Frank discussion re our loss to Obama/Romney and the future direction of FR and tea party movement

My FRiends, we might as well face the reality that we the combined pro-life conservative movement and tea party coalition have lost this round (the presidential election) in the larger battle to reclaim our constitution and our inalienable rights. Rove, Romney and the GOP-e have successfully destroyed and driven off each and every pro-life conservative tea party candidate from the race and all have surrendered to the Romney camp. It is no secret that Romney is not one of us. There is absolutely no doubt that he has never accomplished a single conservative thing in his entire political career (one term as liberal governor of liberal Massachusetts and six years campaigning for president). In Massachusetts, he undeniably championed abortion, gay rights, global warming, gun control, big government statist mandated/socialized health care programs, liberal judges, TARP, bailouts, stimulus spending, debt limit increases, etc, and even though he's recently claimed a complete reversal in political beliefs and no longer despises pro-life conservatives or the time of Reagan-Bush, I still don't trust him. He still stubbornly holds on to some of his statist beliefs, like global warming, gays in the military, RomneyCare, stimulus spending, etc, so there is no way I can vote for him or join Cain, Perry, Bachmann, Newt or any others who are endorsing him. But I will not act on my prior promises that I would actively campaign against him if he wins the nomination. Our combined movement is already torn and splintered and is going to have to be mended if we're going to have any impact whatsoever against the liberal/progressives and statists after the election. To that end I propose a TRUCE among our conservative forces during the remainder of this election cycle.

We conservatives have already lost the presidency to either the Dems or the GOP-e, and if we tear the tea party apart, if we tear the pro-life movement apart, if we tear FR apart then we lose it all. It's far more important that we re-unite and live to fight another day. Even if we can't vote for a true conservative for the presidency, it's doubly important that we all turn out on election day or sooner and drag our friends, neighbors, relatives, co-workers, etc, to the polls to vote straight conservative for every slot on our ballots. The only way we can win our freedom back is to vote out the liberal progressives and vote in as many liberty loving conservatives as is humanly possible into every elected office at every level of government all across this great land. To prevent a total loss to the dems or GOP-e, we must continue the tea party rebellion into November and beyond. Whatever else you may do, you must turn out and vote straight tea party conservative down ticket!!

We must continue expanding our inroads into the state houses and into every elective office in the land. We must continue building on our majority in the house and we must retake the senate!! We must help the conservative governors and state legislatures to fully restore the ninth and tenth amendments and reclaim the real political power away from the federal usurpers and return it to the states and the people per the constitution!! This way, regardless of who wins the presidency, we can cut his unconstitutional expansionist movements off at the knees. And if any executive, civil officer or judge dares commit impeachable offenses, we must hold the majorities so we can impeach and remove them from office!!

And we must salvage and rebuild and continue strengthening our conservative pro-life, pro-family, pro-gun, pro-borders, pro-constitution, pro-small government, pro-defense, pro-liberty movements and our tea party coalition. And we must stop ripping each other apart!!

As far as FR's finances go, we're in the same boat as the rest of the economy and will have to make do with what we can raise. Fortunately, the big debts we ran up a couple years ago have been paid off. We borrowed approx $20,000 a few years ago from two FReepers to fund our national convention, plus we ran up another $20,000 in legal fees during the last couple of years fighting off Righthaven. But those are now behind us and paid off. We also did quite a bit of traveling each year for the last three years on cross country tea party tours, but I think we can now cut that back and remove it from our budget requirements. If we're fortunate enough to not incur any additional legal costs or equipment costs (other than what we've already planned), and cut the travel and a few other areas, we should be able to tighten our belts enough to weather the storm even if we fail to reach our short term fundraising goals.

Whatever the outcome of the elections, we are prepared to roar into 2013 with the tea party chewing up liberal/progressives and RINOs and raising hell in our never ending fight for liberty!!

My two cents..

In 2008 in South Carolina I voted in the primaries for Romney. At that time I thought him better than McCain. I still do. And I ended up voting for McCain after he and Huck pulled a fast one to get Romney out of the running.

