Posted on 03/13/2012 4:33:06 PM PDT by j.argese
Didn't see a thread
But, I do butt into conversations when I find them interesting. After all, that seems to be why FR exists, to read everybody’s conversations and stick your nose into anything that interests you.
As for “troll”, which is another charged often leveled, the way that term is used around here is meaningless, not at all what the original “forum troll” meant — it’s just a way to dismiss what people say when you can’t figure out how to actually discuss something.
Thank you for your kind words. I will have to try harder to live up to your expressed opinion of me. There are times when “courteous” is the last thing on my mind :-)
I do find it funny that you spent so much time begging people to read and respond to your items, and when I did, you decided you didn’t want to do that anymore.
“I think Perry would have been a great president. I think Newt would be a good one (and interesting). I think Santorum would be a decent president.
I think Romney would be the worst choice but one thousand times better than Obama.
Sitting this one out isn’t an option with me. Hope you end up feeling the same way.”
I’m in agreement with all of this, and I certainly don’t plan on sitting this out in November, I never said that. I’ve voted for the Republican nominee since I was old enough to vote in 1988.
What I’m saying is I can’t find one single thing to get me motivated in the least bit to try to get Romney elected. The guy offers absolutely ZERO to the conservative cause. Which is why I want this race to continue to a brokered convention and I want someone other than Romney. And until that is no longer a possibility, I see no reason to unite behind Romney.
One other thing-if I thought Romney was the most electable, that would be something to consider as well, but I just don’t see that. Team Obama will tear him to shreds during the general-and all they really gotta do is run commercials of Romney debating himself. At best, I see Mitt as having about the same chance as Newt or Santorum of getting elected. Given they’re about equal in electability, I see no reason not to hold out for a more conservative candidate.
Why heck no, I just despise it when supposed conservatives use the language and the spin of leftards. You decide where you stand.
Sorry, I don’t follow anyone on here, in 5 minutes I will forget your tag. I am pretty disgusted at all the leftist excuses and phrases being tossed around here. It makes it feel like a little bit of DU Funnies has invaded. If you don’t want to be called out for using leftist language, then don’t use it.
Simply FR courtesy is to ping the individual referenced in a discussion, in this case that's onyx, a stalwart and consistent Constitutional Conservative.
I respectfully suggest that you search her posting history here. She's a very kind, witty, knowledgeable FReeper and I'll confess that I've learned a lot from her. Believe me, if there is anyone on the planet who's not a leftist, it's our beloved onyx, a genuine Patriot.
The next contest is the caucuses this Saturday in my state of Missouri.
After that is Puerto Rico, where apparently Rick Santorum made an unwise comment to a local newspaper saying the state should be required to adopt English as its official language as a condition of statehood. I haven't personally checked this, but there is a Freeper on the ground in Puerto Rico who is running pro-Santorum threads on the situation in his commonwealth and has more details.
Click here on these two threads for Puerto Rico details:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2858804/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2852420/posts
For Missouri, your project of logging onto newspaper websites to post pro-Santorum comments means the Springfield News-Leader and Joplin Globe (the largest papers in the conservative southwest section of Missouri), the major statewide newspapers of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Kansas City Star, and several other important papers such as the Jefferson City News-Tribune and the two daily newspapers in Columbia. Also the Cape Girardeau paper (home of Rush Limbaugh) and the St. Joseph paper get significant regional readership.
Side point: While you're certainly welcome to read the Pulaski County Daily News, you may not want to bother to register to post comments on our partner website for three reasons:
First, the webmaster monitors IP address locations because we've had a lot of problems with foreign spammers and he's likely to reject an obviously out-of-state IP address unless I personally intervene to get you approved (which I will do on your behalf if requested);
Second, such a high percentage of our population is military personnel from Fort Leonard Wood who are registered to vote in other states that turnout is quite low; and
Third, our county's local Republican leadership seems to be solidly for Rick Santorum and I haven't chosen to push potentially divisive issues when the people who would be expected to be supporters of Gingrich or Romney seem to have decided on their own to support Santorum as the best candidate.
Thanks for the info! I appreciate it.
I don’t hold back. Conservatives don’t say “Faux News” or complain about “crony capitalism”. Regardless of how conservative you may be, you are parroting leftist talk right there.
