Posted on 02/21/2014 8:05:27 AM PST by Innovative
"The Republican establishment has more than a tactical deficiency, however. They seem to have no principle that they offer or follow with any consistency. Their lack of articulation may be just a reflection of that lack of principle. It is hard to get to the point when you have no point to get to.
Ted Cruz filled a void. But the Republican establishment created the void."
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...
*********************************
Agreed. Well said.
/johnny
I don't usually. It is only in the span of a few days several what I call 'capitulation articles' by him have been trumpeted here on FR as "what the great conservative Sowell thinks" and by extension, what we should all do - toe that line and hold our noses again.
What he essentially says about Cruz, and the Tea Party, is that WE have to go-along, get-along with the GOPe because they are our last best hope of regaining control to actually do something. Well, they had the Triumvirate (House, Senate and Executive) in the early W years. What did we get besides no more terrorist attacks here? We got the TSA, the DHS, a heavy push at Amnesty (that fortunately failed because of us conservatives), no child left behind, Medicare add-ons and a host of other liberal wet dreams. Republicans - GOPe'ers. They paved the way for Obama, and they paved the way for the great McInsane who we were all told here we had to hold our nose and vote for - because the Republicans would make things better. I'm not even gonna get into Romney and Ryan (who has now shown his true colors).
And this is my beef. For Sowell to dredge up this hackneyed crap again about 'we gotta hold our nose and make nice with GOPe - again' and then spit out a column as if he's the great impartial observer and try and explain things foolishly (like Boehner didn't explain things to us in English [Sowell meant us conservatives are stupid, BTW] and say we'd better make nice so we'll win is crap, frankly.
No, I don't click on his columns on my own - doubt I ever will again, even when some schlub here reposts one telling us again about how we gotta hold our nose again.
Finny is absolutely correct on Romney. Romney was and is an absolute dishonest POS who has no ideological connection whatsoever with the Republican Party much less with the Conservative Movement. Romney, like his father before him, is and was a social revolutionary. He was and is committed to abortion, "gay""marriage," gun grabbing, global warming baloney, the entire homosexual agenda, activist leftist judges, government-controlled health care, including forcing churches and other employers not in moral agreement with his revolutionary health care insurance and abortion agendas to comply with HIS decisions or else, etc., etc., etc.
Romney was a pathetic excuse for a governor even for Taxachusetts, blaming his entire failed record on not controlling the Taxachusetts legislature. There were not enough half-brained Muffies and Skippers to run for the legislature much less enough brainless social revolutionary money-obsessed yuppies willing to vote for the half-brained Muffies and Skippers. Of course, Romney and his social revolutionary agenda might seem attractive to trust fund babies and Junior Leaguers but not so much to the voters of South Boston or Lowell or Lawrence or Worcester or Springfield.
I will tell you flat out that I refused for the first time since I began voting in 1968 to vote for the "Republican" candidate for POTUS, POS Romney. I voted third party for Tom Hoefling and I will vote third party from here on out unless and until the GOP-E jumps into a vat of sulfuric acid, stuffs its vast campaign budgets where the sun shineth not, and turns the GOP back over to its rank and file. My US Senate and US House votes will be cast according to the same standard. No supine love slaves of such trash as McConnell or Boehner.
The notion that refusing to vote for the elitist trash being nominated for POTUS or lesser offices by the GOP-E, means being responsible for the election of trash like Obozo is ridiculous. The 1992, 1996, 2008 and 2012 POTUS elections were lost when the lobbyists and crony capitalists and Wall Street bankers and the special interests nominated Bush (Read My Lips, No New Taxes) the Elder, Robert (Tax Collector for the Welfare State) Dole, John (The Actual Whacko Bird) McCain and Mitt (Son of George) Romney. In each case the greedycrats of Wall Street decided to surrender the entire agenda of Ronald Reagan in order to concentrate on aiding Muffie's trust fund. Blame them and thereby place the blame where it belongs.
