Well, Obama was legitimately re-elected, -- what point does it make to protest his second inaugural?
A better place to protest is in front of the Republican Party headquarters. They lead a party that should have won and it did not win. Ramesh Ponnuru correctly argues in The National Review that it is primarily the part that failed the conservative causes in this election. Here are a few things that the GOP did badly, and as a result we the people have been betrayed by them.
- Consistently the GOP nominates candidates like GHW Bush, Dole, McCain and now Romney: the centrists uncapable of honest articulation of conservative agenda in general. That is a mistake: we will always be outrun in this game by Democrats who lie easily and have the entire press corps supporting them. So long as we field centrist candidates the center will move to the left and liberals will be appearing centrist when it is time to hustle elections. almost all of the follwoing are one or another corollary of this fundamental fallacy.
- The GOP fails to articulate pro-life issues and when it has power it fails to advance them legislatively. As a result, a pro-life voter ignore the pro-life aspect and votes on the issues that either party WILL fight over. Often, like in case of especially many Catholics, once abortion and sexualized culture is off the table, a pro-life voter finds himself supporting the Democrats.
- Similarly, the fight for small government is rarely even articulated by the GOP. Where are the candidates who, like Reagan, promise to abolish the department of Education or Energy, or abolish foreign aid? Perry could not remember what he was "going to" abolish; the rest (I exclude Ron Paul) lacked the courage to even talk of substantive reduction in the scope of the Federal government.
- Most Americans are not entrepreneurs and do not live off stocks, yet the GP agenda is focused around issues peculiar to that class. How advantages for the entrepreneur translate to the wage-earning middle class is rarely articulated, last time I believe it was Jack Kemp speaking to the middle class, till Dole put him in his pocket in 1996.
- The GOP must explain that it has moved with both feet into the post-financial-crisis world, repudiate Bush's financial bailout along with Obama's, and stop being a party of foreign wars.
- The GOP must reform its nomination process. The culture of mutual support is gone in the GOP: Ron Paul should have been celebrated, given a prominent role in the convention and promised a cabinet position if not vice-presidency by the winning candidate. Instead, the GOP did all it could to carry water for the liberal press and suppress his views. Mourdock and Akins should have been defended and their verbal gaffes polished away as they meant exactly what the GOP platform says. Attacks on Romney form the left that Gingrich waged should have been abhorred by everyone in the GOP and they were not.
In short, conservatives lost more than an election, they lost a party.
“Well, Obama was legitimately re-elected, — what point does it make to protest his second inaugural?
A better place to protest is in front of the Republican Party headquarters.”
Now, here is a great example of a useful idiot...the democrats love guys like this!