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.
GREY WOULD YOU STOP WITH THE NAME CALLING??
Everyone who disagrees with you you call a troll
SHUT UP if you can’t make a point without name calling.
I'm going to say something I've said before, and been thinking for a long, long time. And it will probably go over about like it did the last time I said it (like a lead balloon).
The American political spectrum is a three-cornered square. There's the Left (a coalition of social-justice government interventionists and moral libertarians), the Right (a coalition of social interventionists and economic libertarians), and the consistent libertarians. What's missing in this? The consistent interventionists, those who support traditional morality even though they may agree with liberals on economic issues. For years we've been hearing that Blacks and Hispanics fit into this category. I'm not so sure any more that they do, but there are still plenty of people who only vote Democrat for the money, and the moral nihilists ride into victory on their backs like parasites.
We've been arguing economics for over two hundred years. Abortion and "gay marriage" are altogether new and unheard-of abominations. Even people on government relief can be horrified by such things. Personally, I've always said that the economic issues can be hashed out at our leisure once we've saved our country from the moral nihilists who are about to provoke the wrath of G-d to destroy our country altogether. But most people don't want to hear this.
I'm not saying that economic conservatives should forsake their beliefs, but that they should prioritize them. There'll be no economy to argue over if G-d destroys the country because we're writing out homosexual "marriage licenses" (Rashi said the only reason gentile societies were allowed to survive was that they hadn't at least stooped to that level).
I honestly wonder sometimes if conservatives ever listen to themselves. They're against eugenics and the elimination of "useless eaters," but they can sound like they'd very much like to see all those "moochers" eliminated. And ever since the election this is what we're hearing . . . not the danger our country is in from A-mighty G-d for its immorality and violation of His Laws but about "moochers and welfare queens."
I'm sure most FReepers would never believe this, but life on a government check isn't the care-free paradise most believe it to be. There is no more vulnerable situation in the world than to live at the behest and pleasure of a government that can take the checks away at any time for any reason--including political revenge. If Blacks and Hispanics have indeed now become our eternal, implacable enemies it is for their moral stances, not their economics.
Every election that comes the Republican party gets pilloried as social Darwinists. And after ever loss we're told it's the social conservatives (the least social Darwinist members of the conservative coalition) who must go, so social Darwinism will be unsullied by moral puritanism. Does this make any sense to anyone? The bulk of the attacks on the Republican party are for its economic policies, not its moral/social ones, yet we are told after every loss that if it weren't for the latter, the country would embrace the former!
I wish more conservatives would wake up and think for a few minutes.
It's the party's desire to not raise taxes or to cut taxes on the rich that drives away more voters than anything else. Many of the Democrats that have been winning Senate races the past few cycles have been running on pro-life platforms, such as Bob Casey in Pennsylvania. The idea that being pro-life drives voters away isn't supported by facts. This idea comes from nowhere except from pro-choice liberals who are looking for an excuse to move the Republican platform closer to their personal belief system.
Also note that being pro-life does not equal making gaffes like Todd Akin. Romney’s 47% gaffe was as damaging as any gaffe made by anyone in this campaign. This election was lost because Romney alienated voters with incomes under $50,000, pure and simple. It had nothing to do with social issues, it had to do with Romney coming off as an out-of-touch 1%’er who could not relate to the lower and middle classes.
This is precisely what happens when you don't have core beliefs.....You say things that you think conservatives want to hear....but instead, they are incredibly tone-deaf politically. When you have the strength of your convictions, like Reagan did, you don't make those mistakes, ever.
REAGAN did not win because of the social issues. He barely mentioned it except when addressing pro life groups. Scott Brown lost because he was an R in a heavily Obama loving state.
These issues are not going to attract young voters as we stress smaller government but want to criminalize a procedure that women view as a right. We have passed Partial birth Abortion bans and stopped tax payer funding of abortion and many states have passed parental notification. Leave it at that to the states and get it out of national politics.
The perception of some old fart like Aiken telling a girl what to do is such a turn off to young voters. I have a young daughter and she thought he was stupid and ugly.
Don’t tell me I am not a Texan when I about as conservative when it comes to fiscal issues as they get and not for gay marriage. As a woman and mother of a young daughter, the strident pro life position needs to go and leave it to the churches and pro life organizations to try to convince women not to abort.
Right on.
And now that we have the internet, the tailoring of message to ones audience is now over.
Reagan’s remarks to a pro-life group would be all over every facebook link, carefully edited into Youtube videos, and would appear the next night on Jon Stewart to much laughter.
At this point, socially conservative beliefs are important, valid, and numerically outnumbered.
You are right and it was bascially not even mentioned until Aiken opened his stupid mouth. Notice people ran from him like scalded dogs. I disagree with Rush and others that a a more toned down abortion stance means the person is a liberal.
