon
In the aftermath of the Obama Tsunami, Republicans at the state and national level are digging out and correctly spending some quality time analyzing what happened and how to move forward with rethinking, rebranding and repositioning for the days to come.
As one of two statewide Republican elected officials left standing (the estimable Attorney General Rob McKenna is the other), my hope for our Grand Old Party is that party elders, activists and donors resist the ultimately self-defeating instinct to move toward narrow ideological dogma, negativism and unhelpful government-is-bad rhetoric.
I hope the party that I have loved all these decades increasingly will be the idea-rich home of pragmatism and reform, the welcoming party of inclusion and the creative party of can-do problem-solvers. We are, after all, the party of Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and Dan Evans. We have succeeded for 148 years by championing individual freedom and responsibility, equal rights and opportunities for all, fiscal conservatism, strong local and state governments, a vibrant free-enterprise system, conservation of our natural resources and a strong national defense. To cant away from such mainstream American thought and away from the practical, common-sense middle is precisely the wrong approach.
(Excerpt) Read more at seattlepi.nwsource.com ...
Talk to me when a candidate gets 75% of the popular vote.
I've never seen a presidential candidate get 75% so I guess we've never had a tsunami.
Also if the Democrats manage to unseat Coleman and Saxby then they have 60% in the Senate.
I would pretty much call that a tsunami.
No question! The idiotic moderate/rino's have basically destroyed this party. They are so assbackwards they can't even look down without always seeing their asses. (chuckle - this could possibly be the dumbest thing I've ever written, but it just fits!) The base more than ever needs to "bring it" to the GOP/RNC or we are going to be a minority for another 40 years.
We have to stop blaming the GOP/RNC. The grassroots (We) need to start moving diligently, NOW and change it!
WE NEED TO DEFINE WHAT IS A CONSERVATIVE and how it differs from these rino/moderate/liberal assholes. Yes, a conservative is narrowminded, with a vision! Stop making excuses and stop this insane worrying about what the DBM/dem/rino/moderate think. We are right, our vison is true, and this country is the greatest country and has the best IDEA for gauranteeing freedom on the face of the planet. If you don't like it go pound sand!
If the GOP heeds these Chuck Hagel Republicans, the Conservative Party will finally be a viable third party in the US.
McCain received a higher percentage of the vote than Clinton did. The population is thus irrelevant.
Obama got the higher electorals because he won the areas with the greatest concentrated population — the cities, so that is not irrelevant.
My point, which you seemed to have missed or decided to overlook, is that Obama’s win is not an electoral “mandate” as Clinton tried to make out of his win. The country is still very much divided between “conservatives” and the leftists who voted for Obama, and Kerry, and Gore, each of whom purported to have a different message. Thus, the core of conservatism has not changed, while the ‘core’ of liberalism is hollow. They simply want to win power.
I don't consider Obama’s win to be a Tsunnami in the ideological sense mainly because he hid who he truly is in order to win.
But hey, feel free to join in with all the RINOs who are heaping praise on Obammie the Commie and trying to make nice so that they feel like they fit in with the ‘change’ that is taking place.
Personally, I don't think that the future success of conservatism is aided by pretending that Obama has some massive mandate to enact socialism or in playing to the center.
Cowardly Conservatives.
What is a cowardly conservative? First, they seem to cast themselves as pragmatic. But as an identifying feature, what they do is find and then stick a giant magnifying glass in front of a real bogeyman (or just fabricate a sufficiently large bogeyman from whole cloth) and then get the people to agree to all manner of insanity in order to be “protected” from the “staggeringly enormous threat”. Health-care costs, retirement funds, terrorism, mass bankruptcy, mass foreclosure, deflation, economic collapse, global warming, etc. Coward conservatives differ from liberals not in methods, but only in the targets for their manufactured fears.
This is how these "conservatives" sell activist federal government - by suggesting that the absence of intervention will always lead to a crisis, and that the government is merely "protecting" people from some threat (attaching to liberty a very low value, or perhaps treating it as a harmful liability) - mind you, it is not to protect our liberties, but to trade our liberties in for "less risk". It is an outgrowth of the 1930-1960 era Democrat party, where entitlement programs and additional government spending were announced to be necessary in order to head off some impending disaster. Both groups feed off of uncertainty and fear, and IMO both groups are largely sincere in their motivations (which makes it really sad).
When you see a Republican willing to trade YOUR liberties for something - security, subsidy, equality - call them by their chosen name:
Cowardly Conservatives.
The choice is between cowardice (activist government) and principle (limited government). The people who founded this country loved liberty more than they feared death. Quite a contrast against where we have sunk to today.
“Post-partisan problem-solving”
Post-Partisan is code for “one party liberal democrat rule”.
I’ll be “post-partisan” when the rat party is outlawed as a criminal origination.
“Gore won the majority vote in 2000”
You mean the popular vote I’m sure. He didn’t get a majority of it. And that margin would be erased if you subract fraud and the news didn’t call Florida early.
“Obama Tsunami”
OMFG! STFU REED! 52.5-53% is a Tsumami? What a dingus!
But you're right, as long as the idiot RINOs continue to think that we are losing because we are not running fast enough to the left, we'll continue to lose.
We need to employ a principle I wrote about 15 years ago called Reversionism. Essentially, when you see you've gone in the wrong direction, look back and see where it last worked out well and get back there as soon as possible. CS Lewis said, to paraphrase, “If you're going down the wrong road and you know it is the wrong road, continuing down that road is not ‘progressive.’”
It's been quite a few years since we've seen that. Instead, we have the likes of Sam telling us it is "narrow ideological dogma, negativism and unhelpful government-is-bad rhetoric" while politicians think bailouts of private industry, amnesty for illegal aliens, and global regulation of greenhouse gases are somehow a "pragmatic" view of the future. Pffft!
Dump the "rebranding" rhetoric and get back to basics.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.