I never did take this off my FR homepage:
Posted on 11/10/2012 8:05:19 PM PST by neverdem
It is time to throw the social conservatives out of the GOP. Look at what they got us — Barack Obama. It was the social conservatives who did it. They insisted the GOP support real marriage and children. To hell with that.
I’m getting this, in various forms, from lots of tea party activists. The GOP establishment in Washington is whispering it to each other. They look at Todd Aiken and Richard Mourdock and conclude that they, not Tommy Thompson, Heather Wilson, George Allen, Scott Brown, etc. are the problem.
It is time to get rid of the social conservatives.
What’s really going on here is that the people who voted Republican, but who disagree with pro-lifers and defenders of marriage, have decided it must be those issues. They can’t see how what happened actually happened unless it happened because the issues on which they disagree with the base played a role.
This is a psychological avoidance of larger issues and does not stack up to the data.
Mitt Romney won about a quarter of the hispanic vote and a tenth of the black vote.
Those numbers may not sound like much, but in close elections they matter.
A sizable portion of those black and hispanic voters voted GOP despite disagreeing with the GOP on fiscal issues. But they are strongly social conservative and could not vote for the party of killing kids and gay marriage. So they voted GOP.
You throw out the social conservatives and you throw out those hispanic and black voters. Further, you make it harder to attract new hispanic voters who happen to be the most socially conservative voters in the country.
Next, you’ll also see a reduction of probably half the existing GOP base. You won’t make that up with Democrats who suddenly think that because their uterus is safe they can now vote Republican. Most of those people don’t like fiscal conservatism either — often though claiming that they do.
If you really need to think through this, consider MItt Romney. He is perhaps the shiftiest person to ever run for President of the United States. He shifted his position on virtually every position except Romneycare. Of all the politicians to ever run for office, he’d be the one most likely to come out and, after the Republican convention, decide he’d changed his mind. He’d be okay with abortion and okay with gay marriage.
Had he done that, he’d have even less votes.
Several million evangelicals did not vote for George W. Bush in 2000. His campaign had to work to get them back in 2004.
You may mentally decide, to escape having to deal with the other implications of this election, that if only the GOP would abandon its social conservatism it would do better. But if you do, go find yourself a new coalition because you won’t have half the votes the GOP has now. Good luck with that. In fact, if the GOP really wanted to expand with minorities, it’d keep the social conservatism and throw out the fiscal conservatism.
Richard Mourdock was one of two of the poster children for abandoning social conservatives this year. He was beaten by a pro-life Democrat.
The problem is not social conservatism. The problem is social conservatives have gotten so used to thinking of themselves as the majority they’ve forgotten how to speak to those who are not and defend against those who accuse them of being fringe, most particularly the press. Couple that with Mitt Romney’s campaign making a conscious decision to not fight back on the cultural front and you have a bunch of Republicans convinced, despite the facts, that if only the social conservatives would go away all would be fine.
It’s not time to throw out social conservatives. It’s time to accept that without them the GOP would be even a smaller party even less able to reach out to the hispanic demographic all the smart people say they need to embrace. Addition through subtraction never really works well.
I never did take this off my FR homepage:
Why don’t we run a conservative and test that hypothesis?
Right now the evidence seems to show that nominating a moderate squish leads to republican losses.
But face it, they're city folks who think God-fearing America, y'know, those people who have actually read The Constitution of the United States, who might get a bit of dirt under their fingernails at work and occasionally break an honest sweat--from exertion, not just a suit and tie in hot weather--are just a bunch of stupid hicks from the sticks.
After all such sanctimonious condescending attitudes are far from limited to the urbane Liberal, and anyone measurably to the right of the Left considers themselves "conservative" in those environs.
This led to the rise of the exceptional conservative, who is conservative, except_____________ (fill in the blank with the issue of their choice).
Somehow these folks hijacked the GOP about the same time the Communists hijacked the Democrat Party.
