So let me get it straight:
If you vote Republican, you’re going to get bigger government. Might as well vote Democrat.
If you try to pull the Republican party back to its core principles, you’ll marginalize it with extremists. Might as well vote Democrat.
If you try and start a third party, you’ll split the right and lose. Might as well vote Democrat.
Is that about it?
:dubious: Wait a moment, now. Libertarianism is not the GOP’s “core principles.” Neither major American party has any “core principles,” really, in the sense you’re using the term; both are very old institutions – the oldest political parties in the world, in fact, with the possible exception of the British Tories – and they have changed their ideological makeup many times since they were formed; and they have always been multi-ideological big-tent coalitions in any case. In short, libertarians have no better claim than Newt Gingrich or Mitt Romney have to speak for the “real” GOP.
You know any authentic fiscal conservatives? Where? All I see are a bunch of guys who hate Obama and gays and abortion and love Jesus and guns and torture.
The conservative movement nowadays has no room for people who want to cut spending, and hasn’t for the last 8 years. You’re like Charlie Brown, sure that this time the Republicans really mean it about cutting spending.
And what’s it been saying? Got any specific quotes from anyone notable?
I mean, sure, lefties (including me) are looking forward to helping Nutmeggers get a Senator who’s coming from the same place politically that most of them are. (That’s what representative democracy is all about.) But that’s not until 2012.
In the meantime, pretty much everyone on the left that I read would be happy to let Joe mouth off however he wanted, as long as he doesn’t join any GOP filibusters.
And we’re talking about a guy here who campaigned for McCain and other Republicans in 2008, and plans on campaigning for more Republicans in 2010. (I don’t see Olympia Snowe campaigning for Democrats.) But hell, we’d put up with that active disloyalty, if he’d just not join in GOP-led filibusters.
Some attack machine, huh?
Feel free to tell me what I’m missing. But generalities about how people are attacking Joe don’t count. Show me the actual attacks.
I have. What are the sorts of things you’re calling “attacks”? And what constitutes this “machine” you speak of, other than perhaps “No U”?
The evidence for that being, well, what? The GOP has been pushing this idea that they stand for small government for quite some time, and they’ve been increasingly repudiated for quite some time as well - as you’ve noticed, right?
Think about that just a little more. What *are *principles if they are not what guides your actions?
“You are what you repeatedly do.” - Aristotle, as quoted by Shaquille O’Neal
This morning KOS had some nice figures on the historic voter leanings of NY-23:
Hoffman ought to win handily, and that should firm up opposition to moderates such as Crist. Looks like we may be seeing a balanced budget ammendment come up in congress before too many more years.
This would be representative of the recent drumbeat on Lieberman.
This suddenly became an issue for Salon after Lieberman vowed to filibuster against a public option.
Your mileage may vary on whether the sudden less-than-positive interest in Lieberman consitutes an attack.
Please show me where a true, walking-the-talk conservative has been repudiated, or voted out because of his/her conservatism.
Perhaps I should just reserve my answer for Tuesday night, when three conservative Republicans (it appears) will win major races in states or districts that Obama won handily a year ago. (Va., N.J., NY-23)
Perhaps you are right, that Republicans have for so long not lived up to the ideal of what many Republicans want to believe the party is, that they are something else.
But in the current climate of huge spending and government expansion (that I freely admit pre-dates Obama, but that he’s taken and run with), a conservative message it’s going to resonate. And to the extent that Republicans don’t walk the walk on fiscal conservatism, I’d expect people who historically align themselves with Republicans to increasingly seek more conservative alternatives. Hence you get a Hoffman.
What baffles me is how many of you see those people as “the loons,” “the whack-jobs,” “the crazy people.” It’s a natural, logical reaction to the way government is heading, whether you agree with it or not.
Except they didn’t line up behind Hoffman because of freaking fiscal issues! They lined up because Hoffman was pro-life.
Yeah, you’re going to see some primary challenges against moderate Republicans. But they won’t be over fiscal issues, but abortion and gays and the UN and coddling terrorists.
So yeah, you’re going to see more conservative alternatives, as long as you ignore fiscal issues. If you think there’s going to be net movement towards fiscal conservatism in the Republican caucus, you’re dreaming.
It certainly does. You might also consider that much of the impatience with him that you see more directly reflects impatience with Reid for coddling someone who is so interested in undermining the efforts of the party he wants to caucus with, and so much more interested in his own ego than in the nation or the CT electorate that now regrets sending him back to DC.
