Posted on 11/12/2006 4:58:59 AM PST by Alas Babylon!
No not yet, but I probably already know, since he got bounced from the Intelligence Committee for leaking info that got people killed. He should be in prison.
Some of the things I think that would help is defusing the "authority" of these people early, before they get famous and have amassed a war chest. That means when they first show up on a talk show, someone needs to make an effort to appear as soon as possible to refute them. This refutation has to NOT be belligerent, but rather sympathetic. Things like "I understand why Miss X feels that way, but here is why her idea can't work. I really wish it could, because I hate to see anyone suffer."
It is disastrous to ignore these people (like Cindy Sheehan) because they simply get more well-known over time and eventually begin to be seen by the public as authorities on whatever they are griping about.
And lastly, much as it pains me to say this, as long as the democrats can drag out victims for whatever issue they want to push, we should have people we can use to refute them. We did have some people refute Cindy (parents of soldiers who died in Iraq) but she had the stage by herself for far too long. I don't like the idea of recruiting our own victims, but I don't know how else we will be able to refute them otherwise.
Thank you.
Thank you both.
I need to go to sleep, so I am taking myself away from this thread. However, I do think we need to look at how the face of conservatism is presented. I wish Rush would have totally avoided this issue. Actually, I also wish Michael Fox had avoided it!
Steele's ad where his sister (with MS) spoke was an excellent example of this type of authoritative rebuttal. The ad put together by the folks opposed to the cloning amendment in Missouri, though not intended as a rebuttal to Fox's ad, was equally well done and not hostile to the other side. Unfortunately they didn't win the day in either state. It is likely from what I've heard here that they made both contests closer rather than further apart, so that's a good thing, just not good enough.
Again, I relate this back to AB's original challenge on todays thread. We each need to accept responsibility for working on the fact checking and finding out the most effective ways to get that information out to the broadest possible audience.
That is a worthy quest.
Sleep well, dear FRiends. I am off to bed as well.
Goodness, I know I did better this week than the last two, but I'm not even halfway through the thread! I'm dropping out for the day at #404!
What a wimp I've become! Ah well, at least I'm a happy wimp. I came here all depressed about our loss this week and have come away with a sense of purpose and a clear idea of things we can do. That is a major accomplishment. Thank you all.
Good night and God bless.
My pleasure, I calls em as I sees em.
Here is the start of the Fox News Transcript thread
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1737591/posts
We will have to see how this works out. I'm taking tomorrow as a vacation day (I have 17 days to use or lose between now and the end of the year) so I'll peck away at this during the day and see what I can come up with.
Saying it doesn't make it so. The Dems are now the incumbents and will be much harder to dislodge. Those who just were elected to the Senate will have their seats until 2012. If you think that we are going to retake the seats we lost in CT and NY, you are living in a fantasy world.
The DBM is losing more and more customers every day. They are having to fire people, close down many operations, Move operations to consolidate, sell out, and they will not be lean and mean fighting machine they will be meek and weak waiting for the other shoe to drop.
If you believe that it is the DBM that keeps or puts the Dems in power, you are sadly mistaken. Still, the major TV networks and so-called national newspapers like the WP and NYT will continue to lean left.
The so called Democrat Conservatives that were elected will prove to the voters that they are either not conservative or are powerless with a Liberal Whacko like Pelosi in charge and they will be defeated.
They will endear themselves to voters with more government programs and taxing the rich. They now have the megaphone in Congress and will decide what issues are on the agenda and voted upon. If you are depending upon the Dems to self-destruct after trying for 12 years to regain power, you are mistaken.
In my area, the guy cannot even talk without "you knows", and dead air time. He is not conservative and lied through his teeth about abortion and other conservative issues, and he will be defeated in this Conservative district.
Who did he defeat and by how much? Who will run against him in 2008? If you think it will be easy to defeat an incumbent, you will find out soon enough.
Why don't you look back on just the last year to see how quickly things change. How many back and forth cycles were there this year alone? You are putting an old fashioned time line on a 2006-2008 cycle with 24-7 News. The News is constantly changing and anything can happen to change the world in a few moments. Something can happen tomorrow that will totally destroy the credibility of the Democrats.
Do you believe in the tooth fairy as well? In 2008, we will still have Iraq and President Bush. The Dems will spend the next two years trying to uncover as much dirt as possible on the Reps. And the DBM will cover it all.
The ethical problems that plagued the Pubbies will be a distant memory, and Pubbies will have great Candidates that will actually be on the ballot. Texas CD22 will be back in the Pubbies hands after a long 2 years with a liberal answering to Pelosi. Try to have more confidence in our ability to come back.
Texas CD22 may one of the few that we get back. We could also lose more. We are not going to get back in one election cycle. The sooner we realize that, the better off we will be. Setting up unrealistic expectations will just make it that much more difficult.
I really like JD too and I'm sorry he was not reelected. What I was saying is I don't listen to Boortz and I lost respect for his opinions some time ago. His delayed change of heart may have hurt JD's election but if so I didn't know Boortz was that influential in AZ.
Here, we plan on some deep soul searching on what went right and what went wrong and hopefully we can make some changes that will help us in 08. I know one thing about CO, the Democrats are now tooting their horns, claiming CO is a Blue state today.
He needs to be replaced with one of our conservative gasl like melaine, Michelle,Laura or any of the rest.
Thanks. And you know what? I expected to get flames from Rush supporters, but there were none.
Gotta remember sleuth thee guys are "talk show hosts", they seldom get it all right. The key is to pick and chose, as you are doing, what you want to recall about their show.
It's gonna be hard to claim many states are "blue" when their candidates have to run as conservatives.
Yes, she was subdued - think that's the quiestest and calmest I've ever seen her - -maybe she's trying a new tactic for a while? I suspect she'll be back to her old self in no time LOL!
"It is so ironic that the Boy that played Patty's little bother grew up to be on the West wing,and was an in the closet gay when he died when the show was still Filming episodes."
That's interesting - I hadn't heard that!
"Flannel ruffles" LOL!
We really need to call our congresscritters and tell them that they need to get behind someone else besides Lamar or Lott if we want to move our party forward and get and stay on the offensive. We need someone with much more agile thinking ability - they need to have the facts on hand and be able to pounce on Libs and talking heads when they make incorrect statements or spout lies. While looks shouldn't matter, being on TV means they do, and we need a 'fresh face' getting our message out. As mentioned previously, this means someone like Sessions, Cornyn, Colburn, and/or Kyl in the Senate and Pence and/or Shadegg in the House for the leadership spots.
"There are too many things that have been left unchecked."
Agree. One of those things is the Barrett report. Weldon was trying to get this released in its entirety, but it didn't work (a lot of redacted pages). I've read that any congresscritter just has to ask for the unredacted version,and it will be sent to them; and, that it would not be illegal for them to release it. If that's true, Weldon has lost his seat (starting in January)he ought to ask for it and release it now - he doesn't have anything to lose.
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