The Dangerous Good Old Boys of the GOP

And their current answer is for those exact same “good old boys” to “rebrand” the formerly grand OLD party.

Nailed it!!!!

This article actually made sense to me. I like it!!!

Smart Prolife groups understand the “prolife voting increment” and the idea of voter intensity.

The prochoice voter is more willing to vote for a prolife candidate than a prolife candidate is willing to vote for a prochoice candidate.

Also, the abortion issue is more important to prolifers than it is to prochoicers.

So, there is NO good reason to DELIBERATELY run off voters that don't agree with us, on everything.

Tell the truth, but then move on, and do not look petty or preachy on the issue.

The movers and shakers STILL don’t understand what hit them.

The view that prevails in the Washington establishment is that it was "the voters let them down". When, in fact, the voters hold the exact opposite view.

The whole Specter flap revealed this quite clearly -- in particular the Olympia Snowe op-ed which essentially blamed Pennsylvania Republican voters for being "too extreme".

The Rasmussen results are illuminating a very significant phenomenon. The nation's voters appear to be recognizing that their greatest enemy may not be the other party -- instead, it is Washington.

More balderdash.

The GOP’s problem is the 24/7/365 war room of the MSM/DNC/Hollywood/Academia.

And the “American” people (and our pols) who let them run the United States.

Republican Party leaders don’t mind being the Democrats lapdogs. They all have to go. All of them.

Absolutely spot on. In my opinion the Republicans lost because of:

(1) They spent money like drunken sailors for the last XXX years, culminating in the Paulson coup.

(2) An open primary allowing democrats to pick who they’d like to run against. A system they do not seem to be in any hurry to change.

(3) McCain.

(4) McCain’s endorsement of Obama

(5) McCain’s inexplicable and ineffective intervention in the bailout mess. Not to mention the bailout mess itself. Not to mention McCain’s support of the bailout mess. See also (1) again.

(6) Republican party leadership’s ongoing efforts to neuter Sarah Palin. Even after it was obvious that she was generating the only excitement in the race, they kept her in the dark about campaign planning, and tried their best to marginize her.

(7) Liberals, including all the media, had a candidate and campaign they could enthusiastically support. Conservatives had a candidate they could barely tolerate. “He’s not as bad as him” does not win elections.

(8) all the reasons mentioned in the excellent article — too many Republicans ashamed of the beliefs of the people who voted for them and trying their best to be democrat-light.

Orin Hatch and his RINO buds trying to push Tom Ridge while dumping on Toomey.

Orin Hatch and his RINO buds trying to push Tom Ridge while dumping on Toomey.

Oh Gawd.

I have a suggestion.

Hold a nationwide election so Republicans throughout the nation can decide who they want to represent them instead of merely having a small convention with a small handful of cnadidates who, let’s be frank, are fairly flaccid.

Then once said candidate is chosen all we need to do is work to convince the other side why he’s better than the Democrat candidate.

That way the Republican party can go to the polls with the solid base already in line and the only thing we would have to worry about is whether or not we have ocnvinced the other side of the merits of our candidate.

The article and posters make some solid points. However, I think what is needed is an honest re-evaluation of where we stand realistically from an electoral standpoint. While there are still a substantial minority of conservatives out there, there are also a smaller but substantial number of more influential liberals who support the socialist, anti-american agenda. There is also a larger group of SWING VOTERS, maybe 1/3 of the country, that determine elections. It is THEY who voted for Obama and still support him and what little they actually know about his “agenda”. Those are the people that we need to address.

The problem is that we now have a number of structural factors that are working against us that could doom conservatives electorally FOREVER if they are not addressed, and soon; First, DEMOGRAPHICS are against us. The simple fact is that minority voters vote Democratic in substantial numbers, and they are a fast increasing share of the electorate. (The most salient fact is that if the demographics of the U.S. in 2008 were the same as it were in 1992, and whites voted for the GOP in the same proportions, despite everything else McCain WOULD HAVE STILL WON THIS ELECTION HANDILY.) This should cause major concern for anyone who cares about limited government. The demographics are moving even faster against us given immigration and birth patterns. For conservatives to win national elections they need to address this issue as they need to either win an increasingly large share of the white vote (as well as address immigration and consider being more “polarizing”) or an increasingly large share of the minority vote (If anyone thinks they can do that without moving leftward on substantive issues, I’d like to hear their ideas AND see it work in practice)

Second, the liberal media has been successful in their long quest to influence voters; The MSM has never been so biased, but conservatives have to realize that the SWING VOTERS that determine elections are largely apolitical, and they get their news (what little of it) from headlines generated by a liberal newspaper or wire service, t.v. news reporters, etc. The media influences their view of events, and many of these voters believe that if they simply read something in a newspaper or see it on the t.v. news then it must be “true”.

Third, the CULTURE has been quickly moved to the left. The Universities are havens for Marxism and socialism, and there is nothing on the horizon to counter this. Jon Stewart is an unfunny leftist but he DOES have influence. So does Hollywood, MTV, etc. These influences make it “hip” to be liberal, and ostracize conservative views. Younger voters went 2 for 1 for Obama, are now overwhelmingly in favor of liberal positions such as gay marriage. They have been moving steadily leftward with the influence of the education system and pop culture.

Finally, MONEY HAS MADE A DIFFERENCE. George Soros and his billions (Through MOVE-ON.org, ACORN, Media Matters, etc. etc. ) have financed the Left’s agenda through the media AND registering voters. This was a conscious effort, and there is so far no similar committment on the part of any conservative billionaires to do what Soros was willing to do.

I’m not an alarmist, but the reality is that we are facing an existential threat to the America as we have known it. Demographics, media, culture, and money have successfully marginalized conservatives as an electoral force. While George W. Bush was a decent man, he was a “Christian conservative”, he was not an IDEOLOGICAL CONSERVATIVE. As a result, he let these left-wing forces garner strength during his 8 years in office due to his failure to articulate conservative principles, failure to build up conservative institutions, and inability to communicate. He allowed the Left to destroy his reputation and, by extension, the reputation of conservatism in the eyes of swing voters. We are now unfortunately reaping what has been sowed by the inaction. If we don’t get conservative leadership and counter these forces things will soon be irreversable...

The GOP primary voters are responsible for picking him.

Nonsense! You live in Virginia and know very well that when we went to vote on February 12th he had already been declared the presumtive nominee on January 29th after receiving 25.5% of the vote from only 7 states.

The state "central committee" had changed the rules at some point between 1-1-08 and 2-12-08, but no one knew exactly who, when or how it happened.

Obviously we in Virginia weren’t responsible, but there was a series of primaries, and somehow McCain managed to win the contest.

And the only argument I have against those who are arguing with me on this is that it was NOT democrats crossing over to vote Republican — the democrats had a hot primary of their own that was contested way past the end of ours.

McCain didn’t get a majority. That means that we should have been able to elect a conservative, because McCain had a minority of the vote leaving a majority not voting for him.

If everybody who didn’t want McCain had agreed on another candidate, we would have had another candidate.

But we didn’t. McCain had more people who supported him than any other individual candidate. And that is the fault of the GOP voters. It wasn’t McCain’s fault — he didn’t force us all to split our votes. It wasn’t the democrats — they didn’t cross over to vote McCain, nor did they force us to split our votes.