Do you mean "politics?"
Posted on 05/07/2012 8:59:54 PM PDT by Bigtigermike
It should come as no surprise that the Republican National Committee has been “covertly” supporting Mitt Romney throughout the primaries, as POLITICO recently “revealed.” It was the worst-kept secret in Washington
Reagan, the über outsider, called for a “new Republican Party” back in 1977. Reagan wanted the GOP to shed its country club, corporate boardroom image and become a genuine conservative movement, focused on the individual.
Reagan’s words threatened the status quo of the scions and heiresses of the country club and corporate boardroom set. The former California governor and his conservative followers were never accepted by these insiders
[...]
The Republicans’ desire for power is usually stronger than any desire for restraint by conservatism. It always seems to leave conservatives disappointed.
Many conservatives have, in fact, decided that their beliefs have become permanently inconsistent with Republicanism. This may be more apparent in 2012 than ever before. No offense to Romney, but he is the perfect nominee for the Republican Party in 2012 because he — like the GOP — has adopted a variety of positions over the years in order to acquire power. The Etch A Sketch comment was stunningly accurate.
The “lesser of two evils” argument is now settling over the landscape. Perhaps. The “conservatives have no place else to go” storyline is being pushed. Maybe.
On the other hand, some conservatives now view this election as a clear Hobson’s Choice or possibly a Morton’s Fork. One choice is bad or nothing; the other between two bad options.
Conservatives should be clear-eyed, though. The job of the Republican Party is to deceive conservatives into handing over their support. This does not mean that conservatives can’t arrive at the conclusion that this choice is between the lesser of two evils.
But they should prepare to be disappointed.
(Excerpt) Read more at dyn.politico.com ...
s/act of 1965 would have stemmed/act of 1965 would have been stopped, thus stemming/
>By 2016 SCOTUS will be packed with Obama stooges for the next 20 years.
>You won’t even recognize America then.
Not necessarily; the Justices can still be impeached.
In fact, it may not be impossible to remove them ONLY by impeachment; the good behavior clause obviously is violated when felonies are commited, and if they decide something clearly contrary to the Constitution it is a felony; specifically US Code Title 18, Sec 241 & 242.
We have a good portion of the Republican electorate that believes and lives by what the liberal media says about our candidates to a greater or lesser extent.....if the media says ‘this person is too polarizing” then we have so called Republicans call in to Rush Limbaugh saying “I heard on the news what they’re saying this about this person, I’m concerned Rush” or “we got to win and the way this candidate is getting beat up by the media might be too much of a distraction, we need to move on from them Rush”
If Reagan was alive now like after 1976, a good portion would claim that he is damaged goods and there is no hope for him, we need to move on”
Since none of the candidates have 'run' in my state (CA) I can only go by what others have said about Mitt's attack style- something McLame could have used against Teh One (he didn't even lay a glove).
If Mitt is the nominee, I'll look forward with glee at the nastiest attacks his attack dogs can throw at Zero and his stinking gang of thieves and liars. No one has ever been so deserving, ever.
Mark Levin did a show (5/3/2012) where he gives a mock speech that he'd like to have heard from Romney when he was addressing the millionaires and billionaires in Palm Springs. Radio Gold. If you haven't heard it, go to his site, click Audio, and download the 5/3/2012 show. I've got it on hard drive, flash drive, and my cell phone.
What you'll learn from this show is that those things we need to do in our current situation are things we aren't hearing from the Romney camp. Things like deeply held conservative beliefs that Reagan so easily championed.
At a time when the government meddles in so much of our lives and Bozo the Inadequate is hell-bent on even greater impositions, the words Mark spoke, if adopted by a candidate, would not only defeat Teh One but bury him in a landslide.
You know that many of us choose screen names that are meant to be cute and to somehow reflect an underlying reality. Can you actually imagine General Nathan Bedford Forrest supporting the Massachusetts trashbag? Even if he figured out that it is now the GOP rank and file who reflect the nobler sentiments in our society and not the Demonrats? I would bet that he would have long since taken to his horse, summoned his cavalry and obliterated the Robozombie. If you are a betting man, wouldn't you bet that way too?
Nicholas Black Elk, the Lakota pagan holy man or shaman turned Catholic missionary to his people, would have voted for no one persecuting the Catholic Church (and by necessary implication any other pro-life, pro-family church) and for no one so craven and low as to facilitate the mass slaughter (54 million and counting) of innocent unborn babies.
I have no doubt that my real life namesake would be on the same wavelength as I am. Can you say the same?
