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How the GOP Got Here: A Symposium (Mark Steyn)
NRO ^ | 11/5/2008 | Mark Steyn and others

Posted on 11/05/2008 12:08:54 PM PST by mojito

I congratulate Senator Obama on a remarkable and decisive victory. It was in many ways the final battle in a war the Republican Party didn’t even bother fighting — the “long march through the institutions.” While the Senator certainly enjoyed the patronage of the Chicago machine, he is not primarily a political figure: Whether “educators” like William Ayers or therapeutic pop-culture types like Oprah, his closest associations are beyond the world of electoral politics. He emerged rather from all the cultural turf the GOP largely abandoned during its 30-year winning streak at the ballot box, and his victory demonstrates the folly of assuming that folks will continue to pull the lever for guys with an R after their name every other November even as all the other institutions in society become de facto liberal one-party states.

Bill Bennett asked me on the air the other day why voters were so hot for this hope’n’change mush, and I suggested that it’s the dominant vernacular of the age. Go into almost any American grade-school and stroll the corridors: you’ll find the walls lined with Sharpie-bright supersized touchy-feely abstractions: “RESPECT,” “DREAM,” “TOGETHER,” “DIVERSITY.” By contrast, Mister Maverick talked of “reaching across the aisle” and ending “earmarks,” which may sound heroic in Washington but ring shriveled and reductive to anyone who’s not obsessed with legislative process. This dead language embodied the narrow sliver of turf on which he was fighting, while Obama was bestriding the broader cultural space. Republicans need to start their own long march back through all the institutions they ceded. Otherwise, the default mode of this society will be liberal, and what’s left of the Republican party will be reduced (as in other parts of the west) to begging the electorate for the occasional opportunity to prove it can run the liberal state just as well as liberals can.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Government; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: gop; marksteyn; obama
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To: FlipWilson

Wow. FlipWilson, that was some great writing and quite accurate I might add. The 60’s generation, the generation raised to hate all the symbols and institutions that made it great, is clearly now in complete control of this country.

My overwhelming thought is one of curiosity.

Will they double cross our friends in Iraq and surrender democracy and freedom to Al Qaeda and Iran? Losing wars and disgracing the nation on an international stage is at their roots, you know. Of course, they could start off destroying us domestically. A national health-care would absolutely shut-down the greatest health care system on earth...that would be quite a first-term accomplishment. Hey, they may even decide to go a more subtle root....like shutting down dissent via the fairness doctrine.

Boy, Mexico has the PRI and now we have the DEMS. One Party Rule. You’ve got to love what’s in store for us..


41 posted on 11/05/2008 1:03:09 PM PST by Mustangman (The GOP)
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To: TennTuxedo

Yeah, your analogy is better. Those institutions are delivery systems!


42 posted on 11/05/2008 1:06:56 PM PST by aquila48
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To: mojito

Can anybody point to any nation in history that made a comeback once the Slippery Slope was met ?


43 posted on 11/05/2008 1:14:03 PM PST by uncbob (es wouold realize that but iguess their arrogance)
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To: uncbob
Can anybody point to any nation in history that made a comeback once the Slippery Slope was met ?

Don't underestimate the American spirit. I for one am not giving up, I'll just try harder.

44 posted on 11/05/2008 1:16:09 PM PST by Cementjungle
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To: kabar

Will McCain the maverick be just as tough on Obama as he was on Bush? I hardly think so. He campaigned like he was being blackmailed. I say Good Riddance!


45 posted on 11/05/2008 1:19:44 PM PST by tell me
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To: uncbob

“Can anybody point to any nation in history that made a comeback once the Slippery Slope was met ?”

Germany and Japan, although those examples don’t give me much comfort. They killed tens of millions of people in other countries, and they suffered tens of millions of casualties themselves.


46 posted on 11/05/2008 1:23:09 PM PST by reaganaut1
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To: y6162
The timing of the sub prime financial collapse was surely not coincidental.

There. Fixed it.

47 posted on 11/05/2008 1:26:31 PM PST by happygrl (karma's going to be a B**** 0bama)
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To: arthurus

Heh—somehow I don’t think they’ll let him put his name on any new legislation. When Amnesty happens, they won’t give him the credit.


48 posted on 11/05/2008 1:36:31 PM PST by Mamzelle (Boycott Peggy Swoonin')
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To: reaganaut1

The USSR, sort of.


49 posted on 11/05/2008 1:46:29 PM PST by Lexinom
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To: mojito
the “long march through the institutions.”

I had forgotten this. I grew up in the 60s, went to school with some of these leftists, and this is exactly what's happening. After the late 60s and early 70s, when they were never punished for their crimes, they went underground and simply burrowed from within.

In the meantime, the GOP and, in fact, conservatives in general, kept on blithely thinking that this was all a sort of reasonable contest between reasonable differences. It wasn't. Marxism had hollowed out all of our institutions and taken them over, and the Marxists had gotten either their direct representatives (Barry and friends) or their dupes (Pelosi and friends) into power.

