Posted on 11/05/2008 6:46:24 AM PST by 82ndABNOfficer
Total BS!
The middle always decides elections. Bush moved away from his base and lost this election for us on simple ideas . IE. illegals, overspending. He made deals with the rats and the rats ended up eating him up!
Do you think you can make a deal with Teddy Kennedy and come out on top?
All he had to do was strike swift and hard during the socalled mortgage crisis and Bama would have slithered back to Chicago!
Nice guys finish last...
We didn’t turn our backs on Bush. He turned his back on us just like his Daddy.
Being a Reagan Republican, I have to say I was no big fan of many of George W. decisions as President, but I do respect the man and am angered by the treatment this man has received at the hands of the MSM and the general public. I am also equally angered by the abandonment of George W. by the GOP Leaders. When things were good, GOP Party Leaders embraced him. When the democRATS and MSM started to malign him and his popularity rating tanked, instead of circling the wagons, the GOP Leadership ran like scared children!!! We lost this election because the GOP Leadership are a bunch of cowards who “cut and run” at the sign of trouble!! God Save the Republic!!!!
I agree that Bush is far from being an admirable conservative, but we have thwarted many terrorist attacks.
"We"? No, YOU and your fellow Bushbots turned your backs on conservatism with your blind support for the guy who did more to bring a halt to the Reagan revolution than anyone else -- George W. Bush. (GHWB started it; GWB finished it).
Trillion dollar bailout of Wall St. crooks, (non-defense) spending that'd make Jimmy Carter blush, an open hostility to defending our borders and deporting illegals, drastically extending the reach and power of the Dept. of Ed. ("No child left behind"), huge Medicare entitlement, etc. GWB implemented more social programs than any previous President. Conservative? Not by a longshot.
Long past time to purge the GOP of its liberals in GOP clothing ...and John McCain is high on that ignominious list as well.
AMEN.
Yes.
Although.... I suppose if you asked everybody on this thread what they thought "conservative" meant, you would get a rather wide variety of answers. That's part of our problem: anybody can say they're conservative, but it's not really clear what that means.
Another problem is the people whom we accept as our spokesmen. They're self-appointed, for the most part, and IMO they do more harm than good. The hypocritical Newt Gingrich; the self-righteous James Dobson (among other "evangelical" names); and so on. Nobody but those already in the choir are attracted to the sorts of person who seem to be nationally recognized as "conservative."
But our REAL problem, in a political sense, is that we conservatives haven't got a clue how to promote and defend ourselves politically. It's pretty clear to me that we are in the grip of a host of wrong assumptions -- about the rules of the game; about what constitutes "victory"; about the culture in which we live.
We need to fight as long and hard, as dedicated and as ugly as the other side.
Honor is what lost the Civil War for the South.
Please don’t use that term.
Agree - it is a horrible abuse of the word.
And let's stop talking about life as a "journey".
And let's not talk of "Change" as a noun - leave that to the mush-minded feel-good leftists.
It's time to stop the wussyfied, liberal bastardization of language - at least on Free Republic.
I disagree.
We didn’t turn our back on Bush. He turned HIS back on us - time and again.
He was also a very poor communicator. And although he DID win two elections, the margins were needlessly close. Kerry and Al Gore aren;t especially bright men. Gore in particular is a scientific idiot.
The election was lost because the Economy tanked, McCain was ineffective in communicating to the American public the deep complicity of the Democrats - particularly the President-Elect, in creating the problem, and McCain himself was simply the wrong candidate. McCain was too old, not photogenic, not well spoken and hjardly charismatic. His opponent was all those things.
The Republican Party continues to amble, an ineffective anachronism which is increasingly unable to effectuate its own objectives or those of the people who support it.
America still IS a center - right country, but will not remain so for much longer unless the issues of the leftist major media monopoly, the propagandization of school and college students by the leftist NEA, and the inability to erach out to the gropwing Hispanic and Asian American populations are not bridged.
Either there has to be a major shake-up of the Republican Party leadership or it should be shoved aside by a new political party, as effective as the Democrats and liberals are in the political arena, but wedded to a conservative, traditional and more populaist political philosophy.
Just my take on this - it is really sort of subjective.
With all due respect to you, conservatives (and I say that as though FR was still a conservative forum) did not throw Bush under the bus. President Bush has been driving the bus that we seem to find ourselves under.
Sorry, FRiend -- it's not total BS. It's the truth.
It's lots easier to blame Bush, I know ... but if conservatives have lost big here, and we have, it's our own fault.
The thing we need to do now, is figure out where we've gone wrong. There are a LOT of places to start looking.
“You (excerpted) your own topic. That’s a first.”
I guess he’s afraid he will sue himself for copyright infringement.
bush made some mistakes.. but he also did a lot of good..
spending was out of control.. but that was also the fault of house and senate repubs..
it seemed though that no one wanted to stick up for bush at the end.. and that led to climate of change.. also.. the ill-informed electorate actually wanted more gov’t intervention according to exit polls..
He's too stupid to defend his beliefs. What are voters supposed to think? Rep's had a chance and did nothing. Now the othere team goes on offense. This ain't comoplicated.
Well, gentlemen ... you may be correct on a theoretical plane, but here in the real world Obama just kicked our asses by becoming a "brand name."
Even if our principles are perfect (which they're not, btw... that's part of our problem), they're useless unless and until people begin to identify with them.
Obama (and Clinton and Reagan before him) showed us how it's done, and we seem not to have learned a damned thing.
We've got a LOT of work ahead of us. Mr. Alinsky's books might be a great place to start.
I agree with you, about Bush. In 2004, I voted for the Constitution Party candidate because Bush was too liberal and because I knew that Kerry would win 57%, in my state, IL.
Bush’s tax cuts were too small, and his spending increases were too large. He wanted to give amnesty to illegal aliens. He signed a few bills that gave money to Planned Parenthood and the World Health Organization, so that they could perform more abortions. He signed the campaign finance reform law which violates the 10th Amendment. He signed the No Child Left Behind Act, which violates the 10th Amendment.
B.S.
Bush had to make concessions to keep the WOT active. That was his main priority as it should have been after 9/11..
People moan about borders, drilling, etc. I swear it’s like people think he’s God who has to handle every issue ignored by other Presidents. He did what he could despite the Dems and despite people in his own party turning their backs on him. (Including some on FR).
Bush has been a very good President.
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