With all due respect, you will again fail to persuade enough people to vote your way in November and that will be your fault again because you are attaching yourself to a pathetic Robozombie candidacy that deserves to be beaten. You are a good guy. Robozombie is a useless cretin, every bit as much as Obozo, and (to conservatives) a major treasonweasel.
You know, when I have disagreed with you on occasions in the past, your arguments have had a certain maturity and common sense without abandoning principle. On rare occasions, you have persuaded me to alter my views in some respects. On Robozombie, you haven't a prayer of doing so. The GOP-E asked for it and now, with sufficient defections to None of the Above or to third party candidates, they will get it. In spades. They can buy the nomination but they cannot buy my soul OR my vote.
And I could just as substantively advise you not to confuse naïveté of the techniques of sociological manipulation for fairness.
Conservatives lost the primary when Sarah Palin concluded pursuing a presidential run was not the right course of action.
Fee, Fie, Fo Fum: I smell a planted axiom.
Do you mean "politics?"
As to general Forrest, I refer you to my about page and suggest that he might be more open to realism, especially at the end of his life, than the common understanding of his biography suggests.
At any rate I cannot imagine Nathan Bedford Forrest walking into a polling booth muttering to himself, "I'll show you, I'll kill me."
So That explains the unhappiness, grumbling and backbiting.
It’s a marriage not a love affair. :-)
If I could change one thing politically in my lifetime- Ronaldus Magnus would have picked Kemp as his VP. I think George Bush Sr. was a nice guy, but he was a pure New England RINO that never believed in Reaganism. He screwed the GOP with his domestic decisions and set the stage for Clinton. Reagan threw the GOPe a bone with Bush and the GOPe reversed the best thing to happen to them in modern times.
His son, another guy I liked as an individual, was another disaster for conservatives outside of tax policy. He campaigned as a conservative and presided over the biggest growth of government in my lifetime prior to Obamacare. The domestic response to 9/11 was big government in the extreme and he never let up for 8 years. His refusal to defend himself from critics or articulate a message so alienated Americans that they voted for a radical with a Muslim name and no real accomplishments.
The last real spark in the GOP for me was Newt’s 1994 Contract with America. It was crushed two years later when the GOP nominated Dole. That was when I registered as an independent although I have always voted for the lesser of two evils.
I am not surprised we ended up with Mr. Inevitable. I don’t like it, but are any of us really surprised? We are trapped. Lodge a protest and give Obama an unrestricted 4 years to go all in on the progressive agenda and stack SCOTUS or vote against him and suffer the slower dose of progressivism that will be defined, once again, as conservatism.
Perhaps we are not any different than France? What if we got our wish and elected a true conservative that would slash government? Would they be celebrated or would they be crushed by a nation that no longer believes in sacrifice for it’s children and is consumed with what’s in it for them?
What if the traditional Republicans have lost their appetite for the principles of Reagan? What if most of the GOP is just like the nominees they vote for? You know, they talk a good conservative game even while they don’t want to interrupt the big government gravy train.
I don’t have much faith that any politician(s) can fix our nation because that would require a strong majority of our citizens to change their mindset about government. The progressives have cemented almost half the popular vote. Like Justice Kennedy, the moderates decide the race and they constantly change directions like a school of minnows. The GOP needs a supermajority of the independents to win. The rats only need a few in key states.
We are in deep trouble as a nation and it will take many administrations to get our fiscal house in order. Does anyone think it’s possible to find that spark and keep it burning in the moderates for 3 administrations in the face of the ultimate propaganda machine (modern media and academics) as well as a motivated base (see Wisconsin unions)?
I don’t.
>”We have a good portion of the Republican electorate that believes and lives by what the liberal media says about our candidates to a greater or lesser extent”<
Alas, that may be true. I don’t think that would apply to the Democrat electorate or general electorate any less, though. After hearing Rush and other persons on the right attack McCain for years, I was really stunned last time that he managed to win the Republican nomination. If conservatives have a hard time winning among Republicans, I’d expect them to have an even harder time trying to win among the general electorate (which is influenced less by talk radio and by sites like this one than Republicans are).
What "establishment darling" did you see beside Romney?
I saw a few "teaser horses" to give Romney legitimacy, but as you said, nothing intended to gather any traction.
Honestly, who would have bet a hundred dollars Romney WOULDN'T be the candidate, a year ago?
Time to face it. Sarah is a quitter. She cannot/will not lead the conservative cause.
Politics comes from policy: not the tactics used to “game” the contest.