Maybe it was blue dog Democrats who jumped ship, maybe simple subversion of conservative aims, but somehow the backbone, bread, and butter of the GOP became the people who got thrown under the bus, election after election, simply because they had no one to vote for but whomever the GOP-e put up as a nominee.
As a result the GOP has had POTUS election results decline from the landslide of Reagan to GHW Bush's 2nd term loss, to the Clinton Era, to the squeakers of Dubya getting elected, to the latest string of losses to someone who can't even (or won't) provide so much as a college transcript and who is obviously taking the country down the wrong track, full steam ahead.
Sadly, despite losses to or close victories over increasingly poor Leftist candidates, the GOP-e still isn't getting it--which makes me wonder if they aren't part of a greater plan to provide a choice between two flavors of the same thing.
There is little consolation in having a choice between oatmeal with or without raisins and brown sugar when what you ordered for breakfast was steak and eggs.
It is high time America got back to listening to the producers, the hard-working by-the-sweat-of-their-brow people who have built and continue to build America--at times under the most difficult conditions, back to people who value Life, Liberty, and the opportunity to build, for themselves and their progeny, an economically sound and morally just future.
Slackers, scammers, and parasites need not apply.
Please, Almighty Father, send us some statesmen and rid us of these damned politicians.
Me too.
Anybody who wants to enforce a social agenda using the power of the federal government inconsistent with it's enumerated powers is no republican.
It’s time to throw the “moderates” out of the GOP. (”Moderate is a base-stealing word for liberal Republicans.” — William F. Buckley, Jr.)
Either that, or just put the GOP out of its misery altogether. I’d love it if both major parties would just evaporate.
So why did conservative candidates lose senate races in conservative states that Romney carried?
So why did conservative candidates lose senate races in conservative states that Romney carried?
Go over to RedState.com and search through their archives for the Precinct Committeeman project. Your answer in fact is there.
We must do the work of taking over the nuts-and-bolts of the minor functionary positions within the party, those who chose, or from whose ranks ARE chosen, the higher-level representatives. Cheers!
Hint -- your argument shows that Romney was not able to pull in coattails. Not a good argument for him or for his positions.
Cheers!
Where do we learn right and wrong? From God, or government schools?
You’re missing the forest for the trees. You want a tax cut without social conservatism? Welcome to the Libertarian Party.
So conservative candidates lost in conservative states that Romney won because Romney wasn't conservative enough? OK. If you say so...
I have seen the mechanism of which you speak in action: Santorum took the Caucuses in ND, Ron Paul was second, Mitt was barely in the double digits, and Newt brought up the rear. When the delegate slate for the state was presented, 16 of 24 were committed Romney people.
When that was objected to, the power to the microphones was cut and the dissenters ignored. Romney had been picked, and no objection was going to be tolerated.
We must do the work of taking over the nuts-and-bolts of the minor functionary positions within the party, those who chose, or from whose ranks ARE chosen, the higher-level representatives.
We're in agreement there, I just want those going in to understand what attitudes they are up against.
Good luck GOP with that coalition of Illegal Aliens and Fiscal Conservatives (which are neither).....maybe next election the Libertarians come in 2nd
I hear ya. After watching for months while people here trashed Reagan so other politicians would look better, you kind of wonder how many here could do it.
Gallup over a 15 year trend.
It is NOT the conservatism that cost us the election, it is the lack of it.
Do you believe the Pro-Life Hispanics or Pro-Marriage Blacks, in the Republican party will continue to support a party that abandons those values?
In fact the 3 million Republicans who voted for McCain, claim they stayed home precisely because Romney wasn’t conservative enough.
(Just in case you hadn’t noticed that sentiment expressed on this site)
Akin and Mourdock didn't lose because of their abortion stance. They lost because of their mouth. Akin should have stepped down when asked.
The problem is that 7 out of 10 Republicans wanted someone other than “Frontrunner” Mitt during the primaries, and yet the GOP did everything THEY could to force him on us anyways
The insisted on the candidate THEY wanted, instead of who THE PEOPLE wanted
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