Posted on 08/23/2010 3:46:19 AM PDT by Man50D
It's widely acknowledged that in 2010, the Democrats are on the ropes. But just about the same could be said for the Republicans.
A few weeks ago, John Cornyn and John Boehner revealed this election's GOP platform. In a year of massive unrest, public disgust with government, and large-scale rejection of interventionist policies, the GOP will emphasize...deficits. An issue to warm an economist's heart -- and the occasional accountant's, too. Top that one, Obama.
In the wake of Scott Brown's stunning upset in Massachusetts last February, with the entire New England region open to exploitation, the GOP is doing nothing. There are no plans to challenge incumbents in New England. No money, no candidates, no program. Historical moment? Wuzzat mean?
No effort is being made to emphasize the achievements of the nation's Republican governors. Jan Brewer, Chris Christie, and Mitch Daniels, among others, are steering their states through the worst economy since the Carter '70s, pressing critical policy changes, and most important, defying Washington while they're at it. Yet the RNC knows them not.
We will merely allude to Michael Steele's perennial circus act to look beyond to 2012, where we have one announced candidate, the immortal Mr. Newt Gingrich, whose most recent sojourn is a national tour with the most Rev. Al Sharpton.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
TEApublican ping! - Pro-Democrat third partyists are infesting this thread!
What was that you said about “historic facts?”
Er, well, ahem, actually the Whig Party had basically already collapsed in 1852, the GOP wasn't started until 1856. In fact, the GOP was basically started as a collection of former Whigs, plus a few Free Soilers and anti-slavery Democrats. Essentially, the GOP was a continuation of the Whig Party. From 1852-1856, the Democrats were essentially the ONLY major party in existence.
There’s something satisfying about articles that get posted twice with the 2nd article getting more hits than the first.
If it’s not those two it’ll be a McCain or a Voinovich clone. Unfortunately there is no shortage of RINO’s more than willing to sell us out.
“If you cannot organize Conservative/Libertarians enough to take back control of the GOP.”
Thank you for including us libertarians(I’m a small l) within the GOP.
We are not all Ron Paul kooks who want to legalize drugs and go back to a 1792 foreign policy.
We just want the damn government out of our house and out of our paychecks.
I will be voting GOP in the fall....Lamar Smith and (holding my nose) Rick Perry...
The voters are poised to give the Republicans one last chance. If Republican legislators fail, I believe the party will collapse much as the Whigs did. If they succeed, Republicans could be set for dominance similar to what they had up until the Depression.
The Whigs ran presidential candidates in 1856 and 1860. They lost both elections, but they were still a national party in those elections. The Democrats were the only party with a cohesive message and platform, and that’s why they were winning elections.
My original point stands, tho. The idea that there can be only two political parties, and that third parties never, ever amount to anything is disproven by the history of the GOP itself. The GOP is increasingly heading down the road to irrelevancy by their own hand and the selection of a feckless, stupid and utterly incompetent leadership (eg, Steele) and at some point, the GOP will either be taken over by the people it purports to represent, or it will suffer defeat and become irrelevant and people will create another party to represent their issues.
And many of the people in the new “third party” will be disaffected Republicans, much as many of the original Republicans were disaffected Whigs (eg, Abraham Lincoln).
With moderates like John Boehner and Mitchie The Kid McConnell as the leadership of the GOP we will likely see no radical political reform. Its going to be business as usual and caving in to every Democratic temper tantrum.
We will all have to start concentrating on State level politics. Its the states that will take this nation back to a Constitutional Republic not the GOP.
There are enough firebrand TEA party conservatives in the races this year that we could actually see them succeed however they’ll be fighting both the dems and their own party structure to get the work done.
Guys like Steele, Boehner etc...don’t want to see conservatism in actuion. They want the perks of big government just like the libs do.
GOP equals Godawful Old Politicians. If I had any photoshop skills, I would post a picture of Michael Steele grinning from the back of a milk carton. “Have you seen this man?”
My tagline. lol.
Yeah, but don’t sweat it, they are busy looking for the next candidate that can attain more than 1% of the vote, yet less than 3%.
Their irrelevancy is their hades.
