Posted on 01/05/2012 11:23:02 AM PST by Jim Robinson
Tea party favorite and pro-life conservative Sarah Palin and her family were viciously attacked to the point she chose not to run.
Congressional Tea Party Caucus leader and constitutional pro-life conservative Michele Bachmann had early promise, but I guess came across as too "shrill" and consequently her numbers driven down to the point she exited.
Successful pro-life conservative Texas Governor Perry hit the race at the top but due to missteps and less than stellar debate performances soon fizzled and is now all but gone.
Pro-life conservative businessman Cain and his famous 9-9-9 plan had promise, but was driven out due to indefensible allegations.
Pro-life Reagan Revolution conservative Newt Gingrich reinvigorated his campaign and soared to the top of the national polls, but was unacceptable to the establishment and apparently also unacceptable to the "true conservatives" among us and his numbers are now plummeting
You'd think "unquestionably" pro-life, pro-family conservative Rick Santorum whose recent surge took him to a tie in Iowa and who's now surging in the national polls might be good enough to stand against Romney for the base, but looks like there are "true conservatives" now attacking HIM as not good enough.
Well, drive them all out and who's left?
Huntsman? Who? Moonbat Paul?
Ideas anyone? Should we all continue attacking the conservatives we don't like until we drive them all out?
Personally, I could easily have lived with Palin, Bachmann, Cain, Perry, Newt or Santorum and would be proud to enthusiastically support any of them, warts and all. Any one of them is infinitely better than Obama or Romney.
But if we don't land on one soon and raise him up over Romney, guess who we're going to be stuck with? And it ain't going to be pretty. And if abortionist/statist/progressive Romney (or moonbat Paul) is the one, might as well get used to four more years of Obama. I won't vote for or support either one of those two.
I'd suggest that we all stop trying to tear down the other conservative candidates in the race and instead concentrate on trying to build up our own personal favorites. Who knows? May even discover an acceptable conservative (if not a great conservative) in the bunch. We've never had a perfect conservative yet. Not even the magnificent Ronald Reagan. We and they all have warts.
But we do want to have a candidate with at least an actual CONSERVATIVE record and not an out and out liberal progressive RINO. So let's compare their records and their actual conservative accomplishments but not try to destroy them personally.
God bless and may the best CONSERVATIVE be our nominee.
“...Obama/Romney bumper stickers”
That’s brilliant and very funny!
Thanks, Liz. The best thing that Newt can do now is keep referring back to his teaming with Reagan and tie those events to examples highlighting his vision to re-applying those successes to present day challenges caused by Obama’s unrelenting de-construction of our Free Republic. Newt can then show the stark contrast of his vision compared to Mr. Waffle King- Mitt Romney.
“Anyone who truly believes that ANY of our conservative candidates is ok with ObamaCare is beyond help.”
Agreed but my question is this: are we therefore to look the other way / remain silent when, during the primary, GOP candidates endorse liberal policies?
YES!!! Sounds good to me. Psst, don’t let Obama and the energy-hating EPA find out or they’ll try to shut you down. We must get rid of those America haters.
Right when your country needs every patriot to stand firm against tyranny, you're planning to F.O. to paradise, and leave your compatriots to face the devil without you?
Well, bye.
Have to disagree somewhat.
Without regard to electability and if 10 is the most desirable on a 1 to 10 scale, here is how I rate the candidates (including Bachmann and Obama:
10 Bachmann
9 Santorum
8 Perry, Gingrich
6 Huntsman
5 Romney (Romney is saying the right things now, but at heart he is a technocrat - I think he believes he can make the right call for us all)
5 Paul (Will destroy our national security)
0 Obama (Will destroy our country and “fundamentally transform” our American way of life.
The point? Romney is a far cry from Bachmann/Santorum, but he is also a far cry from Obama.
So ya read my post today :-)...
Relish, I would relish to see him consitutionally gob-smack the likes of Levin, Boxer, Schumer, Collins and Snow when they try to pull some extra consitutional crap, and especially that goober Grahamisty...