Mitch Daniels
everything you said makes sense except this:
“The harsh reality is nothing other than Conservatives failed to sell their message to the bulk of the Republican electorate.”
Freepers have been so busy bashing Romney that they have failed to actually listen to him and his campaign - he’s been running as a conservative. immigration, taxes, business regs, energy, prolife, etc.
His campaign now is about beleiving in America again, he’s trying to repeat the Reagan 1980 campaign.
The lesson is that the conservative message does sell. Even when the sellers arent conservatives.
Amen
So in reality third party is now the second party!
And Reagan was "just an actor" ...
Robozombie's nominees would be no better. Reach across the aisle to show what a swell guy Robozombie is??? He might name Hillary or Slick Willie or Eric Holder or Obozo himself. Maybe Bernardine Doehrn? Does NARAL have a candidate for Robozombie to name to SCOTUS? Or National Handgun Control? Or the Log Cabin "Republicans?" Puhleeze! You can click together the heels of your ruby red slippers as many times as you want but you are still living in Oz if you don't recognize Robozombie as being every bit the danger to the Republic that Obozo is.
I have now broken a 44 year habit of voting reflexively Republican for mostly elitist RINO stooge candidates for POTUS always on the same old BS about the SCOTUS. That is all you guys have got and I ain't buying it any more. If the GOP wants my vote, it da*n well better be prepared to EARN it from now on. If you suffer in the process, it will only be because you volunteered to suffer. Not my concern, man.
Even Ronaldus Maximus made two of those errors. Dubya was two for two once the base erupted over his crony Harriet Myers but Dubya listened to the base. NO ONE has EVER accused Robozombie (Governor Etch a Sketch) of EVER listening to the GOP base.
If the GOP is worth anything at all, it can muster 40 votes to prevent ANY consideration of ANY Obozo judicial appointments. They sure as hell are not going to fight Robozombie's nominees who would be just as bad.
As all three of you "fight to the bitter end," ask me if I care when you lose.
I am a Catholic. Romney persecuted the Catholic Church and its institutions (and every other pro-life and pro-family church) under Romneycare and then passed that brilliant idea to Obozo for Sebelius to include in Obozocare. There ain't a dime's worth of difference between Diocletian and Nero in this election. There is absolutely NOTHING either can do to get my vote now or ever. And that is also true on so many, many other important issues where they are just as bad as each other.
And that baloney about denial: I am a Catholic and have no use for Sigmund Freud or for any other psychiatrist. They have a profession based upon what they regard as some sort of self-evident truth that there is no God. Freud, to his great discomfort now knows that there is a God. Denial is just another useless psychobabble term of the liar's art. Need therapy? Find a good ordained confessor.
>”Fee, Fie, Fo Fum: I smell a planted axiom.”<
I’m not sure I know which statement you mean. If you mean, “That [being confrontational] doesn’t require letting a worse evil prevail just to spite a lesser one, though”, that’s been my attitude throughout my adult life. I’m naturally inclined to be critical.
I wasn’t enthusiastic about any of the primary candidates, and just settled on Gingrich toward the end. I’ve never completely approved of any politician (including Reagan). I’m continually supporting the lesser of what are evils in my eyes, so doing so in a general election is nothing new to me.
It’s not like you to raise an objection that’s already been dealt with (I.e. Daniels, Pawlenty, teaser horses).
What gives?
Would you really have bet against Romney a year ago?
Sure, Ozero’s stooges might pack SCOTUS for the next 20 years. Fact is, we’ve never been able to cast a direct vote in that regard and never will. So your point is a wasted and sorry, absurdly ignorant.
I don’t recognize America today! Did you just awake sometime in the last 3 years? The rotten smell has existed for nearly 100 years; its been painfully odiferous in the last 3!
Denial? Let us investigate that. Denial is thinking former Gov Romney can win. Attempting to be respectful, he hasn’t the metal, fortitude nor savvy to lead this great nation. Spineless jellyfish! Poistions so firm, its like nailing jello to the wall!
He will not get the backing of most conservatives, the religious right/religious left and he certainly won’t get my support. Don’t think for one second your vote cancels mine...its doesn’t! My mother, 93 yr old grand mother, my aunt, my two daughters and the 50 -100 co-workers/friends we share, all feel the same. Now multiple that with all the other non-RINO, conservative voters who will hold the line, no thanks to you...Now, who’s in denial?
peace...
Agree!
I really hate to say it, but I've come to believe this is the truth. This was her year, and she likely could have pulled it all off.Her decision to toy with people for so long, and then bail was fatal politically IMO.
