My point was that it was not necessary to accuse Longbow1969 of lack of religion in order to disagree with him. I wound up favoring Santorum but could easily have supported Gingrich or Michelle Bachmann or Sarah Palin or Herman Cain or any number of other individuals who did not run whether that individual was Roman Catholic or not. At various points, I did support each of those candidates. My criterion was the quality of conservatism of a candidate and particularly social conservatism, foreign policy conservatism, reliable support for gun rights and such issues. On that basis, Mitt(ler) Romney, Jon Huntsman and Ron Paul were flat out unacceptable and that had nothing to do with the religion of any one of them.
That having been said, yes, really: We NEED to purge the GOP-E before we can speak relevantly or coherently against the Demonrats. One would think that after the 2012 massacre of spineless Mittler, it would be a unanimous opinion here (or close to it) that the GOP-E walk the plank politically and that we recapture our party before we worry about recapturing the nation. Our efforts are also not helped by spineless wonders like Obama-suckup Colin Powell, Weepy John Boehner, Two-faced Eric Cantor, Pseudo-pragmatist Kevin McCarthy, Mindless Mitch McConnell, that Establishment whore from Texas John Cornyn and a substantial number of other useless GOP-E elected officials and those who finance their purchase of nominations to comfort mindless little Muffy and Skipper and protect their trust funds above all else.
REALLY!!!
Hi BlackElk.
Establishments come and go. If the Tea Party took over the GOP, it would have its own establishment that would become static and attempt to hold on to power at all costs. There is no avoiding that. Being against the "establishment" isn't going to matter if we don't have some new movement that really unifies the right and can take over and become the new "establishment".
The big problem on the right at the moment is how fractured conservatives are. There is a big schism forming between conservatives who don't want to give up the social issues, and the younger generations of conservatives who are far more libertine and don't care about stuff like gay marriage and don't support social order laws. Younger people have always tended to be more liberal, but right now the Republican party is perceived as so out of touch they won't even consider it. Minorities too see the Republican party as something that they have nothing in common with.
I think the future of the GOP is probably more in the libertarian(ish) direction. I don't like Wrong Paul, but I think his "liberty" movement is something to pay attention to. I think you saw people like Sarah Palin repeatedly compliment Paul and say conservatives need to take him seriously and think about what he is saying. On foreign policy and defense, Paul is woefully naive in my view. He also attracts the nutty conspiracy types since he won't disown those people, and that makes him pretty unacceptable as well. Saying that though, his domestic/economic message is good solid conservative/libertarian stuff that paired with opposition to the drug war and some of his other themes might really resonate.
I think traditional movement conservatives and new and growing generations of libertarianish conservatives are going to have to find a way to unite. I suspect that means less focus on social issues, drop the libertarian isolationist stuff, and really unite on the rest of the domestic policy where we already agree. If we do that we can actually stand for something big, exciting and different enough to break the mold Republicans find themselves cast in.