Be sure and get back to the base if and when you ever decide to get the hell out of the way and nominate a candidate who merits the votes of the base the old-fashioned way---by EARNING THEM. Y'all had better get the act together on that soon or you will have a cranky old Hillary in the White House. It won't be enough for you to nominate New Jersey Fats or Paul Ryan or some clone of McConnell or Boehner and then weep crocodile tears over how important it is to have "party unity" lest the wicked witch of New York (by way of Illinois and then Arkansas) occupy the White House.
And if you vote for a conservative democrat, you are a conservative. pfft.
Of course, there are damn few democrats like that around, but if one ran, I would be willing to vote for him if he was the best candidate.
I'm a conservative. Not a republican.
/johnny
Gaffer’s statement on his home page as to being a “scorched earth conservative” is exactly on point. Good for Gaffer. When the spineless, soulless GOP-Elite get that message, when they have been taxed into the earth because the base will NOT elect trash like McCain or Romney, then we can start coming back. By “we” I am referencing actual conservatives.
Hear, Hear. You have company here. Thx, BE
DITTO!
(words to cherish: I voted third party for Tom Hoefling and I will vote third party from here on out unless and until the GOP-E jumps into a vat of sulfuric acid, stuffs its vast campaign budgets where the sun shineth not, and turns the GOP back over to its rank and file.
Be still my heart! {^)
Sweeping generalizations don’t hit targets.
Looked like a pretty square hit to me. It's hard to admit -- I've been a liberal when I voted for Arnold, and Meg Whitman, and I would vote differently knowing what I know now.
Al, a vote is like a light switch. You've got on, and you've got off. The vote is either for, or silent. You either vote to turn the light on, or leave it off. There's no place to vote for removing that light over there.
I was a liberal (functional, if not conscious) when I voted for liberal Republicans. Now I've gained consciousness.
/johnny
Consciousness does not equal anything except consciousness. A clam has consciousness.
When Ronaldus Maximus challenged feckless and totally unprincipled GOP-E POTUS, His Accidency Gerald Ford, I was one of his state chairmen and you weren't.
Getting 75% or 80% of what you want is not a description of what you get for voting for GOP-E crap like Bush the Elder, Dole, McCain and especially POS Romney, IF you are an actual conservative. So you are quoting Reagan to no avail since his words do not apply to such spineless ideological treasonweasels as these. With POS Romney, you get 0% if you are not a trust fund baby.
Romney is simply the very bottom of a verrrry sorry barrel of GOP-Elitists. He is a gun grabber, a pro-abort, militantly pro-same sex "marriage," and a thoroughgoing social issue revolutionary. Can anyone point to a single example of POS Romney's track record that suggests smaller government or control over the spending avalanche in DC? Can anyone show that POS Romney would do anything whatsoever to rein in the environmental lunatics who are fanatically attacking basic property rights and business freedom for anyone other than megacorporate interests and globalization fanatics?
The fact is that, unless you are a trust fund baby, a polo player or an abortion mill operator, POS Romney offered NOTHING to conservatives who ARE conservatives. The US needs one major party that will defend traditional conservative values and POS Romney cannot and will not offer any such positions. Obozo was re-elected by the Republican National Convention nominating that useless POS Romney. In the process, Paul Ryan was exposed as useless as well.
If you want Hillary to be inaugurated in 2017, just keep it up, nominate New Jersey Fats or re-nominate POS Romney and you can get it done. Meanwhile, study on what happened to the Federalists and the Whigs and why and remember that their errors are the errors of the GOP-E which has always had far more money than brains.
I think Jim is getting tired of the lesser evil chorus from the GOP-E supporters here.
/johnny
Here’s what I bet— our old and beloved Sowell, often quoted and referenced by Rush in the past, but found peddling smack this week, and delivering it to the feet of patriot, Ted Cruz, is laying the gauzy, rhetorical groundwork here, for pointing toward another candidate who is waiting in the wings— one, Jeb Bush.
Sowell may have a dog in this fight.
