Posted on 03/17/2012 8:34:10 PM PDT by true believer forever
Along with the realization that Conservatives can win in a Conservative-leaning country, comes the ugly truth that the “establishment” Republican apparatus is – just like the Chicago politician – more concerned with maintaining power and “selecting” candidates than doing the hard work of administering to a bottom-up organization – such as the Republican Party was chartered to be.
Today’s Republican establishment is, for all practical purposes, a mirror (or converse) image of the Democrat Party; an organization structured from the top-down. This power-hoarding of the hierarchy is evidenced by the ridiculous move to award convention delegates proportionately, a move more in line with the abolition of the Electoral College than with the preservation of the Republic.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
And before Reagan, Phyllis Schlafly and Richard Viguerie were able to break the stranglehold of the MSM via direct mail. I learned of this because of Free Republic and from going to see Phyllis Schlafly speak several years ago. I learned a lot about the formation of the modern conservative movement from that talk.
I hope Newt takes it to em. Go Newt.
I posted this before I received info on what activism sidebar meant. Is there really a need to scream?
“but for me the ultimate family values are putting food on the table for my family, putting a roof over their heads, and clothes on their backs.”
True Conservatism allows you to do this and so much more, Newt is the True Conservative in the race. I’m not a believer in 3rd parties, looking back at 1912 and 1992 where they gave us Wilson and Clinton. My goal has been to make the Republican party a True Conservative party, I believe it’s already a majority Conservative party but is controlled by other than Conservatives. I had hoped to get more of the Tea Party people involved in our county but have not been sucessful to date. We are about to try to get more of the Tea Party people to our county convention.
My views on a third party are changing but the reality of the time line we are faced with, and I’m not talking about just this election, is too short. I believe a split in Republican and Conservative elections on any range of offices from Counselman, to State Legislator, to Congressman to President, would lead to a disaster.
Bfl
Last election almost half of these positions were empty. Only those who are elected get to vote on party leadership. You are also in a position to impact the voters in your precinct in favor of your candidate. It only costs about $10 to register.
The other problems are getting the conservatives to agree on a candidate, and getting people to ignore the media propaganda machine/polls/hype.
The issue of electability can not be allowed to trump experience. That's how Obama got elected. The candidate must have experience as well as electability. Imperfections will exist for any candidate, because no one is perfect. Conservatives must also come up with a process to agree on a candidate, at least as soom as the GOPee.
Things to think about. Thanks for the contribution.
Every state is a little different on party organization, but Greeneyes is essentially right in what I've cited him saying below.
So are the people who have pointed out that conservative Republican activists took decades to bring the GOP to where it is today. Things used to be much worse than they are now, and we need to think in terms of decades, not months or even years, if we want to have an influence in making the Republican Party consistently conservative on the national level.
Still others have correctly pointed out that third parties historically have done nothing but wreck the electoral chances of the major party closest to them ideologically. I don't have a problem with encouraging Ralph Nader or Jesse Jackson to go third-party to split the Democratic Party's votes, but I have major concerns about the damage a conservative third-party movement will cause, not only to the presidential race but all down the ticket as good senatorial, congressional, gubernatorial and state legislative candidates get buried due to split votes at the top of the ticket.
That doesn't need to happen — lots of third-party advocates will correctly point out that you can still vote Republican for other positions down-ticket — but it **WILL** happen if Republican turnout gets depressed due to a perception that President Obama will be re-elected by huge margins due to a conservative split.
The one exception in United States history is the Republican Party, which was essentially a third-party movement which replaced the dying remnants of the old Whig Party, but the fact is that the Whigs were basically dead anyway, something was going to rise up to take their place, and Republicans were the right group at the right time to step into a vacuum that today does not exist. Even if the parallels were better, we're talking about events a century and a half ago in an era when virtually nothing about politics resembles what we have today.
I'm painfully aware that if Mitt Romney is the Republican nominee, many of us will be placed in a horrible position. I'm not going to say what I would do in a hypothetical case like that — I'm not naive, I do deal with cold hard truths when I have no choice, but I don't deal in hypotheticals — and the best way to avoid putting us in a position like that is not to nominate Romney at all.
Let's focus first on defeating Romney so the worst-case scenario remains hypothetical. I can live with Gingrich or Santorum. I don't think Romney will win even if nominated, and this third-party debate is only one indicator of how much damage a Romney nomination will do to Republican turnout.
The one good thing these third-party discussions do is warn the Republican Party's top leadership that nominating Romney really is dangerous. I don't think they're taking third-party threats seriously yet. If we move into a brokered convention, those threats may become deadly serious, and I'm not convinced they won't play a role in convincing people in the Republican leadership that they have to deal with conservatives or face defeat in November.
127 posted on Sunday, March 18, 2012 5:43:15 PM by greeneyes: “Easier to take over the Republican Party than it is to start a new party. You have to start by electing committed conservatives as precinct chair. If conservatives don't fill these spots you have no hope of controlling the party. Last election almost half of these positions were empty. Only those who are elected get to vote on party leadership. You are also in a position to impact the voters in your precinct in favor of your candidate. It only costs about $10 to register. The other problems are getting the conservatives to agree on a candidate, and getting people to ignore the media propaganda machine/polls/hype. The issue of electability can not be allowed to trump experience. That's how Obama got elected. The candidate must have experience as well as electability. Imperfections will exist for any candidate, because no one is perfect. Conservatives must also come up with a process to agree on a candidate, at least as soom as the GOPee.”
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