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Palin, the Base, and the Northeast Corridor Conservatives
American Thinker ^ | September 18, 2008 | J.R. Dunn

Posted on 09/18/2008 12:07:17 AM PDT by neverdem

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1 posted on 09/18/2008 12:07:18 AM PDT by neverdem
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To: neverdem
"a swift and transformative upheaval which brings into being a new status quo"

And would that be a paradigm shift?...

No wonder the dims and elites are in head explode mode.

2 posted on 09/18/2008 12:17:13 AM PDT by spokeshave (Hillary wants to kill babies and raise taxes, Sarah wants to raise babies and kill taxes)
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To: neverdem
Fascinating article, thanks for posting it.

If this is the choice of the conservative base, one said “Then we need a new base.”

Behold, this is what your masters think of you. I'm getting really sick of these old-money Northeast elites (both conservative and liberal) looking down their noses at the silent majority of the rest of us.

3 posted on 09/18/2008 12:20:28 AM PDT by thecabal (Conservatives who don't live up to the liberal caricature are now hypocrites.)
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To: neverdem

By jove I believe the ole boy has it!!


4 posted on 09/18/2008 12:25:08 AM PDT by RVN Airplane Driver ("To be born into freedom is an accident; to die in freedom is an obligation..)
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To: neverdem

Thank goodness someone finaly recognizes that the Republican party is not just Evangelicals and country club Republicans. There is a large block of conservatives of libertarian bendt in the vast fly-over country and Heartland who believe in individualism, personal responsibility, private property and limited decentralized government as envisioned in the Constitution and promoted by Ronald Reagan. These tenets are the ideological cradle for entrepreneuralism, small towns and self-sufficiency which formed the backbone of frontier exploration, Western expansion and the values of community service, patriotism, loyalty, sacrifice and civic pride exhibited by the Greatest Generation.

I get the feeling that the elitist east view these ideals as rather provincial and unsophisticated. They remind me of the French fops that John Adams tried to treat with.


5 posted on 09/18/2008 12:48:43 AM PDT by marsh2
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To: neverdem

Dunn can be great and this seems like a good analysis of the situation, but I have absolutely no patience with so-called “conservative” whiners about Palin. The only alternative in 2008 is OBAMA with BIDEN..... get over yourselves, you self-appointed elite of northeastern “conservatives”..... either support Palin or get out of the way b/c we have to save the country from the Obamanators, period.


6 posted on 09/18/2008 12:54:30 AM PDT by Enchante (OBAMAGATE: Iraqi Foreign Minister Says Obama Tried to Derail Agreement on Troop Withdrawals!!!)
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To: marsh2

I say we tie down all the talking heads, force them to read Russell Kirk, William F. Buckley, Edmund Burke, and F.A. Hayek, then ask them whether they think they’re in the right movement.


7 posted on 09/18/2008 12:57:23 AM PDT by Tublecane
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To: neverdem

It’s is nice to see someone taking the longer view. I get so caught up in the issue du jour or the latest poll that I find myself missing the forest for the trees.


8 posted on 09/18/2008 1:00:08 AM PDT by Straight Vermonter (Posting from deep behind the Maple Curtain)
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To: neverdem

Bit over the top. Simpler explanation is that the GOP, over the past decade, has embraced the values and views of the evangelical south. Hence why those who view that culture as alien and don’t put much worth into “faith” and “shes one of us” idolizations are disgusted with the Palin pick. She has more in common with the blue collar values voters (who now ARE the GOP) than those who exist outside of that universe.

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/98jun/gop.htm


9 posted on 09/18/2008 1:12:55 AM PDT by KantianBurke (President Bush, why did you abandon Specialist Ahmed Qusai al-Taei?)
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To: Tublecane
And hit all of them in the head with a hardcover edition of Atlas Shrugs for good measure.
10 posted on 09/18/2008 1:12:56 AM PDT by Kickass Conservative (Obama / Biden, the new Ebony and Ivory.)
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To: neverdem

if Rudy and Joe Lieberman and Donald trump can support McCain and (gasp!) Sarah Palin, then I don’t see what the problem is.


11 posted on 09/18/2008 1:13:56 AM PDT by ari-freedom (We never hide from history. We make history!)
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To: neverdem

Some excerpts:

“The Republican Party is increasingly a party of the South and the mountains. The southernness of its congressional leaders — Speaker Newt Gingrich, of Georgia; House Majority Leader Dick Armey and House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, of Texas; Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, of Mississippi; Senate Majority Whip Don Nickles, of Oklahoma — only heightens the identification. There is a big problem with having a southern, as opposed to a midwestern or a California, base. Southern interests diverge from those of the rest of the country, and the southern presence in the Republican Party has passed a “tipping point,” at which it began to alienate voters from other regions.

As southern control over the Republican agenda grows, the party alienates even conservative voters in other regions. The prevalence of right-to-work laws in southern states may be depriving Republicans of the socially conservative midwestern trade unionists whom they managed to split in the Reagan years, and sending Reagan Democrats back to their ancestral party in the process. Anti-government sentiment makes little sense in New England, where government, as even those who hate it will concede, is neither remote nor unresponsive.

