Sadly, even 30+ years later, some people still don't know how to spell his freakin' name.
Dammit man, it's THIS guy:
Not THIS guy:
Posted on 04/16/2012 12:09:46 AM PDT by Mozilla
Basically the GOP is too divided to ever unite. There is a deep level of distrust and various factions want different things. People do not agree on whom the best candidates are anymore. Us Conservatives, like me, were all over the map as person after person fell apart in the presidential republican primary. Romney is the final nail in the coffin. Newt, to me, has no chance and he has his own baggage. He has a good message though, but it is too late to do much. I personally think it is time to just end the party.
That pretty much sums it up and the choice is obvious. At least for me it is.
I assume you mean Reagan—who was nominated twice. I think that you may be undervaluing Coolidge, Taft, and Goldwater as he was in 1964. I would say “once every 30 years or so,” but otherwise agree with your conclusion.
And only one of those has a chance of completely destroying whatever of organized conservatism is left in the Republican party.
Politics is a career. There are too many Rinos that would lose their fat bankrolls (notice I didn’t say paycheck). I think many of us have the strong delusion we have any power over what the Republican Party does. We think the vote is power but if we don’t have the choice then our vote is meaningless (Romney/McCain/Dole). The Rino elites have no incentive to go anywhere.
Don’t feel too bad. 2008 was probably the last election that would have made a difference. The storm is coming and there just ain’t much you can do but prepare fer it, IMHO.
Exactly. When asked why so many liberal judge appointments in Mass he responded, “It is a liberal state.” Great. If you do get Myth the SCOTUS appointments won’t be much different. Count on it. No Thomas, No Alito, No Scalia from Myth. Just another Ginsberg, or worse.
If we do at this point, 0bummer&Co will get 4 more years, and we go thru unbelievable Hell, which make the first 4 years look tame and sane, in comparison. The Republic is then finally and completely dead, and we’ll NEVER get it back. Never. This is the most important election in our Nations history. Yes, I’m voting Newt in my state’s primary.
WE MUST GET 0bummer OUT OF OFFICE, at all costs!
As Mark Levin says, “I’ll vote for an orange juice can over 0bummer; we can deal with the can, later.”
s primary.
WE MUST GET 0bummer OUT OF OFFICE, at all costs!
As Mark Levin says,
Ooops, sorry for that bad cut&paste job. I’ve had 2 cups o’ joe...
This is false and you look stupid saying it.
Then let's talk about the other conservatives: Perry couldn't debate worth a damn. Gingrich has tons of baggage and while his message is right on target it is diminished by his past. Santorum lost a senate seat to a Democrat in Pennsylvania he was a virtual nobody on the national scene until he ran for the nomination. Anyone pinning their hopes on Santorum were setting themselves and the GOP up for slaughter
Romney on the other hand never stopped campaigning since 2008. He made sure he mastered the politics inside the GOP for his run this year. He is not my choice candidate but I also don't have a reason not to take him at his word for what he is currently saying on the campaign trail. I expect that he will completely support the GOP platform coming out of the convention when he is President. He has shown he is willing to take his campaign negative to ensure a win and it's going to take negative and positive campaigning to unseat Barak Obama.
Any talk of staying home if Romney is the GOP pick is nonsense. Romney looks like Ronald Regan when compared to Barak Obama. This country will be far better off under President Romney than the current President. Just because it will be marginally better under President Gingrich or President Santorum and therefore I will quit the GOP?? I don't understand the logic.
Point of fact Ronald Regan didn't get the nomination the first time he ran for President. But God bless the man he kept fighting for the nomination until he could win it.
You can’t replace something with nothing.
There’s got to be another worthy opposition that emerges.
Careful, I’ve noticed recently that reasoned logic doesn’t sit well with the more zealous ones here.
I’m not a huge Mitt fan, but I’ll vote for him for the simple reason that I’ll take the one I can work with over the one who works against me.
Now, as for why we don’t elect true conservatives anymore, that’s pretty easy, too many republican voters put too much emphasis on one aspect and ignore the rest.
With Santorum you have the religious side of the GOP dancing in their pews, but they would completely ignore the fact that his was as liberal as any democrat with regards to the economy and would gladly use the force of government to force people to do as he saw fit, no better than a liberal to me.
With Newt you got the national defense crowd excited as well as those that like a candidate that would fight, problem was that Newt tilted at windmills way too often and looked like a hypocrite whenever someone would talk family values, it also didn’t help that the man is one big massive ego and he was liberal in many areas also.
The reason why we’ll never get a true conservative is that we have far too many factions within that party who want to decide what a conservative is, many believe he/she needs to be a Bible thumping christian and nothing else matters others think they needs to be strong on national defense even if those actions harm our own personal liberty (Patriot Act) they don’t care.