I'd have given her a chance with my vote if for no other reason, than that the establishment was going apoplectic at the thought of her running.
ROFLMAO!
Absolutely brilliant!
You know the foolproof test for knowing when Mittwit lies: His lips move.
You know the foolproof test for knowing when Mittwit lies: His lips move.
Thank you! That was refreshing and absolutely on target. I don’t recognize America today either and I would wager that most here don’t recognize it either if they are honest with themselves.
Kemp?
The anti-Prop 187 Kemp? the HUD Kemp who fought Costa Mesa when they tried to evict illegals from taxpayer subsidized housing? The Kemp who thanked Al Gore when Gore congratulated him on not being a nasty racist like most conservatives? The Kemp who routinely hectored conservatives on not being progressives on civil rights like he was?
No thanks. He would have been no improvement over the Bushes, just more of the same leftward drift.
The problem for us conservatives concerning Romney of course is that he has flip-flopped so many times on so many core issues that it is risky in the extreme to believe that he will not flip again once he obtains office with our support.
I believe his essential message is that he can fix the economy, the message, if you will, of the mechanic. I am not sure that people are listening to his position on immigration or taxes or his 59 point proposal the fix the economy, or on energy. As long as his positions are not so peculiar as to be remarkable, it is assumed without serious thought that he will behave reasonably.
But it is also true that in American politics the message cannot be separated from the man. That is how presidents get elected by the national voting block, especially the independents who are so decisive. That is probably why Truman defeated Dewey, Eisenhower defeated Stevenson, and Kennedy defeated Nixon. The people vote on the character of the man, or his charisma or some distillation of his essential character. I have often advocated that they should be far more mindful of his ideology but my pleas fall on stone deaf ears. We conservatives are far more likely to have a punch list of issues which a candidate must fulfill for our support. Independents, (forgive me) especially women, draw a subjective judgment of the man. Democrats are a mob whoring after the latest false Messiah.
So if the electorate sees Romney as a competent mechanic who can fix the economy and they see Obama as an ideologue, they will elect Romney. On the other hand if they see Romney as an opportunist who will cut and trim on every issue and they see Obama as likable, we know the result.
I suspect that we as conservatives will be moderately favorably surprised overall by Romney's decisions in office just as we were profoundly disappointed by many of the positions taken by George W. Bush in office.
>”The lesson [of Romney trying to speak as if he were a conservative] is that the conservative message does sell. Even when the sellers arent conservatives.”<
Frankly I didn’t pay much attention to what Romney was saying myself because he wasn’t anybody I was considering until it came down to him and Obama. I suppose he did do more of that than previously (hence the charges of flipflopping), and that did make it more difficult to label him a liberal. I don’t think voters really believed that he was more conservative than some of the others, though. So in choosing him they didn’t vote for conservatism itself.
I don’t know how much of what he said that sounds conservative he would really implement as President (probably not much), but I still support him. I think he’d be considerably better than Obama.
Disagree. And I have to defer to Gov Palin's acumen in all things political. I have yet to see her actually misstep, yet.
I remember plenty of people criticized Reagan walking out at Reykjavik, but who can doubt that move today
We're killin' 'em with the truth, man, and they've got nothing of substance to fight back with. It's truly pathetic.
Mitt Romney is the first and only presidential candidate I've seen in my lifetime whose supporters, in order not to fail the laugh test, absolutely must start every sentence with "Yeah, I hate him too, but..."
I avoid prognostication like the plague, but every bit of two a half decades of campaign experience tells me that such a campaign is absolutely doomed.
Breyer, who believes in applying the laws of other countries at our SCOTUS level so that we may be deemed civilized, is nonetheless not ALL BAD. He wrote the decision in which SCOTUS dismissed the most ancient case then still active in the federal courts: NOW vs. Joseph Scheidler on the basis that the Racketeering Statute (RICO) was not applicable to the actions of pro-lifers protesting at abortion mills. Breyer is by no means perfect but he IS capable of being a grown-up now and then which is better than Sandra Day O'Connor or David "Swish" Souter or John Paul Stevens or Herod "Ohhhh, the candle is flickering low!" Blackmun.
Herod Blackmun was the worst evil of them all and has claimed the deaths of 54 million (and counting) utterly innocent human beings to date. Blackmun made Hitler look like an amateur. That evil beats the hell out of increases in the federal budget or affirmative action schemes or any number of other things that acual conservatives may also care about.
