Posted on 06/23/2009 5:35:32 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
A Gallup poll last week showed that far more Americans describe themselves as conservatives than as liberals. Yet Republicans have been clobbered by the Democrats in both the 2006 elections and the 2008 elections.
In a country with more conservatives than liberals, it is puzzling — in fact, amazing — that we have the furthest left president of the United States in history, as well as the furthest left speaker of the House of Representatives.
Republicans, especially, need to think about what this means. If you lose when the other guy has all the high cards, there is not much you can do about it. But when you have the high cards and still keep taking a beating, then you need to rethink how you are playing the game.
The current intramural fighting among Republicans does not necessarily mean any fundamental rethinking of their policies or tactics. These tussles among different segments of the Republican party may be nothing more than a longstanding jockeying for position between the liberal and conservative wings of the party.
The stakes in all this are far higher than which element becomes dominant in which party or which party wins more elections. Both the domestic- and foreign-policy direction of the current administration in Washington are leading this country into dangerous waters, from which we may or may not be able to return.
A quadrupling of the national debt in just one year and accepting a nuclear-armed sponsor of international terrorism such as Iran are not things from which any country is guaranteed to recover.
Just two nuclear bombs were enough to get Japan to surrender in World War II. It is hard to believe that it would take much more than that for the United States of America to surrender — especially with people in control of both the White House and the Congress who were for turning tail and running in Iraq just a couple of years ago.
Perhaps people who are busy gushing over the Obama cult today might do well to stop and think about what it would mean for their granddaughters to live under sharia law.
The glib pieties in Barack Obama’s televised sermonettes will not stop Iran from becoming a nuclear terrorist nation. Time is running out fast and we will be lucky if it doesn’t happen during the first term of this president. If he gets elected to a second term — which is quite possible, despite whatever economic disasters he leads us into — our fate as a nation may be sealed.
Unfortunately, the only political party with any chance of displacing the current leadership in Washington is the Republican party. That is why their internal squabbles are important for the rest of us who are not Republicans.
The “smart money” says that the way for the Republicans to win elections is to appeal to a wider range of voters — including minorities — by abandoning the kinds of positions Ronald Reagan held and supporting more of the kinds of positions that Democrats use to get elected. This sounds good on the surface, which is as far as many people go when it comes to politics.
A corollary to this is that Republicans have to come up with alternatives to the Democrats’ many “solutions,” rather than simply be naysayers.
However plausible all this may seem, it goes directly counter to what has actually happened in politics in this generation. For example, Democrats studiously avoided presenting alternatives to what the Republican-controlled Congress and the Bush administration were doing, and just lambasted them at every turn. That is how the Democrats replaced Republicans at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.
Ronald Reagan won two elections in a landslide by being Ronald Reagan — and, most important of all — by explaining to a broad electorate how what he advocated would be best for them and for the country. Newt Gingrich likewise led a Republican takeover of the House of Representatives by explaining how the Republican agenda would benefit a wide range of people.
Neither of them won by pretending to be Democrats. It was precisely the Republican “moderates,” Bob Dole and John McCain, who lost disastrously to Democrats who had been scarcely known at first but who knew how to talk.
— Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. © 2009 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
Democrats have mastered the trick of running as conservatives. Their base knows they don’t mean what they are campaigning on and too many conservatives buy it.
Republicans couldn’t get away with running as liberals, because their base expects truth in advertising.
Republicans have yet to find a good way to combat the two faced campaigning of Democrats.
The United States government may surrender to sharia law, but Texas won't.
Precisely.
Which is why we have no representation in the North East now
Conservatives have to allow our candidates to run as “moderates” in places like the Northeast, Western California and now Northern VA.
By “moderate” I mean allow them to essentially ignore social wedge issues for the general election in these areas.
LMAO
There are 57 countries in the Organization of Islamic States
Only 2 have a Sharia system.
When there is Sharia in Karachi and ISB, then I’ll start to “worry” about Sharia in America
The GOP is plagued like the Jimmy Piersall character in the stunning 1957 Tony Perkins film ‘’Fear Strikes Out’’.