Personally, to me being conservative means having a sound free market economic policy, strong national defense only acting when the threat is imminent to defend us, letting their religion guide them but not forcing it on others, and finally and most importantly, it’s allowing maximum freedom to be the law of the land, everyone can do as they choose as long as their actions do not infringe on the rights of another, yes, that means keeping the government out of the bedroom, what people do behind closed doors is their own business not ours or the governments as long as they keep those actions behind closed doors.
Unfortunately we have too many in the republican party that want to use the force of government to force people to act they way they see fit, which makes you no better than a liberal.
To boil it down, I use The Rule of Threes:
1.) One third of us who are/were Republicans think a Republican candidate who has liberal views can govern effectively and save the country. They would contribute money and vote for the candidate enthusiastically.
2.) One third of us who are/were Republicans think a Republican candidate who has liberal views cannot govern effectively, but might help save the country by staving off the day of reckoning by voting for a candidate who will do less damage until a real conservative comes along. A large portion of this third will not likely contribute to the candidate and will vote for the candidate unenthusiastically.
3.) One third of us who are/were Republicans think a Republican candidate who has liberal views cannot govern effectively, and will bring us to the same ruin that a fully liberal candidate would, with the imprimatur and tacit approval of the conservative voter, albeit in a longer time frame. A large portion of this third will not vote for the candidate under any circumstances.
Between each of these categories are narrow bands of gray that mix the two categories adjacent to each other.
The net result is not a good one, electorally, in my opinion. We are divided broadly, and this puts non-fully-liberal candidates (anyone but a current fully leftist Democrat) at a disadvantage both electorally and financially.
Democrats do, I think, view this much differently than we do, and I am not speaking ideologically, and here is why: Liberalism is like a one way ratchet. Once liberal policies are enacted, they rarely are rolled back.
Think a python eating a pig.
The pig is large, and takes a very long time to get down for the python. But the python knows, as does the pig, that in the end, there is no escaping. Because the teeth of the python only allow movement (however slow) to occur in one direction, full ingestion of the pig is inevitable in this model.
Liberals may not actively realize this in any way since most (except the bottom third of the most hard-core of liberals) do not think about politics at that level. Liberals are a mile wide and an inch deep. Even though they may not realize that the one-way ratchet of liberalism is a long, slow, inevitability, deep in their political hindbrains, they know it.
As a result, even though the interests of liberals may be as widely disparate and divided as those of conservatives (or ostensible conservatives) are, they do not have any problem whatsoever voting for or contributing to a candidate who is only half as liberal as they would like, because they know some small portion of their liberal interest will be acted on, and they will eventually get there.
Bottom line: They can be patient and have the latitude to do so, because time and the direction of movement is on their side. Conservatives do not have that luxury, and as a result, our outlook is by necessity, more sharply delineated and focused.
This is a pessimistic outlook, but I fail to see how we can have any outlook other than a pessimistic one at this time.
But because I am pessimistic, that does not mean I have lost hope. This country has seen grim times before, and will again. We are not in those grim times yet, but when things are still this good and we have people rioting because of sneakers on sale, one has to wonder what will happen when our industrial, agriculture and energy sectors are finally destroyed, and food becomes scarce.
The rule of law and the integrity of legal contracts have already been discounted by our government (see recently, treatment of investors during the bailout and the non-prosecution of the New Black Panther Party) and there are now crimes being openly committed that are no longer prosecuted.
The optimist in me says this can all be turned around. But the pessimist in me says it isn’t going to take half measures, and at this time, there is no stomach (except in the lower one third of conservatives described above) for full measures.
Conservatives in the USA are basically a niche group...a minority. Like the liberals they have to realize that they will never become mainstream.
BWHAHAHAHA! What are you SMOKING?
I agree, r. Very, very well stated. I’m somewhere between #2 - #3, in that “gray area”, I guess. I just don’t see a choice for America, at this point. We have to get that POS out of The White Crib, at any cost. Otherwise, America is past the point of *no return*. We may already be there, I don’t know for sure, but I’m not giving-up without a fight for Her.
Post of the week: “Liberals are a mile wide and an inch deep.”
Perfect!
What the heck are you doing on this site?!
The GOP isn't finished nor divided.
Republican voters need to stop letting the #$%^ing Media pick our candidates for us.
The Media talked us into John McCain and now Mitt Romney!
We have no one to blame but ourselves.
When voters are too lazy to pay attention to what's going on and just blindly follow the lead of the Media, this is what we get!
Unfortunately, this is a problem on both sides of the isle. At least with Liberals they have the advantage of agreeing with the Media viewpoint. This country will continue to circle the drain until we take control back from those truly running the show. The Mainstream Media has been running this country since just after WWII and its time for it to stop.
Excellent commentary, rlmorel.
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