The most profound clash between the South and everyone else, of course, is a cultural one. It arises from the southern tradition of putting values — particularly Christian values — at the center of politics. This is not the same as saying that the Republican Party is “too far right”; Americans consistently tell pollsters that they are conservative on values issues. It is, rather, that the Republicans have narrowly defined “values” as the folkways of one regional subculture, and have urged their imposition on the rest of the country. Again, the nonsoutherners who object to this style of politics may be just as conservative as those who practice it. But they are put off to see that “traditional” values are now defined by the majority party as the values of the U-Haul-renting denizens of two-year-old churches and three-year-old shopping malls.”


12 posted on 09/18/2008 1:16:23 AM PDT by KantianBurke (President Bush, why did you abandon Specialist Ahmed Qusai al-Taei?)
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To: thecabal
If they won’t recognize that, they won’t recognize anything. Living in a Northeast that is steadily combining aspects of a Third-World state and a suburban mall, they have lost sight of what America actually is. Huge gaps exist in their knowledge of the country. In the same way that liberals view the U.S. a racist, militarist monolith, the Northeast Corridor coterie view it as a cultural wasteland populated by backwoodsmen, halfwits who need to be guided by an enlightened but aloof elite.

This passage struck me as did your post. Tonight I was watching O'Reilly and he brought on some 'coach' to analyze Palin's hair and voice and delivery and all this crap while she did her interview. This really bugged me as a west coast gal that was born and raised middle class (at best) in a rural western state and town. I went on to live in a whole other world and class as a result of my own efforts and although I worked on presentation when I felt it could best achieve my objectives, I also actively resisted allowing 'them' to define how I looked, the strength of my voice, the passionate displays and the honest, frank style of delivery all of which had help bring me to these people's world and also what made me stand out from them.

I mention this story as I know Sarah will want to refine things for herself if she feels they will best achieve whatever objective she has, but I also know it is the becoming of these things and the compliance of them as recommended by these flaccid, outlines of human beings that I hope my fellow western conservative resists as she sees fit.

It is bucking against these haughty east coast standards that has allowed the most powerful and impactful conservatives to come from the west. Sarah does not need to be 'guided to enlightenment by the elite" I am sure this is why we love her that much more. Sarah brings a whole new class to Washington full and rich and earnest with her desire to represent the people. The ones with the babies, and the snow machines, and the guns, and the trucks, and the God :-).

13 posted on 09/18/2008 1:16:49 AM PDT by GOP Poet
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To: neverdem
There are no electoral conservative votes in the Northeast Corridor. None, nada, zilch. No other explanation is required. If Northeast Corridor Conservatives are not happy with a conservative that ewes to all three legs of the conservative stool, they are unappeasable.
14 posted on 09/18/2008 1:17:46 AM PDT by jwalsh07 (MSM Lied, Journalism Died. RIP 2008)
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To: Kickass Conservative
“And hit all of them in the head with a hardcover edition of Atlas (Shrugs) for good measure”.

Atlas Shrugged! Oops, must be time to hit the hay. LOL

15 posted on 09/18/2008 1:29:04 AM PDT by Kickass Conservative (Obama / Biden, the new Ebony and Ivory.)
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To: neverdem

Northeastern urban conservative , overnight The Thinker invented a new code word for liberal.


16 posted on 09/18/2008 1:43:15 AM PDT by JohnLongIsland (jackmartins08.com NY 4th Congressional)
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To: neverdem

I’m a Northeast Corridor Conservative and I was backing Palin for VP before McCain picked her and am happy with his pick.


17 posted on 09/18/2008 1:49:11 AM PDT by Question_Assumptions
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To: neverdem

Even more than elitism, a lack of experience in winning politics at the local and state level defines “Northeast Corridor Conservatives.” They may sniff at Sarah Palin’s supposed inexperience and populism, but they have long been in political decline on their native soil and have little or no experience themselves in producing successful state and local campaigns.

As Sam Rayburn supposedly said to Lyndon Johnson of the flock of intellectuals that he inherited from the Kennedy administration, “I’d feel a whole lot better about them if just one of them had run for sheriff once.” Notably, those conservatives who do have an abundance of retail political experience — Republican activists and convention delegates — immediately recognized Palin as a political star for the GOP and conservatism. Her nomination was an inspired choice that will generate long term gains for conservatives. As this becomes evident, watch for the eventual admissions to that effect from “Northeast Corridor Conservatives.”


18 posted on 09/18/2008 1:52:43 AM PDT by Rockingham
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To: neverdem
Wish he would have used the word "Republican" instead of "conservative" in many places in the article. I don't feel the terms are interchangeable.

Maryland, New York and Pennsylvania are full of Republicans who are not conservatives. They still have their Nixon and Rockefeller campaign buttons and David Gergan is their spokesman.

If there's any name changing to be done, it's to seperate from these fossils and change the name "Republican Party" to "Conservative Party"

19 posted on 09/18/2008 1:54:04 AM PDT by leadhead (Do or do not, there is no try)
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To: GOP Poet

Thank you, that was very eloquent. That was why I was so excited by Sarah’s nomination; here’s a bone fide western conservative who understands self-reliance, restraint, and family. Contrary to the rumors, the left coast is not yet completely run over by liberal nutjobs.


20 posted on 09/18/2008 1:55:57 AM PDT by thecabal (Conservatives who don't live up to the liberal caricature are now hypocrites.)
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