Posted on 12/27/2012 1:20:29 PM PST by IbJensen
Here's a New Year's wish I would love to see come true. However it is defined or however many people are part of it, it is time to send the giant never-ending "GOP Establishment" made up of some professional politicians, some moneyed nouveaux riche who -- by virtue of their contributions and the faux friendships it buys with politicians -- consider themselves political landed gentry and the endless scam artist consultants they support packing.
As previously stated, I thought Mitt Romney to be a better candidate than did many observers. That said, the recent revelations in news articles that claim to chronicle the Romney campaign reinforce the idea that the "silk underwear" branch of the GOP just doesn't get it.
The emerging story of a candidate who really didn't want to run in the first place and consultants who never listened to pleas from his own family to humanize the man so that everyday people could "feel like he understands them" just makes conservatives and the GOP faithful sick. They once again spent their hard-earned money and endless time backing another Republican nominee who had no prayer of connecting with the average voter. Never mind that he was, at closer examination, a young man of privilege who outgrew his silver spoon to create his own hard-earned fortune, his case was never properly made.
And why is that? The answer is the current class of Republican "experts" and "consultants" who constantly blow into somewhere outside of their self-indulgent D.C. bubble and believe that they really do understand the "average American" in the 21st century. They do not.
Same for the well-entrenched elected officials, many of whom have gone from scrappy challengers of the status quo to fat and happy potentates. The so-called "experts" just sell any sort of snake oil a candidate or elected official and his loyal leeches will swallow. Hence, terrible focus-group-driven commercials, poor strategy in message and a "get out the vote" effort about as technologically advanced as the telegraph and with all the planning for contingencies as the Hurricane Katrina emergency efforts.
Until Republicans get rid of the inherent haughtiness of their operations, nothing will change. I've always described the GOP Establishment as a bunch who will hold a fundraiser, say, with an incumbent Republican president (don't hold your breath for that again anytime soon) or a nominee, or a governor's inauguration -- you name it -- with one unmentioned thing in mind: themselves. They inevitably make the event like one of those toys with endless boxes within boxes, each smaller than the one before it. That's how they do their big "fundraisers." There's the massive box, holding the masses -- where from the distance of a football field one might catch a fleeting glimpse or hear a bit of a speech or event.
From there on, the boxes get smaller and smaller -- and more elaborate. One huge amount gets you into a private reception; the next more expensive one warrants a 10 second photograph with the political star; then there's the price-busting one that gets you a 30 person private audience -- in which every dupe there fails to note that the leader of the free world or the top person in their state listens, speaks, leaves and likely forgets the whole thing five minutes later.
Oh, and then there is that last box. It's reserved for the same snooty creatures who have run everything in their subdivision of the GOP forever. They often are there because they helped take everyone else's money! But regardless, they are there, in the most private of rooms with the highest of public leaders, just hanging out. They are a small, cozy group -- the elite of the elite. Sort of like today's Republican Party -- a small, cozy group.
If I have to read one more story about some Republican official's great golf handicap or how much they all enjoy the private company of one another, I think I'll be sick.
Republicans need to retool their image and their mindset. Just shed all the king's trappings and some of the king's men. Keep the hardworking and in-touch ones, bring in fresh faces, understand the mindset of the next generation, but more than anything articulate what they stand for and, damn it, stand for it.
A little fire in the belly and purpose for being elected and holding office in the first place could at least start to get the GOP turned around before it really is too late.
As soon as the rinos had their Romney head handed to them in an election that the republicans couldn't lose, you proceeded to do what you are doing on this thread, fighting for rinoism.
You are not even taking a break to move right for a while to take a breather, or at least to let us conservatives exhale a little bit, we are years away from a presidential primary, but you are already fighting for the next Romney.
YEARS AWAY, we don't even know who will be running in 2016, yet here you are frantic and excited and raging against the Reagan wing of the GOP as though this is late in the primary of 2016.
Because we live in a 2 party system with no opportunity for coalition government. You CAN join any number of right of center party's anytime you'd like, but they won't actually win elections. But that's your choice. If you most value political purity over ever having a chance to govern, then sure, join a 3rd party.
In our 2 party system the political party's are very big tents - filled with all sorts of competing interests. The candidate that makes it through the primary process has to appeal to a plurality/majority of a wide range of views.
Politics is as much about defeating the opposition as it is about advancing your own particular set of issues. Sometimes just stopping the left is victory enough. 3rd party's can't do that - in fact they act as a spoiler and often help ones political enemy.
Here is where I stand, sir. This country is beyond redemption; if what passes for Americans will elect a man like Obama, there is no hope for their future. So, I am not looking to win any elections since the electorate has lost any semblance of traditional beliefs.
I will take comfort in being among those with whom I share common, traditional American beliefs.
If it pleases you to settle for an occasional victory which means nothing in terms of the country’s direction, good. You should know that things will never be what once were. Some people are willing to settle for very little, and you are one of them.
P,S, I could not help but notice your sadness is having to live under a two-party system “with no opportunity for coalition government.” My goodness, I bet you would be happy in Canada or Europe, where there is coalition government and they all vie for being able to run the welfare state.
How did you come up with a goofy idea like this?
