Posted on 11/08/2006 9:40:09 PM PST by Aussie Dasher
When Americans voted to put Democrats in power Tuesday, they did not reject conservatism but the Republican establishment and its big-spending habit.
"It [the election] was not a repudiation of conservative ideas or values," said Pat Toomey, president of the Club for Growth, a PAC that backs fiscal conservatives for Congress. "It was a rejection of the Republican Party, in part, we believe, for having failed to commit itself to the conservative ideas that are at the core of the coalition that elected Republicans."
While Toomey acknowledged that the Iraq war, coupled with President Bush's low approval ratings and six-year run of full Republican power contributed to the devastating loss, he said the biggest problem was the GOP's abandonment of the core principle of conservativism: the idea of limited government.
Toomey said it's this principle that unifies the Republican coalition -- fiscal conservatives, the libertarians, social conservatives and foreign policy and defense hawks -- because it’s where they all find common ground.
"When Republicans abandon that that central idea, it shouldn't be surprising that they demoralize their own base and they drive Independents and swing Democrats away," Toomey said.
The Club for Growth's internal polls leading up to the election showed public disgust with the bloated size of government, sending many voters over the edge to vote for Democrats. They see Republicans as the party of big government and are upset that GOP leaders didn't enact the fiscal discipline many in office originally stood for.
Americans' willingness to support fiscal conservatives over establishment spenders is evident in the success of the Club for Growth's candidates this election cycle, five of whom are incoming freshmen headed straight for the Republican Study Committee (RSC), the largest conservative caucus in Congress.
Similarly, Rep. Jeff Flake (R.-Ariz.), one of the few true fiscal hawks in Congress, told bloggers on a conference call Wednesday that it wasn’t all the scandals and unhappiness with the war that brought the GOP down.
"Earmarking really came back to bite us. I think we Republicans simply lost our brand name," he said. "We are no longer considered to be the party of limited government and that came back to hurt us badly."
Sen. Tom Coburn (R.-Okla.), who has shamed many of his congressional colleagues for pointing out their pork-barrel spending sprees, said the results should be interpreted as a "total failure of big government conservatism."
Illustrating his point, Coburn said, "Republicans oversaw a seven-fold increase in pork projects since 1998. Republicans increased domestic spending by nearly 50% since 2001, increased the national debt to $9 trillion, passed a reckless Medicare expansion bill and neglected our oversight responsibilities.
"While some of these decisions may have helped secure specific seats in the short-term the totality of our excess did not secure our majority, but destroy it."
Rep. Jeb Hensarling, budget and spending taskforce chairman of the RSC, said he thinks the loss in Congress will draw Republicans back to their conservative roots, given that their excessive pork projects didn't get them very far.
"Instead, over the last several years, Republicans have experimented with big government, and we have now seen the result," Hensarling said. "The Bridge to Nowhere has led us here. The era of Republican big government is over."
oh well get over it.
Neoconservatism was defeated. Neoconservatism was originally a liberal idea in the first place. Big government nation-building has no place in conservatism.
Well, pardon my relentless and annoying optimism...
This *might* have a good thing hiding in it somewhere. Now that the Dems are in power, America is about to get screwed...which...MAY help our chances in '08!
"When Americans voted to put Democrats in power Tuesday, they did not reject conservatism but the Republican establishment and its big-spending habit."
Truer words and all that.
"Sen. Tom Coburn (R.-Okla.), who has shamed many of his congressional colleagues for pointing out their pork-barrel spending sprees, said the results should be interpreted as a "total failure of big government conservatism."
I love this man.
(ahem) in a totallty platonic...admiration sort of way.
I feel like banging my head against a wall. Was I the ONLY ONE who heard Schumer say the administration gave the Dems everything they wanted (in order to get funding for Iraq)?
PErhaps. That being said there are many reasons for this loss. Also to be quite honest for what is being styled as message to COnservative it would seem if that was true then why was this not seen on a much more National Level. FOr instance in Texas there was really only one seat in contention. In my home state there were no Republican seats in danger.
Also, it fails to note why some big conservatives went down this election. For instance look at Missouri.
These guys are right. Yeah most of us in the "base" voted Republican anyway. What happened was the middle ground voters, the conservative democrats originally brought in by Reagan saw spending, wrong headed ness about immigration and pork and yeah corruption and said the hell with them.
