Republicans Should Avoid Social Issues

NewsMax ^ | 031912 | Wayne Allyn Root

[Fred]

Rick Santorum could be the worst thing to happen to the GOP — ever. Worse even than George W. Bush. And that’s saying a lot. Bush did so much damage to the GOP brand, he almost destroyed the party forever. It was George Bush who brought us Barack Obama. Few Americans voted for Obama, they just voted for ABB (Anyone But Bush).

Now the GOP has a golden opportunity. Obama has wrecked the U.S. economy from sea to shining sea. He has turned off voters by the millions. By historical standards, based on the current disastrous economic and unemployment numbers, Obama is virtually unelectable. Obama is a magician. He has made voters forget Bush in only three years. That's a pretty darn amazing trick.

The proof is in the recent polls. This has been perhaps the worst month for the GOP in modern political history. The message is no longer jobs, rising gas prices, chronic long-term unemployment, or crumbling real estate.

The message is about women’s health, the right to use contraception, Planned Parenthood funding, Rush Limbaugh’s use of a crude term to describe a young female law student, and whether Republicans like sex, or hate women. It just doesn’t get any worse than this. And in recent polls, Mitt Romney is leading President Obama.

[steve8714]

Newt’s many enterprises lobbied Congress for Fannie and Freddie. That’s not where you want to go. Newt is a best-selling author and a respected student of American 19th century history.
His electoral experience all being in the House means he never had a chance at the top spot on the ticket. Never had. Never will.

[Colonel_Flagg]

The Reagan coalition was built on social issues.

Since social conservatism is the basis for all conservatism since it shows us the difference between right and wrong, separating the two gives us the milquetoast moderates we’re used to seeing all too often.

We’re conservatives. We’re grown-ups. We can multitask.

[FrankR]

If Republicans "avoid" social issues, isn't that like saying the left's view is the accepted view on those issues?

I agree some candidates can go over to "silly street" on these issues and the winds of their campaign enter the doldrums when they do.

However, I think the complexity of the situation we find our country in now is not going to be helped by sermon preaching.

If a person falls in the river, their first objective is to keep from drowning...once that is accomplished we'll fix the broken rail later.

Priorities must be established. Let's get rid of obama, rebuild the dollar, and get some jobs happening in American, then, we'll go after the porn industy.

Americans sitting at home who are stuggling to pay their light bill and buy groceries are not really concerned with anything but getting their lives back together.

Leadership who doesn't have the balls to tell the left "NO" are clouding the subject with things that can be put aside until the USS America is again righted, and floating again.

If the GOP wins in November, everyone should know that we're in for a fight. Obama has whipped up a frenzy between the classes and - just like Greece - those who have been on the dole will not tolerate it ending. Whether they lack the intelligence to know what the word "no" means, or they are just following their furor's orders, we're in for a fight.

Milquetoast is not going to right the country.

Social issues need to be addressed, but there is a time for everything, and the left is better at demogoguing than the right. They're going to take any and every social issue they can find at their think-tank meetings and formulate a plan to inject it into the national dialogue, i.e.Sandra Fluke.

They're good at using the jawbone of an ass (obama) to beat over the heads of conservatives who stand cowed by that invisible monster, "political correctness".

The left is busy cooking up a lot of surprises, and surprise is a formidable foe. The bammer is stacking the deck, knocking down voter ID laws, making public gatherings at the discretion of the Secret Service (TEA party), and pulling out all of the stops to hush Rush, Hannity, FOX News and the Internet.

FACT: obama can't win, without cheating. It's a fact. Every election he's been in was won, not by accomplishments, but by tearing down his opposition, or cheating at the polls.

We need to be a broken record and no matter what the left says, shove the economy in their faces...over, and over, ad infinitum. We should not let them dictate what the conversation is going to be. They should be made to discuss and answer questions about obama's failed policies and if they want to talk about Sandra Fluke, tell them Fluke is NOT running for the presidency, obama is. Sandra will still be "fluking" long after obama is back in Chicago...or Kenya.

