Posted on 06/07/2011 11:51:10 AM PDT by Jim Robinson
Washington (CNN) - Mitt Romney has a message to Tea Party candidates nationwide: If you lose your Republican primary bids, stay on the sidelines.
The former Massachusetts governor on Monday warned the grassroots movement not to mount third party efforts in general elections, which he said would siphon votes from Republican nominees.
"If there is a conservative candidate that runs in the general election, then obviously, divide and fail is the result," Romney said in an interview with the conservative Web site Newsmax. "Hopefully Tea Party candidates will run in respective primaries and they will either win or lose. And if they win, they will go into the general. If they lose, they won't, and they will get behind the more conservative of the two finalists."
Romney explained that "dividing our conservative effort in the general elections" would "basically hand the country to Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, and that would be very sad indeed."
(Excerpt) Read more at politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com ...
Wow, “strawman troll”....you must be really series.
“Everyone is someone else’s troll - even you”
Yup. Really series
Ok genius, why don't you have a go at answering the following 'fairly simple questions'. (Since they're your questions this should be 'fairly simple'.)
So what happens if/when the GOP chooses our candidate for us like they did in ‘08? Do you vote lockstep like a good Republican even if it means pulling the lever for romney? Do you renounce your allegiance and vote 3rd party? Or do you sit it out?
Say please.
Perfect troll response, punkrr.
lol!
((snicker))
;~)
Just feeling a bit “trollish” today and thought I would answer your question to rockrr /s...
well said. i had the same feeling about why mccain picked palin as they were such polar opposites...just shows that there’s still a pulse in the party.
also agree with with your “local” comments. my wife was frustrated because she knows come election time, she’ll likely vote R as will I, yet her sister and her husband will vote D and “cancel us out” (even though they don’t know a lick about politics), and thought the ideal candidate needs to tow the pc line to bring in the “independents”...
the fallacy is that no one “cancels out” your vote in the primaries, and the Ds and independents are both non-factors in that race. The real point is to get involved early which VERY few people do, and make sure the best candidate rises to the top who can handle his own when it comes national debate time...aka when the masses first start paying attention.
This did not happen in ‘08, but hopefully next year will be different. And all the media spin of front-runner, favorite, polling, etc. nonsense between now and a year from now is just noise.
Elsie posted on Tuesday, June 07, 2011 4:45:55 PM: “ATTENTION Conservatives!! If you EVER want to ‘win’ back the country; you’d better ‘win back’ the education system. (The media wouldn’t hurt; either!)”
Totally agreed. Not all of us in the media are left-wingers, just most... and I’m speaking with two and a half decades of reporting experience when I say that, and a mother who was trained as a reporter all the way back in the 1950s.
The news media were intended by the Founding Fathers to be the schools of politics for adults in the voting citizenry, with a wide variety of political positions being advocated.
The economics of printing and distribution made competing print newspapers non-viable in all but our largest cities after World War II. Hopefully the move of the media to the internet will restore the multiple voices in local news that have been standard for most of our American political history.
I should have known that about Romney based not only on his personal campaigns but also based on his family's political history in Michigan where I grew up as the son of a Republican official. However, I didn't know, and a lot of other people still don't. That message needs to get widely disseminated.
I don't think we're going to have to deal with a Romney nomination for that reason among others, but what if we do face that situation?
I'm reading a lot of third-party comments, but I think this one by Colofornian is probably the most insightful: “It could be the 19th century all over again. The GOP rising then on the ashes of the Whigs. The GOP could be the new Whigs of extinction.”
Also, as LittleRay pointed out, we have one and only one example in United States history of successful third-party politics, and that was when the Republicans destroyed the Whigs due in large part to the Whig refusal to take a stand on principle, and then the Republicans became one of the two main parties. If a third party is going to be created, the agenda has to be to replace the Republican Party, not to compete with it as a long-term third party. That is not a minor undertaking, and while it's not impossible, people need to count the cost before they start the project.
Keeping that fight over a third party off the table is perhaps one of the best reasons to convince moderate and less-conservative Republicans not to vote for Romney. Why can't we turn the argument on its head and tell moderate Republicans that it's the conservatives who do the hard work on the ground, and nominating a RINO is a good way to either split the party or lose the election because conservatives stay home — especially evangelical voters who unfortunately have a lousy record of voter turnout if they aren't strongly committed to their candidate?
Except for the Republicans in the 1850s, every other example of a third party in the history of American politics — every one — has either 1) been electorally irrelevant or 2) led to defeat of the major party closest in ideology to the third-party by siphoning off votes, or 3) became a temporarily independent force that eventually was absorbed by one of the two main parties, bringing with it an entire block of voters.
I don't think we're going to have to deal with a Romney candidacy unless the social conservatives fail to coalesce around a single candidate and Romney or somebody like him wins by default. If we do face that situation, we have a major, major problem. This discussion on Free Republic will be merely a precursor for the debates on our national stage if that happens, and I think the Republican leadership understands that nominating a RINO risks handing the election over to Obama because of a massive “Tea Party” defection.