I said compare their actual records. Don’t make up crap.
How about people chime in with which current/former president they think each of our candidates would perform most similarly to?
Rick Santorum - Seems like a complete clone of George W. Bush. A true “compassionate conservative” with strong religious values and no inherent problems with big government. There is a weakness to him that I’m afraid could make him go soft and accept some bad compromises.
Mitt Romney - Bill Clinton. He will govern according to the poll numbers, flip-flopping as they change. This becomes most dangerous perhaps in wartime, when a president has to stick tight through unpopular times. Socialism is more popular now than it was under Clinton, so expect more of that. His only goal will be to get reelected.
Newt Gingrich - Ronald Reagan. He has the cajones to say I don’t care what ANYONE thinks, I’m going to do what I believe is right. His instincts are more patriotic and traditional than they are ideological or partisan. Even more than Reagan, he has the ego to believe he just might be more right than anyone else, which I view as an asset. The public, the Congress and the courts can be so wrong about everything so often. The best form of government is a benevolent monarch. Newt obviously would be restrained by checks and balances, but I believe he would be a true leader and far and away lead us in the right direction. He will also be willing to take the heat if something is unpopular but has long-term benefit that others can’t see.
Rick Perry - I honestly don’t know. I’m not a great historian but he doesn’t seem to bear similarity to many recent presidents.
You have got to be kidding. That'll never happen. Sarah knows what sort of snake Romney is. Remember, that it was his campaign staffers who came onboard the McCain campaign in 2008, and back-stabbed her in every way possible.
I’d be proud to support Rick Santorum..
Our TN early voting starts Feb 15 and goes for about 10 days M-Sat 9-6
Then theres about a weeks break and then the actual Election Day on March 6
So it depends who is left still running on Feb 15 for me to vote for...
If Rick is still in I’ll vote for him...
I can overlook flaws in the candidate I support, even though I won’t ignore them when we are discussing candidates. I’d vote for Gingrich (heck, I came without hours of endorsing him when he looked like the only guy left worth voting for in Virginia) — but I see him as pretty flawed, and hardly a sure thing to win an election anyway. And up until 2 months ago, that was the majority opinion here at FR as well, Gingrich getting the laugh-treatment when his name came up.One wonders the response had those laugh-treaters read this passage:
The last decades of the 20th century were a transformative period for American society, driven in large part by technological change. As the information age reached its height, traditional institutions of society often found themselves breaking down or struggling to keep up with the pace of change. Government was affected as much, if not more, than the rest of society.Lest we forget, too, that by 1997-98, Gingrich was busy lecturing those in the House who weren't exactly ready to go along with him on Droopy-Drawers Clinton's spending hikes (after all, what the hell fun is it to have a budget surplus the Republicans painted him into abetting and even let him take the credit for getting if you can't go wheeeeeeeeeeeee! at every three-card monte stand on the pipe)---indeed, Gingrich was even pushing for a little bit more than even Droopy-Drawers was asking!---that they just didn't get the Big Picture . . . and lo! come the 1998 Congressional elections, those Congressmen who didn't fall into line under Gingrich's bark actually kept their seats. (They merely told the home folks they were voting no way, no how, no chance, and why, reminding the home folks they weren't elected in the first place to join Clinton's Drunken Sailor Club . . . and the home folks responded accordingly.) It's entirely possible that the uprising that forced Gingrich off the Speaker's perch had as much to do with that budget issue as with anything else that numbered his days with the gavel in his mitt.This line of thinking was encapsulated by Alvin and Heidi Toffler in their best-selling book The Third Wave. According to the Tofflers, the first wave was the agricultural revolution, which led to feudal-style social systems. The second wave was the industrial revolution, which produced "mass society" in its socialist and capitalist versions. The third wave is the postindustrial society, built around information and technology. The Tofflers warned that the new age required new institutions of governance.
No one embraced this idea with more enthusiasm than House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who led the Republican takeover of the House in 1994. Gingrich referred to The Third Wave as "the seminal work of our time." He made the book mandatory reading for newly elected Republicans. This book says the U.S. Constitution "is increasingly obsolete, and hence increasingly, if inadvertently, oppressive and dangerous to our welfare." Therefore, it should "die and be replaced" (Emphasis mine.---BD.)