As soon as you give us some examples of “true conservatives”, or even some explanation of what to most Americans is “true conservatism”. Perhaps we can get the Scotsman stuff out of the way right up front, too, can we?
I do recall asking for some evidence of that, not just a repeat of your profession of faith.
What “logic”? What “nature”, for that matter? Yes, it’s reactionary, but reactionism is defined by being simply opposed to (and frightened by) the real world that the majority has chosen to progress with, not by its reflecting any sort of logic or principle. A position that is derived only from emotion, baser emotion at that, and denial is fairly called by those names. The only thing keeping them from being ignored entirely, as they should, is their numbers and their loudness.
The U.S. government is heading, in a very hesitant, foot-dragging way, with lots of kicking and screaming and obstruction and pullback at every step, in the general direction of a level of public services and welfare that is normal for a modern industrial democracy. Why is the teabaggers’ reaction to that a “natural, logical” one? Is everybody out of step but Sammy?!
You could be right:
Police Called To NY-23 Polling Sites
I’m not seeing anything about fiscal responsibility activists turning out today.
Go, splitters, go!
This is nice too:
10 jokes about Joe Lieberman & his threat to filibuster any health care bill which includes a public option
But let’s not forget that Holy Joe has not actually been a Democrat for several years now. He still caucuses with the fools, but he isn’t a Democrat. That makes attacks on him an extra-party matter, rather than a sign of internal fighting.
And the circular firing squad pauses to reload . . .
I’ve clicked on both links, and it isn’t even clear to me what you’re referring to.
Would it trouble you to quote a key passage or two?
And JFTR, Ron Reagan is just some bozo who’s famous because his father was. If he’s ‘representative’ of anything on the left, then Limbaugh and Beck are the right. Both of them have created their own followings, and millions of people pay attention to them. Hardly anyone notices what Ron Reagan says.
Making up a bunch of black-helicopter fairy tales the moment a Dem is in the White House, and passing them off as truth, is a “natural, logical reaction” to anything?
These must be new definitions of nature and logic that I’ve up to now been unfamiliar with.
That’s inaccurate. Hoffman’s resonant message has been, and I quote: “I want to tell Washington: No more bailouts. No more taxes. No more trillion dollar deficits.”
The pro-life/pro-choice dynamic is always going to be there, and those blocs are going to support who they support. But an assertion that Hoffman isn’t rising in NY-23 on fiscal issues and through his saying he’ll “take on the Pelosi agenda in Washington” every other sentence out of his mouth is missing the self-evident.
You don’t know what a fiscal conservative is? Lower taxes, controlled spending, less government regulation, generally touting free market principles?
I can recall people being voted out of office for NOT being fiscally conservative. I can’t recall any being voted out because they weren’t spending enough taxpayer money or expanding government enough.
And I provided poll numbers earlier.
Also, think of what many here might call “astroturf, violent teabagger mobs with guns strapped to their backs” as evidence of some people’s dissatisfaction with the direction Obama and Pelosi on fiscal issues and the role of the federal government.
You are free to diminish the motivations of the majorities opposed to our current levels of government spending and what’s planned for health care reform as you see fit. The poll numbers are what they are – and they have been since at least July. They’ve been provided earlier in this thread.
Obama won on a charisma vote and a protest vote. Now that he’s trying to implement his vision, he can’t get anything passed. Even among Democrats.
I guess that’s my “profession of faith,” but we’ll see how today’s votes and 2010 turn out. Not to mention whether health care reform passes in the forms in which it exists now, cap-and-trade, etc.
That’s what you choose to see and focus on. As if it’s because a Democrat is in the chair that this is happening.
Click on the Gallup link provided by me above.
Again, it’s not a matter of which side is right or wrong.
It’s that a fairly significant and vehement opposition to the level of spending and government expansion that’s being attempted under Obama is a predictable reaction.
They ignored the most massive expansion of government and most profligate spending in modern history under Bush. They weren’t out there teabagging each other and painting Hitler mustaches on Bush. Now that Obama is trying to stop the bleeding, they decide to blame him for the headwound?
It’s got nothing to do with Obama’s economic policies (which these bozo have no understanding of anyway. There’s absolutely no way they could tell you what they are). All that’s just a pretense, and not one they even work very hard to maintain.