I don’t dismiss your argument completely, but let’s remember that Bush barely squeaked out a win over the likes of Al Gore and John Kerry. Then along came John McCain, another even worse ditz.
Somehow to Bush and McCain, Conservatism became a dirty four letter word.
Look, don’t take my word for it. The party leaders run from us like scalded dogs.
I didn’t coin the term, the Reagan Era is over.
James Carville and the left declared war on Conservatism in the late 1990s. And so far all we’ve declared in return is bipartisanship.
All good points, all valid, correct, and well taken.
I’m not even going to add a ‘but’ to it.
The conclusion I’ve come to is that we have arrived at the point, where the parties have been identified as part of the same organization - the APPROPRIATORS.
It’s a business, not a system of government. This lack of partisanship is in many ways, all for show. R’s and D’s hate each other, but not enough to do much about earmark reform, ethics, Wall St - DC cabalism, etc.
The Tea Party movement is an indictment of that system. It’s not a cult of personality, and Palin recognizes this and is urging that it NOT BE ABOUT HER. Brown ran his campaign in a very similar way. “It’s the people’s seat.”
Gergen won him that election by throwing him that pitch, and Brown knocking that out of the state. Gergen is emblematic of this - SO MUCH a part of that problem.
I used to feel like I was committing a crime thinking that it would be great if they nuked DC during the State of the Union. All the fiefdoms would cease, all the markers would go uncashed. We’d have to start over, and we’d likely start from the ORIGINAL Constitution and Declaration.
I just saw a poll that showed that 63% believe all incumbents should be gone. That’s unprecedented, and I’d like to believe it might not take a nuke to reset the system. I will say that if elections won’t do it, then something else is going to have to, and I think that’s where people are at this point.
Conservatism died when Reagan left office. Hate to invoke Reagan again, but he’s the last guy in power that recognized that GOVERNMENT is, and always has been, the problem. Government is the quintesential ‘necessary evil’, with the emphasis on evil. Franklin recognized that once the populace understood that they could vote themselves every largess, the system of government would no longer work.
Now we have government, and of all things, a series of unions built to protect it from any attempt at reforming it. They have their own civil army, as incredible as that sounds.
So, I just want to be clear that while your observations are spot on, I want the blame for how we got Obama to go to the right people. The ‘blame’ goes to guilty white people who’ve been race hustled into voting for one of the most incompetent frauds ever to hold so powerful an office in the history of the world.
Too young to have marched in Selma in the 60’s with Dr. King, aging hippies, and hippie-wannabes driving volvos wanted the expiation of being able to claim they helped elect the first black President.
“I was there . . .” as it were.
What do you think?