Well, quite obviously, there aren’t enough values voters either.
Maybe not message board posters, but we left-leaning types have won three out of the last five presidential elections (four of the last five going by popular vote) and completely control congress these days. So maybe we know a thing or two about winning that you could learn from…
Do you mean at a state level? Because remember, the RNC doesn’t actually have any power any more at the federal level.
Very much a federal issue. It is, after all, the Constitution of the United States of America that forbids the teaching of religious dogma (Creationism) in public schools.
Hey, don’t apologize to us. You’re the ones who can’t a presidential election without fluky circumstances.
I would hope that the RNC would take posts like these – stupid, ignorant, pathetic, clutching-at-straws posts – and run with them. We could have decades of Democratic rule.
What’s truly funny is that the substance, “Limited government, cut spending, that kind of thing…” is so lacking in detail and thought, that it betrays the entire failure of the modern conservative movement. Instead of focusing on their ideals and spelling out their ideas, they have become a sad caricature of Rovian politics – attach and destroy without substance.
Hell of a place that’s left us after 8 yrs. Now ask “Regards, Shodan” what his solution is to the current crisis. He’s bankrupt of ideas – just like the Republican Party.
Actually the current Republican party, the one that supported Bush/Cheney for 8 years with barely a question is not on the right on economics. They have outspent government income by a large margin and actually expanded government. They have not had the federal government get less involved in citizen’s personal lives but actually become more intrusive. In practice they took the worst aspects of both parties to make a truly terrible one.
This is very true. There is not close to enough and if they drive away any more of the small government/fiscal conservatives they will be a very marginal party. A party of parts of the South and the Great Plains (and Alaska). I know they have lost a lot of the North East Republicans and look to lose even more if they went with a Rush Windbag style “True Conservative” or put Palin on top of the ticket it 2012.
Jim
My sincere advice to the Rs? Uh … it’s somewhere in the Pit. not appropriate here.
I’d second what many others have pointed out here … that the sun is setting on rich, old, mean, white men. Young people and Hispanics voted about two-thirds D this time. I hope that makes Rove lose sleep. Their numbers are only growing, and they are the future.
And** Rand Rover** suggested that they just have to pander to the evangelicals. It seems to me they got carried away with the pandering, and are now dominated by them. I’m still reading the Newsweek article. This bit struck me this morning…
Originally posted by Newsweek My bolding.:
So basically … when it comes to pleasing R voters, Abortion is THE issue. You can screw around on any issue except that one. You are not just pandering to these people. They are running the show. Actual serious conservatives would be better served to start a new party. The R party is just the Religious Party with some other groups cobbled on the tail end.
I do not expect anything to change. Neither half of the Rs could win without each other. And while they apparently can no longer win even *with *each other … its better than being totally irrelevant.
My guy’s not in the White House. Obama is supposed to know what to do - raise taxes and transfer the money to 95% of us, more bailouts, more government spending on health care, more more more.
You and yours have control of the federal government. Let’s see what you can do. Bush came up with an idea to address Social Security years ago, and the Dems blocked it. Bush proposed a bill to introduce greater oversight of the banking industry years ago, and the Dems blocked it.
Okay, you didn’t want those ideas implemented, and here we are. Now let’s see what Obama and Pelosi and Reid can do. The Dems have had control of Congress for the last two years, and achieved essentially nothing but jack up the deficit. That is blamed on Bush. Fine - three months from now, Bush will be out of politics forever, and the Dems have complete control of the federal government - lock, stock, and barrel.
You want to kvetch over excessive spending for the last eight years? Knock yourself out. You want to do a fuck of a lot more of it, and blame it on Bush when it doesn’t work? Don’t hold your breath looking for sympathy from me.
Hmm…seems to me Bush (and McCain and Obama) supported tossing several hundreds of billions of dollars at Wall Street. Bush presided over the largest expansion of government since the New Deal. Bush started a war on wholly manufactured charges that is costing us over $100 BILLION/year (that alone could pay for universal health care).
Perhaps it escaped your notice but we are in the largest financial crisis since the Great Depression. Unfortunately such a time is not when government can stop spending. To re-energize the economy and stop a collapse the government needs to inject money back into the system (see bailout referenced above). Even the Republicans are on board with that (see above).
Sadly your guy has left the US in a fantastically weak spot to do that. Bush squandered a surplus and grew the federal deficit to never before seen levels. He is spending scads of money on a stupid war that was of his making. That leaves the federal bank account in an awful position to now deal with the economic crisis that faces us.
You write that like merely proposing an idea = Bush good and Dems opposing it = Dems bad.
You need a whole new thread on the problems with Bush’s proposal. Imagine he had gotten what he wanted. People put their retirement into personal account invested on Wall Street.
Whoops! (See financial crisis…retirees would have lost everything and had zero safety net)
True. So suggesting the GOP purge the libertarian leaning voters and go for full on theocracy is equally bad advice.
The GOP is less populist now than they were when the Roc-A-Fella Republicans 
were relevant. Nixon at least promised to end poverty. Bush has recklessly cut taxes particularly on the top marginal rates, gutted institutions designed to serve and protect working Americans, and tried to kill Social Security.
