HEAR HEAR!!!
I concur!!
Posted on 11/08/2006 4:50:12 PM PST by Aussie Dasher
Republicans lost control of the House, and perhaps the Senate, because they abandoned their conservative principles and in the end stood for nothing, Rush Limbaugh said today.
In his Wednesday broadcast, America’s top talker said that until Republicans begin asking themselves what’s wrong with themselves they are never going to fix their problems.
When things go wrong, Rush said, "you must look inward and ask first, ‘What did we do wrong? What could we have done better? What mistakes did we make?”
Commenting that although Republicans lost, "Conservatism did not lose, Republicanism lost last night. Republicanism, being a political party first, rather than an ideological movement, is what lost last night.”
The Democrats, he said "beat something last night with nothing. They advanced no agenda other than their usual anti-war position. They had no contract — they really never did get specific. Their message was one of ‘vote for us; the other guys have been in power too long.’”
Rush further admonished, "There was no dominating conservative message that came from the [Republican] top and filtered down throughout in this campaign.”
He added that if there was conservatism in the campaign, it was on the Democratic side: "There were conservative Democrats running for office in the House of Representatives and in a couple of Senate races won by Democrats yesterday.” He cited James Webb as an example.
He also said it was conservatism that won fairly big when it was tried yesterday, but it was Democrats who ran as conservatives and not their GOP rivals. He added that the Democratic leadership had gone out and recruited conservative candidates because they knew liberals could not win running against Republicans in red states.
Rush quoted Thomas Sowell as explaining that the latest example of election fraud is actually what the Democrats did — they nominated a bunch of moderate and conservative candidates for the express purpose of electing a far-left Democratic leadership.
"The Democrats could not have won the House, being liberals,” Rush said. "Liberalism didn’t win anything yesterday; Republicanism lost. Conservatism was nowhere to be found except on the Democratic side.”
The root of the problem, Rush said, is that "our side hungers for ideological leadership and we’re not getting it from the top. Conservatism was nowhere to be found in this campaign from the top. The Democrats beat something with nothing. They didn’t have to take a stand on anything other than their usual anti-war positions. They had no clear agenda and they didn’t dare offer one. Liberalism will still lose every time it’s offered.”
Republicans, Rush said, allowed themselves to be defined. "Without elected conservative leadership from the top Republicans in the House and Senate republicans are free to freelance and say the hell with party unity.”
That leads, Rush said, to the emergence of RINOs — Republicans in name only.
Republicans in Congress, Rush explained, were held captive by the party’s leadership in the White House. They were put into a position of having to endorse policies with which as conservatives they disagreed.
"The Democratic Party,” Rush went on to say, "is the party of entitlements; but the Republicans come up with this Medicare prescription drug plan that the polls said that the public didn’t want and was not interested in. That is not conservatism. Conservatives do not grow the government and offer entitlements as a means of buying votes. But that’s what the Republicans in Congress had to support in order to stay in line with the Party from the top.
"It is silly to blame the media; it is silly to blame the Democrats; it is silly to go out and try to find all these excuses,” Rush said. "We have proved that we can beat them … we have proved that we can withstand whatever we get from the drive-by media. Conservatism does that — conservatism properly applied, proudly, eagerly, with vigor and honesty will triumph over that nine times out of 10 in this current political and social environment. It just wasn’t utilized in this campaign.”
Rush also blamed the failure to embrace conservatism on Republican’s fear of being criticized from those in the so-called establishment. Republicans, he charged, go out of their way to avoid being criticized, fearing they will be characterized as extremists and kooks.
As a result conservatism gets watered down, and the GOP loses the support of the nation’s conservative majority Rush stated.
Anything can beat nothing, Rush concluded, "and it happened yesterday.”
I'm sure none of that has had anything to do with LP'er claims that they taught the GOP a lesson either.
gee, I sense a little hostility towards Rush here -- if he was a DEM he'd just have all the hugs in world cause of his 'problem'.
Where's the 'understanding' here?
Yes, when LP'ers say they taught the GOP a lesson yesterday, I take their word very seriously. It more then adequately demonstrates their goal.
