Posted on 01/05/2013 1:50:07 PM PST by Timber Rattler
The disastrous 2012 election and embarrassing fiscal cliff standoff has brought forth one principal conclusion from establishment Republicans: They have a primary problem.
The intra-party contests, or threat thereof, have become the original sin that explains many of the party’s woes in the minds of GOP leaders. It’s the primaries that push their presidential nominees far to the right (see “self-deportation” and “47 percent”); produce lackluster Senate candidates (Todd Akin has almost become a one-word shorthand); and, as seen most vividly in the last two weeks, dissuade scores of gerrymandered House members from face-saving compromise while politically emasculating their speaker.
What to do about the primaries has become Topic A in many a post-election Republican soul-searching session, and now the first steps are being taken to address the issue. For Senate Republicans, that means a modified return to their 2010 posture of openly playing in primaries. A retiring House Republican is starting a super PAC to help House members challenged from the right. And an RNC commission is mulling over changes to the party’s presidential primary.
(Excerpt) Read more at dyn.politico.com ...
The GOP fight against Conservatives will only make the GOP weaker.
How do Republicans think they will get elected if there aren’t enough of us left in the party to elect them. They are committing political suicide by fighting Conservativism.
I know I am ready to leave, Just waiting for somewhere to go, The GOP has left me.There are thousands like me and they are creating more every day. If GOPe leaders expect to get elected in the future they better start thinking about becoming the democrats they really are or they will find themselves standing in the rain with nothing over their heads.
I agree and we must take the Tea Party to the next step.
We have 2 years ahead of us and I hope that it is made use of.
Anyone who thinks that the GOP is salvageable has not been paying attention for the past several years. It’s time to take the grass roots movement national.
We can’t beat the GOP on a level field but we can keep picking them off and putting people who represent us in GOP seats.
We also have to deal with the collaborators who talk about being tea partiers but happily work to destroy them.
In the increasingly unlikely event that there is a GOP candidate who represents us, by all means we should vote for and otherwise support him. If there isn't, we need to have the means necessary at least to try to have someone who does represent us beat the GOP candidate.
That requires a party structure. With only a few victories in that at the State and Federal levels, there may be a fair chance to begin to turn the GOP more in our direction and thereby to get a more level playing field.
I have lived in NE Ohio as an adult for 35 years. I have been a registered republican all that time. I am still waiting for the first invitation from the Ohio GOP to come attend a meeting, get involved, volunteer, whatever. Clearly, the GOP couldn't care less about grass roots members. Their GOTV effort was a pathetic abortion. That in a nutshell, btw, is why Romney ate shit in November.
We need a new party, one that voluntarily imposes term limits on itself.
We have the choice between federal (commie) socialists and local (fascist) socialists. And we have another choice: neither. Be frugal, and save. Let them default. Laugh at every one of them going through foreclosure and leaving. Let them each throw the usual tantrum. It will be the political/regulator class that will riot, obviously (as seen in Greece and other places). Prepare to take some time out at home, when they do.
Exactly!
I suggested that here just a few days after the election debacle.
Rather than try to keep incumbents perpetually in office, the New Party should do the reverse: there should be no New Party support for any House incumbent’s reelection after he has served one, or perhaps two, terms as a member of the New Party. Being a CongressCritter should not be a career; it should be a brief period of service to the country — perhaps four years for members of the House and six years for Senators — followed by return to being a private citizen. If, following that period, he wants to run again, New Party support should depend on what he did while in office and what he did when he got back home. Was he effective in promoting New Party principles while in office? Good. Did he go to work with or for a company at which he had shoveled pork while in office? Bad. Did he spend much of his leisure time talking with former and hopefully future constituents to probe their views as well as give them his? Good. Did moral shortcomings or too many “gaffes” cause him to fall on his face and become unelectable? Bad.
The idea obviously needs to be fleshed out, but it's a start. Now, we need some folks capable of doing something about it.
BINGO! They have gone the way of the Press...they are NOT what they used to be...merely a poor corrupted shadow dancing on the walls of Marxism while the flames of statism consume our Constitution.
I know what side I'm on, and thanks to these competing groups I'll know which candidates to vote for and which ones NOT to vote for.
“I think the GOP is a closed group, a bunch of assholes who don’t really care about winning, or expanding their base.”
Artfully stated and dead on accurate too. They have been this way for a long time.
Reagan was an anomaly in the GOP stream of insipid, tired mush. Someone like Reagan will NOT be allowed to rise again in the Rockefeller/Rove/Romney GOP. Never.
Time to bolt.
If you think conservatives were ever part of the process in the beginning you are delusional.Were you one of those people who claimed that romney was the only candidate that could/would beat obumer?
Precisely.
Absolutely NO MORE holding my nose and voting 'R'.
I did not vote for Romney, and I will not vote for the next Romney, or the one after that. Never again.
I think 2 terms for Congress and 1 term for the Senate is great. However, I would not want ANYONE elected for thart office again. A congressman coukd run for the senate—but not for congress again. Term limits would apply at the local and state levels as well. Professional politicians are the problem.
Todd Akin was Michelle Bachmann’s and Mike Huckabee’s choice, but not the choice of the tea parties.
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Yep, I wish Sarah Palin’s pick (Sarah Steelman) had won the primary—she’d be Senator Steelman today.
So when, where and how are we going to do something about it?
Absolutely not. I never got on board with RINO Romney, nor with ABO. I went from Palin to Santorum (lukewarm) to 'None of the Above' on election day.
Exactly and I have shouted that for years.
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