Just my 2sense
What you seem to be saying is that Obama agrees with Bush (and McCain) on how this latest crisis should be handled.
The problem with the rest of your post is the usual two fold flaw [ol][li]Bush isn’t running for office, and[*]Bush is a bad President because he expanded the federal government, and Obama is a good one because he wants to do the same[/ol]Well, OK, so Obama has no new ideas. I can’t say I’m surprised. [/li]
So, we will see how this plays out. If Obama spends money like a drunken sailor, as Bush did, and things continue to go south economically, perhaps the Republicans can do what they should have done back in 2000 - return to fiscal responsiblility. If the Democrats haven’t learned from the Republican’s mistakes, which cost the Republicans the 2006 and 2008 elections, perhaps the Republicans can learn if it costs the Democrats the 2010 and 2012 elections.
Or they agree with Obama.
[quote]
The problem with the rest of your post is the usual two fold flaw [ol][li]Bush isn’t running for office, and[*]Bush is a bad President because he expanded the federal government, and Obama is a good one because he wants to do the same[/ol][/li][/quote]
-
Obama is not running for office either now.
-
You would be taken more seriously if your vitriol for what you deem bad economic policy was directed at the current Republican president as well as at the Dem for doing the same thing (assuming he does the same thing). From you it seems all things Dem are bad and all thing Rep are good.
I will make a suggestion that goes right to the bedrock of conservative principles. Regarding cutting taxes and cutting spending:
Cut spending before you cut taxes.
The Bush Republicans were like little children who demanded their dessert before they ate their vegetables. Tax cuts were absolutely necessary, but spending cuts were always promised for sometime in the future. I no longer think any party can be trusted to cut taxes now, and cut spending later. To restore any credibility, let the GOP vow to cut spending first, then cut taxes in proportion to the spending cuts.
Then again maybe I’m wrong. I mean if Steve Schmidt agrees with me I must be making a mistake!
I proposed this a while back, and got no response. They know very well that it is politically impossible to cut spending as much as they want. They really want to tax cut and spend their way into such gigantic deficits that the government could no longer do anything but defense and the most basic of services. Remember starve the beast? Also remember that they were against the Democratic plan not to cut taxes unless there were equal cuts in spending?
I wish the Dems could have blocked torture as effectively as you claim they blocked this stuff. The Dems didn’t block Bush’s attempt to destroy Social Security - the American people did. Remember, the more he traveled to try to sell the plan, the less support it got. He finally had to admit that it would have done nothing to make Social Security more solvent, and that it would have required massive borrowing to pay for current obligations while putting new SS payments into the accounts. But Bush loves selling our country to China, doesn’t he?
While even if he has succeeded it is too soon for the crash to have hurt too many people, everyone now realizes that the market doesn’t always go up. I’m sure that those ready to retire who find they have to sell some of their 401K portfolio at a big loss are pretty happy that Social Security is safe.
As for the bailout, thanks to Paulson’s unwillingness to put many requirements on what banks do with it, they are hoarding the money or using it to buy other banks. It was supposed to be used to unfreeze the credit markets. If Obama keeps the bailout and forces the banks to actually make loans, then things will improve.
The way out of this mess is jobs, not money for the rich to hoard.
You’ll need to take that up with whoever suggested it.
No, he is (or will be) the President, and is expected to implement the new ideas he claimed to have. Therefore the idea of “Bush has bad ideas” is irrelevant.
No, it doesn’t help. Nobody reads my posts for comprehension, and disagreement with Bush (as I disagree with Obama on many issues) is ever enough - pure, blind hatred is all that is acceptable.
For this to be true, you would have to have examples where I said Bush’s spending was good (and the Democrats’ bad). For instance, that a rising deficit was OK during a Republican administration, but bad if a Democrat was President. It seems the general implication is that spending and a rising deficit are going to cease to be issues when Obama is President.
Would you care to come up with some examples of my saying that the deficit doesn’t matter under Bush, or that I supported his increase in the scope of government?
Shodan, in light of what happened with the Bush administration, do you think it would be a good idea to cut spending first, and then cut taxes in proportion to those spending cuts? Or should we just cut taxes on the promise of spending cuts later on?
Excuse me. I seem to have missed your point in pointing out that, “there aren’t enough values voters either.”
Just my 2sense
Actually, my concern is that America is turning strictly into value-voters. It works like this.
- Take a complicated situation and listen to extremely short comments on it.
- Relate it to some random moral position.
- Make a moral pronouncement.
- When people argue morals, retreat to petty issues. When people argue issues, retreat to morals.
- When things get tough, fall back to “it’s my belief and I’m entitled to it without having to defend it, cuz it’s belief.”
- To complete the circle, rally against moral relativism, so that the tactics of 4 and 5 are solidified, even if moral relativism is a total red herring (see 2).
These people generally argue with wishy-washy faux-relativists who think that just because two people have different preferences that they therefore must be able to get along. They’re like neo-hippies, but it isn’t a left/right thing.
