Posted on 11/07/2012 7:37:04 PM PST by JediJones
If Todd Akin had said, instead of his wacky comment, simply, "This has been settled for 40 years. There is nothing a sitting Senator can do about it." - we would be saying, "Welcome, Senator."
That's what I mean about the message.
The Pro-Life lobby has had this backwards for four decades now. They've been looking for an immediate political solution when the real answer is to work on the hearts and minds of the people.
Its working ... slowly. A bare majority are now pro-life.
To make this change, you have to have about 60% on your side, then the politicians can simply say, "Well, the people demanded it" -- but you have to have the politicians in place so that when that demand comes, it slides right through.
Its a cart before the horse thing. You have to have demand from the populace before you can make it happen politically.
Right now, today, we don't have that.
So what is the smart solution to this issue? You've already outlined it. Keep at it in the conservative media. Get the hearts and minds. Then, when the people demand it, it happens naturally, politically, and everyone wonders how it came about.
But in the interim, take this weapon away from the media so they can no longer use it.
You don't have to compromise your principles one bit and you can win the election still the same. You do have to be smart about it, however, and so far, it isn't being done the smart way.
Does that make sense? What I outlined above gets you where you want to go and doesn't force you to compromise your principles. It does, however, require you to be smart in your messaging.
The problem with demographics is that a person can fit a number of categories.
Who did a single white evangelical senior female vote for?
One item I heard on Fox yesterday was that the young did turn out for Obama but that seniors did not, as had been anticipated, turn out for Romney.
If that’s true, then that’s important.
No. Akin should have said that “we never murder the children of felons no matter how heinous their crimes. As your Senator I will do my utmost to protect all children equally regardless of whether their fathers are rapists or saints.”
Welcome to another term, Senator McCaskill, who was down 20-30 points against a Ham Sandwich.
Stop thinking immediate home run. Start thinking long term chess game. Your opponents are playing chess. You're standing at bat waiting for the perfect pitch to whack it out of the park.
How many more centuries do you have to wait?
The problem is that’s not how the Dems are succeeding on same-sex marriage. They are putting it on the ballot relentlessly and no matter how many times it loses, they keep trying until it passes. They are pushing their party to take stances in favor of it and they succeeded at both getting Obama to abandon DOMA and to put it into the party platform this year.
Yet you’re asking for some kind of stealth passivity on abortion. We’ve been trying that for decades and the needle is not moving much. Revolutions don’t need a majority of people behind them. They can be driven by a minority of people who are very forceful in their actions. Most people are passive and will cave in to a minority of people who put up an intense fight.
You’re saying candidates should dodge the question in interviews. They’re never going to get away with that. They’ll look weak, untrustworthy, wishy-washy, very Mitt-like. That doesn’t win elections. If they answered the way you suggest, no one would even know what their position on abortion was, liberal or conservative voter alike. Sure, they can state the limitations of their power to do anything about it, but they’re going to have to say what they believe and why also.
Nobody thinks Akin or Mourdock couldn’t have phrased their answers better. I wouldn’t bring God into the answer myself. I don’t want to alienate any voter on the subject, even atheists. To me the secular arguments against abortion are just as strong as the religious ones.
I’m pretty sure when you drill down into the pro-life polls, there isn’t enough real support for a true pro-life position. There might be people who would never have an abortion themselves, but not necessarily want to ban abortion. Obviously we need to work on changing hearts and minds. But sometimes the political change comes first. A political campaign is a powerful bully pulpit.
Because we don’t have the media on our side, we may need politicians even more than the liberals do. Just listen to the way Ronald Reagan argued the merits of capitalism. He wasn’t following popular opinion with his finger in the wind. He was trying to educate and to change hearts and minds.
It’s passed the time when we can just wait for judges to overturn Roe vs. Wade. We need to seriously put forth a constitutional amendment to get the job done and push politicians to back it.
What was that they say about doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result?
Its time to change tactics and do something that works unless you paying for abortions with your tax dollars because that is next on the agenda.
I'm asking to try something that gets votes and wins elections. We are now past the tipping point where we can rely on evangelicals to push things over the top. Its over and done with. Kaput. Not gonna happen again on a national level.
As demographics keep changing and as this country gives up on religion, which IS happening, you're going to be pushed into more and more of a minority position where you get nothing.
Use your head. This is the truth.
Let's try an analogy. If 26 percent of the population of your town said they wanted to burn your house down, would you listen to them? Of course you would.
