My visceral disgust with George W. Bush is largely what drove me away from the Republican party although I am still a registered Republican. Obama is the current bright spark and most of the more intellectual Republicans I knew have fallen silent and contemplative while the not-so intellectual Republicans sound like conspiracy kooks or whining children in their attacks on Obama.
The neo-cons, where the young Republican Turks were supposed to arising from are (rightfully) seen as disgraced incompetents at this point. Who the hell is going to lead the Republican party of of this morass? What bright spark can the Republicans fall in love with who will help lead them out of this wilderness?
Well, about the only thing she has going for her is that she is charismatic, a feature that the Republican party has been sorely lacking since 1986 or so, when we all found out that Ronnie really was a doddering fool with Alzheimers.
I mean, it’s not like they couldn’t notice that Clinton was charismatic as all hell, and that Obama was too.
The problem isn’t that it’s too difficult for them to find someone, but rather, it’s too easy.
Republicans fell hard for George W. Bush, nominating him twice. Now they say that he wasn’t a true conservative. There’s a lot of truth in that; he spent like a drunken sailor, got us involved in two land wars in Asia, and created a whole new Medicare benefit.
So my question for true, principled conservatives is, what steps have you taken to make sure your next nominee doesn’t do that all over again?
Do the majority of Republicans consider you a RINO?
I’ve been told by Republican party officials I’ve met (state of Illinois & Wisconsin) that Republican politicians I have some respect for are RINOs. (Susan Collins, Tom Petri, Richard Lugar, Olympia Snowe).
The only way the GOP can be saved from gibbering insanity is if somebdy with power and authority in the party is willing to disavow the nutjobs and reorient the party as the small government, libertarian, economic minimalists they are supposed to be. Somebody has to tell the Glenn Beck wing to fuck off once and for all, or the party is going to crack in two.
Christ I don’t what I am at this point. I’m 51 and I started paying more attention to politics in my 30’s. I was disgusted with Democrats during Clinton and disgusted with the Republicans during GWB. I really just want rational, responsible governance, but I recognize that the middle way rarely wins out IRL and people who take a hard, inflexible stand generally get their way in US politics.
I joined the Republicans because I thought they were the rational “grownup” party and yet they keep making insane decision after insane decision politically and strategically. When Dole was nominated (who the fu*k is going to vote for old man Dole? Are you nuts!) is when my disillusionment with the Republicans as the rational party started to accelerate, but Bush’s antics just popped the cork out of the bottle.
All things said I still consider myself a Republican spiritually, but I think Obama is the best President I’ve seen in my lifetime so far. He may screw up royally at some point, but so far his attitudes are largely in resonance with mine.
I’m 30 and the idea of the GOP being the ‘rational grownup’ party is about as strange as telling me that short people make the best basketball players.
I have only been following politics for 5-10 years but I have never known the contemporary GOP to be anything other than protofascist, anti-intellectual, anti-science, over emotional, dogmatic, indifferent to consequences, hair triggered, etc. I really have no idea what its like to see the GOP in a positive, mature light.
I tried reading some of Barry Goldwater’s stuff, and I know he hated the current GOP. But I haven’t seen any real redeeming characteristics in the current GOP. I guess that is why people in my generation supported Kerry by 10 points, supported dems in 2006 by 22 points and supported Obama by 34 points.
Don’t fall in love with any candidate. You should vote with your brain not your heart. Election campaigns should be viewed as job applications not as dating.
I suppose you could say Michelle Bachman is kinda hot, in a Jack Nicholson with an ax at an isolated hotel kinda way. And she imagines that she might be on the national ticket in 2012.
If the OP can’t tell us where the Republican future is, who will? The cracked nut wing of the Republican party took over in 2000 and took office in 2001 and absolutely demonstrated what they would do if given power. The only President to succeed in balancing the budget in the post war years is Clinton, a moderate Democrat. We have, as someone noted, two open ended land wars in Asia, economic shambles and Glenn Beck out front.
Let’s face it, the Republicans and their redneck idiot base, which now controls the party, will stay solidly within 25 to 30 percentage points of the polling public. But with Cool Hand Barry in charge, it is more likely that the Democrats will become the conservative party until a new party rises on the left. And as long as the rednecks keep their base, disciplined lefties like me will not press for a liberal party or organized liberal wing. Unless Obama blows it in an unforeseen way, people like the OP are going to start becoming Democrats.
That’s the meme I grew up with (I’m the same age as you,) but then all the Republicans I respected got marginalized by the rest of the party. Reagan’s ascendency made me an independent, But I thought Bush 41 was a hopeful new beginning. Then his choice of Quayle showed me it wasn’t a ‘grownup’ party.
The 1996 offering of Dole as a “moderate republican” made me realize I couldn’t go back there. Bush 43 showed me I wouldn’t be welcome there even if I did return.
I don’t see how a Pubbie candidate that I could vote for can emerge from the current base of the party.
Actually, becoming Democrats is the best strategy for moderate Republicans. Democrats are so disorganized that anyone not drooling from the mouth with the blood of the poor and underprivileged still dripping from his fingers can appear as a Moderate Democrat. The left half of the party has no other option. They must either vote Democratic, or not vote at all.
A serious effort to for Rinos to become Dinos and move the Democratic party to the right is far more likely to move fiscally conservative, constitutionally constrained government out of the realm of complete fantasy. And if they do, the RNC will obligingly snuggle up to the Right, and so thoroughly screw themselves that a new balance will emerge.
A gun totin Democrat military vetran who wants the Nation to care for its own people enough not to ship them out to protect corporations, and sees that compromising freedom is not the way to defend it is likely to gain a lot of traction among the aging hippie base that currently funds the Democratic party.
It would take twenty more years for the true left to get organized. Organized is not their strong suit.
Ugh. No, that would make “constitutionally constrained government” into a fantasy. After decades of sliding to the Right there isn’t any farther for the Democrats to go before turning themselves into the kind of neo-fascists the Republicans have become.