Posted on 07/28/2007 3:45:31 AM PDT by bilhosty
Local political control was the strategy used by the founders from 1750 to 1775. Whether through Sons of Liberty councils or pamphlet campaigns, the founders established local political control before taking on the British central control.
It’s a logical and sound strategy - the head (federal government) can’t function without the body (local government).
Ronald Reagan was a politician and he proved that if you stuck to conservative principals you would do OK. His only problems came when he trusted a Democrat. He didn’t worry about getting reelected he followed his beliefs and let the chips fall where they may. I’m not completely cynical, we have some good people we just need them to step up and take over.
Rick Lazio was the congressman from NY who was defeated by the She-Beast's political machine. He didn't help himself when he pulled that stunt during their debate, where he walked over to her - "invading her space", and badgered her to sign a pledge for something (I forget what it was).
He was better than most but he did have to make concessions to a democratic congress in order to get their cooperation in his agenda.
So he conceded on spending for their pet projects.
This is where the political process is destined to hurt taxpayers time after time....no one in DC is going to help anyone else unless they get something in return.
That “something” always winds up being at the expense of taxpayers.
Exactly - where is the messaging from the Republicans about our values of individual freedom and personal responsibility. I'm inclined to think the Republicans don't do that because they are currently a coalition of 'small government' social conservatives and 'big government' social conservatives, and since there really isn't any room to create a compromise message between bigger government and smaller government, they agree to say nothing rather than alienate the other Republican side.
Libertarians were on board with Republicans when they SAID they were small government, but now that they've governed as big government along with more conservative social values than libertarians are comfortable with, most libertarians aren't aren't on board. They probably figure if they're going to have to live with bigger and bigger government anyway, they'll go with those who express similar social views. It will be very hard to win them back now that the Republicans have demonstrated their big government actions.
Personally, I'm having a really hard time with the actions of the Republicans, and I wish there were a viable small government, individual freedom party. The Constitution Party had promise a couple of years ago, but they didn't get traction. Libertarian's conceptually have the right idea, but I have yet to see a libertarian argue their position without it coming down to freedom for drugs - which is why they continue to look like the pothead party. Green Party of course is communist. So with no other options, rebuilding the republican party from the inside is really the only viable option, but it will take a long time. Probably it will be the homeschool kids from the 90's and on that do it, where they actually learned about the gift of freedom rather than the government of entitlement.
I don’t think so. What is happening is that most of the Republicans in the Senate are up for reelection and they don’t want to be tied to Bush.
Bush has fought a war on all fronts for 6 years. He has gotten no help from a “spend spend spend” congress. For 6 years he has gone at this alone. Both the right and the left have condemned him for his policies and his principles.
Bush is an honorable man. More than can be said for most of congress. Bush is doing what he believes to be right. He leaves the states to do what they are suppose to do and uses the Supreme Court to enforce states rights. That is why we are winning the social war.
We condemned him for the border, yet Arizona, and Texas are putting policies in place to stop illegals. More illegals are now being rounded up nationwide. With all the political, ecological, and financial wrangling that has to happen before a shovel is stuck in the ground, and we know this, we still blame the President as if he is the one to go out there and dig.
On morality issues, is there anyone better? As Conservatives we wanted states to take back abortion and gay marriage and we got that. More states are implementing bills that do what we wanted.
The war on Terror is founded on Iraq and the President isn’t wavering. He is doing what he knows to be right, as do most Americans. And this is despite what the MSM says to the contrary.
Bush doesn’t listen to polls. He doesn’t care. He is doing what he thinks is best for this country. One thing he needs to do better is communicate. Liberals don’t shut up. Bush has to start opening his mouth and saying what is going on. That is what hurt this administration.
We should be grateful. Remember, if Gore won Tennessee, right now we would be reading about 5 year farm plans and how we are loved by the world as more building came down in terror attacks and no military to do anything about it. And don’t forget, we would have more basketball courts for midnight basketball in urban centers and more police to patrol the streets after the games finished.
He had a democrat house and senate! What would you have him do. One can only dream about what he would have accomplished with both houses of congress like the one Geo. Bush has squandered.
“He had a democrat house and senate! What would you have him do”
I’m not condemning him for it, I’m only pointing out the truth of the situation.
In DC the 2 parties are not going to do anything for the other unless they get something in return.
That “something” will always be at taxpayers’ expense.
