Posted on 11/02/2014 5:33:59 AM PST by Kaslin
Look, I’m not going to lie to you – your vote matters. But let’s be honest, there are Republicans on the ballot who aren’t very conservative. Most of them don’t agree with me on everything and surely don’t agree with you on everything. In fact, many of them are downright awful.
So if you find yourself in a state where the Senate race is close, and you don’t like some of the things the Republican candidate stands for – just stay home.
A message must be sent: We conservatives could not beat all the people we don’t like in the primary, so we’re not going to vote.
That’ll show the establishment. That’ll show the country. That’ll show the future.
So if you’re a conservative in Colorado, don’t vote for Cory Gardner. If you’re in Iowa, show that Joni Ernst what’s what! Live in North Carolina? Who does that Thom Tillis think he is, anyway? From Kentucky? Let Mitch McConnell know who’s boss! Georgia? David Perdue? I don’t think so. Kansas? Teach that Pat Roberts a lesson! Live in New Hampshire? Scott Brown – yuck, am I right?
Look, if conservatives don’t draw a line in 2014, when will it be drawn?
Just because tea party and conservative candidates couldn’t win a majority in primary challenges doesn’t mean they aren’t the majority. It was dirty tricks and the establishment that screwed you … everyone knows that. So show the establishment you won’t take not getting your way anymore.
Honestly, what’s the point of voting for a candidate who agrees with you a majority of the time? Don’t vote. Let someone who you agree with on nothing win, and then next time – in six years – that person comes up for reelection, maybe the Republican Party will come to its senses and let you get your way.
I mean, what would be better for the country – Harry Reid or Mitch McConnell as Senate Majority Leader? Obviously Harry Reid. Mitch McConnell is a squish on a few things, wouldn’t run blocker for President Obama and wouldn’t be a rubberstamp for any Supreme Court nominee, or any court, for that matter. Where’s the lesson for the establishment for that?
Sure, I know, the country will have a court system packed with activist judges, and the president will use his magic pen and phone to grant amnesty to millions of illegal aliens and who knows what else, but principle will be maintained. That’s a moral victory, right? Those count for something in politics, right? They have to count for something…
Of course, they count for nothing. Yet that nothing is what many millions of Americans, including many of you (judging by comments on other columns in which I’ve dealt with this topic), are prepared to vote for by stubbornly refusing to vote for a candidate who isn’t “your candidate.”
Sorry, your candidate lost, and your remaining choice sucks. I get it, I’ve been there. But so what! Get over yourself. Everyone who voted in the primary and your choice lost. It happens. It’s part of life. So you’re just going to quit?
If you want to right the ship of state, how did you think that would work? Your one chosen candidate would somehow undo half a century of constitutional disregard in 20 minutes? Of course not. It’s all going to be incremental. Nothing this big turns on a dime. But before it can get any better it has to stop getting worse.
Harry Reid remaining majority leader in the Senate means things continue to get worse. Barack Obama packing the courts with like-minded judges means things will continue to get worse.
There will come a point of no return, where we will tip over that ledge from which there is no coming back. If you stay home, or you cast a “message” vote for some third party nothing-burger, that’s what you’re voting for. That’s what you’ll get, and that’s the country you’ll be leaving for your kids to inherit.
A vote for anyone other than the Republican, no matter who that Republican is, is a vote for Harry Reid and Barack Obama.
You want to purge the party? Do it from a position of strength. I’m all for a battle royale for the soul of the Republican Party, but not until AFTER the Democrats are vanquished.
Tuesday, go vote. Vote for the Republicans. Send a message that you are not a moody, unreliable person who will take your ball and go home if you don’t get your way, but that you accept your party’s primary decision. It’s a decision you don’t like. It’s a decision you’ll fight in the next primary if necessary. But for the good of the country, you’ll live in “now” and work for the future.
Anything else is a vote for progressives, and anyone who does that is no conservative.