The GOP candidates need to become hammers, and let every liberal and the media be their nails.

Save the social issues until we have the TIME and resources to handle them.

[cripplecreek]

He talks about the economy a lot if you follow him, but you won’t see it on the MSM because they want to feed the notion that all he talks about is social issues.

In my opinion the biggest single cause of our economic problems are the result of us not doing the "Christian thing". The churches were once, the biggest single safety net America had. In a natural disaster, the national guard might come in to help with rescue and clean up but the churches and neighbors did the bulk of the feeding and housing of those affected. Today we rely on overgrown taxpayer funded federal agencies and can sit back and feel that we've done something good by paying our taxes. Its collective salvation and its a sure road to damnation.

I'm not looking for an argument on Gingrich but his idea to defund planned parenthood is fine till he gets to the part about using the "savings" to help fund private adoption agencies. The conservative Christian thing to do would be to defund planned parenthood and let the people decide as individuals what to do with that money.

One of the old timers in My little town told me that he landed here during the depression and never left. He worked his way here from Nebraska and showed up at the parsonage on a cold night looking for a place to sleep. The pastor told him he could sleep in the church on the first night but would have to sleep in the shed behind it once it was fixed up and he paid for his keep. All these years later and he's living his last days in that little house (former shed) behind the church.

[cripplecreek]

The Reagan coalition was built on social issues.

The Reagan Democrats are a beautiful example.

From Wiki

The work of Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg is a classic study of Reagan Democrats. Greenberg analyzed white ethnic voters (largely unionized auto workers) in Macomb County, Michigan, just north of Detroit. The county voted 63 percent for John F. Kennedy in 1960, but 66 percent for Reagan in 1980. He concluded that "Reagan Democrats" no longer saw Democrats as champions of their working class aspirations, but instead saw them as working primarily for the benefit of others: the very poor, feminists, the unemployed, African Americans, Latinos, and other groups. In addition, Reagan Democrats enjoyed gains during the period of economic prosperity that coincided with the Reagan administration following the "malaise" of the Carter administration. They also supported Reagan's strong stance on national security and opposed the 1980s Democratic Party on such issues as pornography, crime, and high taxes.

[KantianBurke]

For any number of idiotic policies that have cost this country dearly both in blood & treasure. Examples include Medicare Part D , BILLIONS in taxpayer dollars flushed down the toilet for “AIDS in Africa,” the Harriet Miers Supreme Court nomination debacle, TARP, Amnesty, the collapse of Operation Together Forward II, the loss of both Houses of Congress under his watch...I can go on. Heck check out my profile page for plenty more tidbits. At the very least the ideological disarray of the GOP can and should be laid at his callow feet. It’s telling how rarely his name and his administration is ever mentioned on the GOP campaign trail btw.

[bopdowah]

Don’t count Newt out! Still 5 mo to go before the Convention and 8 mo to go before Election Day!

[JediJones]

If we can’t talk about social issues this year, then when can we talk about them?

We’re supposed to take a huge chunk of issues that appeal to one of our core constituencies out of our platform? How does that help our electoral, fundraising, or volunteering prospects?

News flash: people who believe unborn babies being killed in the womb is immoral believe it’s immoral all the time. Not just in “off years.” Most morality is like that. If you only stand by it when it’s convenient, you’re not being moral.

Are there going to be years when we can’t talk about capitalism, and have to instead extol the virtues of communism, or at least sit idly by as communism happens and not object?

Are we supposed to set ourselves up as the party who can only get elected when the economy is bad? The Democrats are historically the party who wins when the economy is bad, so that’s an uphill battle on enemy territory we’d be fighting.

The fact is people who do not believe that our nation is facing moral crises that need legal remedies are the ones arguing that THIS YEAR we shouldn’t talk about that topic. They have no plans to EVER talk about it. They’re simply trying to bamboozle the rest of us into agreeing with them. But we don’t and we never will.

