Posted on 04/02/2007 12:28:27 AM PDT by RWR8189
Although the presidential election is 19 months away, the Republican Party has a real and growing problem in Ohio that could cost it the White House in 2008.
Simply put, the GOP brand is in trouble in Ohio, more so than it is nationally. That matters because in 2004 Ohio was the key to an Electoral College majority, and could well be the same in 2008.
Since the 2004 election in which President Bush narrowly defeated John Kerry, the undercurrent in Democratic thinking for 2008 has been to hold the states Kerry won and to turn Ohio from red to blue.
If Ohio's 20 electoral votes were to go to the Democrats, assuming that no other states switch allegiance, that would give them the White House.
And as simplistic as that strategy sounds, it could turn out to be successful because of the woes that are besetting the Republicans in the Buckeye State, more than in any other key battleground.
In fact, polls of Ohio voters are finding them less inclined to support GOP candidates, less likely to consider themselves Republican than in the recent past, and giving higher ratings to potential Democratic candidates with a consistency that should set off alarm bells at the Republican National Committee.
Ohio has historically has been slightly more Republican than one of the other big Electoral College battlegrounds, Pennsylvania. In recent presidential elections it has been roughly as GOP as Florida, the other major swing state.
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...
It is a terrible place to bring your business, is marked by high taxes and high state government spending.
College graduates are following jobs out of the state.
Taft and his cronies ought to be in jail rather than in retirement for looting the state for their own benefit.
Our "conservative" Senators were anything but, so now we have Sherrod Brown.
Conservative voters had nothing to vote for, so they stayed home.
The conservatives in the party need someone to get excited about, to work for, to turn out for on Saturday morning to go door to door for, to tube for, to show up and make phone calls for.
I wouldn't write off Ohio, but there has to be something/one to get the conservative base motivated.
It sure secured Ken Blackwell's place in the Governor's mansion.
Oh, wait ...
We need a Fred Thompson to head our ticket. It will help lift all our candidates, even in Ohio.
I'm a conservative. I didn't stay home. If Kenneth Blackwell wasn't conservative enough for conservatives, then who would have been? I think it's a shame that some good candidates were defeated in the fall because the some of the base didn't turn out to vote.
And I am worried about next year. If the cut-and-run conservatives decide to stay home again because the Republican candidate for president isn't ideologically pure enough for them, we could end up with Hillary or Obama as president. And frankly, I don't see how that is going to help the country or the Republican party.
If conservatives want to leave the Republican Party, they need to start building a grass-roots third party in all 50 states. They can't sit on their rear ends between election cycles and then complain that Republicans aren't conservative enough, so they're staying home or voting for some third party candidate, who might get 1% of the vote. For the time being, the Republican Party is conservatives' best hope for getting elected and influencing policy at the local, state, and federal level.
Rudy is not a party building kind of guy. He would never have done the cross-dressing performance if he had been one. Whatever his drawbacks, he is an extremely effective law enforcement kind of guy and a genuine NYC guy with moxie and an attitude that makes him respond to being tread on by treading twelve times as hard on the offender.
I think that the appointment of Rudy Giuliani as Attorney General (without meaningful Rudy input on judicial appointments or social issues) will be regarded as one of the very best appointments by President Fred Dalton Thompson, along with the SCOTUS appointments of Janice Rogers Brown and two similar 45 year-old nominees to be named. In the first two years of the Thompson administration, the two of them will show the backbone and determination in confronting Demonratic Congressional pipsqueaks and America's Islamofascist enemies that will make Americans proud of institutionalizing a Republican Congress and Senate.
Hopefully, President Fred Dalton Thompson will also appoint a Secretary of State who will rub our enemies' noses in it and put an end to the culture of diployak enemy butt-smooching that seems to be the very definition of the generally useless State Department.
We can also do better than Boehner and we ought to. Mike Pence, anyone????
As John Paul the Great used to say (echoing St. Paul): Be Not Afraid! OR: (less elegantly) Stuff the pessimistic crepe hanging.
Wait just a minute: "a uniter not a divider?????" Aren't you supporting Ron Paul?????
Can you diagram that last sentence? I think I agree with you but it is hard to be sure as written.
I don't support Rudy for POTUS but he deserves credit for a lot as mayor as you point out.
A serious problem with Rudy is that his very unlikely nomination would give aid and comfort to lifestyle leftists in their hope of influencing the GOP, cause changes in the social issue planks of the party platform, wild celebration in the editorial sewers of the New York Slimes over such platform changes and the end of the GOP as a meaningful opposition to the social revolutionary Demonrat Party. We do not need the GOP to be run by Log Cabin "Republicans" or abortionist "Republicans" any more than we need it run by pacifist Euroweenie "Republicans" or by "trust fund baby"/Junior League twits like polo club Muffie and Skipper.
