Posted on 08/20/2012 3:20:03 PM PDT by Clintonfatigued
Bellyaching to you is standing on principle to me. I'm not interested in participating in politics if I can't find a candidate who represents my views. Romney won because he brainwashed ignorant, uninformed or shallow voters with expensive, false advertising and he got endorsements and all kinds of biased, open and backroom support from party leaders. Everything Gingrich and Santorum said about him being a bad candidate for the general election has been proving true, e.g. he can't outspend Obama 20 to 1 like he did to them, therefore he can't get his poll numbers up. Adelson's money never came close to Romney's. Ability to raise money in a primary is irrelevant to the general election, where all the anti-Obama money only has one place to go. Case in point, Adelson is contributing to Romney now just as he and other donors would to any candidate. The only donors who wouldn't would be liberal ones who are for things like abortion and same-sex marriage, whose money I would passionately reject anyway. They're the last people I want my party to owe anything to.
We had a lot of good candidates in our primary. In fact that was the problem, we had too many, and they split the vote against each other in a lot of states. But the key factor was that the big money donors want a liberal GOP party, and not enough conservative groups participated in the primaries by backing a candidate early or donating money. It was a strategic mistake by the base of the Republican party. They could have defeated Romney if they had a better strategy and put more money on the table. Bottom line, the GOP establishment is at war with Christian conservatives, and The Battle of Romney in the primary is just as much a chapter in that war as is The Battle of Akin.
Your Post #72 is spot-on.
It’s more than just Missouri. The GOP needs this seat to take the Senate, and now the wretched, far-too-liberal-for-Missouri McCaskill is going to win reelection if Akin stays in.
Akin will be this year’s Sharon Angle; someone who couldn’t get out of his own way and let the most vulnerable Democrat in the Senate win a race they should have lost.
I hate to say this, but politics is a cutthroat game, it’s not for the meek or the faint of heart.
It’s war out there and everything has to be done for a calculated gain. Trying to rehabilitate him carries with it a huge risk, that 1) it will drag everyone else down and 2) he’ll make more gaffes in the future. Whereas replacing him with someone else who’s popular in MO costs little and has nowhere near the downside.
Then why is Obama not replacing Biden? Looking like a sinking ship and throwing people overboard does not make the party look like a strong, cohesive unit ready to lead. I don't see the "predictions" the same way you do. I'd rather let him try to bounce back for a couple weeks before saying it's hopeless. It's a minor misstatement being trumped up by Democrats, which they do all the time to any Republican. That's not enough to hang a campaign on. "Vote for me because my opponent doesn't really think rape is good, but accidentally used the wrong word that made it sound that way to some people!" Having a rule that says we should throw out any candidate who makes a gaffe is just absolutely crazy. We wouldn't have any candidates left. Not Reagan, Gingrich, Palin, West, Santorum, Romney, Bush, Quayle, etc.
Dems and Repub don’t play by the same rules, I thought we all knew that?
Dems get away with stuff Repub can’t. That is a fact of life. You can complain about how unfair it is, but this is war and complaining gets you nowhere. You play the hand you’re dealt not the one you wish you had, and the smart play here is fold and ask for a re-deal.
We’re fortunate that he made this gaffe now and there is still a chance for a do over. Had he waited a week we’d have been stuck with the lousy hand.
Is the baby a human being, BAz?
From the local press... a few paragraphs down, a statement from Missouri Right to Life:
http://www.ksdk.com/news/article/333873/3/Fallout-over-Akins-legitimate-rape-comments-
From Family Research Council:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/election-2012/wp/2012/08/20/a-todd-akin-defense/
Susan B. Anthony List:
You know, the Repubs either stand with their principles or they don’t. What next, submitting the Party Platform for beltway approval?
“Is the baby a human being, BAz?”
Depends on whether you believe that a single fertilized cell is a human with consciousness and rights. I don’t.
It is a single cell only for 24 hours.
So, when EXACTLY does a baby become a person?
Is it "above your pay grade"? Or do you think there's a chance this "single fertilized cell" might turn out to be a giraffe or something?
What EXACTLY does consciousness have to do with anything? Do you believe that a person must be conscious to be a person and have rights?
Are you even aware that FR is a PRO-LIFE forum and not a libertarian pro-abortion cesspool?
As Paltz requested, documentation, please? I'd like to know who in the Right-to-Life community is standing up for Akin so I don't sound like a crazy for saying it's his decision to make instead of joining the “Dump Akin” brigade.
I live in Missouri. I've heard all three of the main Republican candidates speak at various events, including Sarah Steelman at a neighbor's home (there are certain benefits of living in a neighborhood of bankers and lawyers and retired colonels and real estate developers) and have met both Akin and Steelman at several different events in our county. Sarah Steelman was our state senator; I've seen Brunner at some events but don't know him beyond the standard political coverage. But we're now getting pummeled with “all real Republicans want Akin out” rhetoric.
Right now I see nobody outside Free Republic defending Akin and even most people here are mad at him.
52 posted on Mon Aug 20 2012 19:03:29 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time) by JediJones: “You have to understand the GOP would love to annihilate any and all Christian conservatives from their ranks. They don’t agree with their values and they falsely believe they are a drag on the party’s popularity, because the only people they socialize with are wealthy beltway liberals who think Christians are hicks and rubes, so they think most Americans are like that. The GOP simply can’t purge the Christian conservatives because they would become immensely unpopular with the base. But whenever they see an opening where they think they can get away with destroying one of them on some nonsensical pretense without getting much blowback like they’re doing with Akin, then they will take it. And I’ll be damned before I go along with this undeserved lynching.”
