So the GOP must become liberal, or risk losing everything. This is the second time this week that I have read this kind of twisted logic from a "conservative" here on Free Republic
The only way the GOP and conservatives can win is to become liberals. If that's what it takes to win, then what's the victory about????
Lately I've been having trouble figuring out if I've somehow logged on to DU...
The GOP needs to win because of national security, and because it's the only chance that babies have of getting past the abortion nightmare.
What I have written is not liberal,. It's common sense.
Liberal is demanding massive wealth redistribution, penalizing "the rich", etc.
What I am talking about is preserving America's industrial base, which is also a national security matter. The long term social stability of the United States is also a national security matter.
Want amnesty for all those illegal aliens?
Well, we're probably going to GET IT because the Democrats took over Congress, and the President is inclined to give it (just don't call it "amnesty").
Holding onto Congress means keeping a coalition that amounts to a majority. Pro-lifers, pro-defense, pro-war-on-terror: those things matter greatly. The economy matters, but here it cuts various ways. The capital elite give heavily to Republicans and have gotten generous tax breaks in return. Most of the arguments here have been from the perspective of the capital elite. But the manufacturing worker, the Midwestern union guy, the Reagan Democarat who, in the past, voted for the GOP on national security and social issues, now his economic situation has gotten SO strained that he is voting for the party that will give him greater social protections, because he NEEDS them.
So, we Republicans have two choices: lost EVERYTHING, because we lose the Reagan Democrats and have constituency coming on board to fill that hole, or COMPROMISE on economic matters, accept some economic inefficiency, to give greater security to the Reagan Democrat workers, esp. in the Midwest.
UNLIKE war-and-peace issues, or abortion and gay marriage, economic policy is NOT primarily a moral issue. It's a matter of business, of money. It is possible to compromise on economic matters in a way that it is not on matters like abortion or defense or even gun rights.
Now, what James Webb wrote was dead-on-balls accurate as far as that Midwestern manufacturing sector is looking at it. Webb won. And folks like him are going to win more and more and more, because people are feeling desperate and are going to vote for the man who addresses them on their bread-and-butter issue. Calling him a "socialist" or some other damnfool epitthet is playing ostrcih. We are going to lose election after election unless we modify our economic policies to address the problem of insecurity in the fast-vanishing economic sector. The Midwest is turning into Appalachia, and that means that if the Democrats offer something, and the Republicans offer nothing, it becomes a blue region. And with that, the Republicans never win the White House again, and they never win Congress.
It's not a matter of becoming liberal. It's a matter of softening economic policies that have become too skewed in the service of a particular philosophy that is not actually right on some key issues.
Didn't Vicomte13 speak in FAVOR of the Kelo v. New London ruling back in 2005, or at least tell us all that people would simply accept the ruling and go on with their lives?
Wrong then, wrong now.