[curiosity]

I get the impression that President Bush could give an hour-long speech and say he's tripling everybody's taxes, and certain rights were going to have be given up for whatever reason, and as long as he spent two minutes at the end talking about being a Christian, most Republicans wouldn't care about what he talked about the previous 58 minutes.

LOL! You've just described many, many Freepers to a tee. Some of them even proudly embrace the "bushbot" label as if it were a badge of honor. Busholotry, I call it.

If we conservatives as a movement don't break out of this funk, we're doomed.

[af_vet_rr]

If we conservatives as a movement don't break out of this funk, we're doomed.

Or we could work from within and try to swing the party back to its Conservative roots.

The problem is, the party is filled from top to bottom with people who will ignore many Conservative issues, either because they don't want to confront them for one reason or another (such as the borders/illegal immigration), or they want to enforce their beliefs on local entitites, on a country-wide scale (No Child Left Behind, various traffic laws, etc.). Some people really do see it as a tool to use against others.

When President Bush said "local school districts had better do what we tell them, or we won't give them their taxpayer money back", that should have set off alarms - instead it was applauded by Republicans. If Bill Clinton had done that, FReepers would have been out in front of the White House picketing in droves.

We also have the problem of - if Conservatives leave the party, the democrats are liable to win - the GOP knows we don't want that, and so they have a lot of power over us because of that.