50 posted on 11/05/2008 1:47:38 PM PST by livius
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To: uncbob

Depending on what you mean by the slippery slope. The Pilgrims almost lost it all in the 1620’s. Our first national government, The Articles of Confederation, failed in the 1780’s The British burned Washington DC in the war of 1812. The Constitutional order collapsed into Civil War in 1861. The pioneers who went West to get rich mostly got tired and sick and dead. Our whole economic system ground to a halt in the 1930’s. Socialism came to America in 1932. We were forced to fight a two front war against pretty tough customers in the 1940’s. And after that struggle we faced down the Soviet Empire and went broke doing it. A great nation like ours is ALWAYS a breath away from disaster because we are a free people who make mistakes. And we just made another wopper. But now the Socialism founded by FDR is heading for the ash bin of history and we will have to pick ourselves up and do it all over again. It will be one hell of a dance with pain and suffering but we will prevail. Until the next crisis. We cannot escape history.


51 posted on 11/05/2008 1:55:48 PM PST by mick
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To: happygrl

“The timing of the sub prime financial collapse was surely not coincidental”

Thanks, I need a good editor. I’m not always successful at grammar.


52 posted on 11/05/2008 2:07:10 PM PST by y6162 (uot)
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To: Mustangman
In 1995 the Newt Republican Congress passed a budget consistent with his Contract With America. Der Slickmeister vetoed it and the pubbies ended up bleeding from every orifice as the old media and popular culture beat them up.

That, plus the election The Zero, I'm not confident we are a center-right republic.

The masses eventually get what they want, and end up getting what they deserve.

53 posted on 11/05/2008 2:15:28 PM PST by Jacquerie (All Muslims are suspect.)
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To: mojito

“It was in many ways the final battle in a war the Republican Party didn’t even bother fighting”

Republicans and conservatives in America have reached a point which is something akin to where the South stood after the battle of Gettysburg.

They have suffered a defeat - possibly a decisive defeat - from which recovery may no longer be possible. The war is not over, and of course it must be waged to the end, but the chances of victory are growing dimmer, for the enemy has both demographics and the kulturkampf to its advantage.

Anyone who doubts my assertion about “demographics” better take a look at the millions upon millions of illegals about to naturalized under Obama - and not only them, but the millions and millions more who will follow them in via “chain migration”. They won’t be bearing guns, but a different sort of weapon as deadly to our cause: votes.

In the Civil War, the numbers were on the side of the North. Eventually, the South ran out of soldiers (not to mention the money and materiel) with which to continue the fight.

In _this_ war, again, their side has the growing ranks of “soldiers” - the burgeoning numbers of millions of illegals and browns who will eventually make it impossible for conservatives to make their voice heard through the numbers of votes they can raise.

Again, the war is not over, but “victory” - however we care to define it in terms of politics, culture, and demograhics - at this point in time, remains in doubt.

I wish I could be more optimistic. But I’m a stone-cold realist (and that was reflected in my posts up to the current election).

That said, fight on!

- John


54 posted on 11/05/2008 2:15:57 PM PST by Fishrrman
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To: mick

Add in a nuke hit from the muslims and the whole fabric of an advanced technological society becomes undone and unravels at the speed of light and it is a return to the dark ages like when Rome fell


55 posted on 11/05/2008 2:16:49 PM PST by uncbob (es wouold realize that but iguess their arrogance)
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To: mick

“The fat, soft, whinney people who now apparently represent over 50% of the nation will soon go the way of the goony bird”

Tell me...
Just where do you believe they will “go”?
Do you think they’ll just disappear?

- John


56 posted on 11/05/2008 2:18:51 PM PST by Fishrrman
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To: Fishrrman
t the millions upon millions of illegals about to naturalized under Obama - and not only them, but the millions and millions more who will follow them in via “chain migration”. They won’t be bearing guns, but a different sort of weapon as deadly to our cause: votes.

Not really

They won't need those votes when the senate creates Emperor for life Obama like Hitler and Caesar
57 posted on 11/05/2008 2:20:52 PM PST by uncbob (es wouold realize that but iguess their arrogance)
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To: Fishrrman

The fat soft whinny people will succumb to their ailments from type 2 diabetes that they can’t get health care for for in the new socialist state. Gee, there is a bright side today.


58 posted on 11/05/2008 2:25:05 PM PST by austingirl
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To: aquila48
I saw this last week (or the week before...)

The interviewer is Edward Griffin, I believe, a member of the John Birch Society.

Most people who view this video will pooh pooh it as a wacky conspiracy theory. The transcript for it is here. It is, IMO, accurate (and almost fully implemented). The dumbing down of America is almost complete.

Bezmenov, Yuri; Griffin, G. Edward. (1984). Soviet Subversion of the Free Press: A Conversation with Yuri Bezmenov [Videotape]. Westlake Village, CA: American Media. OCLC 45810551.

59 posted on 11/05/2008 2:35:56 PM PST by CatQuilt (Lover of cats =^..^= and quilts)
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To: arthurus
Public education is a lost cause. Thank God for private schools (although some are no better than public in terms of indoctrination) and home schooling. We need to draw the line in the sand and protect home schooling, even if we ourselves don't take advantage of it.
60 posted on 11/05/2008 2:39:42 PM PST by CatQuilt (Lover of cats =^..^= and quilts)
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