Calling the Whigs a "national party" in 1856 and 1860 is sort of like calling the Constitution Party of today a "national party." Sure, in a technical sense it's true, since they do have a couple of schmoes who constitute the "state party organisation" in each state, run out of one guy's basement. But to actually try to apply this term credibly is simply laughable.
My original point stands, tho. The idea that there can be only two political parties, and that third parties never, ever amount to anything is disproven by the history of the GOP itself.
No it doesn't. Not by a long shot. The Whigs were not a second party after 1852. In fact, most of the Whigs became Republicans between 1852 and 1860, which is why the GOP rose so suddenly to national prominence. It was essentially filling the void left by the Whigs after their collapse. The idea that the GOP is in some similar state today, and that there's this vacuum just waiting to be filled by some rinky-dink third party that is guaranteed to appeal to only about 10% of the population is absolute balderdash. It's the same sort of childish wishful thinking that we so commonly see on the Left in places like Democratic Underground.
The GOP is increasingly heading down the road to irrelevancy by their own hand and the selection of a feckless, stupid and utterly incompetent leadership (eg, Steele) and at some point, the GOP will either be taken over by the people it purports to represent, or it will suffer defeat and become irrelevant and people will create another party to represent their issues.
Every agrees that the GOP "leadership" has big problems. The obvious answer is to replace the "leadership," not waste time, money, and energy on the quixotic quest to convince millions of grassroots level registered Republicans to leave their party and join some egomaniac's third party experiment. No thanks. The only things irrelvant are third partyist delusions.
And many of the people in the new “third party” will be disaffected Republicans, much as many of the original Republicans were disaffected Whigs (eg, Abraham Lincoln).
Yeah. Good luck with that. There's a reason that, despite the failures of the GOP leadership for decades, that no third party has appeared on the scene to present any credible competition. It's because these third parties are usually so abrasive in their approach or so irrelevant in their appeal that there's no hope of them ever being more than fringe spoilers that help the Dimocrats win in tight races.
You are completely correct. In fact, I think a GOP win will help Obama get reelected in 2012 - if that's what he wants to do. The GOP will be the scapegoat for the dems failure - and as always - they will not fight it. They are part of the problem.
This "dogma uber alles" purist mindset. Elections are won by coalitions of interests. The Freeper Purists choir are too busy voting people off "their island" to ever build a workable election coalition.
It is clear the Freeper "Dogma Uber Alles" crowd has failed to learn the lessons of the implosion during the late 1990s of the Perot "Reform" Party.
Third parties start out rallying to an issue or an individual. Usually driven by some charismatic leader, they start out all gung ho for "the cause". This goes on for a short time frame then some divisive issue arises.
On this new issue, some in the 3rd party favor one point of view, some the other. Thus, being dogmatic purists incapable of tolerating any other opinions then their own, they factionalizing into a 4th party as those who lose the internal debate in the 3rd party declare the winners "traitors" or "RINOS" and go off to form their own clique.
This factionalizing continues on and on until the original 3rd party movement is so split up into tiny competing factions it is politically impotent.
That is what has happened to every single third party movement in US history. Every single one. This attempt will end no differently.
Good luck replacing the leadership of the GOP.
I rather suspect that people will grow tired of the GOP long before they’ll be able to reform it.
The GOP continues to wander the landscape with their head firmly wedged betwixt their buttocks, with no economic policy worthy of the term. Should they win both houses of Congress in this election, the lack of any plan other than to “not do what the Democrats want to do” will become apparent, and pretty much seal the GOP’s fate. At this point in time, we have an Evil Party (the Democrats) and a Stupid Party (the Republicans). One is actively making the economic situation worse, the other has no plan on how to make the situation better.
Most of you party die-hards are utterly ignorant of the size and scope of the financial problem before us. I can spot the card-carrying “I am a Clueless Republican” types when they claim that tax cuts will get us out of the problems we are now in.
If the GOP takes control of Congress and does not produce results quickly, they will find out just how quickly these things can turn, just as the Whigs did. The problem was slavery when the Whigs were torn apart by internal divisions, now the issues are economic.
Enough of beating this third party straw man. Can ANYTHING be done to whip some sense into the Republicans? I can’t think of any and if they don’t change radically who cares if they win. There’s the battle line.
