Posted on 05/08/2006 11:00:10 AM PDT by shortstop
The polls are now saying what you’ve known for months.
The Republican Party is in trouble. President Bush is in trouble. The Republican majorities in both houses of Congress are in trouble.
The midterm elections are shaping up to be a Republican train wreck. Democrat House leader Nancy Pelosi is already fantasizing about investigations and impeachments.
The goose, the pollsters say, is cooked.
And it should be. The Republican Party in Washington has so betrayed the people who put it in office that it deserves to go down in flames. The president, the Congress and the party to which they both belong have the public-approval ratings they have earned. They are getting what they deserve.
And they will be obliterated in November.
Unless they can kiss and make-up with conservatives.
George W. Bush doesn’t have a problem with the American people, he has a problem with conservatives. The shift in his popular support has all come from within the core of voters who put him in office – ditto for Republicans in Congress.
The math on this isn’t hard.
He was elected with about 51 or 52 percent of the vote. That means half the people didn’t like him coming in and, because of their party or philosophical identification, aren’t apt to like him ever.
So of the 65 percent of Americans who don’t approve of the president or the Congress, 50 percentage points were never going to approve in the first place. That means the swing has really come from some 15 or 20 percentage points – one-quarter or one-third of the original number who gave the Republicans Congress and the White House.
Those people are conservatives.
But not all of the conservatives. Most of the approximately 35 percent of Americans who remain supportive of the president are conservative. They are disappointed, but they remain at least tentatively loyal. Mostly because loyalty is a conservative virtue, but also because they can’t stand Democrats and their liberal crap. Democrat glee and talk of impeaching President Bush if they take control of Congress may be the only thing that keeps the remaining conservatives on board.
But as it stands today, the Republican Party is about to get poleaxed.
Unless it makes amends.
Unless it bends over backwards and somehow convinces repeatedly burned conservatives that it can be trusted. Unfortunately, it seems that the president and the Congress are working overtime to do exactly the opposite.
It seems that the Republican Party is going out of its way to give conservatives the finger. It seems that the calculus of the party is misguided, and that it sees currying favor with the 50 percent who’ve always opposed it as the pathway to success.
But it’s not. It is the pathway to failure.
And the Bush presidency may be effectively over as a result. And the Republicans in Congress are about to go into another decades-long exile.
Because the president and his party have not been loyal to their philosophy or their supporters.
And what goes around comes around.
Here are the failings.
Illegal immigration. The president is 180 degrees out of synch with the American people. So are the Democrats, but they have the good sense to keep their mouths shut about it. Senate Republicans might as well be Democrats. Arlen Specter and John McCain are indistinguishable from Teddy Kennedy and Harry Reid. The bottom line is that the American-Mexican border under George W. Bush and the Republican Congress has been raped on a daily basis. That is first cousin of treason.
Budget deficit. The party of fiscal conservatism has put the country even deeper in hock. When tax and spend hasn’t been enough, they’ve gone to tax, spend and borrow.
Welfare. The party that supposedly understands and detests Marxist socialism has increased welfare entitlements more than anybody since Lyndon Baines Johnson. George W. Bush and the Republicans haven’t cut back on welfare, they’ve opened the floodgates of welfare.
The environment. The president has tried to have it both ways, wisely blowing off the Kyoto Accords but imposing his own Al Gore mileage requirements for car buyers and makers. Republicans have been in charge of Congress for about a dozen years and had the White House for six, and yet we’re still not drilling in Alaska or off California or going after other energy reserves on federal land in the West. The president gives us lectures on our “addiction to foreign oil” while standing in front of roller-skate cars. Six years of George W. Bush and we still haven’t opened or begun a refinery and done next to nothing to increase electrical generation. The same environmentalist idiocies that prevailed under Bill Clinton prevail today.
Economic security. These last six years have been lethal to American manufacturing and economic self-reliance. These last six years have been the best six years in the modern history of China, and failed American economic policies are the reason. We have gone toe-to-toe with the Chinese and they have beaten the snot out of us.
Military security. President Bush was admirably strong in the first several months after September 11. But he has since fallen apart. We have two Vietnams now – in Iraq and Afghanistan – not because we were wrong to go in, but because we were wrong to go in with one arm tied behind our back. The Democrats claim the president is wrong for fighting a war. They are incorrect. He is wrong for only fighting half a war. Conservatives cringed every time an American GI was left to twist in the wind, undefended by the president, as they were vilified by the press and a politically correct command structure. China has risen to challenge us on the Republican watch and now we are being bullied by Iran and North Korea. The party of military strength has left us militarily weakened.
In short, the Republican president and the Republican Congress have stopped being Republican. And real Republicans are fed up.
And their support has been lost.
That’s what’s behind the polls.
And unless it changes – unless the president and the Congress change – the same people who made the Republican Party are going to break it. Conservatives gave the Republicans Congress and the White House, and they can take it away.
Well said
Excellent read!!!!!
Truer words never spoken: Conservatives gave the Republicans Congress and the White House, and they can take it away.
I would disagree in that the GOP has the ky to the GOP's future.
Honest Abe must be spinning in his grave! Republicans on The Hill must repent and change their ways and begin to serve Him the rest of their days!
The Dems and the GOP have given us 2 choices: Would we like a quick death, or a slightly slower death?
The basic message of this article is true, but some of the specifics are off base.
The Republican party is doing just fine. Just imagine the country with a permanent majortiy democratic. The reps are doing the best they can with horrific problems and a hostile press and traitorous democrats.
Furthermore to compare toppling the governments of Afghanistan and Iraq, and replacing them with governments more of our own liking, with a civil war where we lost as many as 2000 troops in one week of combat is patently absurd.
Well, that means its not in our hands, but their own. The elected nincompoops need to fix their screw-ups before the election.
Ooops. Outta time.
I am not going to hold my breath. These arrogant bastards think they know everyting, just like most of the other people at the mid and high levels of government. They think that their opinions are the only ones that are right, and every last one of them expect the conservatives will stick with them just because they have "r" in front of their names.
Conservatives are yelling so loudly, it is hard to imagine that the pleas can be so ignored.
"CONSERVATIVES HOLD KEY TO GOP FUTURE"
in other news
The Sky is Blue
How about you keep blindly stoking that decrepit machine without me, and as many others as I can convince?
I'm not going to be roped in by the press and FR trolls. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
Because there's a massive attack on Bush, the Republicans, and even the Republican base right now - that's actually supportive of the conservative outrage!!! - tells me to go the opposite direction. As a matter of fact, my Bush support has just gone up 100%.
I WILL NOT allow the liberal press to use me in their quest to impeach Bush and I WILL NOT join them in their "Hate Bush like everyone else does even the base " propaganda. It isn't gong to happen!
Well said...of course they might put me on another suspension or expulsion for criticizing the bushbots and saying so, but cest la vie.
....and now....the rest.....of the headline.....
UNFORTUNATELY, THE RINO'S HAVE CHANGED THE LOCK
I was reading and agreeing with most of what the author said until this point. Conservatives have never been economic isolationists. If we adopted protectionist policies, the resulting worldwide trade war and recession would surely cause the base of power in this country to shift to the socialists. Once that occurred, he would really learn what it means to lose military security. Unfortunately, Bob Lonsberry offers us nothing not already being sold by Pat Buchanan.
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