Posted on 03/26/2008 4:45:52 AM PDT by ovrtaxt
Mar 11 2008 Loss of Hastert Seat is Proof Conservatives Are Prepared to Sit Out This Year
…It’s a wakeup call for John McCain…
By Richard A. Viguerie
Republicans’ loss of the House seat held for two decades by former Speaker Dennis Hastert is proof that conservatives are prepared to sit out the 2008 elections.
Instead of contributing and volunteering, conservatives are closing their checkbooks and staying home. Liberals and Democrats are enthusiastic to a degree not seen in decades, and grassroots conservatives are sitting on their hands.
This is a wakeup call for John McCain. Since securing the nomination, he has done nothing significant to reach out to the conservatives who provide the vast majority of the volunteers for the Republican Party in every election. Senator McCain, and all the candidates on the ballot with him, will pay the price in November.
The farther we go down this road, the longer it will take to repair the relationship between conservatives and the Republican Party. The damage that’s being done now will affect the party for years to come.
In the race for the Hastert seat, the Republican nominee, Jim Oberweis – the handpicked choice of the GOP Establishment – reportedly had difficulty getting enough volunteers. The Chicago Tribune reported that, when the primary runner-up, conservative State Senator Chris Lauzen, declined to endorse Oberweis, “his decision not to endorse Oberweis sidelined a potent grassroots organization that could have helped the Republican candidate.”
So strapped for volunteers was the Oberweis campaign that, according to the newspaper The Hill, Republicans turned to congressional interns in Washington to make calls for Oberweis.
The defeat shows that the Republican Party’s current political strategy is fundamentally flawed. Rather than running on the issues, Republican leaders continue to try to buy elections by earmarking and pork-barreling and special-interest spending, by using taxpayers’ own money to try to buy elections.
Particularly instructive was a Hastert aide’s comment regarding the billions of taxpayers’ dollars he was willing to spend to save the seat of Representative Clay Shaw in 2000. “We knew” the control of the House “could come down to two seats,” the aide recalled, “and if that meant we had to spend $8 billion for Mr. Shaw, that's what we were going to do.”
The more earmarks, the angrier conservatives get. They see Republican leaders corruptly, immorally spending our children’s and grandchildren’s inheritance, trying to buy elections. And they’re fed up.
Pork barrel spending has turned to ashes in the mouths of the Republican leadership.
This election is like running in the Special Olympics. Even if McCain wins, we're still retarded.
If that headline is true then conservatives are retarded morons and deserve the hell Obama would unleash.
The way things are going on the Dem side, McCain may not need any help from conservatives!
Yep, you get who you vote for and who you won’t vote against.
Not necessarily. The Republican, Oberweiss, is a millionaire perennial candidate for governor, senator and who knows what else. The primary win was his first and only win, and only because he had a lot of his own money to spend. Unfortunately, he’s going to be the candidate again in November, so consider this seat gone for two years. Put a decent Republican in the race, and the seat goes back to the Pubbies.
There is a major disconnect between the “GOP Establishment” and conservatives. I'm tired of being told we must support a Rhino candidate to save the party.
I made this point on several different threads a while ago:
The same mentality and “principles” that lead one to conclude they could “never” vote for the Republican nominee-—who turned out to be John McCain-—perforce eventually will lead to people not voting for Republicans down ticket either.
So all the talk about how people will only sit out the presidential election, but vote for a R majority in Congress, ends up in a bunch of smoke.
Yet people argue that they are not responsible for ceding the country to the Rats by not voting for the Rs.
Agree...I don not blame any conservative for staying home. It wasnt the base that funded the bridge to nowhere, support earmarks, passed McCain Fiengold, tried to pass McCain Kennedy, refused to seal the borders, establish the gang of 14 and the list goes on.
The RNC has had vols walk out of offices in DC...the base has quit sending money and the elected R’s still have the attitude they know best for us. The hell with them!
Maybe we need an Obama for two yrs..let the GOP regroup and start another fight!
McCain will ruin the conservative movement.
“This election is like running in the Special Olympics.Even if McCain wins, we’re still retarded.”
You got that one perfectly correct!!Thanks for the laughs as well!
