Posted on 04/28/2009 9:05:33 AM PDT by Al B.
To be relevant in politics, you need either formal power or a lot of people willing to follow your lead. The governing Republicans in the nation's capital have lost both on their continuing path to irrelevance.
The disconnect between D.C. Republicans and Republicans throughout the country has been growing for nearly 20 years, but it became more intense and noticeable during the waning years of the Bush administration.
Perhaps the final straw was the $700 billion bank bailout plan pushed through Congress last fall despite strong voter opposition. For all the furor unleashed this spring by congressional Republicans about President Obama's $787 billion stimulus plan, the Bush-era bailouts last fall were approved with virtually no advance notice and no guidelines as to how the money would be spent. Looking back, most voters and nearly eight-out-of-10 Republicans now believe the bailouts were a bad idea .
[...]
The disconnect between the Republican base and Beltway Republicans also can be seen in the recent history of presidential nominations. In the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama, the Democratic candidate, was seen by voters as more likely to deliver tax cuts than Republican nominee John McCain. By the way, Bill Clinton's victories in the 1990s also followed a belief that he was more likely to deliver tax cuts than his GOP opponent. It's hard to imagine how the party of Ronald Reagan could let that happen, but it did.
[...]
Look for the Republican Party to sink further into irrelevancy as long as its key players insist on hanging around Congress or K Street for their ideas. The future for the GOP is beyond the Beltway.
(Excerpt) Read more at rasmussenreports.getmobile.com ...
That’s a serious charge. Please explain what you mean and what is your evidence.
A possibility if not for the fact amnesty is practically assured now, and the Dems will have millions of new voters by 2010 and 2012.
Her first big spending program is based on her own family’s problems. That’s a hint of the future for sure:
Oct. 24, 2008:
In her first policy address since joining the Republican ticket, Sarah Palin called for parents of special needs children to use federal funding to pick the school of their choice...
Palin also called for full federal funding of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, phasing in an additional $15 billion in funding over five years.
As opposed to President Reagan:
During the 1980 presidential campaign, Ronald Reagan dubbed the fledgling Department of Education “President Carter’s new bureaucratic boondoggle.”
If its not, it should be.
The only way the GOP can kick out the DemoCommies is by OPPOSING THEM. And the GOP National Leadership has demonstrated AGAIN AND AGAIN that they are spineless, gutless CAPONS.
Until people like Michael Steele and the people who put him into his position are gone, I’m not holding out any sort of hope.
On the big issues, like Individual Liberty, Small Government, Free Enterprise, RR had it right. IMO so does SP. In contrast to GWB who sold out every one of those principles in the end. I can not see SP ever saying, "I had to violate Free Market principles in order to save it".
I just don't think you have made the case for us fearing SP becoming Bush3.
I hope you are right, but until people like Michael Steele and the people who put him into his position are gone, I’m not holding out any sort of hope.
I think I'll wait until I hear post-election what her position is on additional Fed help for special-needs kids even though it is certainly, as you say, small potatoes compared to issues such as the return to founding principles and the pursuit of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness -- issues which she talked so eloquently and movingly about in Evansville.
See, this is what I don't understand. You agree that you don't like the evidence I presented and then you ignored the evidence. Bush redux. In fact, that's the same way Obama got elected.
But like Al B said, she was following the party ( MAC ) line.
And I tried to bring in RR to also lend a little perspective into the argument. No one expects to agree on every issue. But there are Big issues and Small issues. You are nit picking on what I consider small issues. Maybe they are Big issues to you. That's fine. But you are not giving us your criteria. I did.
I gave you the issues I consider critical for conservatives. If you show me where she has been in violation of those :ie: Individual Liberty,Small Government, and Free Enterprise.....AS HER OWN POSITIONS AND NOT PART OF HER LOYALTY TO THE TICKET IN 2008, then maybe you can make the claim that she is a potential Bush redux.
Otherwise, I think simple fairness requires you to hold your fire until she is out on her own running for President.
Bush redux.
She defended it because it was the McCain position and because of what she was told, which was that it was a rescue. Nowhere in that interview did she say she supported TARP in the form that it took immediately after it passed. Period. She blasted "Bernanke and the others" for changing the rules right away after it was passed. She also said she fully supported the Republican opposition to the auto bailout.
Since then, she has opposed the stimulus and the other spending crap that has come out of Congress. Her fiscal year 2010 budget in Alaska has a 16% REAL reduction in outlays so far and she hasn't finished with the veto pen yet.
If you're trying to make the case that she's not a limited- government fiscal conservative, you're just flat wrong.
No endying Steele has been underwhelming.
If we can't change Congress in 2010 and get Obama out of the White House in 2012, none of it may matter anyway. And as Scott Rasmussen says in this article (and I agree completely with him), the GOP leadership is utterly lost right now.
I hate to tell you this, but Ronald Reagan picked GH Bush as his vice president, which was the springboard for him to become president and was also how GW Bush became president.
“hate to tell you this” Don’t EVER talk down to me again! Where were YOU in 1980?! I was at the Iowa Caucus for Ronald Reagan. Bush would have NEVER been anything w/out Reagan!
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