Posted on 05/01/2012 8:27:38 AM PDT by mongrel
People who are on this forum, for the most part, are here because they believe in JR's guiding principles: God, family, country, life and liberty from a conservative view point.
Right now we're engaging mostly in yelling matches with each other about one thing: voting for Romney. How do we step back and look at the bigger picture and come up with a plan? Perhaps we need to stop arguing about whether or not we rally behind Romney and begin to think long-term.
Without unity, we will repeat the history of two groups. The African-American community is taken for granted within the Democrat party, their vote is assumed, but Democrats are not really there for them. Sure, they got their token win with Obama, but he really isn't one of them. In the end, the Democrat party will continue it's tradition of liberal racism and elitism long after Obama is out of office.
If we keep supporting the GOP-e candidates in the general election, conservatives will also be taken for granted and never taken seriously. We might occasionally get our candidate as president, but in the end it will be about tokenism and keeping conservatives on the plantation.
If we go out on our own with a third party, we'll end up in the same place as the Libertarian Party. We will be pure in our politics, but we will have little effect on the ongoing direction of our country.
The key to making something happen is forming coalitions that make sense. Before I give a specific proposal, I want to make something clear. I don't think we should give up on this election. I think the House and Senate races are vitally important. However, I do think we need to step back and look at the long view of how to cultivate and maintain political power for the conservative cause.
I believe we need to start planning now for the 2016 presidential election. Not because we're giving up on 2012, but because that perspective may help guide us today.
In late 2015, we need to have a caucus, convention, whatever we want to call it, to rally behind one candidate to be the conservative candidate for the presidential nomination. We should prepare for that caucus in the same way we would work at hiring someone in a company. It could even be done online at Freerepublic.com. We need to bring together social conservatives, TEA party, and flexible libertarians to find someone. We need national leaders who are willing to make this happen.
What we need in a conservative candidate for president:
1. Conservative Principles. Clear, consistant core principles that have been lived over a lifetime. The vetting process would mean looking at that record.
2. Integrity. This person should have a personal life that is filled with moral consistency and integrity. This does not preclude those who have had moral failures, but it does insist on a process of restoration where they have taken ownership rather than covered it up. We could do our own sniffing by hiring oppo research teams to find out if there is any dirt out there.
3. Leadership ability. This person should have a track record as a leader in the private sector or in government that shows they know how to properly manage people and complex systems toward the conservative cause. It does no good to have a true believer who doesn't know how make a bureaucracy bend to his wishes. Again, this should be easy to assess by looking at their track records.
4. Communication skills. This person should be able to effectively use the bully pulpit to rally the public behind them. They might anger one sector of the public, but they should be able to keep at least a strong majority with them through their communication skills. Perhaps some of our PR and Marketing people could come up with ways to put candidates through the ropes in showing us what they can do, and to even pull together focus groups to assess their skill level.
If we get enough nationally known conservatives to rally around this, we could then move forward, united around a single candidate.
Why is it important to do this now? Because in all likelihood it will be either Romney or Obama in the White House next year. There is an outside chance of a 3rd party candidate running and winning, but those who prefer this path still need a plan B.
If Romney wins, this caucus would happen anyway. He will know from the beginning he will get a primary fight from the right. That might be enough to even push Romney stay further to the right for his first term. We can replace Romney mid-term, and show the power of the conservative vote even against an incumbent president. That seems to me to be a much more likely possibility than electing a third party candidate this time.
The other possibility is that Obama will win another term. This means that the next Republican primary starts up again with no real front-runner. We need to be ready for that.
The last possibility is that somehow a third party candidate will win as a conservative. If that candidate fulfills the 4 points above, then the caucus would only serve to broaden and solidify support.
We won't have a clear idea about what will happen to Romney, Obama or a third party candidate until we get closer to November. In the meantime, lets begin building for 2016.
I’ve been involved with FR since Monicagate. Inevitably, all that time, the “conservative” vote has been divided between libertarians, who want freedom, smaller government, and less taxes, and social conservatives, who are concerned about things like abortion, marriage, and family.
There is no reason on earth why these two groups cannot work together, as they must if they want to win. History has demonstrated that you cannot have freedom without morality and self-discipline, and it has also shown that big government increases corruption.
But every time I have urged Freepers to work together, they have refused. The libertarians in particular.
“OK,” they’ll say, “we’ll agree to support the right to life (more or less) if you give us free drugs and legal prostitution.” Or, “Smaller government means never telling anyone what to do.” Or, . . . whatever.
They play right into the hands of the RINO establishment, who say, “Well, we really support the right to life, but let’s not talk about it, for fear of offending somebody.” Never mind that people might not vote for Obama if anyone bothered to tell them that he has a long record of supporting the practice of throwing babies born alive into the trash, or onto the roof to die of thirst. They did that at the hospital owned by Rev. Wright’s black power church, and Obama voted three times to support the practice. Do they really think that criticizing him for that would offend people? Apparently so. Or, they just don’t really give a damn about the right to life, but only pretend to.
That’s the sticking point. How do you get all these various kinds of self-defined “conservatives” to work together? It will certainly take strong and persuasive leadership.
We need to elect Romney, and force him to govern conservatively. He’s going to know who elected him and he will succumb to our pressure.