Here in Texas, the pro life community backed Dewhurst because he had the best record, but he stunk on the other issues critical to our state. Well time to get sensible, we have passed all the pro life legislation we are going to get and it is time to leave it off. In the platform it would be fine to say, “We believe in the sanctity of all life and stand on that principle. However, it is left to the states to pass pro life stances and not the federal government as long as Roe V. Wade stands.”
The work needs to be done outside of the political arena, we must use the power of social sanctioning, I believe there has been a sea change in the way people view abortion, even amongst many who say they’re pro-choice, somebody who’s had an abortion is generally looked down upon.
Politicians will let you down every time, no matter which party they belong to. Stop relying on them to change the morality in this country, they are the least qualified to do so.
Starting with Sandra Fluke in February, the Democrats decided that one arm of their strategy would be the Republican's "war on women". The media picked up this theme and ran with it. No sooner had Rush Limbaugh apologized then along comes Aiken followed by Mourdock bumbling right in to this narrative. They became the face of the party and their so-called "war".
Female voters fled in droves. The gender gap was an historically unprecedented 20 points! I do not for a minute buy that this gap was due solely to economic issues. We cannot win when the other side starts off right out of the gate with a 12 point lead among female voters. We simply do not have the numbers to overcome such a deficit. And female voters are not as socially conservative as male voters are, a fact supported by poll after poll (not to mention election results --the only poll that matters).
Yes, Romney alienated lots of demographics and for various reasons but I believe that social issues, not economic ones, cost us millions of female voters and quite probably the Senate and the White House.
AWESOME smack down on a RINO.
You rock GW!
Gallup may tell us young people are pro-life. Exit polls tell us young people voted for the most pro-abortion President we've ever sent to the White House.
If you tell a pollster you are pro-life and then you vote for a pro-abortion candidate, you are not really pro-life.
Poll after poll can tell us we are winning on social issues but when we lose on Election Day, we aren't really winning, are we?
Maybe you should just have a heart to heart with you daughter and explain how sex outside of marriage is not a good thing.
You are not a conservative, just because you think you are.
The comment that set me off -- at least, tracking the thread back from your comment to me -- was this:
This is where actual research would help. Figure out which planks of the party are hurting us most, and where, and why.
It’s important.
The reason this is Marxist Alinskyite is that it makes two *assumptions*, both of which set back conservatism.
1) The problem is necessarily with we conservatives, that there are planks in the party holding us back.
This throws away the idea of the short-term messaging (e.g. exit polls have said 15% of Obama voters decided to vote for him at the last minute, following his public Lewinsky by Chris Christie over the hurricane); it forgets voter fraud (precincts in Cleveland and Philly with over 100% turnout, and 99%-100% voting for Obama, whereas even Southern Utah -- Mormon -- went only 80%-20% for Romney, and didn't have 100% turnout).
2) It assumes that all the people that turned away and didn't vote, did so because Romney was too conservative, and not because he was a Mormon flip-flopping squish; or else that he was foisted on the GOP during the primaries despite never clearing 35%.
Instead, the other author declares ex cathedra that it is the fault of the platform (and therefore of conservatism, intrinsically) instead of considering the candidate, the situation, or the race. Romney ran as an American-loving economic turnaround expert, not as a cultural conservative. And those liberals who I talked to (I live in Minnesota, so I get to see them up close and personal) formed their impressions from left-wing sites and didn't listen to what Romney said, but only to the attack ads from Dems.
Oh, and if I get to it, I will write a detailed piece later this evening analyzing the election.
Cheers!
such a tolerant attitude. My daughter does not have sex outside of marriage and resent your insinuation that she does. She is a bright, Christian college student and if you think that is the way to win votes by insults you are wrong.
Drew, did you see post 83?
Just askin’.
Yeah, so? Am I supposed to pretend that our side is winning? I did my job in the voting booth supporting both Romney and an amendment banning public funds for abortion. They both lost.
WRONG, WRONG and WRONG!
“Yeah, so? Am I supposed to pretend that our side is winning? “
So your answer is ot throw away Conservative ideals.
Got it.
“I did my job in the voting booth supporting both Romney and an amendment banning public funds for abortion. They both lost.”
A RINO candidate that was forced down our throats, because that was who the Dems and the GOP elitists wanted for us.
And you’re shocked that he lost?
The GOP Establishment win the Morons of the year award.
They got their PERFECT candidate in Romney. A non social controversial squishy moderate “Fiscal Conservative”. They ran against the most corrupt incompetent President of the last century.
THEY LOST. They lost running the campaign they tell us EVERY 4 years they HAVE to run. Don’t blame the Soc Cons for the utter failure of the GOP-E political theories. They ran to the middle as hard as they could this year in a “Gimme election” and manged to LOSE.
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