Hank, I want to thank you for your post. You deserve my personal thanks based on our prior discussions, and because I think you've been a reasonable and rational Gingrich supporter, the sort of person I can respect.
Ironically, although I'm a Santorum supporter, I'm not yet ready to call for Gingrich to pull out; we need to look very hard at the upcoming states to see if there are states where a continued Gingrich candidacy is key to keeping Romney from winning.
However, I think the last two votes in the South show clearly that Rick Santorum, despite being a Northerner and a Roman Catholic, is able to reach the evangelical Southern voters who are key to Republican turnout in the South. That was not at all clear to me after the South Carolina vote. I still can't explain what happened in South Carolina unless it is a pure emotional reaction to Gingrich's blowout winning performance in that debate responding to the accusation from his former wife — even the Bob Jones University precinct had huge numbers of Gingrich supporters.
However, South Carolina's dynamics have not been repeated since except in Gingrich's own home state. At this point I believe we have a two-way race between Santorum and Romney unless:
1) Romney decides to fold his cards based on business decisions that he's throwing good money after bad, in which case we have the race we should have had all along between Gingrich and Santorum on who is the better Republican standard bearer, or
2) polls show that a continued Gingrich candidacy is necessary to keep Romney from winning secular conservatives who are now Gingrich supporters but who may be willing to vote for Romney if Gingrich drops out, or
3) delegate filing problems mean that the best way to stop Romney from winning certain states or districts is for Santorum supporters in those areas to rally behind Gingrich.
Bottom link, Hank: Gingrich has fought hard and deserves a great deal of credit. He's clearly the best-qualified candidate of the four remaining men based on experience. In my book, having a reputation for being the "smartest man in the room" is a positive, not a negative, and Gingrich provides serious intellectual respectability for conservative positions that nobody else in the field can come close to matching. Perhaps most important for me, nobody can legitimately dispute that Gingrich was primarily responsible for being the vision-setter who won the 1994 elections that took back the House of Representatives -- he did what most conservatives, including me, considered to be impossible, and he can legitimately claim a significant part of the credit for building the modern Republican Party.
I could support Gingrich if he were the nominee, and I've done a lot of damage to myself in my own church-related circles by arguing that a Christian conservative can vote for Gingrich in good conscience. The facts have shown, however, that I'm in the minority of evangelicals on that question.
As some of Gingrich's supporters have said, the Huckabee-Santorum wing of the Republican Party seems to have won the race in this year's primary to determine who the anti-establishment hard-right candidate will be. However, we haven't yet won the race to reject Romney. That needs to be our short-term goal, and the time is growing very short. If we don't win that goal, I am very much afraid we're going to re-elect President Obama.
We agree, with a qualification: I'm not sure that may not have already happened. I think Gingrich and Santorum get along much better than a lot of their supporters, and they agree on the key goal of defeating Romney now and Obama next.
I can think of some good reasons (delegate problems for Santorum, Gingrich supporters who may go to Romney in certain key states) why neither Santorum nor Gingrich may want Gingrich to drop out yet.
Katie, if you have problems with Rick Santorum’s social conservative views, you may think that the Constitution Party is Rick Santorum on steroids.
If we lived in a multiparty parliamentary democracy with proportional representation I might be a supporter of the Constitution Party. It's the closest thing the United States has to a realistic Christian political party. In a nightmare scenario of Rudy Giuliani and the pro-abortion, anti-gun, and anti-Christian liberal Republicans taking over the GOP, I might be willing to vote for the Constitution Party either as a protest vote or with the intention of actually creating a conservative alternative to a liberal-dominated GOP, but thank God, that's not going to happen. Free Republic was a factor in destroying Giuliani's credibility a few years ago, and as bad as Romney is, he's not as bad as Giuliani.
However, my goal is to win elections, we can't do that in America without getting 50 percent of the vote, and I believe in almost all circumstances a third-party vote does more damage than good. We're stuck with the Republican Party, warts and all, and anyone who was active in Republican politics thirty years ago knows that the GOP is tremendously better today than it was a generation or two ago. Progress has been slow, and sometimes things went backwards, but the GOP is going in the right direction.