In any case, all anyone can manage to do is discuss morality. Pragmatic solutions based in genuine compromise are totally gone.
And I want them back. I want to see calm, reasoned discourse which can acknowledge that there are different approaches to solving our problems and we can’t know for sure which will work, but we can decide on the most likely one. I’d like changing one’s mind to be an indication of wisdom, not wishy-washyness. I also want world peace and a pony, although I’d like to think that calm, reasoned discourse could lead to the former.
I’m a centerist by nature and a fan of capitalism. If the Republican committee wants to get my vote back, here’s the biggest thing they can do: stop telling blatant, obvious lies. Let me give you a few examples.
Several times during the past couple of months, while I was watching the morning news and getting ready to go to work, I’d see an ad in which Obama talked about his plans and referred viewers to his website for more information. During the very next commercial break, I’d see a McCain ad saying Obama had no plans. As an ordinary, none-too-awake person, my response to that is, “What do you mean he doesn’t have plans? I just heard him talking about them.”
The whole “Obama pals around with terrorists because he associates with Bill Ayers” meme is another example of this. I looked into it and it seemed to be nonsense to me. What got me angry, though, was reading Sarah Palin’s response to the debunking of this whole business. She said she wasn’t going to believe the AP and continue to say Obama pals around with terrorists.
Finally, as was touched on earlier, the whole idea that legalizing gay marriage will force churches to perform them. I got married fairly recently. My church could have refused to marry me if I didn’t use the service in the Book of Common Prayer, let alone if I were gay. They also required at least three mandatory counseling sessions, six if one of the people getting married had already been divorced, and this is a notoriously liberal church. If they can refuse to marry you because you want to write your own vows, I can’t see why they’d be forced to marry you because you’re gay. Saying churches will be forced to marry homosexuals sounds like another blatant, obvious lie to me.
The Rovian scare tactics, bullying, and general meanness I’ve seen from the Republican Party over the past few years have turned me from someone who agrees with some of their policies to someone who’s actively fed up with them and dislikes them at times. I had legitimate concerns about America’s going to war in Iraq six years ago. Because of those concerns and my opposition to the war, I was branded a traitor and accused of not loving America by some people.
Speaking of false characterizations, I would appreciate it if the Republican Party would stop immigrant bashing. Most of the first generation immigrants I know are conservative. My own mother voted Democratic for the first time this election, although I think Dad still voted for the Republicans. Immigrants aren’t just poor Hispanics and refugees. They’re engineers, doctors, and other professionals and saying we don’t love America and want to destroy it is, in some ways, the worst kind of slander. I love America so much I went through several months of bureaucratic hassle to become an American. Yes, there are illegal immigrants here. I don’t know what percentage of immigrants in America are legal and what percentage are illegal, but considering what illegal immigrants went through to get here and remain here, I think accusing them of not loving America is also a stretch. This spring, a Republican candidate for office was running ads saying he thought people who wanted to become citizens should be required to read, write and speak English. I saw a similar sentiment from someone in the Pit recently. That’s a fair enough idea, but here’s my problem with it. That’s already a requirement. Saying you want to make it a requirement isn’t technically a lie, but it does come across as foolish or uneducated.
Finally, as [b[Friar Ted** suggested, I’d like the Republican Party to stop saying they want to make abortion illegal. (Thank you for saying that, sir.) I agree that abortion is immoral, but I also know there are circumstances in which there are no right choices. I read that a woman is four times more likely to have an abortion if her income is below the poverty level. If we really want to reduce abortion in America, and, as Father Ted pointed out, it has been dropping, why don’t we do something about the circumstances which lead a woman to consider having one? Requiring that employers provide paid maternity leave would help, even though that is more government interference in business. On the other hand, I once worked with a woman who was aware that taking unpaid time off for maternity leave was just going to push her and her husband further into debt and the prospect was daunting. Personally, I think some sort of universal health insurance would also help reduce the number of abortions, but I’d settle for some form of free prenatal care and obstetric care for those who can’t afford it. If that universal health care included free birth control, so much the better, although I’m not not asking the Republican Party to support that.
Look, I like the idea of fiscal responsiblity a lot and the idea of minimal government interference. Who was it who said, “The government which governs best governs least?” Twenty years ago, I was willing to give supply-side economics a chance. I don’t see it as having worked. I’ve seen the rich get richer while things have gotten tougher for the lower and middle classes. I strongly support small businesses and I think they’re an important part of the American economy and a vital part of the American dream. I also know from working for some of them that small businesses aren’t perfect and can be just as unfair to their workers as any large corporation. Even so, I think government should support and encourage them.
If the Republican Party would give me reduced or eliminated Federal deficits, something I did not see under Reagan or the current administration, and encouragement for small businesses, and no unneccessary government interference, I’d be a lot more inclined to vote for them. If they lie to me and try to scare me, I’ll continue to not only not vote for them, but actively dislike them. It is possible for reasonable men and women to disagree about what the best cource of action for a country is, yet work together for the benefit of that country. I’d like to see that happen again.