Possible 3rd Party Forming on the Right?

Great Debates
121

That may be the case, but they need to find a voice either as a group or through proper representation. All I hear when sitting across the table from Conservatives is fear and a lot of anger, and that mostly in conveniently pre-digested sound bites from Fox or Limbaugh.

But even when you state their concerns as quoted, I don’t really understand where the fear is coming from. What regulations are being proposed that would kill their small business? If your work force consist of 20-50 people, is there really a danger of unionization? How does the proposed health care reform plans ‘take away’ existing health care plans? None of the conservatives that I’ve attempted to engage seems to be able to articulate responses to these questions without invoking the canned “government take-over of health care” argument or Socialism.

Many individual freedoms were been sacrificed in the name of security, and that happened on someone else’s watch. Local authority over federal authority sounds too much like a return to the ‘mob rule’ days of the South and I CAN’T understand why anyone would want to get back to that. Low taxes are great, but the quality of life that we take for granted has a price tag on it and it needs to be paid for by everyone. What ‘you earn’ is measured like profit earned by any business: operating cost (payroll, facilities, operational expenditures, etc.) must be subtracted from revenue to determine profit. There is an operating cost for the quality of life that we have in this country and we all pay for it by means of taxes.

Honestly, with the exception of the healthcare industry corporations, there seems to be a deafining silence from big business in much of this dialog. I hear a lot of “politicians” and “talking heads” defending free-markets and maligning government intrusion into it, but that has mostly been limited to the financial sector and healthcare.

122

Here’s a datum concerning the domination of the GOP by the crazies:

Here’s the sort of normally cost-free token gesture a party can make to a group whose votes it might eventually want. But nobody from the Senate GOP caucus was willing to make that gesture.

Maybe Sam can come up with some other explanation for this, besides the obvious: that the Senate Republicans are more afraid of offending an increasingly nativist right wing of their party, than they are afraid of losing Hispanic votes.

123

http://www.watertowndailytimes.com/article/20091025/NEWS03/310259942

124

Mitch McConnell, Senate Minority Leader:the public option could kill you.

It’s not just teabaggers, Sam. McConnell’s not some wild-eyed radical by GOP standards; he’s the sort of Republican who wakes up in the morning, thinking about how he’s going to keep the big-money boys happy today. If he’s saying this sort of shit (and it’s not the first time, IIRC) then the whole party is.

You can’t get to the right of these guys without running into Lyndon LaRouche.

125

Haven’t heard from Sam in over two days now.

Will this be yet another thread he just kinda checks out of when things don’t go his way?

126

New York District 23 is a two-man race now…literally, Scozzafava drops out.

127

Hm. Interesting. Don’t think there’s enough time to take Scozzafava off the ballot, though.

128

Is there some reason the Republicans couldn’t have just had a primary to decide on who their candidate would be? Seems to be the same effect in the end, but not as messy.

129

Hoffman is not a Republican (no matter whether certain Republicans endorse him), but a member of the Conservative party.

130

Considering the election is on Tuesday, I would say not.

131

Yes, the only actual Republican up for election in what has traditionally been a Republican district has now cut and run.

132

Yes he is. The Conservative party came to Hoffman after the Republican county chairman in NY 23 picked Scozzafava. Hoffman was a contender for the GOP spot but didn’t even make to the final round when they picked Scozzafava. He even describes himself as a Republican:

Even if Hoffman wins, which is very likely now, this is real bad news for the GOP. This race was their chance to abandon catering to the fearful and the hateful and run a candidate that would appeal to all the moderates who’ve run away from their party. They picked someone like that in Scozzafava and the Tea Baggers were able to revolt so badly that she quit. Kudos to the Tea Baggers for their victory but dragging the GOP even further to the right is just going to keep alienating normal people and keep losing elections, even if they do successfully retain this very conservative district.

This is how the right wing has been characterizing Scozzafava:

If you can’t win an election without appeasing people who seriously believe that someone like Scozzafava is a radical ultraleftist, how can you ever hope to be relevant serious national party?

133

Well with Dede giving up the ghost today it is a great victory for conservatism and probably for the bank account of Dede as well. I wonder how much she sold out for?

