I'd have to agree with you there.
Amazing << Hear this. Feel this, and tell me that this isn't music.
Hey Barack HUSSEIN Obama, I went to Harvard too! That was the worst fieldtrip of my life, but I went there...
Posted on 02/28/2009 7:55:28 PM PST by EveningStar
...The Goldwater myth shuts down all attempts to reform and renew our conservative message for modern times. And it offers a handy justification for nominating a 2012 presidential candidate who might otherwise seem disastrously unelectable...
(Excerpt) Read more at newmajority.com ...
I’m not too concerned about who the GOP nominee is at this point. Either Obama will succeed, and no GOPer will defeat him, or he will fail and any GOPer will defeat him.
Not likely.
It's the "any GOPer" that I fear, should Obama fail.
Good grief, why even bother posting something from a discredited know-nothing like Frum?
Debate is good for the mind.
I'd have to agree with you there.
Amazing << Hear this. Feel this, and tell me that this isn't music.
Hey Barack HUSSEIN Obama, I went to Harvard too! That was the worst fieldtrip of my life, but I went there...
But he has a very good point that is illustrated by the fact that picking up a million extra votes in an already red state is worth less than changing a state from blue to red.
In other words, “Experts agree: Obama’s re-election chance is either dead or alive.” All we need is the CNN screenshot.
This is a general interest list. We cover everything from the sublime to the ridiculous.
If you want on or off this ping list, please FReepmail me.
As we should have learned with Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, the GOP wins when it stands on firm conservative principles. When the party tries to out-”moderate” the DemocRAT “moderates” we lose. It is that simple.
No it isn’t.
(Sorry, couldn’t resist.)
ping
:)
Changing a state from blue to red might be worth more provided you don’t also turn some of the red states to blue (such as happened in this Obama thing).
What's the point of nominating a McCain if it means you're going to get an Obama?
Frum is a well-meaning -- and very influential -- idiot.
The problem with that was always that Bobby Kennedy or Ted Kennedy could probably do what Nelson Rockefeller wanted to try better. There is no reason for conservatives to vote for a progressive Republican if there is Democrat around who can do just as much damage to the country.
Agreed.
Yeah? Tell us how Frum’s guy did in 2008 again?
[Frum is a well-meaning — and very influential — idiot.]
Who appoints people like Frum, and David Brooks and even George Will to speak for conservatives??? I think it is time to serve them all a giant cup of STFU.
RINO crap. Straight into the trash that goes.
True....but Frum doesn't really present anything that needs serious consideration. His essential argument all along has been "social conservatives bad, cost us election", which is empirically untrue if one bothers to examine the actual results of the 2008 contest. Social conservative ballot initiatives wons practically every place they were tested, and the ones that didn't lost because they were poorly written and conservatives openly refused to support them. The Republican candidates in the down ticket races more often than not were moderates who were outflanked on the RIGHT by Democrats pretending to be conservatives.
If Frum thinks that conservatism was beaten in 2008, then he needs to open his eyes.
So who’s unelectable Frum?
Hm... interesting take.
Funny, Frum didn’t point out that Johnson was forced out of office in 1968 and was replaced by Richard Nixon, who was supposed to be washed up in 1962.
This led to Republican-appointed Supreme Court Justices and a wind down of the Johnson Vietnam War and a return of our POWs.
His claim that it also caused today’s immigration invasion is also ridiculous. That was due to a lack of enforcement after Reagan passed the amnesty bill when the problem was manageable.
Frum is a moron. He probably also blames Katrina on Goldwater’s loss because it occured after it. What is sad is that Frum and his ilk are still making tons of money long after their opinions have been discredited.
Let’s hope the depression puts these guys out of a job.
Prior to Kennedy's death, Goldwater was shaping a viable and powerful strategy of direct debate and confrontation. Instead, he had to run not only against the deceitful scum and corruption of the LBJ whorehouse, but against the ghost of a martyr.
He also was the casualty of open opposition within the party, led by the Rockefeller republicans who attempted to abort the nomination with the preposterous Scranton candidacy late in the year, and who continued to oppose and undermine Goldwater after the nomination.
While Frum is right in his painfully obvious point that the ascendancy of Reagan was not a planned strategy in 1964, nevertheless the seeds of the Reagan era were planted in the party, in a historic moment, now recognized in retrospect simply as The Speech.
It was America's good fortune that Reagan was positioned so well at that time, and sadly there is no one of comparable strength waiting in the wings today.
So the basic point is valid, there is no virtue in losing. But then, who the hell ever said there was?
They are appointed by the media. That tells you all you need to know.
Yes. Because of the the JFK assassination, any Republican was doomed to defeat. I remember that era.
Does anybody else wonder why we still support the UN?
It tries to undermine the Constitution of the USA and
would love to cripple our Constitutional Republic.
In over 60 years the only politicians who tried to get
the USA out of the UN were Goldwater and President
Ronald Reagan who did kick UNESCO out.
What is with all this talk about a Presidential candidate when we have the midterm elections in 2010 which are so important. People need to keep their eye on 2010 and stop this crap of Presidential politics.
Cannot even believe anyone pays attention to what Frum has to say. Cannot remember the last time I agreed with him.
That is the best post I have seen on what should happen to these so-called ‘conservative’ writers.
But it had damn little to do with Goldwater's "message". It had a lot more to do with the act of one Lee Harvey Oswald, and also the demonizing of Goldwater by the DemonRats and their press lackeys. Really not much different than what happened to McCain, except that the main "demon" was George Bush, and McCain only because he wasn't a Democrat, and was pro military.
Another triangulating phony.
That is some talent !!!! I did like the live version better.