Never gonna happen, all the conservatives left the party and went independent. That means they can’t vote in the primaries and that is why we get LIBERALS.
Re-register the independents as republicans and you will see a change.
Simple solution: Vote Tea Party candidates into the Congress and Senate but do everything to weaken the hold of the establishment on the GOP. With the right candidate in the Congress, we can manage that situation. Strengthening the establishment RINOs leaves us out in the cold. Enough of holding our noses and strengthening the RINOs. Voting for Romney is to keep the status quo.
Every little old white American Grannie who wont vote for Willie Mitty is suspected of carrying a contrabad vote for Obama...
My good conservative name has been well groped...
LOL! Brava, TN! Well put!
Really nice to see someone take the time to look at this and raise the kinds of questions that you have. It is a good start. It is only a start but unless I am mistaken that is exactly what you intend. To get the ball rolling. Good job.
I spent many years in the Republican trenches watching a party elite knock down, kick around the Republican candidate that I liked. I got tired of it and left the GOP. I will never go back.
If I can add my suggestion it would be that any effort to get a conservative into the White House can’t include the GOP Party. It should be glaringly apparent that GOP and conservative is an oxymoron.
What parties already exist? Do any of them have a platform that is close? If so, can that be a starting point? Moving en mass to an already established acceptable other party would be a head start over starting from scratch.
I don’t think we need to use an established party - we just need a leader to bring the factions in line. Someone who can create a single named entity and be the face of the organization.
Right now, Romney is the face of the GOP. We need a *single* leader to arise who can be (at least) the titular leader of the Tea Party.
That's easy, do what they do: Flip the board over and scatter the pieces.
The solution is a third party. The GOP are enablers of the ‘Rats not opponents. A coordinated war on the Constitution, freedom, and God is no game. The so called game is RIGGED.
I agree that something must be done. I have thoughts, but little energy. I believe we need to concentrate on the House and Senate, and especially on our state houses, even governorships, if in play.
As far as planning for 2016, I’d do what I could to help get organized. The one thing I do now, every day, is pray for the country.
If Perry indeed runs in 2016, I have my candidate.
Perry probable needs to listen to what the residents of Texas are expressing regarding another Presidential run. But then maybe the remaining two years of his term is all he expects and plans for something else.
In late 2015, we need to have a caucus, convention, whatever we want to call it, to rally behind one candidate to be the conservative candidate for the presidential nomination.
Clarification please.
Is that a candidate to run in a yet to be determined party or is that a candidate to run in the existing GOP?
If Hussein is allowed to win, there won’t be elections in 2016. At least not as we currently think of them. We’ll be under the boot of the new Stalin.
This is more ‘doable’ than one might think
Social conservatives (The Christian Right) has been cast adrift... The GOP likes the ‘social justice’ types, and has been moving that way for some time (note the move from ValueVoters to Saddleback last election). The last election was the first time that the GOP candidate team did not support the main-line view of Right To Life, and this election looks to be heading for a pro-choice candidate.
The Christians are a MIGHTY electoral force, with their own established media, their own networking, and the biggest ability to get boots-on-the-ground of anyone in the country.... Get them excited, and they can easily grow to become close to 1/3rd of all votes cast.
The TEA Partys, while fading and fizzling, are a tremendous coalition with a civil libertarian core, which was capable just two years ago of changing the election without any doubt. It is suffering from a lack of cogent direction, but if that command and control network can be harnessed TOO, look at what we’d have.
These two MASSIVE (gargantuan, really) forces are wholly disenfranchised once the GOP convention runs its course. That is when the iron will be hottest, and that is the time to be ready with the hammer. It is a few short months, but enough time for a popular uprising of Conservatives to coalesce, providing the leadership ties have already been bound, and ready for the task. And I think the presidential election is the very thing to wake a rebellion - get behind a 3rd party candidate and PUSH - Get the Christians to lend a hand and you WILL lift that candidate to prominence. and the fervor generated will flood down-ticket, certainly. And that is a more likely scenario than trying to get folks excited about the down-ticket only (as that is all we can honestly do currently).
And what is there to lose?
While 2016 is important, it is too early to worry about that, with the current distraction of the election in the way. But getting it up and running FOR this election is doable... and with any sort of success this election comes the amplification of power in 2016.
The Christian Right must certainly be the spear - but it will take the TEA Partys, and their political know how to be the point of that spear.
put the two of them together, and there is still one grand chance to waken the Conservative juggernaut.
Work within the system. Voting for another person or sitting home is goin to lead to an easy Obama victory, and quicker death knell for America.
Obama can’t destroy the U.S. in four years. Take a chill pill and quit buying the doomsday scenarios the GOP-e is throwing at you to get you to support their liberal candidate.
In reading the responses to this thread, there are more Freepers than I anticipated that seem to hoping for a “quicker death knell”. I’m not talking about the third party voters, I’m talking about the ones who are ready to abandon the system and literally fight a war.
Why do we keep insisting on “either-or” instead of “both-and”? Couldn’t we all agree that Scott Walker has done a phenomenal job as part of the Republican Party in embodying our ideals? Can we also not value those in the Constitution Party and Conservative Party who are working for the same things?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.