[Poohbah]

Is it realistic to take crucial segments of your consituency for granted, betray them, and expect to win elections?

Ah, but they really AREN'T crucial segments of the GOP constiuency--they've sat out enough elections, and slow-rolled the GOP so many frickin' times, that the GOP figured out how to win without them in 2000 and 2002.

Anything that these folks get is a gift--and they know that it's a gift--and they're remarkably ungracious about it.

There's a lot of talk about the "grass-roots conservatives."

They're doing this, they're doing that, they're doing damn near everything you can think of...except actually turning out and voting on election day in the numbers they claim to have.

[hchutch]

Not only that, they are still making demands on all sorts of issues. And the response from Bush and his people is, rightfully, I might add, "What have you done for me lately?"

Loyalty is a two-way street.

[Sabertooth]

Ah, but they really AREN'T crucial segments of the GOP constiuency--they've sat out enough elections, and slow-rolled the GOP so many frickin' times, that the GOP figured out how to win without them in 2000 and 2002...

< -snip- >

They're doing this, they're doing that, they're doing damn near everything you can think of...except actually turning out and voting on election day in the numbers they claim to have.

Do you have the numbers for the elections and constiuent turnouts of 2000 and 2002 vs. 1996 and 1998, with regard to Republicans who call themselves conservatives and/or social conservatives? Did GOP conservative turnout decline either numerically or proportionately in 2000 or 2002 from the preceding two elections, as you appear to hold?

That's not my impression, though I could be wrong.

Keep in mind that in 2000, while we did win the Presidency by a miraculously thin margin, we actually lost seats in the Senate, and I believe the House as well. What saved our bacon in that election was the anti-gun stridency of the Democrats and the GOP swing of gun-owners, including blue-collar Democrats, in response to that.

This, of course, was all predicted by self-annointed realists, who never live or post in fear of the mean things that the Left and the media might say about them, right?