What if Romney successfully uses his money and a divide-and-conquer strategy to win the Republican nomination by getting a plurality though not a majority of Republican support? The primary and caucus system makes it entirely possible to get a majority of convention delegates despite representing only one portion of the party, if the right candidates are knocked out of the race early and if others stay in long enough to divide up the opposition. That's probably what happened to get John McCain nominated, and it could get Romney nominated as well.
There could be advantages to using the model of the 1850s by abandoning the remnants of liberalism in the Republican Party with a massive shift of conservatives to a new party, much like how the strong and radically uncompromising ideological commitment of the early Republican Party against slavery and for a strong federal government destroyed the remnants of the Whig Party and led to the election of Abraham Lincoln. (Sorry, Southerners, but those are the facts of the Republican Party's history, and it's a big part of why so many conservative Southerners of several generations ago stayed Democrats for so long.)
But let's not kid ourselves. Unlike countries with multiparty democracies, third parties don't work here for a reason. In the United States, we have single-member winner-take-all districts in nearly all of our state legislatures. At the federal level, all of our congressional districts and senatorial races are winner-take-all single-member races. Without changes in state and federal laws, there is simply no way to maintain a viable European-style three-party system in the United States unless the third party is regionally based. Even the southern Dixiecrats, who had the best possible chance to do so in modern American history, didn't succeed in creating a third party and ended up migrating into the Republican Party under the leadership of men like Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond.
We also need to remember that just as with the 1856 election, there is a very good chance that a new third party in 2012 would lose and cause a lot of damage.
Here, I think, are the minimum things we need to insist on in any third-party conservative presidential candidate:
1. They must have massive grassroots support so strong that the party not merely comes in second in a number of states, getting viewed as a “spoiler that lost the election,” but actually wins a number of key conservative states in the electoral college. That probably means not just smaller conservative states but at least a couple of major states, of which the most likely is probably Texas. A win in Texas and Florida by a third-party candidate would force the entire political system to take the third party seriously, and would likely lead to a number of members of Congress deciding to cast their lots with the third party.
2. Strong grassroots support isn't enough in an era where massive amounts of money are necessary even to get on the ballot in many of the biggest states, as well as to buy television advertising and do national campaigning with only about three to six months to get the message out before the November 2012 elections. The ability to raise massive amounts of money is crucial.
3. The use of the internet news media, as well as FOX News, gives non-mainstream candidates a fighting chance today if they're attacked or ignored by the mainstream media. Taking a page from the Democratic online playbook that gave birth to Howard Dean and Barack Obama could work. If the candidate doesn't fully understand the role of the internet, they need to have a campaign team that does, and can use it effectively and aggressively. The internet will be key to any successful insurgent campaign either within the two main parties or by a third party bid.
4. Being right on the issues isn't enough. The presidency is not an entry-level job, and a third-party candidate faces a tremendous credibility gap. Anyone nominated who doesn't have a solid record as a state governor with executive skills or a solid record in the Congress with legislative skills absolutely **MUST** have a vice-presidential nominee who does have those skills, as well as many people willing to serve in his/her cabinet and publicly declare themselves, knowing they are destroying their own political future in the Republican Party by aligning with a third party movement.
Let's not minimize how much of a risk it is for somebody qualified for a cabinet-level post to declare up front that they are supporting a third party. What happened to Joe Lieberman is nothing compared to what will happen to a Republican who bolts, since the Democrats have a long history of disarray but the Republicans have historically been much better at enforcing party discipline and punishing people who threaten the leadership. Even by posting this, I know I run the risk of it getting copied and quoted years from now, even though I hold no office in the Republican Party and have no intention of seeking elected office. Somebody in office or seeking office runs a much greater risk.
I hope it's crystal clear that I do not support a third party. What I support is a conservative takeover of the Republican Party. But I can't back baby-killers, and that is probably the only issue in current American politics that could get me to vote for a third-party presidential nominee.
If somebody is going to talk about third parties, count the costs. Know what you're getting into first, and have a plan to win, not just to compete.
This is all true and we are unrealistic when we believe we will ever achieve the heaven on earth we desire.
We are flawed human beings and even another political party (we already have at least 40) is not going to be made up of pure people and would be a guarantee of any kind of improvement and likely would only make matters worse.
The logical line of attack is to nominate the most conservative possible.
Romney is a Yankee mAsshole. If he is nominated I will vote Libertarian or Conservative party. The R’s will have a majority in congress, hold the purse strings. I am not so sure Obama isn’t going to get a challenger. He is very weak.
Great post, Darrell!
Can either of you link to the Romney abortion vid post? (Sorry, I’m asleep at the wheel today.)
I noticed a couple weak responses on the baby killing question between the grunts in the NH debate, but I’d like to have some nice links to pass around as the primaries get more interesting.
Ok, will run the videos on the threads for awhile or until we get tired of him.
So, what do you think of cva’s #312?
Are you going to hector and harass him like you did Partisan Gunslinger? Will you sneeringly call him “effectively pro-Obama”? Will you cheerfully mock him proclaiming “thank(ing) you for Obama”? Or does he get a pass for his stated intent to do exactly the same as PG said because cva is a fellow Lost Cause Loser?
“Oh NO, it will ensure another 4 years for Obama”, they cry.
possibly (snicker)...
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