Demonstrators march in Washington to protest healthcare reform plans. Photograph: Rex Features
Posted on 11/01/2009 8:48:39 AM PST by TaxPayer2000
The 2008 election didn't exile Republicans to the political wilderness. Today, the party has already started its comeback
After Tuesday, the Republican remnant in Washington is fearing the worst. Opinion leaders warn of a big, and perhaps permanent, shift to the left. But Obama, overspending, over-taxing and over-regulating could make this week's liberal euphoria as distant a memory as 2004's talk of Rove's majority-making genius. (After the loss, the recriminations, 6 November 2008)
Does anybody remember the 2004 elections? Republicans enjoyed unified control of the federal government. George Bush boasted that he earned political capital with his landslide victory – actually a 50.7% squeaker for a wartime incumbent against an uninspiring challenger – and he damn well intended to spend it. Karl Rove went to bed each night and dreamed of a permanent Republican majority.
Two years later the congressional Republicans were thrown out on their posteriors. Then in 2008, Republicans lost their redoubt in the White House. Hope and Change had come to America with Barack Obama's landslide victory – actually a George HW Bush-like 53% against a septuagenarian senator who ran the worst campaign in recent memory – and a filibuster-proof Democratic Senate majority was soon to follow.
But the American people did not love the Democrats. They merely loathed the Republicans, who had given them (if I may quote myself): "War, Wall Street jitters, wage stagnation and, above all, W". If the Democrats did not understand this basic fact, I predicted, they would soon have problems of their own.
Two years ago, the Republican base was dispirited, the Democratic base was vacillating between energetic and enraged and the GOP couldn't buy independent votes with a bridge to nowhere. It's early, but things are starting to trend in the opposite direction. Angry conservatives are mobilised, liberals are starting ...
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
Demonstrators march in Washington to protest healthcare reform plans. Photograph: Rex Features
“Angry conservatives are mobilised”
Let me rephrase: Energeric and motivated Reagan Conservatives are mobilised.
Obama is finishing the job of The Clintons!The DESTRUCTION of The DemonRat Party!!Do we have to thank him?
Obama is in the process of the total destruction of the country. Our 'hope' is that it can 'change' before he succeeds.
There is a lot of work to be done. We can only pray that the American people join together to stop this community organizer from turning us into a third world country!
“Unfortunately, the Republicans don’t yet deserve to return to power. They still have no unified message on healthcare, no consistency on fiscal policy and an unhealthy addiction to launching wars of choice in the Middle East.”
Not entirely right, but a couple of good points. An example of lost initiative would be a Republican counter proposal in health care reforms to set alongside the Democrat HealthControl monstrosity.
A Republican plan reduced to writing, at least in outline, not just the assertions of “we have good ideas too . . .!”
Amateur hour continues . . .
Obama is in the process of the total destruction of the country. Our ‘hope’ is that it can ‘change’ before he succeeds.
There is a lot of work to be done. We can only pray that the American people join together to stop this community organizer from turning us into a third world country!
If we deteriorate to 3rd world status - and we may - I think we will fragment. Too weak or corrupt or oppressive a central government - and we can see that from here - will lead to dissolution and formal seccession. 300,000,000 people will not lay down and die because some drug abuser bastard in DC says so.
The primary reason a state as large as the US holds together is because it is in our mutual interests for trade and security. Take away the power to buy, take away mutual security, and things will fragment quickly.
I agree with your principal point, but a 50 - or 57 - state banana republic will fall apart.
Personally, I don’t feel the likes of New York, Massachusetts, Illinois, California, and all of the major Decmocrat-controlled parts of this country are corrupt, selfish leeches that don’t hold ANY of the values I have. I’d RATHER be separated from them. If it takes secession, breaking-apart into ‘banana’ republics, then so be it. However, I think the ‘banana’ parts would be those listed above. In the final analysis, a weakly-united coalition of God-fearing citizens and other residents influenced by evil can not stand, period.
I guess people have not read “The Death of Conservatism” by Sam Tanenhaus. This is the leftist mantra: Conservatism is dead. The reality is that it is about to come alive for the first time in over seventy years. In 2008 the democrats could have nominated a complete incompetent (as a matter of fact they did) and won the election because of the discontent in the country. In 2011 the republicans may have trouble nominating Sarah Palin because she is to far to the left, because conditions will be so obviously disasterous. For the last seventy years, under democrats and republicans, the leviathan has been growing. It has become so bloated that it dictates every aspect of our lives. Apparently there are eminations and penumbras in the Constition that allow the federal government to dictate the type of tiolets we use. One example from Malcolm Muggeridge: “As more and more money is spent on education, illiteracy is increasing. And I wouldn’t be al all surprised if it did’t end up with virtually the whole revenue of the western countries being spent on education, and a condition of almost total illiteracy resulting therefrom.” One benefit of an Obama admistration is that we will finally defund departments like the Department of Education because this spending in unsustainable.
If? Are you familiar with Detroit? Oakland, East St. Louis, Newark, Bridgeport, Cleveland and a hundred other once productive cities?
Maybe you meant the nation as a whole? Well, the inkblots of 3rd World slums, mobs, kleptocrats have yet to fully take over a state yet. But, give them time.
“If we deteriorate to 3rd world status ....
If? Are you familiar with Detroit? Oakland, East St. Louis, Newark, Bridgeport, Cleveland and a hundred other once productive cities?
Maybe you meant the nation as a whole? Well, the inkblots of 3rd World slums, mobs, kleptocrats have yet to fully take over a state yet. But, give them time.
Yes, I meant a generalized decline through most of the US. Right now places such as you mention are spots of necrotic tissue, whereas I am looking for the more generalized stage of “gangrenous limbs” - which will be amputated. California, Michigan, and New York are largely there.
The current Jack Artist in Chief’s policies of “spreading the wealth around” simply spreads the rot to healthier parts of the polity. I really don’t see a likely turnaround, as parasites and thieves, like the grave, are never satisfied.
I think the odds are much more likely for Soviet style dissolution, with or without Balkan style civil war(s); a sudden and generalized eruption of violent civil disorder with racial and economic overtones, or a “successful” establishment of a totalitarian state on the ashes of the Constitution - with a coin toss as to whether it is the ‘left’ or ‘right’ on the inside of the concertina wire.
Please note I do not advocate any of these paths, I just see them as the most likely outcomes given our current decline, in what presently is in practical terms a one party nation state.
I have seen some of the places you mention. They are habitable only on the basis of outside support. That support is not infinite.
Great answer, we are on the same wavelength.
Maybe some Rats will jump off the Obama ship instead of eating the poison.
Dear LADY J,this process is underway!We have The Founders to thank for our ultimate protection(as well as DIVINE PROVIDENCE)!!
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.