The trick is to call them liars. It has the virtue of being true, but unfortunately it offends dainty Republican sensibilities to be so direct. When, for example, Obama says that his health care “reforms” won't force anyone to change coverage, Republicans should be screaming liar at the top of their lungs. Instead they have to preface every remark with tedious disclaimers about the President's eloquence and good faith. By the time they get around to a criticism, the audience has gone back to sleep.
Please, dear God, send us a leader who doesn't mince words.
I think the 400 lb gorilla in the room is the complete lack of RKBA in the platform. Look at the primaries last year; Guiliani? Romney? McCain? They should have never been on the ticket.
Palin in fact proves it; chosen as a “we can have a woman too” lynchpin, and as a weak bone to throw at the 2nd amendment voters, she becomes a star out of principle while the others crawl back under the rocks they use as shelter. Even Huckaby made a surprise showing, and really, at the time, could you blame the electorate? We were hungry for an RKBA candidate.
Cmon GOP, it isn’t a big tent, it is a big campground with lots of connected little tents, each one with a patriot inside ready to defend themselves and their country.
bump
1. Republican primaries need to be CLOSED to pubs ONLY.
2. Voter fraud (ala ACORN) in general election MUST be stopped by any means necessary.
Voter fraud should be stopped, absolutely, but candidate fraud needs to stop too. And now that some suspect that the sitting president himself is not eligibe due to country of origin, it becomes just the next bump on the slippery slope when non-citizens gain the right to vote in federal elections; that is after all controlled by the state, not the feds.
Time to say enough is enough, and use the holier-than-thou rhetoric of the Obama supporters against them. Now would be an excellent time to present a bill that required specific qualification criteria for candidates and their voters.
On your first point about primaries, I think that needs to be deferred to states, as the various and sundry laws, as well as timing, do not make for a one-size-fits-all solution, IMO.
gosh sorry for the rant. I guess I am finally feeling the long term stress of feeling politically helpless for so long.
What is RKBA? Really Kickin' Bad Actors? I promise to feel stupid if you tell me what it stands for.
PS: Love the GOP "Big tent" vs "campground" theme! Nice!
Sorry, RKBA = Right to Keep and Bear Arms.
Thanks. I stumbled on their website after I posted.
bump
Even though we win on the social issues? The current consensus on abortion isn't 'pro' anymore. And the consensus on partial-birth never was.
And then, you'll have to show me an R-candidate who was soft on the social wedge issues who didn't also go soft on the fiscal issues in an attempt to pay for the social issues. And then show me a softie who has a lick of sense about border control.
I don't really care if we elect more Snowes or Jeffords in the NE. They vote the wrong way on the important issues, which means the Republicans get the label of being ineffective when they do have a 'majority'. I don't want the republicans to be a Majority-In-Name-Only, which happens if we need to rely on RINOs to make up the 51 Senators or 218 Representatives majorities.
Who is talking about not deferring it to the states? It would seem to me to be up to the state Republican parties to get behind getting rid of the cross-over vote problem in primaries in a manner befitting the respective state laws.
meh...
The populations of those areas are not going to elect limited government type conservatives whether they attempt to ignore your “social wedge” issues or not. The local and national media will make sure of it.
SO... If your only going to get a socialist elected, there is no reason to compromise our ideology. What I mean by this is its pointless to elect someone whos ideology is the antitheses of ours. Get enough of them in the party and they will push out the limited government type conservatives and lobby for further “moderation” as a way of winning even more seats. (for socialists.. not conservatives)
Instead of fighting the socialists in the other party, we are now fighting the socialists in the other party and those in the GOP (whom of which now virtually OWN the GOP). No thanks... Been there done that... Still stuck there...
The path to reclaiming the freedom we so cravenly abandoned, doesn’t pass through the socialist slave states anyway. In fact, it doesn’t even pass through Washington, DC. The path leads through those states and peoples that are willing to retake the positions that were intended for them and declare their sovereignty from the federal governments usurpations through actions and not just resolutions.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.