Posted on 05/06/2009 8:30:12 PM PDT by rabscuttle385
A must read.
Hope so! That way (some) Conservatives will stop whining about “we need to take back the party” and start forming a new one.
“Divisive”? You better believe things like abortion (and gun control, and socialism) are divisive. Right and wrong are always divisive.
I know that for every conservative who wants to say they will never vote for a republican in the general election if they aren’t conservative, there is a moderate who says they will never vote for a conservative republican in the general election.
Which is fine, nobody has to vote for anybody, but you will never be in the majority if you refuse a majority vote. It pisses me off when a conservative wins a fairly-fought primary and the moderates refuse to accept the results, and I imagine that moderates get similarly pissed off if they win the primary and conservatives walk away.
But I know who DOESN’T get pissed off — the democrats, who find elections easy pickings when the conservatives and moderates of the republican party refuse to support each other’s candidates in the general elections.
There are certainly candidates that are so far out of the republican mainstream that we are better off letting the democrats win (Chafee and Specter, anybody?)
And for those conservatives who are happy to never win another election, that’s fine — I’m not asking anybody to give up their principles, just making sure they understand what their principles and actions mean.
When I go into a general election, I vote for the person who has a chance of winning who will do the least damage, which almost always will be the republican candidate. With any luck, the primary will have chosen a conservative, but if there are no solid conservatives in the general election, I still don’t want the liberal democrat to win.
Because if 2006-2008 has shown us nothing else, it is that democrats who have the power to control the agenda in washington ARE much worse than RINO republicans stabbing us in the back.
Just one guy’s opinion, but I find all the red highlighting distracting.
Dole was actually a fairly descent guy, and fairly conservative. But for some reason he let himself be persuaded by the party handlers and “experts” that he should shut up about abortion.
In fact, it was worse than that. After Ralph Reed of the Moral Majority had pretty well put him over the top single-handedly against Pat Buchanan—who seemed at that time to be the more conservative candidate but had some problems that later became much more evident—Dole turned on the Moral Majority in his acceptance speech and as good as told them to get lost.
So, they did get lost. The didn’t vote for clinton, but neither did the vote for Dole. They stayed home by the millions. Dole was an idiot to do that, because as I said to begin with, he was a pretty decent guy who could have been a real conservative. He was a war hero, he had good instincts, he was (I think) pretty conservative, but he let his handlers wreck his campaign.
And they did the same thing to George Bush, who at least was stubborn on the life issues and defense but gave in everywhere else.
Ralph Reed, of course, was disowned by the Moral Majority, which never really recovered.
McCain’s defeat made us stronger, not only because it stripped us of the always-lose game of The Party In Charge, but proved once and for all that realpolitik is the cause of ineffectual government.
"Conventional wisdom," stubbornly promoted by the ruling class on both sides of the aisle, insists that the ultimate purpose of a political party is to get its members elected to office. In truth, such a notion represents defining evidence of a party in decline. The founding purpose of a political party is always to advance a particular set of ideas. The chances of those ideas being adopted as public policy will increase with greater popular support and the strength that lies in numbers, a party is established to move the particular banner forward.
The Whig Party could never quite find its footing, because it was united only by its desire to win office. Several regional leaders vied for power.. W.H. Harrison, a figurehead was installed as President with Clay as his expected successor as Sec. of State, but after Harrison died after a month in office, he was succeeded by an anti-Jackson Democrat, Tyler, who soon broke with Clay. Clay narrowly lost in 1844 because the issue of slavery reared its head and a third party candidate cost Clay the state of New York and the Presidency. The Mexican War raised slavery to the forefront and it eventually destroyed both national parties, but the Whigs first. The Republican Party was created in reaction to the collapse of the Whigs in the push for the expansion of slavery.
I’m sorry you feel that way!
Sometimes a man HAS to choose wether he is willing to fight or just go along. Some of us heve reached that breaking point to fight.
I’m not going to bore you with a litany of reasons because it would do no good.
My breaking point has been reached, so I will do what I can do and hold my head proudly knowing that I fought as hard as I could!
What will you do?
21% of the electorate currently identify themselves as Republican. We aren’t in a position to purge the party of anyone. Can we win a few elections first before we go on a witch hunt?
Bump!
Was the 1996 convention the one where Governor Weld (RINO-Mass) was surrounded by a group of conservatives chanting “Libertine...Libertine...Libertine”?
Sorry ‘bout that. I’ll try to stick to black highlighting next time :-)
I could not agree more, CharlesWayneCT. Well said and spot on!
Up until now, I’ve been a complete scoffer regarding the feasibility of an effective new third party (and it WOULD be extremely difficult to pull off), but I;m beginningto entertainthe idea seriously. If the conservatives the the GOP, they’d get 15% of the vote, max. With only one Conservative Partyin 3-way races,a plurality could be possible. The RINO GOP would be made up of 5% left-leaning independents, 5% Cautious Democrats, and 5% RINOs. Most of these people vote Democrat in actual elections.
Not only NO, but HELL, NO!!!!!
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