It’s truly pathetic when most conservatives all over the U.S. already know about what’s probably coming the country’s way after mid-January ‘09 when the Democrats will probably be controlling everything important politically, but conservatives still can’t really do anything to stop it from happening, even this early from the November 4 election!
Each day, the GOP and McCain make matters worse. We all heard months ago that Nancy Reagan was going to support McCain.
Big deal, she and her two kids were, and are not conservatives.
But...the stoopid GOP, and McCain think if he trots a 90 year old woman out to say she supports him.....well golleee, that makes McLame a real conservative.
The GOP must really believe conservatives just fell off the turnip truck. My disgust for this party grows daily. They are so weasely they should not be trusted with donations.
Wound + salt = Impy (WIMPY)
Comments like yours are so helpful! Man am I so glad you woke me up! I just wrote a $1,000 check to the McDole campaign. /sarcasm
Oberweis, the perennial, was not a great candidate, but he did run as a conservative. He also adopted a hard-line anti-illegal immigration policy. A different conservative could have won, but the seat was not lost because conservatives sat the race out.
I think I’ll make it my tagline.
We talk all the time about how the RATS take the black vote for granted because they believe they have nowhere else to go. Well in a lot of places, the Republican establishment has done the same thing with conservatives. The difference is that the conservatives don't seem inclined to put up with the same garbage. I don't believe this would be happening if the party hadn't first done everything they could to defeat Lauzen.
That’s right, they’re airing out their junk early. By November, we’ll all be used to black racism and desensitized.
The winner works at Batavia. He would be considered a minor god in the community.
Let me get this right ...
The Republican Party has evolved into the Democrat "lite" Party.
McCain the "maverick" has been selected to lead Democrat "lite" Party.
The Democrat "lite" McCain is against free speech ... for illegal immigration ... believes the global warming scam ... admits he hasn't a clue about economics ... and has fought his "friend" GWB every step of the way.
A Democrat "lite" Party representative (GWB) has been in the White House for two terms.
The economy is tanking.
Fuel costs are skyrocketing.
Food costs are going out of sight.
And the Feds are printing funny money to buy off the electorate.
Now you think that conservatives should support McCain and his Republican "lite" Party?
Have I got that about right?
Probably no more tired than people who may not be conservative enough for you are tired of a minority of the party who consider themselves the base, when they are not, trying to hold the party hostage.
Have you ever considered there may be some of us conservatives, who are not ultra enough conservative for you, that may well rebel down the road to your candidate because we are tired of the actions of the ultra conservatives in this election?
Make no mistake, I'm a conservative but am not pleased with the reaction of a spoiled few who continue to whine about McCain not being conservative enough.
And I'm sure there are a lot of others like me.
Is there any reason we can’t unnominate these candidates. After all the people did not select them and we shouldn’t be forced to vote for them. There are many good people out there.
...or rilly....!!!
last time a liberal democrat was in the White House,
conservatives regained control of congress,
control of the Senate,
passage of NAFTA, welfare reform,
return of the majority of state legislatures,
majority of governorships,
the joy of watching a "great" leader explain a semen stained dress while every liberal apologist looked like the hypocrites they are....
Meanwhile with Bush, we got..... tax cuts, conservative supreme court.....
hmmmmmmmmm, Kennedy education fiasco,
Medicare pharmacy boondoggle,
soldiers in the field prosecuted by liberals in uniform with authorization up the chain of command
spending like drunk sailors without cutting a single program
talked to like idiots for thinking that our border should be secure
told that illegal aliens are just doing the hard work that Americans aren't willing to do.
..like field work, construction, poultry processing, rape, murder, drunk driving, filling hospitals and not paying bills, overwhelming local schools, killing African Americans to control ghetto drug/prostitution/protection rackets....
so it's a wash for me.
McCain has stated that he is an "environmentalist", believes in global warming.
will not drill in ANWAR
thought that "tax cuts" for the rich was wrong
talks about "going to Washington" to "get things done".
wanted to be a democrap and voted like it.
Has more skeletons in the closet than John Wayne Gacy, due to the Keating Fiasco and who knows what else after "serving" in the senate forever...
so as far as a conservative "retarded moron".... I acknowledge the name and raise a one fingered salute in your direction.
Jim Oberweis was a flawed candidate from the beginning who did not even have the support of many Republicans in this election.
