I drive around with a custom “Republican Against Bush” bumper sticker.
I hate him as a president, I hate him as a person. I don’t care how many local pastors he fools into following him, he’s a stupid charlatan who believed his bad advice and now tries to ruin the American Experiment.
Are you a Real Republican, who feels betrayed by this Texas-Cletus leader of the party? Do you favor less government overall, instead of what W has actually led to? Do you wish we’d never spent this money on this un-winnable occupation? Do you feel that the political/ religious powers in Iraq will never allow for a democracy, which would “justify” our occupation?
Are you repulsed by someone who can’t admit he made a mistake, ever? Have you decided that he’s not just a rather poor public speaker, but actually kind of dumb?
Join with the Rebel Republicans who refuse to sanction waterboarding and the suspension of habeus corpus for Gitmo prisoners.
Come on, admit that you can’t see yourself voting Democrat, but wish you’d never heard of W.
The big question I have is - can you (as in non-crazy, responsible people) take your party back or will a third party emerge behind Bloomberg that will take the Republican party’s place?
I’m not a Republican, but take heart that there are thousands of like-minded Republicans out west. That southern-style Republicanism doesn’t sit well with the libertarian Republicans around here. Outside of Utah and Idaho and Colorado Springs, George Bush is a hated man. Rank and file Western State Republicans are tearing their hair out right now over the choices they have in the primaries. Their guys (Romney, Guliani, Thompson) are tanking and Huckabee is GWB II to them.
Most of my friends are pretty conservative, and many of them swear they’d never for or a Democrat. But I’m seeing a lot of them finally throwing up their hands over Bush. Not sure they’re ready to vote Dem, but they’re sick of Bush’s version of Conservatism.
And, not that I’m a great speller or anything, but it’s habeas corpus.
I happily join the Republican Rebel Alliance. I remember what the party promised me - smaller government, lower taxes, a strong military against the commies.
What have I gotten? A bloated government, somewhat lower taxes, and a military that someone decided we just had to use.
I am from the semi-libertarian wing of the Republican party who longs for small Federal government, nasty Supreme Court justices who will bitchslap Congress when they overreach and remembers the Founding Fathers, and hardcore local control.
Vote Democrat? Fuck no! Their typical candidates are just as bad in over-spending, over-use of our military in foreign lands, and a desire to rule all from DC. This is not to say that I would not vote for the occassional Demcrat, but their party is not mine either.
I will stay Republican in an attempt to make small changes from within, or in hopes that we will throw the Neo-Con bums out soon.
Oh - my votes in 2000 and 2004 were cast in California, making them irrelevant. I might have voted for Bush the first time (I trusted his advisors at the time), but I certainly did not in round 2.
Hear, hear! Dubya is an embarrassment to the party, the government, the country and pretty much the human race. I’ll admit I voted for him (I’m in Illinois so my vote didn’t count either) but how in the name of Zeus’ bunghole did he manage to fuck up so badly. I’ve often thought of him as the mediocre student who manages to squeak it through the harder classes by relying on cheat sheets, spying on test answers and copying the smarter kids’ homework. He is the epitome of the Peter Principle.
Now I look at the choices available to Republicans. Where is the puking smiley when you need it? Once again it will be an election where people won’t be voting for their candidate but will be voting against the other candidate.
As loony as Perot was (admit it: he was nuttier than a pecan log), at least there was a third choice. We need a strong, charismatic, clean (read: no skeletons) independent candidate to come forward. A Libertarian with charm, wit, intelligence and a plan for the country. But they have to get their name and face out there just as effectively as Perot did but without looking like they just flew over the cuckoo’s nest.
I’m a fellow traditionalist Republican like the OP, I LOATHE Dubya, he’s done more damage to the U.S. both internally and externally in eight years than I ever thought would be possible…
But I just can’t get behind the Democratic candidates either, for reasons well enough known elsewhere here on the board, so I won’t go re-hashing them, the only candidate that even comes close to my views is Ron Paul, and he’s not doing too well…
if it wasn’t for McCain’s stance on the Iraq War, i’d consider him, but…
I was a Republican since before I could vote, up to about 3 years ago, but I turned Democrat because of the Chimp - but mostly because of the fuckhead Republicans who continued to support the Chimp as things went into the toilet. Most of the candidates still won’t say anything against him. I particularly include McCain in this list. My wife, also a Republican all her life, is in the processing of changing her registration.
My neighbor, an NRA loving real conservative, hates the guy’s guts also.
In the '60s what happened to me was called radicalization.
You must be talking about Johnson and Kennedy. Clinton, if anything, under-used the military for fear of being portrayed as interventionist by the Republicans (ironically enough.)
Then again, I’m a pro-interventionist myself, when it comes to human rights, I’d just prefer to do the intervention correctly.
He did??? Bombed Iraq for 4 days. Bombed Serbia for almost 3 months. Lobbed a few missiles at Sudan and Afghanistan, too, IIRC. That’s small-fry compared to Vietnam and Bush’s Iraq debacle, but Clinton was no piker when it came to using the military. You’re right about being criticized by the Republicans, though. He was.
Maybe, just maybe he could have been more aggressive against ObL in Afghanistan, but that would’ve involved some covert ops stuff, not an out-and-out invasion.
Massachusetts Republican checking in. Have been very disappointed with George, but remember what the alternative was - John Kerry. Just when I think I may have to abandon the Republicans I look at what else is out there. Here in Ma. we have just gone through the first year of having a Democrat Governor in about 15 years & the way things are going it will be 1 & out for the Democrats.
I consider myself a fiscal conservative, social moderate & non-religious & would love to see the Repubs move away from issues like abortion(settled) gay marriage(inevitable & not a bad thing) & come up with some real solutions to the problems in our cities. Some of these places are ticking time bombs & the policies of the Democrats make things worse.
He went simultaneously too far for those who would go out of their way to criticize his politics and his strategy, (both of which I’m not the biggest fan of nor the biggest detractor of), and not far enough to get things accomplished (since the Serbian intervention was about 5 years too late, and a couple missiles won’t bring people to the negotiation table or kill targetted people on the ground as hundreds of years of history should tell us).
But screwing up small is better than screwing up big. Of course, up until the present administration Johnson and Kennedy made more of a weighted impact in combined military screwups than every other postwar administration put together.