[Altura Ct.]

Republicans Should Avoid Social Issues

Republicans should just roll over and die...

[JediJones]

His electoral experience all being in the House means he never had a chance at the top spot on the ticket. Never had. Never will.

Would you agree to amend the constitution so that Speaker of the House is no longer two heartbeats away from the presidency?

[gogogodzilla]

Find me a fiscal conservative who considers themselves moderate on social issues, and I’ll show you a liberal.

Find me a social conservative who considers themselves moderate on fiscal issues, and I’ll show you liberal as well.

[caww]

Free market economics can't thrive as a system without honor and integrity.

today however it's about what you can get away with by riding the line of integrity without going over it....or being caught if you do.

Because so many lack integrity....it's not an issue for them how they win or are successful. Thus we end up with countless regulations to keep these mis-fits from going further....which only prevents the man of integrity from being as successful as might otherwise be we regulations not strangling him from "doing the right thing".

[maryz]

Newt’s many enterprises lobbied Congress for Fannie and Freddie.

Where are you getting this? I know of no proof that he lobbied for F&F, only that he consulted. Apart of course from Mitt Romney's claim that he lobbied. I did hear that several of Mitt's supporters (Susan Molinari for one) did in fact lobby Congress for F&F to stop any investigation, and that individual Congressmen have said so. No one has ever cited a single Congressman who claims to have been lobbied by Newt.

It would be ludicrous to swallow that anyone would hire Newt to lobby Congress -- Dems hate him and GOP-e hates him even worse. Do you really think any of them would be amenable to his putative lobbying? I think they'd throw him out on his ear.

[steve8714]

Apples and oranges. I would’ve loved to see that when Pelosi was speaker.
My statement is neutral on the intrinsic value of the man, just stating fact.
Nobody since Garfield, and even he was Senator-elect.

[cripplecreek]

They have no plans to EVER talk about it. They’re simply trying to bamboozle the rest of us into agreeing with them. But we don’t and we never will.

I've been voting for some 20 years and for that 20 years I've been hearing the same crap from the GOP about how we need to win first and then worry about social issues later and they've lied every single time. Like a drunken abusive husband, they're out of second chances.

I've drawn my line in the sand and I go no further. If Obama is reelected it will be bad but my soul isn't dependent on America's survival. I have no moral responsibility to people who scramble to win at any cost.

[caww]

They have no plans to EVER talk about it.

Since when do we have to have governmental politicians do the job the church is called to do?.... You sound like the Jewish leadership when they wanted to take the life of Christ ,instead went to Rome to do the deed.

[gogogodzilla]

What did the TEA party stand for, again? I’m having a brain fart right now.

Was it ‘Contraception is Sin’? Or maybe it was ‘Porn is the work of the Devil’? Or maybe it was ‘Premarital sex is bad’?

...

Oh, that’s right! I remember now!!! It stood for ‘TAXED ENOUGH ALREADY’.

I think that tells everyone what it was all about. And it was the most successful sweep of Congress is about 100 years. Amazing, considering ‘everyone’ knows that only social issues win elections...

(Rolls eyes.)

---

I’d say that social issue do have a massive effect when the economy is good and people aren’t really worried about much. But they tend to take a backburner to getting a job, finding food and shelter, and near slavery to the state...

[longtermmemmory]

it is always a homosexual who says “republicans should stay away from social issues”.

It is “ronald reagan will kill us all” playbook of the dems.

[gogogodzilla]

True.

Unfortunately, social conservatives take that to mean that the state must compel moral behavior from an unwilling populace. That doesn’t work; it just breeds resentment against the state.

And that eventually leads to either revolution or civil war.

It always does.

[cripplecreek]

Find me a social conservative who considers themselves moderate on fiscal issues, and I’ll show you liberal as well.

Exactly.