This is right on the money. Every one of our conservative candidates could win with five canned issues and answers, no matter what the questions asked are. All questions to a conservative candidate from the media are asked simply to trip up the candidate and try to pin various extremest labels on them.
Here’s the five answers:
1. I’ll vote to reduce taxes and reduce spending.
2. I’ll vote to reduce regulation, including green house gas regulations.
3. I’ll vote for a strong military and for strong protection of our borders.
4. I’ll vote for strong methods for protecting our country from terrorist and other enemies.
5. I’ll vote to repeal ObamaCare and then vote to replace it with honest reform.
Say, and really believe, these four things and nothing more and you will be elected. The rest and come after you are elected.
Agree - 100%
Every social issue that is brought into the conversation loses some fraction of the people in the movement. You may say good riddance, but you’d be diluting the impact of the movement - and the more issues you add, the more irrelevant the movement becomes.
NO!
I will NOT compromise my values to make nice with the Democrat butt-kissing RINO GOP. Time for the GOP to choose where they want to be instead.
I don’t agree.
I can do “lesser of evil” calculations as well as anyone.
But I’m looking for the whole package. If you don’t get “natural law” you probably don’t get the constitution either. If your morality is rooted in the culture rather than the transcendant you don’t have anyway of knowing when the culture has gone off the rails.
So, no, I’m not going to ignore the moral order. Separate from the moral order liberty can’t sustain itself. If a McCain is all we’ve got to go up against a raving communist, then fine, but the fact that after all of the backstabbing McCain has done, Arizonans reward him with high office, is itself evidence of a much deeper problem.
If you keep losing at the political level its because you’ve already lost at the deeper moral level. Your response has to be on both levels. You’ll never turn it around, though, if you can’t speak to the deeper moral law. Its not just about winning, if winning means electing people like McCain. You have to persuade and win with people who truly represent your views.
Is reelecting McCain a victory? For who, besides McCain?
For someone who detests “religious” issues, Karl Denninger is sure preachy. Sorry, Karl, I want to know where a candidate stands on the issues of abortion and marriage. If they aren’t willing to take a principled stand, I’m not willing to lend my support or vote for them.
The author is correct.
Giving up our social core values is got us here in the first place.
Pray for America
Politically, maybe, and it makes a lot of sense. My wife, for instance, would never have an abortion voluntarily, but thinks there are too many babies in the world that are neglected and it needs to be an option. She is pro-choice that way, but again, it’s a personal issue to her.
I think Conservatives need to win at all costs, and although homos and Planned Parenthood AFTER you are elected, not before.
Be like Obie, go as a centrist and then turn into Goldwater, I say.
Denninger is absolutely correct on this.
Having thought about the proposition proposed here, I have to disagree with the conclusion.
Abortion Is Not a purely religious issue. If the Declaration Of Independence is to be taken seriously, then the human life within the womb of the mother has rights!
To assert otherwise is totally ludicrous. Those who say that human life starts only after birth are treacherous liars. IMHO
Human life begins at conception, any other position is logically corrupt, and the proponent of such a view is incapable of thinking with clarity.
The family is the core, elemental unit of society. An attack on traditional marriage, and the family is an attack upon society’s stability. Pure and simple.
Both of these issues are at the center at the of Communist vs Western Civilization debate. By Western Civilization I mean that civilization and political philosophies handed down from Greek, Roman, Christian and European societies.
Abortion and the re-definition of Traditional Marriage are direct attacks upon the meaning and validity of the Declaration Of Independence for the furtherance of establishing State Power that wants to control Human existence and purpose from birth to death.
These are not “Wedge Issues”, they go to the heart of State vs Citizen relationship, and what Our Freedom means!
That’s all we need - another outsider trying to tell us how to think! Go away Karl and Lorianne, we Tea Partyers are doing just fine, thank you!
JC
If the goal of the tea party people is restoring a Constitutional smaller federal government, and they only focus on fiscal issues and enumerated powers it might be successful. Liberals love their own money, they do their best to keep it.
However it will be impossible to avoid wedge issues because there is money tied to them. They will have to deal with them.
There is no such thing as nice and neat politics, all compartmentalized and mutually exlusive to everyone’s idealistic enjoyment. Reality doesn’t happen that way.
What is going to happen is that alliances will form between tea party people and conservative democrats (for many dems, independents) and between republicans and various tea party people. More will be in common, in general, with tea party ideas and republican ideas.
You don’t jettison wedge issues though just because they’re difficult. If they are worth fighting for on principle and as part of a core philosophy (ie given everything else you believe it’s just common sense you’d be for or against a certain wedge issue) why run from it?
We are tired of people that try to please everyone. That is the thing we hate about Big Tent RINOs and false unity and the weird logic pretzels they wind up twisting themselves into. We love democrats trying to avoid questions and wriggle around because of this kind of stuff, we hate republicans who are like this and have no balls or guts to stand for something so they stay silent or worse.
100% spot on
I tend to agree, somewhat. I wouldn’t want to see abortion and gay marriage become the main issues, but I don’t want them to be nonexistant either. But lets not forget Denninger voted for obama.
>> Hayworth let the campaign’s terms include those wedge issues
Kinda’ asinine. The wedge issues in question are not a ‘problem’ in Republican primaries.
Must be running scared that religious Americans might actually change things. If you prefer to be areligious, fine, but religion defines a person in many ways. True christianity has brought freedom to the whole world over the centuries, mostly before the 20th century, after which it began to be practiced in form and not spirit. Any time that religious fervor picks up, it can be hijacked by legalists who worship the tenets of it, but don’t practice them from the heart. True religion is compassionate, but doesn’t overlook the sin. They have compassion on the individual, but in love try to help the individual to overcome the sin.
There is no reason to put down our Christian religious beliefs as if they do not have a place in our government. Just the opposite. If you do a complete study, and not from a leftisit point of view, you will see that many tenets of the US Constitution originate in the Bible, as it was the Bible that steered many settlers to the New World to enjoy religious freedom. It was the Bible that framed the documents called the Magna Charta, the Declaration of Independence, etc.
If you strip religious significance from our Constituion, you’ll have a dead piece of legalism. Today, we have tried to water down the religious effects on the Constitution and what we have is lawlessness unequaled to any period before in our history.
It’s time to have a true spiritual renewal in America. Actually, it’s way overdue!
It was. . . that sentiment in the Declaration of Independence which gave liberty, not alone to the people of this country, but, I hope, to the world, for all future time. It was that which gave promise that in due time the weight would be lifted from the shoulders of all men. This is a sentiment embodied in the Declaration of Independence. Now, my friends, can this country be saved upon that basis? If it can, I will consider myself one of the happiest men in the world, if I can help to save it. If it cannot be saved upon that principle, it will be truly awful. But if this country cannot be saved without giving up that principle, I was about to say I would rather be assassinated on this spot than surrender it.