No compromises on these issues of importance. The business cycle will continue regardless of who may be POTUS and, even IF (which I would deny) the GOP loses even to Her Heinous in 2008 (remember that the junior Senatething from NY has problems too), we have not reached the point of one man/one vote/one election just yet.
So, he is still a liberal statist Rino.
"The conservative cause" is sometimes a subjective thing. McCain is opposed to gay marriage and abortion. In fact, while his rating from the American Conservative Union isn't 100%, I doubt that anyone with a rating close to 100% would be electable as president in today's acrid, polarized atmosphere.
McCain's rating, if I recall correctly, is in the 70-80% range. The ACU does't rate mayors but if they did, Rudy would rank around 50-60%. That isn't going to fly. If you want to talk about guys who "betrayed the conservative cause," think about gay rights and abortion.
Sure he has the backing of a lot of Republican Party officials. But these are the same political hacks who insisted we run an aging Bob Dole in a year when Clinton was vulnerable. Now they want to foist McCain on us.
McCain has won two Navy Crosses and survived several years as a POW. He has combat experience like nobody else. Tell me about Rudy's military background. There is a war on. McCain can serve one term, and give Duncan Hunter four years to serve as VP and gain more national recognition. Then it's Duncan Hunter for President in 2012.
As for Rudy's appointing liberal judges--that's simply false, as Ted Olson has pointed out. Olson supports Rudy because he has pledged to nominate strict constructionists like Roberts and Alito.
I am deeply concerned that with Giuliani, we'd get RINO judges like Kennedy, Souter and even John Paul Stevens. I have a great deal of difficulty trusting Giuliani completely about this.
"Look, you're backing a losing horse with Rudy. A lot of voters won't even look at your 'got tough on crime' stuff."
You make the mistake of thinking you speak for most conservatives. You don't--why else would he be the front runner among Republicans? Do you think most of us don't already realize he's a New Yorker and has had three marriages and has liberal proclivities? But we also know he's a crime-fighting supply-sider who made New York a livable place again by kicking butt and cracking skulls and getting in the face of the media. A lot of us want this kind of ruthless executive ability in the War on Terror. Rudy's what we need this time around.
No compromises on these issues of importance.
I couldn't agree more. What made Ronald Reagan into the phenomenon that he was? He was a small town boy from the middle of Illinois. But he had experienced the Southern California glitterati and he wasn't going to be fooled. He took small town values and gave them Hollywood charm. The religious conservatives who had largely given up on politics in the '60s and '70s came back by the millions and millions, and they voted. They're starting to fade away now. Nominate Rudy and they'll all stay home.
I do not care that much about what he did in NY. After looking at his ultra leftest record I know he is far to liberal for me ever to vote for him.
"I think that the appointment of Rudy Giuliani as Attorney General (without meaningful Rudy input on judicial appointments or social issues) will be regarded as one of the very best appointments by President Fred Dalton Thompson."
I doubt Thompson will get the nomination--and if he did, I doubt he'd win a single blue state. Right now he's making a small stir--but there's no there there. His single term in the Senate was inconsequential.
Your remarks on Whalen's influence on Rudy were apt. But I disagree with your analysis of his prospects for the presidency. Times change. With the appointments of Roberts and Alito, the abortion issue is no longer on the front burner. The gay issue has always been a side-show. The War on Terror is what now preoccupies the national consciousness--and it makes Rudy the man of the hour. Notice how quickly and articulately he condemned the Iranians for the hostage-taking. He minced no words and spoke loud and clear--unlike any other American politician. He's not somebody who would ever be pushed around--and would strike fear in this country's enemies.
That being said, I still don't believe in supporting Giuliani as the answer. I believe, as many of my friends cut from the same cloth, that supporting someone just because they have a nominal R after their name is going to work out. I think we can do better.
I have been criticized before, and will be again, but I am standing fast trying to pull the party back to the right. And I will spend many hours trying to do that on a precinct level. I do not believe third party has the ooomph to make it.
In God We Trust.....Semper Fi
I see an answer. It's called enforcing the rules on the books for "free trade" against the mercantilists that are eating Ohio's lunch, not to mention the rest of the country...
Not surprising, at all. In Cleveland almost everyone that I know is a liberal Demo-rat. Grr, and we’re probably a swing-vote for ‘08.
Hell, Voinovich, Taft and DeWine have killed the franchise.
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