Posted on 04/26/2009 6:03:07 AM PDT by Sub-Driver
In GOP base, a 'rebellion brewing' By: Ben Smith and Jonathan Martin April 26, 2009 07:03 AM EST
A quick tour through the week’s headlines suggests the Republican Party is beginning to come to terms with the last election and that consensus is emerging among GOP elites that the party needs to move away from discordant social issues.
There was Sen. John McCain's daughter and his campaign manager who last week demanded that their fellow Republicans embrace same-sex marriage. Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman – the most devoted modernizer among the party's 2012 hopefuls – won approving words from New York Times columnist Frank Rich for his call to downplay divisive values issues. The party’s top elected leaders in Congress, meanwhile, spooked by being attacked as the “party of no,” were recasting themselves as a constructive, respectful opposition to a popular president.
But outside Washington, the reality is very different. Rank-and-file Republicans remain, by all indications, staunchly conservative, and they appear to have no desire to moderate their views. GOP activists and operatives say they hear intense anger at the White House and at the party’s own leaders on familiar issues – taxes, homosexuality, and immigration. Within the party, conservative groups have grown stronger absent the emergence of any organized moderate faction.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
We need some leaders along the lines of....B1 Bob.
I voted for the lesser of 2 evils last election,
really voted FOR Sarah.
I won’t again. Voting ‘lesser’ got us nowhere and it’s unlikely it can get worse.
From now on I vote my conscience, conservative.
Whether that’s Repub, Libertarian, Independent, Constitution and so on.
>”the Washingtonians”—denizens of the rarefied political heights of the Capitol District where similar tenacious, ‘rat-like political mutants dwell, and where they only talk to each other. These strange creatures actually are unaware that the earth revolves around the sun, not around them.
LOL - It’s true and funny at the same time. Just look at Murtah, Frank, Pelosi, Dodd or most of Congress [republicans included].It’s the “special privilege” / “I’m your superior” attitudes that I don’t like.
>Being AGAINST same sex “marriage” is a majority position, a winning issue, everywhere (including California!) that it has been subjected to a vote.
>
>How is moving to the losing side of an issue good advice for a party which is trying to GAIN rather than LOSE votes?
A very good point you bring up. I’m thinking it’s the idea of “repeat a big enough lie often enough and it becomes the truth” idea applied, not to reality, but in the assumptions that are presented.
Denial among Democrats is crass but not unexpected. For Republican "leaders" to be similarly in denial is mind-boggling.
This is just some more "manufactured consensus." And seemingly centered on the poly-marriage, flying against a tide of evidence to the contrary, we're supposed to believe the position held by Barack Obama is the "divisive cultural issue" that keeps people from voting for Republcans?
Hogwash, pure and simple Barbara Streisand.
Someone had dropped a bankroll in the fringe Log Cabin coffers, I will bet you.
Because this is just flat-earth nonsense.
Agreed. Very agreed.
I'm a programmer, so I'm kind of big on the ideas of justice & logic: if you feed the same inputs to a function, you get the same results. Too much of government seems run not by justice, the "law"* /constitution, but by "feelings", populism, power-lust, and the whims of the bureaucrats.
* I say law in quotes because, as some have pointed out, Judges are no longer content to be referees applying the [same] law justly, evenly to all; but instead want to selectively apply the laws or redefine the meanings of words to suit their own policies.
Oh really? I thought it was just a few rag-tag extremists according to the MSM.
I have to agree with you.
Rather than religion, I’d rather conservative focus on key moral issues, such as personal responsibility, truthfulness, integrity.
Any RINO who thinks Conservatism is an 'excess' will earn my vocal and undying opposition.
We tried the McVain, 'moderate' way, republicanism once. How did that work out for ya ?.... idiots.
If the party goes that way once more, I will quit.
Nam Vet
We need to get rid of as much of government as possible and reverse the Socialism that has crept into the system.
Forget religous issues. Its has been our doom.
______________
Honestly, I have to agree with you. We need to take baby steps to get it back. I have many conservative friends that are pro-choice. They vote Republican every time, but many feel this issue is hurting the party. To halt the attack on religion we have to get back in the game. If we keep this up, we never will. Get in the game, then start repairing.
You’re making the mistake of confusing moral absolutes with religious hegemony.
That is exactly what the left and the Godless media would like you to do.
Being against illegitimacy, homosexual marriage, killing babies en utero, hard drug use etc has nothing to do with my Christianity other than that they do dovetail. Decent folks regardless of their religion know bad things when they see them...or they ought to.
Nor is being pro-gun, pro-war hawk, anti-Islamist, anti-envirowacko, anti-race/gender politics etc have anything to do with religion either.
BTW...Barry..bless his heart moved very much to the center as he aged....unfortunately
Totally agree. The values issues belong at the local level. That is the way our country was founded.
The anger at Washington right now is because of spending. Now the "moderate" GOP wants to spend more? Go to hell, guys.
Right now we need to focus on less government, less government, and less government, in that order.
Excellant point...unfortunately the prevailing mood among the DC Republican class is that YOU, me and the rest of the base are just a bunch of hayseeds that only need to coddled every election cycle. For years the base has been screaming but to no avail. The Republican in DC party and get their pics taken with the likes of Kennedy(surely a felony to most conservatives). Now a large portion of the base is staying home rather than support RINO scum.....just look at the results from the NC races. Dole was tossed out and soon the weasel lil dickie burr will be looking for a new job.
It’s time for a new day within the Republican party
Actually, we tried it with Gerald Ford, George Bush I (in his re-election campaign), Bob Dole and John McCain plus Bush II tinkled away most of his term trying to be civil and reaching out to the opposition who, to show their gratitude, sandbagged him at every turn.
MODERATES? What the heck is that? People with no values or ideas? People with no principles? We need to clean house. I don’t need to be led by people who disagree with me.
He was a useless pro-abort. His first wife, Peggy, was a long-time (35 years or more) national director of Planned Barrenhood (as was Bush I's mother). Barry bragged about taking his daughter Susan to abort her child. To a very large extent, Goldwater was a brain dead knee jerk libertarian and in his last term a not very honest one.
He was in love with the notion of letting his descendants (several of them) feel free to practice lavenderism and mouth off in favor of it publicly.
He stabbed Ronaldus Maximus in 1968 and again in 1976.
I am ashamed to admit that Goldwater made me a Republican when I was a gullible teenager. I recovered soon enough and realized that Reagan was by far a better man and leader.
We have long since kissed (kicked?) dead Barry goodbye and good riddance. Materialist obsession with money is not a cause particularly worth fighting for much less "the one issue and one only." Fiscal tightwadism is an acceptable part of a broader coalition but not in the absence of a far more essential dedication to innocent human life, marriage, morality, a militant military policy, etc.
Goldwaterism is dead as a doornail and a good thing too.
Politico calls the Utah Governor the “most devoted modernizer” among the party’s 2012 hopefuls. Modernization sounds so wonderful. Everything and everybody should be modernized!
But in fact RINO Huntsman and his new buddy Frank Rich are promoting social decay and decadence and redefining male-female marriage into oblivion.
Lenin and Stalin were modernizers. In the name of scientific Marxism, he tore down backward churches and ripped up Russian society by the roots.
Spare us from the modernizers!
The problem is that these guys are humanists and materialists. Those guys all believe in what a famous Vietnam-era Democrat in the Johnson Administration said,
"When you've got them by the [expletive deleted], their hearts and minds will follow."
We all saw how well that worked out.
But that's how things always work out with people who don't believe anything. They can never get their arms around the idea that other people might actually believe things, and be willing to live and die by their beliefs.
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