Posted on 04/30/2009 7:33:36 AM PDT by rabscuttle385
Over a year ago, Mitt Romney was losing primaries to John McCain, and conservative pundits from Ann Coulter to Rush Limbaugh predicted the end of the GOP Coulter went as far as promising she would campaign for Hillary Rodham Clinton if McCain became the party's nominee.
By November 2008, the GOP had embraced a nominee who had considered switching parties twice, had opposed tax cuts, and had failed to advance an aggressive shift in a foreign policy that left the GOP discredited in an area it had always trumped in.
It's not that McCain's willingness to reach across the aisle was condemnable. On the contrary, had McCain been able to do that as a conservative, he would've had more than tepid support from voters.
It also has less to do with the reasons conservatives disagreed with him when they should have found common ground. For example, McCain angered many conservatives when he opposed the federal ban on same-sex marriage.
Here in New Hampshire, congressional candidate Grant Bosse was among the few Republicans who understood the importance of leaving some decisions for adults to make with God and their state, not judges and the federal government.
It's precisely the reasons many couldn't support McCain even conservatives who stuck by their guns and refused to send him to the White House that merit serious reflection.
So far it's difficult to sense the fundamental message shift required for the GOP to make inroads in 2010 and 2012, but it seems no state is better poised to nurture these than the state of New Hampshire.
They key to doing this successfully? Allowing New Hampshire's libertarian spirit to infuse the GOP grassroots and allowing that to spread nationally.
(Excerpt) Read more at nashuatelegraph.com ...
If libertarians get rid of their ideas about open borders
and legal drugs, then they are welcome.
The third, and most cogent reason for restricting the interference of government, is the great evil of adding unnecessarily to its power - J S MILL On Liberty
Eric Cantor’s gonna take care of that. He and Newt.
BARFFFF!!!
I would like to at least try and give you one. I'd love to say that much like that great poet and philosopher Meatloaf "Two out of Three Ain't Bad". Frankly you struck out on three straight pitches. Not talking about Libertarians as a party per se, but libertarians.
Abortion: Gubmints job is to protect it's citizens. Unborn children are citizens.
Gay Marriage: We don't care what people do in the privacy of their own home. Give them the same rights as married people. We just won't call it "marriage". We'll call them Butt Buddies.
Secularism: More Jesus and Less Government is good. More Jesus AND More Government is not.
I’ve always felt that marriage should be out of the hands of government. If it is a religious institution, which I believe it is, then leave it to the church. Married people shouldn’t be taxed, incentivized, subsidized, etc. any differently than individuals. I think grouping people into married and non married is another form of collectivism.
Leave marriage out of the state. JMO.
No one wants to hear that, like children, when given the choice between a fun, permissive babysitter (liberals) and an old grouch (the SoCon wing), people will pick the fun, permissive babysitter nearly every time. If they're going to take your money and control you anyway, may as well has a good time, right?"
That is a positively brilliant metaphor moutainbunny! I actually may borrow it sometime ;)
I've often said that the difference between the SoCon Republicans and the Liberal Democrats the difference between wanting "Big Daddy government" and "Big Mommy government". Both see government in a parental role -- when in fact it the citizenry who need to be the "parents" to government lest it "get out of hand and run wild" -- and not the other way around!
The ones that want more freedom and less government?
There are millions of folks that would like the Republicans to be the party of more freedom and less government.
On three out of three, I think my description of the views of lifestyle libertarians is accurate.
On the merits, abortion is wrong because it is morally wrong. Were it not for that, whether or not to treat unborn children as citizens or otherwise under the protection of the law would be either a utilitarian question or left to the choice of the mother.
The problem with gay marriage by any name is that it subverts and devalues traditional marriage and families, with devastating long term consequences for stable relationships between men and women and for the rearing of children. Like it or not, traditional marriage and family life is the best way to raise and foster responsible adults.
The evidence from Europe is compelling on this point. After a generation of gay marriage, some gays marry, most gays and straights do not, and illegitimacy is nearly the norm. The consequences are rising crime, falling standards of personal conduct, declining educational attainment, general misery — and a decisive turning toward socialism and the caretaker state to sort out and tend the wreckage.
When one looks at the numbers and history, the greatest source of resistance to socialism comes not from the small sliver of libertarians but from the far larger ranks of traditional conservatives, and especially from those whose resistance is grounded in traditional religious faith.
In large part this is because America’s traditional nondenominational ‘civic religion’ regards freedom and limited government in a society adherent to traditional moral values as essential to the working out of God-given moral choice and free will.
From that perspective, at least in the American context, more Jesus means less government — hence the vilification of traditional Christians from the Left and the academic-media complex.
Lifestyle libertarianism offers a philosophy that was last seen in extended practice in the ancient imperial Rome. I prefer to be guided by the experience and traditional norms of a more than dozen generations of Americans.
The rest of us are ok. :-)
The Silver Libertarian was Stan Jones, who took enough votes in Montana to allow the ‘rat to win that seat.
Sounds like maybe the GOP should have run someone that would have garnered more of the “unappeasable” population.
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