#86: Last sentence: acual = actual
You hit it square...”if they are honest with themselves”. Most don’t recognize the precious the gifts we were given and how few of them truly remain.
“Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country”...Its not just a typing exercise! Appreciate you guarding the wall and standing tall!
Regards!
If the fix were in the fixers were far more clever than I am because, as a fixer, I don't think I would've permitted other candidates to take the lead over Romney three or four times and expect to get it back. It's time for Occam's razor to shape our thinking.
But I don't suppose my guesses are any more to be esteemed than anyone else's especially, as Yogi Berra said, about the future.
I do not concede that Gov. Tim Pawlenty was a "teaser horse." If you recall the media were searching everywhere for an alternative to Romney. One can dismiss them as disingenuous but the bulk of the electorate may not have recognized their deviousness and simply gave Tim Pawlenty no traction.
Why was Mitch Daniels the darling of the media, which should parallel the desires of the establishment Republican Party, if the fix for Romney was in fact dominating the day?
Romney had raised money, he had name recognition, he was the runner-up, or nearly so, behind McCain, he was telegenic, and he had, of all the candidates, been doing his homework for four years. These are all important considerations and they are the way nominations for the presidency in America are won and no one can legitimately infer from them the existence of a conspiracy.
I think we need to understand there is a GOP-E out there that has no place for conservatives who want a smaller government.
When guys like Paul Ryan in the House envision a balanced budget in ten plus years and get cheered as great conservatives, I can’t fathom that.
My own Senator Pat Toomey envisions a ten year path to a balanced budget that includes tax increases by closing “loopholes”.
What’s conservative about any of that???????
How about getting rid of EPA and OSHA? They are redundant with agencies that the states already have anyway.
The Department of Education and Department of Energy and more need to go......
Now that’s conservative and will help to balance the budget along with entitlement reforms.
The insiders want no immediate solution to the debt problem..
Why not now???????
What a pathetic litany.
To us in ‘flyover country’ Romney appears better than Obama and to many that’s all that counts to them
To those who like to retain access to the power brokers, the corrupt, the gravy train and the money machines in Washington D.C. sees Romney just the same as Obama and to many there that’s all that counts to them .
Who’s winning?
“>There are those here who seem to take it as axiomatic that whatever Obozo would appoint to SCOTUS and other courts must inevitably be worse that whatever Robozombie might appoint. That is the planted axiom.”<
Thanks for explaining because nothing in my posts in this thread referred to the Court, so there was no way I could have guessed that this was the planted axiom I was Fee, Fie, Fo Fummed for. :-) I did say in another thread a day or two ago, though, “I wouldn’t like that either [Romney naming leftist justices]. I think the opposite is more likely, though — that people would settle for a worse nominee from Obama than from Romney because they’d figure that would be the best they can get.” (I just say ‘likely’ because I don’t think we can know for sure.)
I don’t see why that would have to be a planted axiom, though. It may not have been consistently true, but I’d place Democrat presidents to the left of their Republican adversaries for the last half century at least, so I’d make that assumption on my own without anybody having to plant it. You can’t always tell how some of these justices will turn out, though.
+1
The economy will drive many votes this year and Romney stands a good chance of winning without my vote.
But in the end the debt bomb is going to burst first in Europe and eventually here.
Austerity measures the GOP-E and Romney will support are probably going to resemble Europe’s with tax hikes alongside of spending cuts.
What are the people going to do then?????
Maybe they’ll be ready for that conservative third party that wants to eliminate government agencies and programs.
A third party that wants government downsized without tax hikes.
I can’t recall more disinformation coming from Republican candidates and “conservative media” at any time in the past, and yet you say we were not defrauded and that we lost fair and square? Nuts!
The Romneybots and the GOPe bought the nomination. They want him so bad, THEY elect him. I’ll have nothing to do with it.
My daughter, who is 28, said she rather have Obama for four more years than Romney for eight. I am so disappointed in the republican party. I don’t want Romney but I sure don’t want Obama. Not much of a choice.
Thank you for stating more eloquently than I would have the real answer here.
The TEA Party movement has been very clear from the beginning that the goal was to take over the Republican Party. We need to continue working at a local level to ensure conservative candidates end up in positions of political power.
The GOP has not nominated my first choice for President since 1984. That doesn't mean I'm going to take my marbles and go home.
I am sometimes tempted to switch to a party I can agree with 100% of the time, but I don't know where I would find a second member.
> I am sometimes tempted to switch to a party I can agree with 100% of the time, but I don’t know where I would find a second member.
:-)
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