Its only 2 years, hunker down and let the Democrats implode as you know they will as they try to juggle all their disparate constituencies.
Why should conservatives feel defeated...they were out voting to keep the Democrats from power. They did their jobs.
That's a very respectable statement. Forget the label neoconservatism. The USA cannot abandon the security role it has played in the world since WWII, though other nations like China with North Korea have got to start carrying their weight.
President Bush never backed down from being opposed to nation-building as conceived by wide-eyed liberals. The USA engages with the Middle East because it is a real danger that cannot be ignored by withdrawing into "Fortress America." It is the same reason we engaged the Cold War.
It is a long war, and there will be battles lost. Two horrific regimes were eliminated, and, what do you know, there are still horrific forces in the region. Nation building in these two instances is responding to an emergency.
Not a bad point but what concerns me is our men and women in harm's way, seems like many have just forgotten them altogether and they have the MOST to lose...
Conservatism cannot be defeated when it is not represented by candidates on the ballot. And it does not look like there is a conservative candidate even on the horizon to be on the Presidential ballot in 2008.
I've seen lots of rejoicing (as one person said, "We taught the GOP a lessons"), and some who say the war is a minor issue that doesn't compete with their cause. Few people have even considered the impact on the troops.
In 2008, this is how we can retake the Senate
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1735336/posts
Well, yeah, that's because we've re-enetered the era of Democrat big government.
If Republicans want voters to even consider believing them they will have to start by refusing ANY pork from here on it. By refusing Big government programs from here on out. I have my doubts Republicans have it in them.
This is such BS. Wait until they see democrats spend! It's been 12 years. Memories are short.
We were defeated by 365, 24/7 pounding and bashing of POTUS and the war in Iraq by MSM in collusion with democrats.
People love their entitlements and government spending. They just want it spent on them and not on the war in Iraq.
Yep. I don't know any conservatives who didn't vote Tuesday and who didn't vote Republican. They might not have agreed totally with their Republican candidate but they understood the alternative.
I ditto that.
Everyone I know voted and voted GOP.
Guys, the seats taken were taken by anti abortion, pro gun Democrats. They became us to win.
But even that would not have sufficed were it not for the corruption scandals -- that all the exit polls showed were the predominant issue of voters.
Do not use this occasion to waste time wallowing about in a pit of philosophical debate as to whether the party should move right or left Because It Does Not Matter. The party would have been just fine exactly where it was if the corruption had not occurred.
So go out and find squeaky clean candidates to run in those predominantly GOP districts that were won by a Dem and without doing Anything Else, we will take back Congress.
I think he's overlooking the middle ground, swing vote which tends to be moderate, pro abortion and pro stem cell research. Bush's only veto of his term, remember, was stem cell research. Even though Conservatives want to believe that everyone agrees with them on the right, this is not true. Many, many Republicans want medical research to continue and perceive the Conservative right as obstructing that. Even Laura Bush and Barbara are moderate Republicans in this area. No, I think the Republican party looked too much like Democrats in the area of pork, and closed out the wider wings of the party leaving voters one choice, to vote against the current Republican hierarchy.
As far as the RNC and its cadre of RINO-coddlers is concerned, we lost because they didn't go liberal enough.
Leave it to those liberal fools to insist that we should make the same mistakes over and over and expect different results.
With all due respect, the future success of conservatism is dependent not only on the message, but also on the messenger. Conservatism is definitely not dead, and as Rush tried to do in consoling the faithful today, the Republicans lost in this election, not conservatism. But where is the messenger to take up the flag? Ronald Reagan has been out of office for nearly 18 years...almost a generation. You'd think in that time someone would have come along to carry the standard. There isn't anyone I see. (And if anyone says "Tom Tancredo," they can go to their room.)
Maybe if you guys weren't such miserable cranks and negative crumudgeons, you'd get more love.
There is a good chance that they haven't. The current party leadership is NOT conservative, they are power politicians. They believe that the key to their success is to appeal to as wide a population as possible. That is why they have tried to out spend the Dems and willingly thrown conservatives under the bus in exchange for what they thought was broader mass appeal. For the GOP to change the GOP leadership must change. The next few months will be very telling in who they choose to lead and what the message is.