I also think that since our “Republican System” (No I don’t mean Republican party!)which was mandated by the Constitution is NOT a parliamentary system so it functionally penalizes 3rd parties. It’s essentially a “winner take all system”, executive offices are electorally distinct from legislative offices there is no polling of the legislature and the picking of a prime minister. Third parties in America are historically sources of ideas and political trends and not all of them good ! They are not sources of political power. It takes an extraordinary set of circumstances for a 3rd party to replace one of the major parties. Electorally all a 3rd party does is provide “dissenters” a place to go at the polls. Of this 3rd party is a “spin-off” of a major party this “dissent vote” hands the election to the opposition.
I have no dogma, and certainly no political dogma. I just know the economics of the situation, and they’re not good. I don’t see any third party out there as a viable alternative - yet. Not the Tea Party(ies) or any other. But I do see the situation in the US is rapidly reaching one of our historic inflection points where radical change does happen.
The modern political environment is based on economics, period, thanks for playing all other games. The party that can deliver a increasing standard of living is the party that will, on the whole, win elections.
The GOP lost in 2006 because, contrary to all the breathless nonsense of GOP hacks like Larry Kudlow, the Bush economy was never that good. The increase in the US economy and consumer spending was not organic post 2002, it was based upon the expansion of easy credit. Easy credit always ends in a debt deflation, which we are now undergoing. Household wages stagnated throughout the Bush administration, ie, there was no organic improvement in take-home pay for the vast majority of households through Bush’s two terms. But thanks to the Bush administration’s home ownership policies, coupled with a feckless Fed and know-nothing-do-nothing incompetence at the SEC, we saw an implosion in our financial markets.
The DNC response to this has been to socialize private sector debt (ie, the bailout of the financial sector), but the failure of the financial markets has also exposed the unfunded liabilities of all manner of DNC-inspired programs, and most increasingly the huge unfunded liabilities of public sector employee pensions and benefits at the state and local levels. The DNC’s plan for turning around private sector unemployment has now been shown to have been an expensive bust. While the DNC is talking about protecting the little guy out one side of their mouth, they’re really the party of huge give-aways to the bank fraudsters. People are figuring this out pretty well.
The problem for the GOP is that it also has no clue how to turn around the private sector unemployment situation, they show no appetite for taking on the fraudulent banking sector or the corruption that has now taken hold of our markets. eg, you cannot show me ONE GOP candidate who can tell me what HFT is and why it is a bad thing for US markets. The GOP is going to continue to mouth slogans instead of actual plans for economic recovery, they’re going to continue to champion such nostrums as tax cuts, when most of the US tax-filing public is now not paying any income taxes and small businesses are worried about revenue most, and paying taxes on income would be a nice problem to have.
The central problem for the GOP is that they show no evidence of understanding just how huge the financial problems we face are. I would liken the prattle coming out of Republicans today to a child showing up to a forest fire incident command center with a plastic bucket full of sand from his sandbox. It’s a nice thought kid, but in this situation, thoughts don’t count for much. They’re going to get another chance at bat this fall... and I predict that they’re going to fail and fail big.
Tell ya what - you can keep on pretending like third parties will ever have any relevancy, and you can keep on being a frustrated and angry little man. Go right ahead. It’s your life.
Both parties are fatally flawed and essentially pursue the same socialist goals. A third party with a fresh outlook would be nice, but it also would be a suicidal quest for widespread electoral power.
For now at least, the Tea Party needs to work from inside the GOP — the party that ALLEGEDLY supports smaller government, lower taxes and more liberty — in the same manner as the Republican takeover of the failed Whigs.
But there is another dynamic to consider. And this one is going to be fun!!
The November election will send at least SOME fresh faces with Tea Party ideas to Congress; the more the merrier. Hopefully we’ll see a lot of them but even a handful is a good start.
Once in office, these bomb-throwers and Constitutional firebrands will make a beautiful noise. At least a few will bristle at the idea of being co-opted (e.g. corrupted) by the RINO establishment and they will hold to their truths in no uncertain terms.
These worthies will file bills and propose Amendments and make rousing speeches that will set our patriotic hearts soaring! And with our many “new media” options, we’ll get to hear these speeches and send them viral on YouTube, et al. The conservative silence will be over.
Then we can see what the landscape looks like leading up to the 2012 voting. Something tells me our “new champions” are going to make a lot of changes, for the better, and inspire us to make many more.
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