My recollection is that there were Republican superdelegates in 2008; this issue was covered by the media when the superdelegates ended up making the decision on whether Clinton or Obama would be the Democratic Party's nominee. The statement four years ago was that both parties have superdelegates, but the Republicans don't have as many.
Personally I don't have a problem with superdelegates. They serve a purpose in a close race that is drawn out for an extended period.
I can appreciate that. Forthrightness is a solid Conservative trait. It's the leftists who have mastered the art of dissembling.
Conservatives don’t say “Faux News” or complain about “crony capitalism”.
Since I wasn't the poster using the "Faux News" term, I'll focus on "crony capitalism". Here's Sarah Palin explaining how that corrupted form of capitalism is a blight on America. I don't doubt her Conservative credentials and I hold Mrs. Palin in very high regard. When leftists infiltrate our economic system, the best ever devised, the result is not unfettered free enterprise but a vile product characterized by its cronyism.
I'll add that I likewise have nothing less than high regard for your Service to Our Country in the Air Force. And really, I think that our divergence on this matter is primarily semantic and not fundamental.
Why do you think the Tea Parties have been fighting against the rinos?
Thank you for the link regarding Romney allies in MI favoring an open primary.
Ironically Romney got bit by that ever so clever strategy with at least some of the dems engaging in their own operation chaos.
Clearly the dems fear Romney most. That’s why AFSCME has spent $1.5 million attacking Romney in FL and OH.
http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/super-PAC-campaign-fundraising/2012/03/05/id/431438
352 posted on Tuesday, March 13, 2012 9:09:29 PM by napscoordinator: “One thing I can say for you is that you have a flair for dramatics. I wonder if your profession is acting. If not, you should go to Hollywood. You would be good at it.”
Maybe she's acting, but if so, it's a very good act.
I've been watching katiedidit1 and a group of other Gingrich supporters for some time because I've been trying to understand what motivates the more militant of Rick Santorum’s opponents. I think katiedidit1 is sincere and on the level, and is not acting.
One reason why I've been paying attention to Katiedidit is that she and I both live in the Missouri Ozarks and that means there aren't the regional complications of people who may hate Santorum for things I wouldn't understand without understanding their local political dynamics.
Bottom line is I think she's telling us her honest opinions and is really upset about Rick Santorum winning over conservatives. I'm still not sure I fully understand why, but she's one of the people to whom I'm paying attention in an effort to try to understand what makes the anti-Santorum people tick.
As a conservative and as a Republican, I need to understand my fellow conservative Republicans even when we disagree — perhaps **ESPECIALLY** when we disagree.
There is a new dynamic in this year's presidential race. I've written about it here: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2859059/posts?page=25#25
I'm very unhappy with that dynamic. I believe it is destructive to the moral foundation of the Republican Party and if successful will steer the Republican Party into a European-style secular conservatism where the definition of conservative switches from classic Judeo-Christian values focusing on personal morality, strong families, private property, and national defense into a libertarianism that values private property and nationalism but has forgotten the biblical basis of private property, capitalism and national defense.
I'm certainly not saying katiedidit shares that dynamic. I do think that dynamic is out there, it is dangerous, and to the extent that the Gingrich campaign has attracted secularists who are passionately opposed to a role for religion in public life, we need to remind such people that Gingrich himself doesn't agree with that viewpoint.
Some of the most rabid Gingrich supporters have hated every candidate but Gingrich. Just go back over the months of their posting histories and you’ll see them attacking each candidate to rise to the top.
I live in MO now but my home is Virginia. I worked as precinct chair, district delegate, hosted fundraisers..last one being for Jim Miller (Reagan's former asst budget dir) I worked for George Allen when he ran for governor and for Ollie North. Since I have been in MO..have met many of the republicans candidates and former reps from Ashcroft, Kit Bond to Roy Blunt.
My mother worked for Goldwater and later Nixon. She was a delegate to the gop convention in KC for Reagan but my father died that summer...she was invited to the inaugural ball at the Whitehouse when Nixon won. I have worked the polls in Va and worked at headquarters for various candidates..btw..Ollie North lost Va but carried my county:) I even went to see McCain and fought for him because Obama scared the hell out of me. No more...I am tired of watered down candidates that cave on their convictions and yes, I believe in Newt..it is no act.
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