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MM has well, I am not sure but he is not who he once was.
O.K. Mike, no need to change strategy.
The path to victory is paved with the likes of Romney, McCain, and Dole.
He may or may not realize it. If he says that constitutional principles will no longer sell in America, he is saying that he believes America as a constitutional republic is dying or dead.
This may be true. If it is, he should for the sake of clarity say so.
Well then Michael, lets just run as democrats and be done with it.
Hogwash. Bush ran as a strong, "kinder and gentler" conservative in that election and ran a very conservative campaign. His team often referred to it as being Reagan's third term. Remember "Read my lips"? - That was a conservative promise not to raise taxes. If was Bush's failure to govern as a conservative that cost him a second term becasue he broke his promises.
In 1988, George H.W. Bush sought the presidency by promising to deliver a "kinder, gentler" America. Despite the opposition of most conservatives (who passionately preferred Jack Kemp, Pat Robertson or even Bob Dole in the primaries), Mr. Bush crushed Michael Dukakis in the general election and swept 40 states and 426 electoral votes—the last Republican candidate to win the presidency decisively.
Yeah, and that's because Bush ran as a continuation of Reagan's policies. When he jerked back to his RINO roots in governance, he paved the way for a very weak (at the time) Bill Clinton.
Medved loves the Doles, McCains, and Romneys of wobbly class. He loves losing.
“Reagan himself (whose gubernatorial record of...endorsement of legalized abortion”
Is this true?
You don't need to deport one, single illegal alien, Mikey.
All you have to do is stop giving them free stuff as prize for making it across the border.
Thanks, I added Medved to my list!
(Of “experts pundits” that I no longer need to waste time reading or listening to.)
Typical whitewashing. Bush won in ‘88 as a continuation of Reagan and won in landslide. When he ran on his own moderation, he lost.
Nixon in both ‘68 and ‘72 ran as a law and order, to hell with the hippies conservative. And the conservative movement was just getting its footing when Nixon ran.
It is only since 1976 that the real record should be looked at i.e. Reagan’s challenge to Ford. Ford lost barely, Reagan won big, then big again, and Bush won on Reagan. Bush lost, Dole lost, Bush won barely and then barely again (victories mind you from a candidate running as a conservativ), McCain lost and Romney lost.
The fact remains that we haven’t had a strong conservative as the nominee since Reagan and we haven’t had a large victory since Reagan (Bush’s first victory is essentially Reagan’s third).
Medved apparently doesn’t want candidates’ moderation to be considered as a factor in their continual losses.
Michael is your typical Big-Spender Republican. Not quite fiscally conservative, embraces the practical, and supports the establishment. Not a quite a liberal. Religious in his own home. ‘Tolerant’ of abberant behavior.
Jeb Bush is his man, Sarah Palin is a ‘Persona non-grata’.
He represents the Republican party and the reason why we will be saddled with every entitlement program the DemocRATs will shove up our collective *sses, while all the time telling us he is against it.
W.A.S.S.
America has taken a 100 year dumbing down trip. Of course there are hardly any conservatives out there. She gone.
Interesting....
It boils down to the consumer, the voter. The one who convinces them he/she has the best product win.
[Of course, that does not mean the winner actually does have the best product.]
In the last several elections, the Republicans just have not fielded candidates who can ‘sell’ their product to the voters.
2012:
One forget which department he would eliminate.
One did sort of go flakey.
One couldn’t win either Florida debate, but somehow he would have been marvelous against Obama?
One got caught in old hanky-panky that turned out to be stories rather than story.
One couldn’t keep his senate seat so several years later he thinks he is ready for the big chair.
One kept promising revelations on the birth certificate issue, but that fizzled when he couldn’t produce.
The one who did get the nomination was actually the author of the precursor to Obamacare.
That was the best the Republicans had to offer. And they wonder why they lost?
Bringing up running against Dukakis proves nothing. He was a pitiful candidate. Like McCain and Romney.
Medved uses the election of the two Bush’s to prove his point.
He fails to recognize that Bush the elder (George H.W. Bush) may have won in 1988, when he did run as a conservative, but he lost in 1992 after he had failed to govern as one.
With respect to Bush Junior (George W. Bush) he did run as a somewhat wishy washy “compassionate conservative” in 2000 and he lost the popular vote to a very weak candidate and only won office because of the Electoral College. Had Ralph Nader not run under the Green Party flag, and siphoned a few thousand liberal votes from Gore, Gore would have beaten Bush in Florida and won the Electoral College as well as the popular vote. He almost lost his reelection bid in 2004 and likely would have lost if he hadn’t been lucky enough to face the patrician “no personality” John Kerry. The truth is the younger Bush was a moderate and his “compassionate conservatism” neither played well with real conservatives nor the moderates the GOP elites love to embrace.