I can see where you are going with this but you must also admit that the average voter has been pummeled with lies about Vietnam style quagmire by the MSM since the end of the first month after we invaded in 2003.
It finally wore them down and in no small part do to backpedaling by Repubs including Bush on the lies from MSM about WMD and that Iraq and Afghanistan are 2 different wars.
Americans need patriotic news like we had in WWII. Then I fully believe we will buck up but since the MSM refuses to do that job then we must figure out someway to get the message across. Just this year the Pentagon started a program where troops returning from overseas go out and talk with the public. That should have been happening from day one.
Anyway as I was discussing with someone on another thread I would love to see Santorum run as VP. You may check out my tagline for an idea of who to run as a Presidential candidate. If Santorum doesn't go for VP (and eventually Pres) I would like to see him run for Gov in 2010.
If "macaca" were a racial epithet, someone somewhere would have named the country where this is true. He used a nonsense word for a pest and got hammered. His big mistake was apologizing over and over when he should have laughed it off.
That is a possibility especially if it's a RINO who feels they are entitled to be President. I don't know if their are any out there that are quite that bad. I don't think even McCain would pull the party that far down. He didn't in 2000 so I don't think he would now.
Rush is wrong.
They lost because they couldn't get their message out.
These were losses in blue states.
The bile will be gone in a few weeks..
"Conservatism did not lose, Republicanism lost last night. Republicanism, being a political party first, rather than an ideological movement, is what lost last night."
Damn straight!
FWIW, that's the only way Rick Perry won reelection. Texas is probably the most conservative state in the Union, and a sitting Republican governor only walked away with 40% of the vote. In 2004, when I was a representative to the McLennan County Republican Convention, Perry sent a representative to give us a "pep talk." The representative told us that the Republican party was the party of the big tent, and that if we were tied to a narrow ideological agenda we needed to leave, because the Republicans didn't need or want us. I stood up, waved at the man, and walked out. Yes, I still voted Republican, and voted for Perry, holding my nose while I did it.
However, just about everybody I know who voted for Perry held their noses while doing it. IF Strayhorn had not siphoned off 20% of the anti-Perry vote, I believe that the Rat would have won. Strayhorn's ENTIRE vote count was the anti-Perry vote, and that vote went right through the center of Texas, directly along the proposed path of the Trans-Texas Corridor. I live in central Texas, which is extremely conservative, and the hatred for Perry is palpable.
I've been slammed hard on this site for voicing opposition to the Trans-Texas corridor, but I have too many friends that are looking at the possibility of having their property condemned for it, and what's most galling to them is that Perry wants to award the contract to a foreign company.
NAFTA, open borders, and now the Trans-Texas corridor have really demoralized the Republican base here in Texas. I don't think the Democrats will be any better, but Republicans better wake up. Perry's ceiling in this state is 40% right now. Kaye Bailey has avoided scandal and stayed conservative, and she cruised. Perry made it pretty plain to the voters that multi-national corporations are more important to him than the citizens of Texas, and he barely survived.
"They lost because they couldn't get their message out."
You mean, "Vote for us, the other guys are worse" wasn't their message?
Senator Schumer said today that if GWB had fired Rumsfeld back in September or October, and not the day after the election, the GOP would have kept control of both the Senate and the House.
GWB hurt us bad on that one. And if he had vetoed some of those damn spending bills.
The buck stops at GWB.
"The buck stops at GWB."
I generally listen to three nat'l radio hosts and all three are pretty much saying the same thing.
I wasn't really speaking of the initiative.
Hell, I hunger for a leader that doesn't treat the presidency as a damn fraternity which includes BJ Bill. I hunger for a leader who always keeps me in the dark. I hunger for leader who doesn't seem to care about illegals more than me. I hunger for a leader who doesn't spend money like a drunk teenager.
...for starters
"The electorate voted out many strong-on-the-border GOP House members.
It was yesterday. Do you recall that?"
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More than likely JD got voted out by illegals. That's what happens when they tip the scales past "critical mass". Expect more of the same in the future. I can't wait until GWB grants a "pathway to citizenship" to every last one of them (and their families). He's the grand architect of the utter destruction of the Republican party. Remember, you read it first here on FR.
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