A serious Republican candidate for President would have come out and said: "yes, we are down to $2.50/gallon right now, but we're going to go back up -- based on OPEC's strategy -- probably soon.. 0bama is owned by an environmental lobby that thinks our energy future comes from pixie dust." McCain couldn't, because that is also what McCain believes.
A serious Republican candidate for President would have come out and said: "You are being sold a bill of goods on this Bailout. The market is in need of a major correction, and if we need to guarantee liquidity through the credit crisis, the Federal Reserve has ways to do that which do not involve taxpayers bailing out or buying into Wall Street." Instead, our candidate proposed adding another $300 billion on top of the $1.4 trillion already paid to stabilize the market, in order to allow over-leveraged mortgage buyers to welsh on their obligations even longer.
A serious candidate for President could have said, "contrary to claims made by the US Chamber of Commerce and the Op-Ed page of the Wall Street Journal, serious studies have actually shown that illegal immigration is a net drain on our economy. It is senseless for us to import additional weakness during a contraction." Instead, our guy mumbled some lame nonsense about "securing the borders first." Karmic justice: Hispanics are a major cause of McCain's loss.
A serious candidate would have hit 0bama and Biden early and hard about coal: both of them made idiotic statements about coal, and both favor Cap and Trade. So does McCain. What he should have said was "Regardless of how you feel about Anthropogenic Global Warming, it doesn't make any sense for us to maim ourselves in the face of increasing carbon emission from the emerging economies in China and India. While we're capping and trading, China is going to be eating our lunch." But McCain could not have said that.
Let me know when you want me to stop.
The standard bearer for an ideologically conservative party must articulate conservative principles. The point of my post is that either the Republican Party must descend into the kind of Me-too-ism that it "enjoyed" in the 50 years before the Roosevelt Era, or it must decide to be a conservative party, and that means its presidential candidate must be eloquent and firm for conservatism.
That is why GWB has had his problems, and that is why McCain could not differentiate himself from his 0pponent.
I agree. All I’m saying is when we have a Republican and Conservative President who has been outr leader and face of our party for 8 years and who is at 70-75% disapproval a -50 net compared to a +5 or so four years ago, when you’re being outspent and outadvertised by an unprecedented amount in all the key states, when the media is 1000% behind your opponent(way more than I’ve ever seen for any dem, and I’ve seen a lot), when the economy is in the worst shape its been in 75 years and everyone blames your President, when THE 2 ISSUES that won W his reelection terrorism and moral values have completely disappeared from the agenda in four years, when the economy has gone from 20% to 60% as an issue, when all the polls for the past 6 weeks said you were behind by 10 to 15 pts and that’s all that was trumpeted for weeks on end, when your party is in shambles as evidenced by the GOP Senators and Congressmen who continue to get tossed out, when you’ve seen your party go from even strength with the opposition to -10(a net -14 in OH, a -10 in VA for example) to the point where close to 25% of those who were Republicans four years ago are either democrats or independents today, when you have all that and more against you, it’s a very tough mission.
And I’m just saying that if you want to blame someone, and frnakly no one person is really responsible, but if someone has to be at the top of the list, Bush is way more deserving than McCain. McCain was dealt a rotten hand and all things considered, I think he ended up doing about as well as any Republican would have done this year, probably a bit better. Without the economic/financial collapse in September I think tonight’s results tell me he would have won. But it did happen.
There’ll be plenty of time to apportion blame, and hopefully we’ll be able to use the next four years to recover from Bush and develop a coherent opposition to Obama and the dems, who will now be responsible for everything and not simply able to blame Bush for everything.
A bunch of folks were pretty down in 1976 when Carter won and four years later we were on cloud nine. Things can change awfully quickly in politics as we’ve seen the past four years.
I also hope that Gov Palin isn’t singled out as the sacrifical lamb as to blame her for this beyond rediculous.
Command Economies don't work and will eventually self destruct. Our Mixed Economy has been going on now for almost 80 yrs. I see boyBO as an American Gorbachev who will try to save the mixed economy like the original Gorby tried to save communism. With the same result. Which is why I say we must not allow the Vichy Republicans to blame Palin. She is a true small government,free market conservative and must be protected and nurtured for the future battle when the economy really tanks