Posted on 05/09/2009 3:41:49 AM PDT by Scanian
The writer is absolutely correct, but I don’t think the Republicans will be smart enough to figure this out by 2010.
The Republicans have no clear leader, no clear direction, have no foundational principles which are non-negotiable. They’re a mess. The foundation of the structure is rotten.
Unfortunately, I believe the time has come to burn the building, bulldoze the site, salt the earth, and rebuild under a new banner. The Republicans have so damaged their brand that no one takes them seriously anymore and I see no evidence that the current cast of characters can be reformed into a truly conservative party.
Colin Powel?
RINO and fool.
Excellent post. Conservatism itself is the center, it is the middle of the road, it is moderate. Reagan used conservatism to move the center to him, not the other way around. God bless FReeper Common Tator and may he Rest in Peace, but he used to always advocate for the GOP to move to the center.
What guns are those? The R’s had four years to govern. They wielded mostly moderately left-wing guns.
For the R’s to offer an alternative, they would actually have to be conservative. Otherwise, they are just a slightly more moderate version of the dems. “Vote for us. We don’t suck as much as democrats” is not a very good campaign slogan.
More fundamentally, all this “the Republican Party is dead” stuff from the media is only designed to consolidate the death grip the political class has on the “things that may be discussed.” So it is appropriate to discuss HOW the government should do things for people and what things it should do. It is NOT appropriate to discuss whether the government should be doing something at all.
By forcing the R’s left, which is the whole goal here, the political class eliminates any actual alternative to our current system of government, which is: (1) Grab a lot of money from small businessmen and some upper-income taxpayers and then give that money to people and businesses in exchange for money and votes; and (2) Grab a lot of power for the government. Then dispense portions of that power in exchange for money and votes.
The only difference between mainstream R’s and all D’s is a small difference in emphasis on which pigs should get the most slop at the trough. They do not disagree on the urgent need for a trough filled to the brim by thee and me. Nor do they disagree that the only people who should decide which pigs get the slop are other members of the political class. They emphatically agree that the folks who actually fill the trough up are pretty much a nuisance to be ignored except when you have to lie to them around elections.
The (so far successful) to drive the R’s to the left is to institutionalize that approach for the lifetime of current office holders.
What we need is Repubs who get out there and TELL WHAT THE DEMS are doing to this country, instead of trying to win by taking the middle road. Triangulation will NOT win at this point.
Conservatism works, yet we've allowed the Left to dominate the thoughtspace for too long. The horrors of dictatorship were foisted upon us. Slavery is a conservative position, along with trapping women in every school textbook you read. That is just plain wrong.
Tradition fails or works as it serves individual liberty. Clearly, if you are going to cause a revolution it better be an improvement. Our entire governing system, the American Revolution, is predicated on slow, meaningful change. To be an American Revolutionary is to be conservative, that is conserving the hard fought liberties that drain away by man's natural desire to control others.
It's the devils world and our Founders knew it.
I won't vote for another lawyer, but I'll vote for business people with some exceptions. Politics is by nature the business of lying and favors. We won't cure that in one election.
The one thing statists have on us is they understand and desire power. Like the One Ring, that power is corrupting. Someone has to wield it though, if we are to return to the center and American Liberty.
Oh, ok! In that case, I agree entirely!
Powell couldn’t forget his own skin color and voted on that basis as did a lot of people. Not Ella Fitzgerald though.
The OP has big tent, reach out across the aisle, in the spirit of bipartisanship principles all in an effort to expand the voter base at the expense of Conservatism. Nothing for Conservatives to see here.
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