The Republicans originally went to Washington, D.C. as a small government, anti-welfare, pro-defence, free market party. In 2006 they went to the polls looking like a corrupt, big government, scandalized, pro-illegal, pro China, pro mega corporation party. Much of this view was deserved.
Demmocrats had nothing in 2004 and 2006. Neither did the Republicans really, and it finally caught up to them in 2006. The Republicans have no one at all to blame but themselves. They haven’t learned a thing, unfortunately.
Not exactly.
If the RNC appeared to be dysfunctional, it is because it was and still remains so.
In the effort to play "Base Politics" in Washington, they lost.
It was inevitable!
The two parties were nearly equal, with each garnering 50% =or+ one or two percent which was the margins of defeat or wining.
In 2006, the Democrats as a minority were able to maintain unity, while the Republicans, as a majority were not able to because the base is split on divisive issues like immigration, stem cells, abortion, and other RTL issues. Rather than avoid these issues like the plague during the election, a portion of the "base" (that might be you, I dunno) decided to press ahead and forced the party to position themselves on these things and the democrats gleefully took the "populist side of all of them, including the war. This is all they needed to do to break up the unity and damage the swing vote margins that we once had. Without that populist swing vote, now alienated due to controversial crap, we lost...and will continue to lose in 2008.
The damage is not yet complete. The cyin has not yet begun, because if you thought 2006 was referendum on a party that was not conservative enough, you are dead wrong. That opinion is held by a small piece of the party base, some 25% at most, and the rest are trying to tell you how it is. But you won't listen just as you were told not to push divisive issues through to the general election in 2006.
This myopia, hubris, or stubbornness within the base is going to completely destroy it and result in a Dem sweep in 2008.
I know I must sound like a broken record, but I've been harping on this issue for more than four long messy years.
I don't think I care any longer. I think the party and this country are in dire need of a rude awakening which I believe is forthcoming in the next decade. A rude awakening that will prioritize issues like they have never been prioritized before, except perhaps at the founding of this nation. All the things at are important to you now, will be forgotten or moved so far down the list that they are not spoken of, except by people recounting the past.
You have a choice to continue in your myopic, small picture ways, or you can come to your senses. I think the first choice is more likely, and that is why I predicted what I have deduced as our future.
In the end, it could be said that our society became lethargic and vain, and in that lazy vanity, we no longer placed the important logical things ahead of our self gratifications.
In other words, we screwed ourselves.
What you are saying is that you don’t really care what happens to the troops now that the demonrats are in charge.
It was all predictable, but in your mind, well worth the gloat!