I voted for Gingrich in 12 despite a lot of misgivings about the guy. And I donated to Santorum later despite my conviction that he could not keep running for long.

I simply do not think we had any strong, reliable, steady conservatives in this race.

Having expended so much passion over the years railing against McCain, and then ending up voting for him, I learned a hard lesson and didn't waste a lot of passion being angry over how Romney was forced on us as the RINO answer to Obama. It's like being extorted--"Vote for my loser or get Obama"--and I can't say I like it, but it is what it is.

But being a grownup and being a believer in Original Sin and a disbeliever in the perfectability of mankind, I'm still going forward and will support the GOP candidate...until he gets into office

...and there, Jim, I think is when the power will shift from the smug Kristols and Roves and right back into the tea party.

I wish we hadn't been so generous to Bush. He might not have taken his base so for granted and tried to get Laura her heart's desire...that invitation to Hyannis Port that never came.

We can vote for Romney and not love him. We can vote for him and not owe him a **& thing. We can watch every move he makes and work on stocking more and more conservatives in the House, Senate and eventually all the state houses.

Which is why I'm not wasting energy being angry.

After all, Lindsey Graham is up for reelection in 2014...LOL

I honestly think Romney is better than McCain, and I voted for McCain. Nobody I really wanted, except maybe Cain, would run.

And there are a lot of shills on FR running around trying to tell us to stay home this election to worry about.

Thanks for this.

This post is, imho, a very sensible and welcome answer to prayer . . . and very essential practically.

I still believe that the Marxist globalist oligarchy has rendered the vote counting to be a very corrupt, manipulated charade, farce of a process that does not alter what the oligarchy has already decided about who they will place in office a bit.

However, I still believe we are responsible before God to vote as wisely and prayerfully as we can.

And, I encourage foks to pray earnestly as I still believe that prayer does more to save or protect what shreds of our Republic and Constitution are left than does voting.

I don’t think fantasies about political solutions to the engineered desturction and chaos we are increasingly rushing into . . . help prevent such at all. I think we have to deal in realities. I appreciate your post as it appears to be a greatly more realistic perspective on the political realities currently operating in our besieged Republic.

The Marxist globalists are determined to shred the Rpublic to ashes to enable the overt establishment of their global government on top of those ashes to be all the easier.

The U.S. Senate fully supports those goals with very few exceptions. The House leadership, ditto.

Changing any of that will take tons of prayer and whatever actions God would direct. I don’t expect to see much progress, if any, until after Armageddon, personally. Nevertheless, I believe we must do what we can and that as unto The Lord.

Nothing else will help much at all.

Assuming Romney becomes the (R) nominee, he will need to coalesce the base. He must do this convincingly for conservatives and Tea Party to get on board full throttle, not just halfheartedly.

How many of us were enthusiastic about Reagan in 1980 but thought the "Rockefeller Wing" was going to sabotage our chances when he selected GHWBush as his VP? How many of us were somewhat enthusiastic about Quayle, but not so much about GHWBush in 1988? How many of us were enthusiastic about Kemp, not so enthusiastic about Dole in 1996? How many of us were only cautiously supportive of GWBush in 2000, but roared when we learned he'd selected Cheney as his VP?

How does Romney get us ALL on board? Here's a suggestion:

Run not only with your VP but with your proposed cabinet as well.

Conservatives sometimes have to be reminded that a President is not king. He can't get anything done by dictate. Above all, he must be a quarterback for the team. While a quarterback may sometimes run a ball in to the end zone himself, more often than not he strategically uses the talents of his team mates to move the ball down the field and bring about the win.

Did anyone hear Palin the other night (4/12/2012) on Hannity when asked if she'd consider being Sec'y of Energy? Did you watch her show the following night in place of Greta? Did anyone hear our own FReeper Allen West when interviewed on Hannity (4/11/2012) and asked whether he'd consider being Romney's VP? And BOTH essentially said YES!

Newt has effectively conceded. Are any of these folks any less conservative for facing what are becoming our realities this election cycle?