I have some kin that were in the upper levels of both W Bush campaigns. I was surprised how much they knew about Free Republic back in the 90’s.Yes they were working here and everywhere else too! So is the opposition.
That said, a solid conservative co-worker announced in 2008 that McCain was not pure enough! He would vote third party to send a message!!!
After I went over the math, he said that in four years everyone would flock to the conservatives!!
He was deeply saddened his plan failed in 2012! I still remind him at every chance.
The trolls, the paid interlopers and some that must have bumped their head very hard; they all post here at Free Republic.
And you know this ... how?
Perot voters gave us a Clinton who barely made it into office BOTH TIMES. If not for Perot voters, Clinton would well have been elected by a majority, Clinton would have been more powerful politically, and the Republican Revolution might have failed.
But you keep your eyes squeezed shut, Ditter. Feel the force. It's been working so well for the past 20 years.
Republican -- they don't call it the Stupid Party for nothing. Stupid to voluntarily vote themselves into government tyranny/slavery on the pretense they're voting "against" it.
An advantage for who? Rinos are not automatically entitled to a vote. Ergo, they are not ‘disenfranchised’ by what they don’t get or would not have gotten anyway.
If the GOP cant run a winner that can attract voters, that’s their fault. If they lose, it’s their fault. They are not entitled to squat. Blame their RINO for being unworthy of a vote.
I knew people in Ft Worth who knew Perot and according to them he didn't want to be president he wanted to keep GHWBush from being president.
He hated Bush! Remember how he bailed out with a phony excuse? Perot is scum and if you voted for him you are an idiot.
non-sequitor response.
You are apparently still looking for utopia Norm.
Yes, it would be great to have a society that looked more like it did back in the 50’s - but that not going to happen. We have the political leaders we have because of a generally amoral electorate. And short of an act of God, that is not going to change.
We’re still left with my original premise: if you want to help conservatives, give them a team they can work with. A squish rino is more likely to be swayed than a hard-core leftist - it’s very simple math.
And perhaps we wouldn’t be so far gone if over the last 30 years so many “pure-blood” conservatives didn’t pitch a fit, do meaningless write-ins, or stay home.
Give conservatives a chance!
The above line simply isn't true. A vote for whichever candidate is a vote not for any of the other candidates. So, if someone votes Libertarian or some other 3rd party, then their vote is recorded for that party.
That said, I don't think it is necessarily a sound strategy if that is what it's intended to be. Romney demonstrated the worst in strategic thinking when he wrote off social conservatives and went after moderate liberals instead. It was a big, fat fail. So, in elections, strategies fail or they succeed. It's seldom that one sees some kind of middle ground. A moral victory suggests an otherwise fail.
What to say about the strategy of voting 3rd party in protest as a strategy? What is the goal of the strategy? The most obvious is the hope that the losing party will see the electoral failure of their rejection of principle and amend their ways and return to their core principles.
There is only one measure of the success of that strategy, and that is results. Has that happened or hasn't it? If it hasn't then there are 2 choices that I see: (1) A movement to take over the party, or (2) moving one's registration in actuality to a different and/or new party.
And if that doesn't lead to a return to core principles, what remains is becoming "a voice in the wilderness crying 'prepare the way of the Lord'."
I’m the guy telling people to vote for conservatives. Your lack of understanding the situation is your problem.
I’m going to vote for the most conservative candidate available.
The reality is that perhaps 5, certainly less than 10 people in DC are remotely conservative. The Republican party is fully RINO and hates us. You don’t fix that. you leave it and form/join with others like you and fight them as you would a Democrat. The cards will fall where they may.
But we can’t ‘fix’ this. And we all need to stop deluding ourselves the GOP will come around or that ‘we’ will hold feet to fire. Thats what all these rinobots said every election and screamed whenever anyone tried to.