Success for BHO might well mean no more presidential elections. Short of that, a lot of what BHO and the Congress is doing now is calculated to insure that no Republican candidate for president will be elected.
Translated out of pundit babble, this means: "Palin is a dangerous wacko and so are her supporters. Get with the program, you mouth breathing schmucks. Learn to drink tea with your pinky finger pointed straight out, and join Obama's loyal opposition!"
-ccm
Doesn't matter--that specific point is valid even if he supported a loser candidate with a rotten campaign. You're trying to imply a fallacy of division.
“His claim that it also caused today’s immigration invasion is also ridiculous. That was due to a lack of enforcement after Reagan passed the amnesty bill when the problem was manageable.”
The 1965 immigration act is what brought on the immigration, a took a few years for word to get out but then it started exploding.
We were replaced by foreigners because it was legislated by the democrat party when they had the entire government under their control.
No, I’m pointing out that the strategy is flawed.
When you abandon principle to bend to the imagined will of ‘new’ voters, all you succeed in doing is alienating your base. You have the added benefit of losing all credibility with those who are actually convinced by someone with principles.
2008 was a prime example of that. McCain was as good a candidate as you can be while being a wishy-washy moderate ‘aisle-crosser’ that Frum is advocating for. That was the high water mark for neo-moderate Republican politics.
So you agree with Mitt Romney and his father. They stormed out in protest when Goldwater was giving his speech, then Mitt’s father ran as the antiwar candidate in 1968 while Mitt was avoiding the draft in Bordeaux, France during those years.
“There is no reason for conservatives to vote for a progressive Republican if there is Democrat around who can do just as much damage to the country.”
Yep. Might as well vote for the real thing every time instead of a stalking horse for the left who’ll tar your reputation. We’ll be listening to Republican ‘re-branding’ crap for another twenty years since the Bush, Boehner, & McConnell crowd spent the GOP into oblivion (and the latter two can’t get it together enough to stop even now).
“I am astonished that a self-anointed pundit like Frum could discuss the 1964 election without reference to the Kennedy assassination. The shadow of that event totally dominated the year that followed, and Goldwater was the casualty.”
______________________________________________________
I join with you in astonishment about the lack of reference to the Kennedy assignation. The Louisiana Republican party got its start in 1963 first in support of Charlton Lyons for Governor, then we shifted gears to work for Goldwater and we carried Louisiana by about 60 to 40.
In March, 1963, Ronald Regan came to Baton Rouge to speak at a fund raising event for Mr. Lyons at the Capitol House Hotel in Baton Rouge. He traveled to BR from California by train because he did not like travel by plane. I and a couple of others had the pleasure of keeping him company the afternoon of the evening event and showing him the state capital, including where Huey Long was shot. My regret about the afternoon spent with him was not bringing a camera and taking a picture with RR. What a prize that would now be.
Up until the day Kennedy was killed, the campaign was developing into a real debate between JFK and BG, with BG rapidly developing momentum. Human Events categorized the race as Goldwater in a jet plane vs. JFK in his rocking chair. The assignation of JFK followed by the use of the “little girl and a-bomb” TV ad by LBJ is what IMHO turned the campaign into a LBJ victory.
In looking back at JFK, I see him as a moderate liberal whereas I see LBJ as a sell-out southern liberal who pushed the country into the “Guns and Butter” of social programs that were primarily directed at the black community (victims)and concurrently waged the Vietnam war. Carter was not the worst US president... LBJ was. Carter is a close second.
In the early 1960’s, liberalism was just beginning to take off using the concepts developed at The Frankfurt School and the technique of Critical Theory, brought to Columbia University in 1933.
As mentioned above, BG was developing momentum in the fall of 1963, and since there is no conclusive proof of just who was behind the killing of JFK, I would propose that his killing was arranged by the Fabian/Frankfurt socialist/liberals in an arrangement with LBJ, who was a power hungry, POS willing to sell his soul to become the President of the US. How about that for a conspiracy theory?
Goldwater lost, but he left the RNC in a liquid financial position, not depleted, and by virtue of the southern states that he carried changed the composition of the RNC to reflect a more conservative posture as compared to the up-east David Rockfeller control of the RNC.
At the Republican convention at the Cow Palace in San Francisco, RR gave his speech in support of conservative concepts that led to his ultimate support by the Republican Party but he still had to fight the up east RINO’s led by David Rockfeller to get the nomination in time to run agaist the peanut farmer from Georgia whose name I do not want to type.
I am an old fort who was there and am proud of what we accomplished at that time. Now it is time for you young forts to get off your ass and do what is necessary to dethrone the big eared, purple lip, socialist, muslim who was not born in this county. Am I biased... you bet...
Liberalism is one god-awful mental disease...
Whatever one's leanings, the Bush-Cheney administration objectively generated a lot of hostility and negativity toward the GOP and to conservatism, incorrectly identified with their policies. This needs to be understood properly. It led directly into this Obammunist insanity.
Really confuse the RATS... do not offer anyone as a prospect until Sept 1, 2012. Let them spend their money wildly.
Frum! Isn’t this the little twit that ran a hack-job on Palin?
Goldwater would have received a larger share of the vote had he turned his campaign over to the professionals who won him the nomination instead of his inexperienced "Arizona Mafia."
Scranton's letter smearing Goldwater, which he circulated at the convention in a last-minute attempt to deny Goldwater the nomination certainly didn't help the party--and neither didScranton's and Rockefeller's refusal to support Goldwater during the general election.
That fact also alienated the Democrat Liberal elite, then very non-anti-semitic.
Guy didn't have a chance, but then neither did the Rockefeller Republicans.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.