Posted on 02/02/2007 7:21:41 AM PST by steve-b
Jeb Bush got it right. He told conservatives at the National Review summit this past weekend that Republicans lost the 2006 elections because they abandoned their principles of limited government and fiscal responsibility.
Ronald Reagan won two landslide elections on a limited-government platform. Bush has twice squeaked through with his big-government conservatism....
The big problem for Republicans last November was the loss of moderate, independent, and libertarian voters to Democratic candidates. A new analysis of the American National Election Studies data shows that libertarian-leaning voters made up 15 percent of the electorate in 2002 and 16 percent in 2006.
Those voters gave Republican candidates for the House a 47-point margin in 2002, but that margin dropped to just 8 points in 2006. About 2 million libertarian voters switched parties in 2006, for a net Republican loss of 4 million votes. The shift was strongest among the youngest voters.
For decades, the Republican party united libertarians and conservatives against the big-government Democratic party. But the recent Republican trend toward big spending and centralization has discouraged both groups.
In one recent poll, voters preferred the Democrats by 2 to 1 to deal with the economy and the federal budget. Meanwhile, the party's tilt toward social conservatism — the anti-gay marriage amendment, the clumsy intrusion into Terri Schiavo's hospital room, the "intelligent design" crusade — has turned off younger and more libertarian voters....
(Excerpt) Read more at examiner.com ...
And where was he last Fall?
It's a difficult time for Republicans because I think that people are liking cradle to grave entitlements and they realize that staunch Republicans aren't going to give it to them.
We had our chance to educate people during these last 6 years and we blew it. Big time.
So now the Republicans see the handwriting on the wall and will move to the mushy middle. I could be wrong, but that's how I see it.
..he's right, but only a partial list--I could add waffling on the WOT and sending mixed messages on border security...
He ought to talk to his brother about that....
Maybe he had duped himself into believing that everything was just peachy keen with the Republicans. Quite a few people around here sure did.
No more Bushes for me.
The consistent misrepresentation of the Schaivo case and of Intelligent Design is more than a little troubling. The Urban myths surrounding these seminal issues are a deliberate distraction from the truths and powerful principles underlying them. Both are vigorously liberatarian issues.
Schaivo because the collusion of a contemptuous husband and corrupt officials denied a young woman and her family the right to life.
ID because public school teaching about the nature of reality is now cast in concrete by atheist technicians.
There is profound confusion about basic moral issues in our culture. That abortion advocates place all emphasis upon the interests of a woman during her pregnancy and none upon the person she is carrying is the clearest example of the absolute abrogation of morality.
The Republican party has utterly defaulted on its platform of fighting for basic freedoms by allowing deliberate falsehoods and distortions to stand uncontested. Republican leaders are guilty of the cowardly failure to confront those who demand the right to be immoral.
Exactly. If Jeb had run against Bill Nelson, he would probably have won that Senate seat for the Republicans, and the Dims would not now hold a one seat majority in the Senate.
Yes, and as long as the Republican candidate and platform are 0.0000001% less socialist than the Democrats, the usual FR chorus will be loudly demanding we cross that well-trodden broken glass to pull the GOP lever.
What border security?
Any voter wanting smaller, less intrusive government won't find it in eaither of the major parties at this point. And without the smaller, less intrusive government voters, the Republicans can't beat the dems. It's going to be a long, cold winter if they refuse to return to their conservative roots.
..touche
Maybe this will shut the "hope you're happy, you conservatives who stayed home wah waah wahhhhhh!",folks here on FR. The fact is, conservatives did vote republican, we lost the moderate vote because of spineless demo-lite pubs now in office. So why don't you naysayers shut up.
FMCDH(BITS)
Bwaahhhaaaaahhhaaaaa!
They don't shut up because they have nothing else to say and they have no sense of introspection. Most can't be expected to say, "for 6 years I've been a cheerleader, pimping for things that, had Clinton done them, I would have screamed about. Mea Culpa."
No, they have to blame someone else, innocent bystanders who get pilloried for daring to point out the lack of the emperor's clothes.
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