I am sad about that, yes. Brilliant as our founders were, I wonder sometimes if the way our system was set up wasn't a mistake. It produced a 2 party system almost immediately, and I have some issues with it. For one thing, I WANT to be able to belong to a party that where I share a closer bond and a more specific set of common interests. The problem is, with no coalition government possible, I am stuck having to share a big tent in the right of center party instead of a true conservative party.
This country is beyond redemption; if what passes for Americans will elect a man like Obama, there is no hope for their future.
I am pessimistic, but you've completely given up. If you're certain it's all over then sure, join some dead end 3rd party since you don't think it matters anyway.
You should know that things will never be what once were.
Times change. But perhaps you should take a moment to remember the fact that the American public voted for FDR 4 times. FOUR times. And the war is no excuse since they voted for him 3 times before we were in WW2. Obama is awful, but FDR was in a league all his own when it came to leftwing economic populism. FDR transformed this country for generations, yet for some reason the people that put him office over and over again are given a pass by many conservatives. Not everything in the old "traditional values" days was so peachy keen. FDR was very much like Hugo Chavez in many ways, yet a public that many believe was so much better back then elected him over and over.
For those who want to believe I promote RINOS (which is laughable), my far greater desire is to ALWAYS defeat the Democrat--ALWAYS!!!
Yeah. Right. Poor Romney.
What a schmuck.
Huh?
HUH???
And all you have to say..is WE have had a temper tantrum!?!?! You sound exactly like the MSM...
You said here: "Our ideology is losing out to a bunch of secular, socialist drivel that's doomed to fail (just as it always has) and it's infuriating"
Yet you apparently think doing the same thing over and over again...will get different results.
I ain't game for that anymore. PERIOD.
Classic case, in any case, of reversing the roles of marketing and product. Marketers, including those in the GOP, think the marketing determines the success of the product. If that was true, Disney's mega-flop Dick Tracy should have been a hit. It was a crappy product, and all the marketing in the world was for naught. Romney was a liberal Democrat and all the marketing in the world couldn't keep it from showing. The truth will out.
Frankly, as long as guys like Romney are welcome in the GOP, it is lost.
Either the Republican party get some public resignations, or limited government Christian conservatives move on to a new party. And there are a lot more Americans who claim at least one of the three ideals (limited government, Christian, conservative) than not.
Romney became the throw-down. His side is the wrong side, no matter what party he belongs to.
Um ... hello? This "big talk" sure manifested itself in this last election. Romney lost. Do you think he would have gotten fewer votes if he had actually been a conservative?
See, the real America, of folks who should legitimately vote -- not counting illegal immigrant votes, bussed-to-the-poll votes, the dead votes, the harvested voters of liberals who would never vote otherwise, but real voters, those of us who would take the trouble to register and then haul our butts to the polls and vote -- MOST OF US are sick of liberals, the biased media, and Obama.
If the Republican candidate had actually been a conservative, he might have won even in spite of massive vote fraud, which has been distorting and deforming election outcomes for decades. But Romney was a joke. America knew it.
Your country is in better shape than you think.
Yeah. Right, Longbow -- your vote for Romney counted for squat. Even if he'd won, it would have counted for squat.
Wake up.
Your vote for Romney did zilch, and if he'd won, in the big picture, it would have accomplished zilch but to move the entire picture leftward. OPEN YOUR EYES.
You want to fight the good fight? Start believing in your fellow countrymen and mostly apolitical Americans who saw through Romney. Obama is vulnerable; he, as does much of liberalism, won by harvested and fradulent votes, and the spin that America "loves him" is crap. At least half of us, likely more, think he stinks, think liberalism stinks, and hate the bias of the MSM. Therefore Obama is vulnerable, and so is liberalism. You want to fight the good fight? Start THERE.
Well said. Bravo.
Said by a voter whose vote ended up ... irrelevant.
The GOP, on the other hand, used Fear of Obama to get righteous people to vote for an amoral statist liberal like Romney.
Both are instances of people throwing temper tantrums because they didn't get their way.
Statements like these, any time comparing the "wrong" side as being like children, are becoming a litmus test for me. That mindset reveals an ugly arrogance and presumption, a combination of pompousness and contempt. Worthy of ignoring on that principle alone.
We're all adults here, FRiend.
“Statements like these, any time comparing the “wrong” side as being like children, are becoming a litmus test for me. That mindset reveals an ugly arrogance and presumption, a combination of pompousness and contempt.”
Longbow1969 sounds just like Michael Medved.
If you were on my bus, I'd make it stop and then I'd kick you off.
You remind me of Hudson in "Aliens" --
"Game over, man! Game over!
My 83-year-old staunch Republican mom has voted all her life, Republican all the way, and for the first time, in 2012 declined the Republican at the top of the ticket. First time, and she's a very political person.
I've voted straight R ticket in every election since 1976, and this was the first time I voted third party at the top of the ticket, not because I thought he'd win, but because I wanted to be sure my vote was included in the "neither of the above" count, which in the best case scenario between bad candidates becomes a plurality, or lack of mandate. It hurt Clinton both terms. He got his ass kicked with the Republican Revolution the first term, and got impeached the second term.
Votes count. Sadly, many of the ones that elect liberals are from imaginary voters. Vote fraud is real. But then we get a fraud for a conservative in Romney. Fraudulent all around. Obama is vulnerable, but Republicans are too distracted to smell blood.
You are blind as a bat, dear.
/johnny
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