So why the hatred of social conservatives? Any Republican coalition-builder who wants to win national elections has to consider them. The problem with today's Republican Party is that one in four people who vote are being ignored.
Your post is a perfect example of everything that's going wrong with the conservative movement. Asians (for example) are extremely hard working, both through school and through life. They comprise a number of small business owners that is vastly disproportionate to their numbers. Yet what should have been natural Republicans, voted overwhelming Democrat. Why? Because, people like yourself would paint the GOP as a Christians only club with no room in the ranks for secular conservatives.
I'm not afraid to say it. The religious right is driving more people into the Democrat fold than it's attracting to the Republican tent. The GOP cannot retain it's Christians only bent and continue to be successful in national elections. That's just a fact, and someone higher up should pay attention.
What hatred? If someone is looking for hate, look in a mirror. There is none here.
The fact of the matter is, the country has changed.
To win, the Party has to change.
End of story.
Is this really so hard to comprehend? A national election cannot be won using many of the Social Conservative planks of the platform any longer. Period.
That is all. Its reality. We have to suck it up and deal with it.
If people want to LOSE elections for the next thousand years, then keep doing the same thing. We already know the results of that. We saw it on Tuesday.
LOL, what mythical GOP are you talking about? The higher-ups have been trying to ignore Christian conservatives for decades. And the more they succeed at ignoring them, the more they lose elections.
As demographics keep changing and as this country gives up on religion, which IS happening, you're going to be pushed into more and more of a minority position where you get nothing.
The biggest problem with your argument is that the premise is wrong. The general reason the GOP ticket lost this time and the biggest albatross around their neck for decades has been the perception that they're "for the rich." The voters said they thought Obama related to the middle class more. There is no issue more precious to the GOP yet more unpopular with the public, as proven by the polls, than their refusal to raise income taxes on higher earners.
So why don't we forget about abortion and moderate our stance on the tax issue? Let's tell our candidates to dodge the tax question when it comes up. Let's tell them to say that the issue is settled and the rich are just going to have to pay higher taxes. Then maybe after 40 years of keeping quiet on the issue and refusing to argue the case, the public will magically wake up and change their minds. THEN we can finally lower taxes on the wealthy once the public comes around and it won't risk costing us any votes.
As for me, I support a flat tax. But don't you think we should consider the country's changing demographics and evolving opinions and for the sake of the survival of the party, agree to raise taxes on the wealthy? If you truly believe your argument on abortion, then you HAVE to agree with this, because the GOP's tax plank is far more unpopular with voters than their abortion position.
Please note I'm playing devil's advocate above. I don't agree with moderating our fiscal OR social policy. Although I do think the tax issue and general perception of being "for the rich" IS by far the party's biggest hurdle to getting votes.
Not to mention, if all we're going to do as a party is put our finger in the wind and push for whatever the polls say is most popular, why do we even need two or more parties? One party can handle that. Not to mention it's an extremely gutless, spineless and soulless attitude.
Number one, this is nonsense. Presidential elections are won on superficiality and emotion. They bring out too many ignorant voters.
Number two, the insistence on not raising taxes for higher income earners is the most unpopular plank in the GOP platform. And their perception as being "for the rich" is their biggest hurdle to expanding their base, not their perception of being pro-life or Christian.
Lastly, if the GOP becomes the pro-choice party of low taxes, you're absolutely insane if you think you can win elections with that. You'll see a third party founded very quickly by truly principled conservatives. That might kill the GOP altogether, which is probably a good thing at this point given the incompetence of the leadership.
You've got it entirely backwards. People like you want to paint the GOP as a secular club with no room for Christian conservatives. The Christian conservatives understand what a coalition is. You have complete backing from them on fiscal and military conservatism. The Dems also get it. Blacks don't like same-sex marriage, but they remain loyal to the party even though they don't agree 100% with it. You can't have a coalition if you continually throw one of your coalition members under the bus.
You are spot-on there. But while we are looking at rebooting a Party, we need to be examining all things up and down the chain.
Right now, we can't get enough votes to win a national election. Gerrymandering districts will only keep us the House for so long. The clock is ticking. We have until 2020 at the latest to have something rolling or as I see it, we're done for.
I'm happy to cave on the tax issue and moderate the effect on Small Business by reworking the tax code so that S Corps and other business entities are separate from personal income tax. That will take care of everything right there.
Never mind that there aren't enough rich people to soak. That's a fact, but nobody cares. We cave on that but correct the tax code so that Small Business isn't destroyed. Its "in the works" anyhow as part of the debt deal. We can slide that through and call it The Grand Compromise.