Integrity usually includes standing on principle in season and out of season. Presently, integrity is down on the list, out of season, taking a lower place to cowardice, tactical maneuvering based on grave error, compromise and outright caving to un-American forces and un-American activity.
Ted Cruz simply defied the tactics.
His 60 vote request in the senate, instead of a simple majority, should have received applause, because it forced the rip in the veil. No longer could the five Republican cowards in leadership hide behind the veil and manipulate their empty rhetoric for blaming the senate majority. They were exposed to the sun light.
Ted is terribly out of season, with this sun light business, which is the first sign of hope for integrity ever actually making a play for the Republic.
Sowell seems to resent that Ted Cruz might benefit from his show of courage, as one of the quotes from Sowell, upthread, indicates.
A very Jeb Bush-like approach, in my opinion.
Your assessment seems reasonable IF Sowell is/was that far-thinking, but I also have one, too. It’s called ‘being comfortable with the status quo even one that is establishment Republican.
Frankly, establishment Republicanism has spent so much time and effort these last few years at engineering feats of capitulation and the resulting CYA show votes that go with, that they are highly resentful at the opposition to their cowardice from real conservatives, especially when the exposure goes beyond Fox and talk radio.
What kind of dog does Sowell have in this fight? Sure, he’s got a record of being conservative [LITTLE ‘c’, though] over the years because in the scheme of things, ineffectual thought pieces against the [ooga booga] GOPe didn’t amount to much. IOW, all concerned in the sympathetic small ‘c’ media and the GOPe weren’t getting anyone really riled up.
Enter Cruz - that bastard [they think]! The freaking nerve of him! To actually follow through on the same thoughts they perfunctorily have been giving lip-service to is TREASON! Far, far worse in their minds is that Ted Cruz has excited the patriotism and vigil for traditional values and sovereignty Conservatives harbor. That upstart, the very nerve of him. Blasphemy, his unduly energizing the all-too-patient Conservatives.
Thus, their reaction - WE [Conservatives] have to appease GOPe and come together on capitulation to Democratdom. All so they won’t be upset at the comfortable little second-tier world they’ve been deluding themselves with.
That is EXACTLY why Romney failed. It's amazing how many people here, who should know better, think that Romney lost only because he "failed to articulate" etc. etc. No, Romney lost because he was a functional liberal Democrat and everything he "articulated" revealed that TRUTH.
Gaffer, Sowell has been a wise, steady, true guide for way too many years for me to think he's all the sudden not valuable anymore because of him penning ONE opinion/observation that I think is wrong, and this is the first time I can ever recall of disputing a position held by Thomas Sowell. I am MUCH MORE INCLINED to rethink my position because if Thomas Sowell is anything, he is WISE. Only a fool would indulge in dumping him on the strength of ONE opinion disagreed with, when he has been the MOST (IMO) stellar, crystal clear voice articulating conservative principle and thinking. He has been a faithful guide and inspirer.
Everyone is entitled to a mistake or two, and this in my opinion is Sowell's -- he fails to see that if the GOPe nominates another functional Democrat in 2016, many voters will either vote third party or stay home, Sowell's advice notwithstanding. I wish that instead of warning people against rejecting liberal Republicans, he was taking steps to face the REALITY of what WILL happen if/when the Republican GOPe nominates another functional Democrat for president, and move forward on that premise -- that voters are going to reject that candidate whether it's the smart thing to do or not -- as to how to proceed in the best way. Anticipate it and work WITH it rather than try to avert it.
I am perplexed by his take on Cruz, his implication that Cruz might be the one responsible for splitting the party ... Sowell is in is 80s, I believe, and he is very wise ... but his great age now may be making him more cautious and even timid than he would have been as a younger man. Would he ever have opined thus about someone like Cruz 20 years ago? Just the same, Sowell is much too wise to disregard because of one puzzling opinion.
"So you are all for the Dems to take over and destroy the country."
Gaffer is for no such thing, and that you even entertain the thought in your ridiculous defensiveness, makes you ONE HUNDRED PERCENT WASTE OF BANDWIDTH.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.