I know that up close and personal in ways I'm not going to discuss publicly on Free Republic or anywhere else that a Google search engine can reach. You are absolutely 100 percent right.
The problem here is not Akin opposing the rape exception, but bringing biological inaccuracies into an extremely explosive and emotional fight.
He's got to know better, and if he doesn't, that's his own problem. Christian conservatives supported Akin for a reason. It wasn't so we could get something that with one slip of his tongue on an obvious issue would blow up the whole Republican agenda on a national basis.
At least we can be glad this happened in August and not two weeks before the election. Akin may be able to survive this, and if he makes it through with Christian conservative funding and no national party support, he'll then make an **EXTREMELY** strong case for what happens when social conservatives accept an apology, move on, and fight for our guy.
But when you're running for political office on the national level, you just can sound like a hillbilly county commissioner. Our local voters got rid of people for similar wild-eyed comments said in front of reporters, and if the stakes weren't so high I'd say that Akin needs to go back to some small town with local reporters doing their jobs and learn when not to say stupid stuff.
You nailed it right there!
I oppose rape exceptions, but I am fully aware that there are pregnancies that resulted from rape. However, I am also aware that the number of cases is VERY LOW (less than 4000 per year).
Rape has been used as a red herring by abortionists for decades. It is an emotional issue and they employ it to justify millions of murders. If anything it is an issue that conservative politicians should AVOID in public because it's impossible to get a point apart when it's being distorted through sound bites. If anything, they should simply point out that the Supreme Court has ruled that capital punishment is unconstitutional in cases of rape and leave it at that.
“So, when EXACTLY does a baby become a person?”
My personal belief is that during the continuum of pregnancy a fetus accretes rights according to its stage of development. In judging whether a given abortion is moral, I would weigh the reason for aborting against that stage of development.
Since this position is not “life” (fetus becomes a person at conception) or “choice” fetus doesn’t become a person until birth), it doesn’t fit either of the politicized poles of the argument. Excluded middles are what you get when you politicize a scientific question.
As Reagan would say, since you don't really know when life begins or when consciousness begins, then if we err, we should err on the side of life.
BAz, if it weren't life, then they wouldn't have to kill it.
And if it weren't human life, then it would end up being a dog, cow, salamander, etc.
God, speaking in the bible in Jeremiah 1, says "before you were formed in the womb, I knew you." IOW, long before you are giving credit for life.
And the US Constitution says in both the 5th and the 14th amendments that no person shall be deprived of life without due process of law.
Your position is not conservative, and I can't see how it avoids anything, for abortion is ALWAYS intentional killing.
Speaking of scientific fact, there is no doubt that a fetus at any stage of development is an individual, unique, human life. It, in fact, is not part of the mother’s body. It is completely supported by the mother’s body but is a separate life. We seem to have ceded this scientific fact to the abortionists and pro-choice women who scream, “It’s MY BODY and no one can tell me what to do with it!!!” When you abort a fetus you are killing a human being. We do justify killing humans in some conditions, in war and for crimes being the two main accepted reasons. I can accept abortion in cases of risk to the mother’s help or in the case of forcible rape but you can’t say it’s not killing a unique individual human being. If there’s no awareness you can maybe, I won’t, argue even though it’s a human being it’s not a person yet. We really don’t know when a fetus becomes aware. They show signs of responding to stimuli fairly early but that may not mean they are conscious. Most people don’t remember anything before about the age of 3 or 4 as adults but when they are that age it’s obvious they remember their surroundings, and parents, and siblings.
Look. She obviously likes Romney, but, in all fairness, in this case, Romney didn't make a bone-headed statement about the female body "shutting down" to prevent "legitimate" rapes from creating a pregnancy.
That's one crazy, crazy theory. And it's enough to make it the centerpiece of the entire campaign. And, unfortunately, understandably so.
Christopher Minick
Sorry, Tod but Akin represents the old guard republican religious wing which isnt important anymore. The vast majority of republican voters today are more focused on small government, and personal responsibility vs a religious war on personal decisions. The religious wackos in the republican party are unwanted distractions and sources of negativity that hurt the parties image. Much like how the anarchists and communists are unwanted in the democratic party. Face it, the days of moralism are over.
From the local press... a few paragraphs down, a statement from Missouri Right to Life:
http://www.ksdk.com/news/article/333873/3/Fallout-over-Akins-legitimate-rape-comments-
From Family Research Council:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/election-2012/wp/2012/08/20/a-todd-akin-defense/
Susan B. Anthony List:
http://www.lifenews.com/2012/08/20/pro-life-groups-attacks-on-akin-hide-obama-mccaskills-abortion-record/
Again, the Repubs either stand with their principles or they don’t. Will we be submitting the Party Platform for beltway approval? By tripping over themselves to disavow Akin (who they all fundamentally agree with), Repub leaders are just fueling this media frenzy. Their opposition is now the media story...
Since Mr. Akin has refused to give up the nomination which the voters accorded him, maybe this nonsense from the Repub side will die down, and we can get back on message to attacking BHO...
Here is a little something about politics. When the Democrat Party aids a Republican in winning his party’s nomination, it’s not because they want Republicans to have the best candidate. The McCaskill campaign ran ads designed to help Akin win the nomination. Does this change your mind?
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