Gingrich is almost universally associated with opposition to big government. But that was not actually the case. Gingrich rhetorically criticised big government. And it served his enemies and the Clinton administration to portray Gingirch as slashing government programs. The Gingrich-inspired "Contract with America" was generally seen as a call for smaller government, although it did not actually call for cutting a single government program. (The closest it came was a call for zero-baseline budgeting.) (Emphasis mine.--BD.)
Actually, Gingrich opposed bureaucratic government---inefficient government---not big government per se. As Gingrich said in 1994, "government plays a huge role" in society and "anybody who believes in the American Constitution ought to believe in a fairly strong government." He went on to say that he has "no particular beef with big government." Or, as he said more recently, if the bureaucracies can be reformed and made more efficient, "the country could get excited about the opportunity to make government work."
That is not to say Gingrich and his followers would not like to see a smaller government. Many changes they support would indeed reduce government bureaucracies. But in the end, Gingrichism means "recognising that even a relatively small federal or state government will be much bigger than anything the founding fathers could have dreamed of." (Emphasis mine.--BD.)
. . . [His] belief in technology has led Gingrich and his disciples along three basic paths. First, they believed that government institutions needed to be reformed to make them more efficient. Most were built under an outdated "second wave" ethos. They would have to be updated for the new "third wave" technological age. Gingrich-style conservatism was about bureaucratic reform and technological innovation, not about shrinking government or individual liberty.
. . . Make government institutions efficient and all else will fall into place. "As a country we can give people better lives through better solutions by bringing government into conformity with the enterpreneurial systems they are experiencing in the private sector." The issue is not how big government is or how much it spends; it is whether we have "the systems architecture that would spend it intelligently." Traditional conservatives want the government simply to do less. But Gingrich and his fellow technophiles believe that the right systems architecture will enable the government to provide "greater goods and services at lower and lower costs."
This attitude gave Gingrich conservatism its appearance of optimism. Rather than being against big government, Gingrich could be for reform. "We need to move from a 'no, because' to a 'yes, if' approach to government policy." Former representative Vin Weber, one of Gingrich's followers, has also sounded the call for reforming government, rather than cutting it:
Conservatives have to do better than simply bash government. We have to lead the way toward reform of government. We need to look at the whole of government and think about how to empower the consumers of government benefits, rather than the bureaucracy. Conservatives who simply look to abolish agencies are going to be disappointed, but conservative reformers still have an open field.Thus one could say of Gingrich's conservatism, "while this view did indeed see the federal government as the source of the many of the nation's troubles, it did not hold that the problem was federal power as such. Change those wielding federal power, and the power could be harnessed to the ends of conservative reform."
. . . Gingrich once called for abolishing the Department of Education, but he has since become an enthusiastic supporter of federal government involvement in education. He endorsed President Clinton's plan for the federal government to finance 100,000 new teachers and called for the government to provide Internet access to all Americans and computers to every four-year-old. He has proposed paying students for taking difficult math and science courses.
Energy policy is another area where Gingrich and the technophiles support massive government intervention . . . He would support a host of public-private partnerships, investments in alternative fuels, and conservation measures. Almost anything goes, as long as it involves new technology.
While Gingrichites correctly understood the failures of traditional welfare programs, they sought to reform not end them. "The old phrase 'conservative opportunity society' always envisioned a reformed welfare state," Weber notes. A Gingrich welfare state included government-funded orphanages and "parental training" centers for single mothers. He supported the Medicare prescription drug benefit and has joined with Hillary Clinton to call for the government to develop a national health care database.
In some ways, Gingrich-style technophilia may seem to be a much smaller movement than (others within the conservative movement). It is, with a few exceptions, largely based around one man. Yet, Gingrich has had and continues to have enormous influence over the intellectual development of both the Republican Party and the conservative movement. Given the disillusionment among Republicans with the current level of congressional leadership, nostalgia is increasing for the Gingrich era.