I have proposed cabinet and administration roles for persons who were Romney's rivals at some point. These are the skill sets we conservatives wanted applied to the places of government where they'd be most effective. Instead of rivals let's make them team players:

Rick Santorum - Sec'y of HHS

Sarah Palin - Sec'y of Energy + Sec'y of Interior (merge these)

Newt Gingrich - Sec'y of Education

Michelle Bachmann - Attorney General

Herman Cain - Sec'y of Commerce, HUD, and Head of GSA (merge)

John Bolton - Sec'y of State

John Petraeus - Sec'y of Defense

Tim Pawlenty: Sec’y of Transportation Ron Paul - Head of Federal Reserve (let the audit begin)

Donald Trump - Head Council of Economic Advisers

Paul Ryan - Head of Office of Management and Budget

Joe Arpaio - Head of FBI, and Homeland Security (merge these)

Dick Cheney - Head of CIA

White House spokesman: Mike Huckabee 1st Supreme Court nominee: Mark Levin

2nd Supreme Court nominee: Ann Coulter

And our own FReeper, Allen West, as VP.

I was a Perry guy. Keep him as Governor of Texas. He's doing fine right where he is.

Next: Most of these folks are honed primed and stoked from the recent primary debates. They're all sharp. Nationalize the cabinet selection process as much as the Presidential and Congressional elections.

Release every one of these folks back out onto the campaign trail with an assignment: tackle in an "in your face" way each of these departments - stage a kick-off news conference in front of each one of them in DC. Challenge the office holders to the equivalent of Lincoln-Douglas style debates allowing each Obama appointed office member to defend their record and their (mis)-management of their public trust.

They won't debate, you say? OK, try some new Rules for Conservative Radicals. Stalk them, dog them with cameras, "Breitbart" them, shame them into the arena, watch the cowards avoid the heat, watch for and exploit their mis-steps, create and run ads based on their failures in office and refusal to be made accountable.

While this is distracting the DNCs resources, Romney can land his own punches on Obama in the same way he's managed to blow away all his opposition in the primaries. Use Romney's well funded strike teams to confound opposition at the grass roots, do what they can to discourage and depress Democratic opposition and their voters.

Face it: if Romney was able to take out his competitors in the primary don't you suppose Obama's hacks could have taken anyone of them out in the general?

Have Romney's boys sew the seeds of hopelessness and dissension in the Obama ranks, cut 'em off at the knees, emphasize betrayal and failure of Obama to keep 2008 promises. Undermine, destroy and confound the opposition into a confused, ill-directed mass. They'll find themselves fighting on more than one Alinskyized, freeze-the-target candidate -- not just a single Presidential candidate, and instead they'll be spending their resources fighting 15+ personalities "running" for cabinet offices AND the Presidency!

Who are the DNC’s "generals" they have to call into a fight like that?

Instead of dividing us with all the endless sniping, let's quit doing the DNC's work for them and work on dividing THEM for a change!

Romney and Netanyahu both began strategic business careers at Boston Consulting Group. Agree with them or disagree with them, but admit that they are patient, long range, strategic thinkers.

One of the things Romney has been able to do in large part is to keep his persona distanced from the decisively well-calculated positioning of opposition to rivals in the primaries. His name-less, face-less cloaked "hit-men" are as effective as any guerrilla force out there, but all that activity is maintained at a plausibly deniable, comfortable, arms-length distance from Romney the candidate. I dare say it puts the likes of Nixon's and Clinton's "opposition research" squads to shame.

Sorry George. Enough of the "kinder-gentler" crap. Tight formations, and "gentlemen's wars" provided the fixed targets that let us destroy the British in our War of Independence.

I can see that machine going to work on Obama and leaving more than just a few lumps. Let's turn the "talents" of Romney's henchmen on to Obama, keep them disciplined, focused, and this side of doing any thing "Watergate," and let them go for the DNC's jugular.

If Romney is what we've got to work with this time around let's face that fact head on and let's hold his feet to the fire and make our will known as conservatives. If he's smart he'll seek our trust, and appoint many of our cabinet choices. To secure our trust he's going to have to both earn it and maintain it.

Romney will go a long and convincing way to doing that by arming, deputizing, and funding the campaign efforts of his "cabinet-in-waiting."

FReegards!

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