Posted on 09/03/2007 10:06:58 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
During the summer, a female acquaintance of mine in her 70s who had been a faithful Republican during her long life received a GOP telephone solicitation as a previous contributor to the party. Not this time. She informed the fundraiser that President Bush's position on immigration was the last straw. She would not give the Republicans another dime.
Such a rebuff, commonplace for Republican fundraisers today, puts a human face on cold Federal Election Commission statistics showing a commanding Democratic lead in raising money for the 2008 elections. This unusual disparity is at once a symptom and a contributing cause of the melancholy suffusing the Grand Old Party.
As measured by offices held, Republicans have been in much worse shape during my half-century of reporting in Washington. The party was a mere remnant after the Democratic landslides of 1958, 1964 and 1974. But never have I seen morale so low. While Republican support for an unpopular war has remained remarkably strong, almost all the non-war news during the dreary August recess has been bad for the GOP. The hope is that the eventual elevation of a presidential candidate will revive the party's spirits.
The week before Labor Day, when nothing of importance was supposed to happen, brought bad news even as it appeared nothing worse was possible:
* The apparent disgrace of Sen. Larry Craig, a former member of the party leadership, was all the worse because several Republican senators and staffers were not a bit surprised. That raises two questions. If so many people knew Craig was an accident waiting to happen, why was he not eased out of office? How many other examples of possibly scandalous behavior are known but hidden?
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Donations funneled through the Club For Growth give the best bang for buck IMO:
http://www.clubforgrowth.org/about-necessary.php
To borrow a phrase from Christopher Hitchens, the GOP has no one left to disillusion. Here’s to hoping the coming tsunami sweeps out the big govt nanny staters and allows the limited govt constitutionalists to gain prominence.
This is the same response they got at my home, and it's my take that this is why we're beginning to see some action on illegal immigration. How long it will last, I don't know. I am very skeptical.
It's going to take more than a few months of consentrated effort for me.
every open borders guy in the party has to be thrown out. and terror has to be inflicted on anyone in the bureaucracy who says anything good about open borders.
Club for Growth is a big pro-illegal open-borders organization.
They don’t get it either.
Novak, a Washington insider to the core, still doesn’t get it, in spite of his opening lead.
It’s illegal immigration, stupid!!!
As long as the RNC and RCCC and RSCC don’t want to recognize the obvious and flip to the people’s view on stopping illegal immigration and forgetting amnesty, they will continue to get nada or Bush Peso bills from the true Republican voters.
But they hang on to Martinez and ignore the 800 pound illegal gorilla.
Dumb. Really dumb.
Maybe Calderon will give them the money.
Not from me. My candidates get my money the old fashioned way - they earn it. No crapping on my interests when it comes to decisive votes and then expecting another hand-out. I don’t vote by proxy and I don’t trust that any organization is going to dole out my dough any better then I can myself.
Showing the queers and the RINOs to the door would help too. We already have a political party that represents perverts, child molesters and Communists. We’ll see more debacles like November 2006 if we don’t reclaim the moral high ground that Reagan seized for us in 1980.
Trust me, it’s only an illusion. Trucks started rolling across the border at 12:01 Saturday. So called Mexican trucking Companies. Most weren’t. American-Mexican partnerships have been formed and bare the Spanish names of the American company, in most cases.
The Trans Texas Toll Road is, nearly, unstoppable now. The work at the Mexican ports is running 3 shifts.
And Bush is ready to fall on the sword to get his deal done.
Am I the only one who noticed the recent SPP meeting’s minutes aren’t available, only press releases, slapping each other on the back?
I never thought I’d see this happening.
Is Club for Growth strong on Social Conservatism issues or just Fiscal areas? What exactly is their stance on First Amendment and Border Patrol and Traditional Family Values issues?
Yep, Bush’s idiotic pro-amnesty, jail the border patrol, don’t build the Fence, etc pretty much finished him off for me, as a lifelong Repub.
As much as I despise the Dems for the low lifes they are, Bush has spit in the eye of the Repub Base so often, that hardcore Repubs like me have lost any sense of caring for him, and when the Repub Party can’t purge a Liberal Dem like Bloomberg, but allows him to stay in the Party, what’s to support?
Gives us two choices, the Pinks and the Reds. Wow.
Well, I didn’t either, and I couldn’t disagree with it more.
Thanks for the comments.
Well, you guys are echoing my concerns. Either the party wakes up or we’ll be developing a new one soon enough, out of the ashes.
Politics is ALWAYS a matter of comparison rather than absolutes.
We ARE the party. We just have to throw out the idiots who have pirated it and are, figuratively, dancing on the table with the lampshade on their heads.
http://www.thearticlesofimpeachment.com/
That dog don't hunt.
That isn't all of it, really. Illegal immigration is the symptom, not the disease.
The disease is that the GOP has been controlled, with only a couple of interludes (Teddy Roosevelt's administration, the Goldwater campaign, the first Reagan administration), by the business lobby.
All else flows from that, including the disordered condition that ties Sen. Craig's peccadilloes directly to immigration: the really rich and the corporately preoccupied just don't care about anything "normal" people care about.* That includes social issues, tax issues, and employment issues. And immigration is an employment issue.
* -- Some top executives at a Fortune 500 company were asked by professional-development consultants, in an exercise I have direct knowledge about, to rank a series of about 12 value clusters, so they did. Examples of these values included wealth, prestige, security, duty, expertness. Results: "Affection" (familial, social, etc. etc.) ranked number four on their list -- but they were spending 80 and 90 hours/week at the office! The top three values were all leadership values like "independence" and "self-realization", and that was what they were spending practically all their waking time on. They may have been excellent men in some ways -- but they absolutely were not "normal". They were totally driven -- and the CEO was a "screamer" and a slave-driver to boot.
Well, if the pubies want to play in the big leagues, they’re going to have to return to their base. If our government is going to do some of the stuff Bush has, I’d just as soon it was done by a person like Hillary. Let her take the blame.
I want to be able to tell folks we’re not the party of big spenders, supporters of the Department of education and proposing ways to legalize the illegal immigrants on our soil.
I agree, but when guys show up a year before the election with $70 million in their war chest, it doesn’t give us common people much of a chance to loft a true conservative.
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