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If you average Connor and Souter with Roberts and Alito, does that make the decision making of Republican appointments 50-50? Roughly equal to flipping a coin?

Talking about repealing the 17th is easy. There is a way that you can personally lead such an effort, and it would be an effort likely to end in success. Please see post #45.

If Republicans are going to be the political party that you would like to see them become, it is going to take significant changes in the leadership of the party with the replacement of many incumbents. The leadership won't change substantively unless sufficient numbers of Congress change enough to have a large enough and conservative enough Republican delegation to elect more conservative leaders.

Surely you must realize that most people seeking careers in politics are little more than whores selling political favors in exchange for votes or campaign funding. Are you too blind to see that the Republicans are tending to occupy the ground formerly occupied by the Democrats who are moving even farther to the left? Instead of taking our country back, Republicans are taking it further into socialism, but just at a slower pace than Democrats. And in truth, if you look at Bush's and the Republicans budgets, federal spending is growing at an even greater rate under Republican control than it was when Republicans were in the minority. Arguably, a case can be made that Republicans are more effective at achieving your stated goals when they are in the minority than when they have power.

Open your eyes Jim. At best, Republicans are fighting a rear guard action while retreating into socialism and still growing government. Freedom in America is becoming nothing more than illusion. We used to have it. We still have the warm fuzzy memories of it. And like the frog slowly headed for a boil in the still cold water, we buy into the illusion and think we are OK. We aren't! And if you are too blind to see the difference and start taking action to the contrary, neither you nor FreeRepublic are likely to have any significant effect toward "reversing the trend of unconstitutional government expansion and is advocating a complete restoration of our constitutional republic". In a way, your blindness is actually tragic: "In our continuing fight for freedom, for America and our constitution and against totalitarianism, socialism, tyranny, terrorism, etc., Free Republic stands firmly on the side of right, i.e., the conservative side. Believing that the best defense is a strong offense, we (myself and those whom I'm trying to attract to FR) support the strategy of taking the fight to the enemy..." Why? You haven't recognized that the Republicans are slowly becoming the enemy.

It is not too late. And we can take our country back. In fact, we can take it back in far less time than almost anyone can imagine. It just takes some thought and leadership. There are still large numbers of very conservative Americans. Given the chance, they will vote for genuinely conservative leaders. Ronald Reagan's two landslide elections and the 1994 Congressional elections proved it. Jim, if you will lead the debate, FreeRepublic can become the catalyst that gets Rush and other conservative talk show hosts on the same page. All it takes is the courage to believe the truth. If you have lost your faith in the American people, and think you are doing yourself or them a favor by slowing the rate of descent into hell, then you are going to end up boiled just like the frog.

Just as grass-roots Americans need leadership, so does FreeRepublic. There once was a man named Jim Robinson who had a fire in his belly and he was willing to fight for freedom. The sacred fire of liberty is barely perceptible in the America of today. As dim as it is, it still stands between us and total darkness. Jim Robinson, can you still hear the ringing words of Ronald Reagan, "We have come to a time for choosing; we will preserve for our children this the last best hope for man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.....history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening." Was he speaking to you Jim Robinson, or has the fire in your belly gone out?

In 1976, Republicans remained loyal to an incumbent. They rejected Ronald Reagan and we paid a terrible price. At the time, I didn't have enough faith in Ronald Reagan. I did not believe he would have enough courage and determination to run again in 1980. President Reagan said this: "Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction, It is not ours by inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people. Those who have known freedom and then lost it have never known it again. Knowing this, it is hard to explain those who even today would question the people's capacity for self-rule. Will they answer this: if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? Using the temporary authority granted by the people, an increasing number lately have sought to control the means of production, as if this could be done without eventually controlling those who produce. Always this is explained as necessary to the people's welfare. But, "The deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the principle upon which it was founded" [Montesquieu]. This is as true today as it was when it was written in 1748."

It would be a mistake to let allegiance to the Republican Party over rule your allegiance to freedom. You are being presented with a decision to make. You can lead FreeRepublic toward freedom or lead them deeper into the Republican fold. These really are two different paths. Even doing nothing would be a choice. In 1964, if Republicans were actually succeeding at your goals, would President Reagan have given up his Hollywood/TV career to enter a field that he described as being a lot like the world's oldest profession? And in spite of President Reagan leadership and the example he set, in spite of the Contract with American and the gains Republicans made as result, are the Republicans closer now to achieving your goals than they were when President Reagan picked up the torch that holds the sacred fire of liberty? Jim, ask yourself, which choice would President Reagan want you to make? Would he prefer defeating Democrats to recovering our lost freedom?