The perception is off. Number one, medical research in general is enthusiastically valued and promoted by all. Including non-embryonic stem cell research and embryonic, but with some regulation on the latter based in ethics.
Number two, ethics should play a role when cloning is involved and a procedure involving a closed circuit of destruction/creation of life. An adult look at these issues cannot help but to register ethical caution, for a bunch of reasons.
True, the advocates for federally funded unregulated research successfully paint the ethically concerned guys as fundie Luddites who want Michael J. Fox dead. It is not a fair thing, but the politics worked for their side in this instance.
The Republican Party will have to return to it's conservative base and prove it in the next two years. They've got their job cut out for them and we'll all be watching closely.
Hopefully we'll be firing off frequent snail mail to as many as possible.
Christian news and commentary at: sacredscoop.com ...
I actually was trying to demonstrate, using salt and pepper shakers, where he falls on the economic continuum, and I had people grabbing the salt shaker and sliding it over to the edge of the table to demonstrate their opinion of Bush. And I'm thinking "Wow... if upping the federal government's commitment to eduation by 25% above and beyond Clinton puts him over there by the napkins, where would MY ideal scenario place that salt shaker? By the restrooms? In the parking lot?"
This time around, my straight Republican vote was an effort to keep the Dems out of power. Let's face it, the Republicans in power, as a whole, ignored the will of conservative voters. My vote along that of many, many others, was NOT a vote for the tactics of Republicans in office now. They simply looked like the lesser of two evils.
As a conservative, I DO feel defeated, but more importantly, I fear the damages that the leftist agenda could bring upon this country even more than they already have.
Personally, I think the rats cheated big time in many elections. Allen was up until the bitter end, when I think the rats, who had held out their predominately democrat areas of Richmond, stuffed the polls. No other reason for Richmond, which is heavily black and democrat, not to have been reported earlier.
Of course.
How can you become "Fortress America" if you have no borders?
"But even that would not have sufficed were it not for the corruption scandals -- that all the exit polls showed were the predominant issue of voters."
The explosion of "earmarking" is legal corruption. Maybe not "scandal" yet part of the equation.
Corruption WAS the single factor cited most often. DeLay led the way to take over K Street lobbyists, which is another kind of legal corruption.
In six years, the voters saw the results, and didn't approve.
And when issues provided opportunities, they were squandered--immigration. A big winning issue--yet Republicans delivered only a "last minute" fence.
So people all across the political spectrum looked at the immigration result, and said " if this is all a majority party can do in six years, let's try a new team."
It was a "throw the bums out" election. The totality of Republican party "leadership" failed miserably.
But they got their earmarks. I wonder how much from earmarks filters back to politicos, families, friends, etc.?
Watch how many defeated politicos wind up with lobbying outfits, of some type. Still making a great living off their corruption. Yes, I know both parties do it. Mine just paid the price.
Who's the chump that let millions more of them into the USA across wide open borders, that should have been secured, after 9/11?
Believe me, I know the anwser to that. Ironically, amnesty will be easier to obtain now.
Would it be more accurate to say that most of those who get elected to public office become full of themselves and lose any integrity they may have had?
Conservatives, on the whole, complain among themselves. Isn't it about time we learned that "screaming" against each and every assault on our values is the only thing that will work?
Gracias, senor Bush.
Yes, I noticed.
I remain stunned. I watched Allen lead all night and then all of a sudden....he was behind. Thank you for telling me which area lagged. Last I heard earlier today, he is going for a recount and has not conceded. Bless him.
I'm looking at Mark Sanford and would appreciate it if any Freepers take a look at him as well and give an opinion. He's an SC governor who just won re-election. He says he's not interested in the WH yet but if we push who knows?
http://www.petitiononline.com/msan2008/petition.html
Maybe some folks here know more about him. Is he a good public speaker? Is he good at getting the conservative message across and if so is he as equally good at keeping the message going?
As such, said companies want us, the TAXPAYERS, to fund their search for this Holy Grail. Or say - the modern day version of the Alchemist's quest to turn Lead into Gold.
FYI, all success thus far has been with ADULT Stem Cells and Umbilical Cord Stem cells.
No, America was just defeated.
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