They are very generous to each other with money that is not their own.
“One can only dream about what he would have accomplished with both houses of congress like the one Geo. Bush has squandered.”
I’m guessing he would not have had such an increase in spending and the economy would have soared even higher.
We would have had the same increase in spending on defense, probably more.
without the out of control spending in other areas.
Most assuredly!
It's easier to tax the living bejeezus out of the ignorant. I raise my stepson's consciousness (and that of his friends) by occassionally shaking my head at them, and saying: "Man, do I feel sorry for you guys. You're going to be working 8-9 months a year to pay your "servants" in the government..."
I don't know why, exactly, but Graham REALLY grates on my nerves.
THIS IS HOW IT HAPPENS. Compare these goals of the International Communist Party with those of the Democrat party (they hate it when you call them that). Moreover, compare them with the goals of some in the Republican party.
Note to anyone reading this post: If this doesn’t make you volunteer, donate, email this to everyone you know, or otherwise become more politically active, you should probably be on a different website.
[From “The Naked Communist,” by Cleon Skousen]
CURRENT COMMUNIST GOALS
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament [by] the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev’s promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers’ associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to “eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms.”
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. “Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art.”
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them “censorship” and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, healthy.”
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a “religious crutch.”
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of “separation of church and state.”
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the “common man.”
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the “big picture.” Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture–education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand [or treat].
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use [”]united force[”] to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction [over domestic problems. Give the World Court jurisdiction] over nations and individuals alike.
The GOP isn't in decline because people are more apt to be liberal today. It's in decline because it has become dominated at the national level by radical secularist "neo-conservatives" whose agenda is strongly opposed by a huge chunk of the Republican Party base. I offer the illegal amnesty idiocy as Exhibit A in support of this statement.
Podhoretz does a clever job of masking the fact that he himself is one of those effete, limp-wristed "neo-cons" who have been instrumental in the decline of the GOP's fortunes.
“We no longer appeal to the center”
TRUE CONSERVATIVES DO NOT NEED TO APPEAL TO THE CENTER.
Conservatism works every time it’s tried. Reagan appealed to the center and some of the left because of his decisiveness and his strong conservative values .. not because he was willing to cow-tow to the center.
And .. I totally disagree that the congress doesn’t get it .. they get it .. they just don’t want it.
When the repubs take on the immigration mess .. they can win big in 2008. The repubs must show they are FOR AMERICA FIRST - and not feathering their own nest. We must force them to realize that joining in the corruption of the dems is not a good choice.
If the repubs don’t distance themselves from the Bush amnesty plan - people will stay home again in 2008 and it will be a horrible disaster for America.
People didn’t believe us when we told them in 2006 they were courting disaster by staying home. Now .. we have seen that warning come to fruition and the dems are even more horrible than I thought they would be.
We must make this clear to the repubs - either change or the whole govt is going to be liberals and Hillary will end up president - which is a terrifying thought.
Someone needs to. Of the pool of candidates, Fred seems best suited.
I do believe the corrosive influence of the MSM is a factor, but at the same time, conservatives have been gaining ground through the Internet and talk radio. As viewership and readership of MSM declines, so does their influence. They have compensated by becoming even more partisan, which worked in 2006. Finally, I don’t think we should make so much of a single poll. While it’s good to wonder as Podhoretz has wondered, I don’t think we shoudl consider his argument remotely persuasive. As for 2000, Gore was help as the successor of Clinton, who presided over a good economy.
. . . which, considering how recently the South was a region in which no Republican need apply, would certainly be ironic! But in reality, of course, the Red county/Blue county map of the US is predominantly red.The issue is sophistry vs. philosophy. To argue facts and logic, in a talk show format or via FreeRepublic postings, is to engage in philosophy. To argue from the assumption of superior wisdom and caring, via sound bites and "news" reports, is to engage in sophistry, And sophistry has been amazingly successful; an astonishing percentage of otherwise responsible-seeming adults want to believe it - and will hold their hands over their ears and sing if you threaten their worldview with facts and logic.
How else to explain Bush hatred, putatively based on the conceit that he caused Hurricane Katrina's devastation of New Orleans. Or the claim that American soldiers flushed a book down a toilet. Or the claim that Bush was responsible for the fact that soldiers who were being investigated by the Bush Administration had not adhered to protocols which did not apply to the people under their charge.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.