“Down-to-earth, Fargo-talking Palin was a missed opportunity because almost immediately for some reason she was served up to the DC press in gottcha interviews and caricatured as a hockey-mom bimbo by NY-DC grandees of her own party.”
You betcha. If I’m not mistaken, NRO themselves took part in that shameful display.
And the RNC itself, who coordinate national strategies and focus on messages, behaved like they were running grade-school car wash. When House Minority Leader John Boehner was asked about another "Contract with America", he replied "There will be no effort to try to nationalize the elections." Great call there, Mr Brilliant. The Democrats held a National Campaign, and you decide it's 'every man for himself'. That's timidity, atop stupidity. He should be pulled from his office, suit stripped from him, and tossed into the gutter without even a look back to pity him. Certainly he should never be in such a position again.... but the same louts who voted him Leader before will do so again, comfy in their minority status.
Agreed. The GOP needs to give its governors an opportunity to be the face of the party (ie Govs. Palin, Jindal, and Sanford). I think the GOP also needs to squash the ‘next in line’ presidential nonsense. That last worked in 1988. The GOP has taken back the presidency from the Democrats over the last 40 years when it’s run governors as its presidential nominee (ie Bush, Reagan, and Nixon). Who was the last Republican senator to win the White House? Bueller, Bueller...
Harding, for those of you scoring at home. Before that, Benjamin Harrison.
The next Republican presidential nominee has to come from outside of DC. The Democrats are in control of the executive and legislative branch until 2010, for certain. This should give them plenty of rope. The GOP candidate will have to be able to critique them from afar. I do think that Gov. Palin should assume a prominent role as the face of the party. At the end of the day, she attracts plenty of attention. I don’t think she should automatically be the shoo-in as the nominee in 2012, though I certainly would not mind it. Jindal would be a great pick, one who could run on a record of solid, effective conservative leadership. And Sanford would be another clear conservative.
About the only senator I would consider would be someone like DeMint of South Carolina. If anything, he should get a more prominent role in the Senate GOP leadership.
How about the GOP is identified as the party of the rich, and here you have Wall Street screwing up everything and and a history of incompassion, to boot.
parsy, who wishes the GOP would conduct their auto-autopsy correctly.
mark
You can build that kind of reputation over the course of a primary campaign. Vice Presidential candidates rarely have the opportunity to do so. They get put on the spot all of a sudden and don't have much time to win voters over.
Once she blew those initial interviews, the undecideds moved away from our ticket and went Obama
Sarah did better later, but the damage was done.
Anybody with an IQ higher than an eggplant would know that the press was gunning for her - if she couldn't handle Katie Couric, she couldn't handle the Presidency.
McCain, like GW Bush, saw a move to the center as a way to grab minority votes and the “undecided” voters. This is a classic mistake in business, in war and as it happens, in politics.
Success comes from figuring out what you do well and then doing that thing better than the other guys do their thing. The Republicans needed to get the ball rolling with a real and honest conservative agenda including Border Security, Family Values, Smaller Government, and the Sanctity of Life.
When the Presidential Candidate goes to Washington and buys, wholesale, into bailouts for people that made bad decisions THEN blames Wall St. instead of the Democrats two bad things happen. First, true Conservatives lose confidence in his ability to represent their interests and, second, the Democrats become convinced that we're trying to squeeze in on their territory and pull out the “hypocrite” card. The issue with border security works just the same way.
The ONLY areas that McCain took a true conservative stance were on family values and abortion and he CRUSHED Obama on these issues.
Remember, if you don't define your position other people will define it for you and you may not like the results.
Perhaps I’m still in near depression mode from Black Tuesday, but I see little hope of conservatives ever again being a creditable political force. Why? We live in a crude, immoral country. With the unchecked media leading the charge, Christianity is mocked everywhere. Our values are regarded as an old fashioned relic of the past. Look at the “work ethic”; laziness and a hedonistic lifestyles are celebrated. Wealth spreading politicians are easily elected and re-elected. Personal and financial responsibility dismissed as virtues of the past. Bad personal financial decisions are someone else’s fault. When the dems are done with their complete power grap, the U.S. will soon be unrecognizable, a shell of its former greatness. May God have mercy on us, but sadly, I don’t think he’s listening anymore.