GW Bush was an imperfect candidate and president, his “compassionate conservatism” annoyed me because it implied that conservatism isn’t almost always the more compassionate course in real terms. It signaled his discomfort with conservatism. He spent far too much energy reaching across the aisle for support, in fact a look at his budgets shows he was buying what support he got from the other side of the aisle. And got nothing from them in terms of respect.
On a human level, I love the guy. As a president I am grateful it was he rather than the clown prince who was in office when the jihadists hit the Twin Towers. And otherwise, conservatives had to fight him every step of the way. And because its hard to fight one of your own, we wound up watching while the budget balooned far beyond what was demanded by the war. I always assumed he was purchasing Democrat support for the war by rubber-stamping everything they demanded.
So, were we right to vote for Bush over Gore, with all his flaws? A thousand times yes. With all his flaws we were fortunate to have a moral man in office when the Towers came down.
So would you rather fight a GW, who is trying to do right, or a Gore? Would you rather fight a Romney, who or an Obama?
I can see where this is all going. The Jeb Bush crowd are prepping us for their guy, who essentially holds us in contempt, trying to shame us into supporting their guy. If you put him up against Hillary, and factor in the possibility of another 911, who would we rather have in office when the bad stuff happens? Clearly not her.
But wouldn’t we rather have someone in office who doesn’t hold us in contempt?
The next few months on FR are going to be non-stop war between the Jeb proxies and the Hillary proxies, alternately shaming us into supporting him, versus demands that purity requires us to sit out the election for the sake of principle.
No because thats a battle not worth fighting. Anyone stupid enough to vote for Jeb deserves what they get. Same for Mitt. When that starts, you’ll have clear decks. People that stupid arent worth any fight at all.
the rest of us will simply be working to elect a conservative and the others can do whatever.
Well, it happens during every primary. What's different?
Then you have no hope at all to change things?
It is not acceptable to me to have no strategy at all. It isn’t. Must be in my genetic code or something.
I do not see giving up. Giving up is anathema to me. You never give up.
I know, some of it is annoying, some of the attacks are over the top. Still, I enjoy it, I think the back and forth is valuable. Just the process of putting my thoughts into words and reading the responses helps me to crystallize my thinking. Its a process, but I can bounce an idea off people here and there really isn't any place else where I can do this. I think in another era you'd do it at the barber shop, but those days are gone.
If only FR had a barber's chair.
Read this thread. These are the ‘principled’ people we have to work with. All RINO all the time. Preach holding feet to the fire and screaming when anyone tries to election after election.
Hope has to be based on something otherwise what differentiates us from Obama HopeandZombies? these people WANT Amnesty. they are voting for the people that promised it. They WANT obamacare. They demand we reelect the people that funded it three times. Thats full support for both.
They actually bitched for 500 posts about people sticking to conservative principles. We can all read it. Lies, Unicorn math. they even argue over how elections work.
They are welcome to their RINO utopia. As for me, I will vote conservative.
The time will come when the people will rise up in a great wave and destroy the citadel of Baal and all his minions. This is not a nation to be trifled with.
My objective is a conservative victory and a turn of this ship of state in the direction of the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence.
How do I get there?
Same way the founders did. Elect the very principled people the leftists here hate so much. It could not be easier. Stop doing what 30 years proved did not work and go back to what did.
Reagan did it. But today the instant gratification crowd is too cowardly to make hard choices and take even one hit. They want a miracle and will vote RINO until one happens.
As I said, look at this thread. They won’t fight for any conservative. All they do is find excuses to justify another RINO vote in yet another election. The Romney thread has people making excuses for Jeb already.
Oh surrreeeee...These people believe in conservatism. Yup.
Frauds. Cheshire frauds. Their words and actions show it.
I must be reading more of it or something. I also think we’re about out of time as a country.
I used to camp this country from almost every compass point. You know what? I’d be afraid to take my family camping now, as I wouldn’t be absolutely certain we’d be safe anymore.
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