For Abortion, nowhere will I ever say to compromise your principles on it. I am going to suggest toning down the rhetoric a bit. There is a world of difference between the two.
The reasons for that are not as anyone might surmise; its to get the media off our backs. They have been using that as a bludgeon for years and I want this weapon of theirs disarmed. In short, I'm calling for getting smart about it. Polls show that (slowly, very slowly) the country is coming around to a pro-life stance.
More time is needed to get it to 60% or better. That time needs to be bought somehow. If the grand change to finally deal with Roe is to be done, the politicians have to already be in place when the tipping point is reached and it is a viable thing to do.
Its about being smart. It can't be done now. It can be done later. We need to ask ourselves a simple question - do we want it or not? If we do, then there is a road to get there. If we don't, we can keep doing what we have been which has had zero success so far.
Play it like chess, not checkers. Arrange the pieces on the board before starting your attack.
There are a ton of pro-choice groups out there beating us up left and right. They have a lot of money. If the rhetoric tones down, the money starts coming out of those groups and weakens them in the long-term.
Like I said, chess. Set your opponent up and lay a trap. If the rhetoric is out in the open, they can say, "See? Now we need another load of cash to fend this off." Without anything they can point to, how do they raise money? How can they run attack ads when there is nothing to attack? How can the media use this as a weapon when there are no silly soundbites to go viral?
All of these ideas will evolve, of course, as all of us scramble around and try to find a workable plan.
At the same time, we also need to identify targets that can be weakened.
Its going to take a while to work this out. It will not happen overnight, but we need to leave no stone unturned. Just going by the polls isn't going to be enough. We need to identify entities on the other side and target them to be weakened and reduced. A lot of that can be done with a simple change in rhetoric. No real principles ever need be sacrificed -- except perhaps adding another bracket for the ultra-wealthy. Fortunately, that has a blissful side-effect in that the Michael Moores and Susan Sarandons of the world get to pay. That idea makes me very happy. I'll cave on that if the S Corps can be set free.
Let me repost what you quoted so you can reread it and comprehend:
You definitely do not need Conservative Christians in your party.
In fact, you can have and keep the GOP altogether, so you do not have to worry any longer about who we Christians are driving out of your beloved party of compromise, capitulation and liberalism.
If biblical and Christian values have to be sacrificed for expedience and to attract secularists - you might as well try convincing us that we need to compromise with the devil in order to get into the Kingdom of God.
Same difference. And if that’s the case - no thanks. We’ll go elsewhere.
Outstanding point. The belief system of an individual independent of God, doesn't make it any more or less correct than any other belief system.
On this we fully agree.
This is why God's Plan s so magnificent. It doesn't depend upon a person's belief system independent of Him, but it relies ONLY upon the faith/belief (same word in the original Greek found in Scripture) which is His work in us. It doesn't come to us independent of Him, but only through the Word of God, the Son, Christ Jesus.
His belief system is true and only His is true because it comes from God Himself. Study it. Don't take my word for it, but study His Word through faith in Him.
I'm not waiting for anything. This is not a game. Talking about "legitimate rape" is absurd because the premise should be the life of the child not the alleged crime of the father. I believe Akin failed because he did not speak the truth plainly. But he might have failed speaking the truth and I'd be content with that.
...the Lord saveth not with sword and spear: for the battle is the Lord's...
You could have stopped right there.
It is absurd and shows not only a lack of tact, but a lack of understanding, a lack of compassion, a lack of brainpower, and we can continue on and on describing that comment with every invective and negative adjective in the dictionary. It still would not be enough to adequately condemn it or the thought processes which created it.
Put quite simply, it is that kind of talk which turns people off and turns them away.
I'm certain that Akin spoke from his heart, but his comments show the kind of heart he has - none.
In doing so, he paints all people of faith in public as being - well - callous and stupid to be blunt.
A common refrain I use and something many people fail to grasp, including much of the faith community is this: "The Golden Rule works faithfully in reverse. As you do unto others, so shall they do unto you."
Akin's comment told people he didn't care about women. People decided they didn't care about him.
Folks have been trying to do something about abortion for about the last 40 years. A good parallel to think about is the Jews wandering the desert.
You are correct when you say it is not a game. However, when what you are doing has zero net effect and people have been working at it for 40 years, perhaps a bit of introspection and soul-searching is indeed in order. It ain't working. Try something new. Otherwise, it will be another 40 years of wandering the desert. And another 40 years. And another 40 years. And another...
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