. . . But far from leading conservatism back to the philosophy of Reagan and Goldwater, Gingrich's ideas for a technocratic, efficient, and bigger federal government have helped drive it toward the big-government conservatism that dominates today.
. . . Gingrich has been riding a wave of nostalgia for the Republican Revolution of 1994. The recent Republican Congress was so incompetent and so inclined toward big government that 1994 looks like the golden age. But Gingrich was not and is not a small-government conservative . . . Indeed, listening to Gingrich, one gets the distinct impression that he doesn't care how big government grows---as long as it uses computers.
---Michael D. Tanner, from "From Oxymoron to Governing Philosophy: The Roots of Big Government Conservatism," in Leviathan on the Right: How Big Government Conservatism Brought Down the Republican Revolution. (Washington: Cato Institute, 2007; 323 pages, $22.95)
Anyone watching CSPAN? The Nashua New Hampshire Republican Party is on LIVE on CSPAN.
I just listened for the very first time to Buddy Roehmer, LA governor and congressman. He was a lawyer under Reagan.
I finally heard what I wanted to hear in total. What I do with it is something else, but I heard my heart sing.....
FINALLY.
“Anything But Obama.”
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I’m with Newt until the end. I’m also fine with Perry or Santorum. I will never vote for Romney in a primary but I am intend to exercise my constitutional right to vote and whoever wins the GOP nomination has my vote. I refuse to sit home and give the evil dictator wannabe a chance to stack the Supreme Court with Marxists and to give that monster 4 more years to “fundamentally change America”.
The presidency is too important to give as an “award” to someone who led a good family life, donated or served their country a lot. We really need someone who will do a good job. If you were going to hire someone to build a skyscraper, would you worry about their past and their personal life, or would you hire someone who demonstrated they knew how to build a strong building that would not fall down or collapse no matter what happened? We need to look at what a person can accomplish for us and not parts of their personal biography that have little to no bearing on what kind of job they’ll do.
I look at it like this, put them all in a uniform with a weapon along side of you facing a massed over the top rush upon your position, who would you trust to be covering your back?
Who would rise and charge?
Who would drop their wepon and run away?
And who would try to surrender??
Don't put words in my mouth. I didn't write that. I wrote "any of the above"... and only six were mentioned.
Hilary Clinton can beat Obama
I certainly didn't mention Hillary Clinton. I would put her in the same dangerous league as Obama.
When Obama’s policies fail and the country does not improve, we will be able to come back in 2 years and 4 years and tell them they made a mistake by rejecting conservatism and should give it a real try.
If Obama wins a second term, I fear the Constitution is likely finished and the country cooked. Forget a redo in "2 years and 4 years". There will probably not be a sequel to 2012 if Obama prevails. The forces of American totalitarianism are already on the march and are not slowing down or turning around for such a silly thing (in their eyes) as "the Constitution".
Frankly, we may already be cooked, based on the social and financial policies and results Liberals have successfully implemented (and to be fair, with a lot of "GOP Establishment" support or acquiescence). There may not be another opportunity to right the ship in 2 or 4 years. By then, the hull will be fatally breached, the ship will have heeled over, and we will be headed toward the bottom.
In my opinion, we are facing the same appalling choices and outcomes as did The Weimar Republic in 1933 or the Russian Provisional Government in 1917. The important thing now is to stop what is headed our way, in whatever way it can be stopped - if it is not already too late.
The best chance of stopping such a disaster, of course, is with a strong conservative nominee who defeats Obama. The Senate and Congress must also be put in GOP hands, along with a majority of conservative members who can over ride the Bolshevik minority and do the desperate and painful fixes which must be done.
This is no longer about "party" or "third party" - or even working hard until we can educate enough of the currently somnolent and brain dead public to see the light and eventually come around. That can come later - if there is a "later". It is about the survival of a Constitutional Republic, and that is at dire risk now.
We had better get it right.
Romney is still quite a bit older than Obama.
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See how I fixed that for you ???
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