If the GOP can get its act together, maybe they can win this seat back in the fall. They need a better candidate.
BS. What you say is pure nasty BS. McCain is barely a Republican. Twice he was going to defect. If you call that “conservative” enough, then you are not a conservative.
The GOP moderates and independents are not entitled to anyones vote, except those that wish to support McCain.
Yes, they are called "Democrats".
A biggie, especially with Heller vs. D.C. being ruled on this month.
Imagine instead if Gore or Kerry had picked the replacements for O'Conner and Rehnquist. Tain't pretty.
The lesions of the last election are completely lost on you. You presume I won’t vote for McCain, but you would be wrong.
What I can’t stand is the crop of Congressmen that have spent this party into a minority status trying to be like democrats
Yes, McCain is a disappointment, but he will not keep me from voting. I will go out and vote for anyone with an ‘R’ by their name just to vote against the ‘D’.
I’ll do anything and everything to insure ‘D’s heads explode. That’s my payoff - keeping ‘D’s out of office and enforcing the idea that ‘D’s are a perpetual nightmare for the USA.
Folks can stay home if they want, to prove a point...but that point isn’t very sharp and it doesn’t do a thing but ensure three new socialist Supreme Court justices in the next four years.
Even if McLame could resurrect George Washington and run him as VP, how does that help the Republican party beyond making the liberal John McLame look good? VP's are just figure heads, their role in shaping government policy is very limited.
Remember Gerald Ford, probably our most athletic President ever? The pressss went after his every single trip, stumble and stubbed toe and in months turned him into a stupid, clumsey klutz.
Well, McCain’s old. Watch out for every single “um”, “Uhh”, “duh” and every misspoken and mispronunced word. They’ll have him pronounced senile in a heartbeat.
Great job, you RINOS.
The Dems & MSM out-snookered the Pubbies.
They got Dems on both tickets. So, it is a matter of which Dem — Clinton or Obama — on the Dem ticket faces the Dem on the GOP ticket.
Whatever happens, the Dems win.
“I’m tired of being told we must support a Rhino candidate to save the party.”
You MUST support whoever the Republican nominee is to save the NATION!!!
We can write in the candidate of our choice in the general election and hope every one else is doing the same thing. But we had our chance when folks like Duncan Hunter, Tom Tancredo and Fred were running, and we chose to let ourselves down by voting for the dummy McLame. With McLame all we have is a geriatric "W" Bush, and perhaps even worse. Not long ago McLame was considering leaving the Republican party because he found it difficult to reconcile his liberal views with conservative ideology.
Normally, yes. But McCain's old, in cancer remission and more likely to die in office than most, so the VP may well become President.
Just because a candidate (McCain, in this case) has an R does not mean much.
The RNC has not represented the conservatives for years.
Look at the massive uprisings GWB caused, not once, but several times: Dubai, Miers, Amnesty round 1 (2006) that the House shelved, Amnesty round 2 (2007) that the Senate shelved. Amnesty round 3 (2007) that shut down the Senate switchboard before the Senate shelved it.
Those massive uprisings signals to a politician and political party who are out of touch with the will of the people.
The RNC continues to demonstrate that they prefer the centrists/moderates/leftists. They want globalism, amnesty, open borders, NAFTA, etc.
The problem with the continued Obama and Clinton battle is that it emboldens McCain to select a moderate VP and give the conservatives his middle finger -— again.
My sentiments exactly. GOP political suicide.
Two decades, huh; another poster boy for TERM LIMITS!
I despise McCain, and I can see nothing he could do or say to make me vote for him.
Having said that, I have to admit that his demurrer yesterday regarding bailouts for Wall Street and "homeowners" was statesmanlike and I really appreciated it.
I have to disagree, GWB has put the latest round of nails in the coffin.
That would be true if Bush hadn't already done so. It gives me no pleasure to say, "I told you so" in 2001 on FR (to a great hue and cry).
Jim O. was not the GOP establishment guy.
Jim O. is conservative, very anti amnesty and someone the GOP establishment in IL hates.
I saw him try to answer a monetary policy question from Ron Paul in one of the debates. Someone on Youtube did a Ms. South Carolina mashup with that clip. It was sad.
Nonsense.
The GOP reaps what it sows. If your candidate is a liberal don’t complain when conservatives won’t vote for him.
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