134

If she had money, she’d still be in the race. She said the drop off in fundraising is why she wasn’t able to answer charges made against her.

135

Maybe that was the blood price she sold out for: they agreed to pay her debts.

136

Why would the Republicans bail on their own candidate? More likely she bailed on them.

OTOH, if the Pubs attempt to co-op this Hoffman guy, it’s a real sign the this election os a pawn in an internal power play. The neocons and ultrconservatives have no real interest in leaving the party. They want the brand name, and would rather drive out the moderates and make THEM form a new party to the left of the Pubs.

IMO of course.

137

Ahh, thank you for the clarification. In answer to the question regarding a Republican primary, my answer still stands, although it’s certainly deficient.

138

NRCC Officially Endorses Conservative Party’s Hoffman In NY-23

I’m not sure what this fiscal sanity Boehner and friends are talking about is, must be some new direction for the party?
It certainly seems that the internal war is in full swing today.

139

Just what do you think isn’t going my way? Hoffman will likely win NY-23 now. I started this thread saying that this was a possibility, and lots of people chimed in that it was’t going to happen.

The thread then broke down into yet another echo chamber of lefties going on about how horrible it was that the Republicans aren’t lefties themselves and that the Tea Party people are all a bunch of mouth-breathing reactionary troglodytes, and that the path to the Republican’s future is to vote for people like Scozzafava, who is a Democrat in anything but name.

Sorry, I’m not buying it. I know lots of ‘Tea Partiers’. They aren’t Birthers or crazy racist nuts. They’re sending a message to the Republicans that if they don’t stop putting special interests and campaign contributors ahead of the limited government principles Republicans are supposed to stand for, they’ll support candidates who will. Good for them.

I’ve said many times that Conservatives have to shed the crazies and stop fighting losing battles. But that doesn’t mean abandoning the core principle of limited government. It means dropping the religious right which wants to turn every issue into a battle between God and the forces of evil, and becoming serious advocates for serious limited government policies.

To me, it looks like the Tea Partiers are moving in that direction. Of course right now it’s a broad coalition of everyone who hates what the Democrats are doing, and that includes a fair number of nutbars and the religious right as well. But I’ve been watching carefully what the movers and shakers in that movement are doing and who they are, and they’re not the wackos you think.

One of my main points in the OP is that the people who kicked off Hoffman’s rise by endorsing him were not your usual gaggle of social conservatives. There wasn’t a James Dobson or even a Mike Huckabee in sight. In fact, those people are sticking with the establishment Republicans. It was people like Steve Forbes, who put economic issues front and center.

Here, if you want to see what the core of the Tea Party looks like and stay informed as to what they’re talking about, try these blogs:

Instapundit
PajamasTV
Bill Whittle
Roger L. Simon
Big Government
Big Hollywood

I’m sure you’ll find lots to object to on those blogs. What you won’t find are militia types, anti-evolutionists, racists, birthers, or any of the other completely wacked out righties.

What you’ll find is mostly people broadly sympathetic to libertarianism, or at least more in that tradition than in the social conservative tradition.

And you might want to check out CATO’s analysis of the latest Gallup survey. 23% of the country now considers itself libertarian, and the number is much higher - 44% - if you simply ask them if they would say they are socially liberal but fiscally conservative.

Even at 23%, that means more people self-identify as libertarian than as liberal.

What you’re seeing now in NY-23 is that the libertarian wing of the party has been ignited by the Democrat’s sweeping big government initiatives, and they’re no longer willing to play nice with the Republicans who get elected on the backs of the religious right and who then govern as big government politicians who stay in power through populist appeals to God and populist social issues.

It’s a very healthy trend. Even liberals should cheer if the right moves away from social conservatism and more towards libertarianism.

140

Oh, and I’m not going to let this smear stand. Have a look at my post count, sparky. Does that look to you like someone who does hit-and-run thread posts?

The fact is, I’m often alone on my side of the debate around here, having to answer to multiple rebuttals at a time, often in multiple threads at a time. There are only so many hours in a day, and I already spend too many of them on the SDMB. I know how anxiously you must hang on every utterance of mine, but maybe instead of complaining that I don’t attend you enough, you should just try to get a life.