Posted on 09/21/2014 4:48:33 AM PDT by Kaslin
I know a lot of people are giddy at the prospect of Republicans taking the Senate this November, but that’s becoming less and less likely. It’s not because Democrats are rallying around a particular mission or set of candidates; it’s because Republicans and conservatives aren’t.
It seems like I’m always writing on issues no one wants to hear are mistakes, such as messaging or social issues. But I don’t care. These things have to be said. If these columns are received like a gaseous cousin on a long car trip through the desert, so be it. Crack a window…
If things continue on their current course, the GOP will not retake the Senate. Anyone telling you differently is selling something.
There are many reasons for this: tough primary fights, the “establishment vs. Tea Party” meme, stubbornness, arrogance, ignorance, ego. You name it, a segment of the center-right coalition suffers from it.
Too many people and groups on the right are content to take their ball and go home because their candidate lost a primary and/or the nominee doesn’t pay enough attention to whatever pet issue they care about most. They may vote, but their email lists sit idle and their wallets remain closed.
GET OVER YOURSELVES!
As upset as you may be, this election is not about any of the candidates you dislike. This election is about the following things, and the following things only – Barack Obama, Harry Reid and the Supreme Court.
I don’t care where someone lives or who their Senate candidate is … if you don’t support the Republican candidate, for whatever reason, with everything you have, you are voting to retain Harry Reid as Senate Majority Leader.
In spite of what you may have heard, the Senate is very much in play and too close to call. As unpopular as Barack Obama is, that isn’t enough to win. You have to be involved – through donations, volunteering, talking to everyone you know – or else Democrats will win.
I’m not making this up, I’m not trying to scare you; these are real numbers in real races that will make the difference. And they don’t look good.
The next two years can be spent either forcing an unpopular president to veto popular, pro-growth, pro-liberty legislation, acts that will harm his party for years; or spent with an unfettered activist president complaining about a do-nothing Congress while he initiates executive actions to implement a radical agenda and worse – packing the Supreme Court.
Live in Kansas and think Pat Roberts is a squish? Tough! Suck it up and support him.
Live in Kentucky and think Mitch McConnell is awful? Get over it and support him.
Live in Iowa and not a particular fan of Joni Ernst? Grow up and support her come hell or high water.
Live in Colorado and don’t think Cory Gardner is for you? Who cares? Support him or you are supporting Harry Reid.
Live in Arkansas and wish Tom Cotton wasn’t the nominee? So what? He’s the nominee, support him or lose more than that one race.
It doesn’t matter where you live—Louisiana, Michigan, Alaska, West Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, New Hampshire, anywhere—if you don’t suck it up, fight and work like your candidate won, you will be handing the Senate back to Harry Reid and the power to President Obama he has always sought – to fundamentally transform America.
It’s not the Senate that’s on the ballot this fall; it’s the Supreme Court.
In the last two years of his presidency, Barack Obama could appoint as many as three new justices to the Supreme Court. Would you like to see retiring justices replaced by young activist progressive nominees rubber-stamped by Harry Reid? Then work!
Yes, a Supreme Court nominee must overcome a filibuster according to Senate rules. But those are current rules and, as Harry Reid demonstrated for all other federal appointees, those rules can be changed at a moment’s notice and by a simple majority to fit whatever he and the president want at any time.
If you stay home, or if you simply vote and that’s it, you might as well be working for Harry Reid and Barack Obama. If the Supreme Court is lost, it will be lost for at least a generation. Then it won’t matter who you elect or who the next president is, the progressive agenda will be locked in as the law of the land for the foreseeable future.
You have a choice this fall: Sit on the bench or work to defeat whoever the Democrat is running for the Senate in your state. One choice is a vote for Harry Reid for Senate Majority Leader and more cover for President Obama’s abuses of power. The other will at a minimum apply pressure on the hemorrhaging wound from which our liberty is seeping.
The damage done to this country in recent years won’t be reversed by one election. No ship as big as the United States can be righted immediately. It will take time. But it can’t start being corrected until it stops getting worse. It can stop getting worse this fall if you vote and work to get others to do the same.
If you’re unhappy with your choices this fall, if your candidate didn’t win, you face a simple choice this November: Check your ego, pull your head out from where your hands are and get in the game. Or just quit. Which way are you going to go?
As if it would make a difference anyway.
Exactly. Which means a GOP majority senate won’t count for much.
This is just a chat room, comprised of a self-selected group of (mostly) conservative participants. I would be interested to learn how well it represents the cross section of the general public. My guess is that FR is useless as a predictor of the general public, even the part of the public that identifies with the Republican Party.
I would guess that the low information and "average" voters (more than low information, but not really aware of the details of issues) outnumber the principled voter by at least 100 to 1.
I think that if you are GOPe, it's rational to (discretely) write off the principled voters, and go after the squishy middle.
EVIL conservatives is your description.
Even Libertarians are more right than wrong. “Purist” conservatives sometimes suffer from excessive navel gazing have good intentions.
Oh, since you brought up the “5 million votes”, that has been solidly identified as the number of “purist” conservatives who sat out 2012.
Orin Hatch was helpful to Bill Clinton that way (making sure the president didn’t nominate a too-far to the left person for SCOTUS). It was Hatch who came up with Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s name.
If you were truly realistic.
You would acknowledge that if the GOP takes the senate, it won’t be
Reid obstructing conservatives, it will be the 14 Gangsters, you know,
that group that only rears their monkey wrench heads when the GOP
controls the senate.
It’s only purpose is to stop anything conservative. You know that and
everyone else here knows that.
Your too smart by half. You’re someone who over-complicates things because you want to win the argument by being “right” but you still talk in circles and don’t solve the problem. The only thing it solves is your argument.
Even if if you think my opinion isn’t “correct” for your purposes, or you don’t know what you’re talking about at all, it makes no difference. None of this blah, blah, blah, yada, yada, yada does anything constructive to get someone besides the liberal progressive marxists elected unless we get out and VOTE for our side’s candidate.
Maybe I am assuming you are conservative, or right of center, but if you think you have no side (like the 2012 election where millions of voters stood on the sidelines because they didn’t approve of Romney over their non-exixtent “perfect” candidate), we end up with Obama for another term. By default, that approach makes you just as culpable in electing Obama as the low information voters who don’t have a clue, did. Either get out and VOTE or I believe your argument lies in fallow ground.
But even with a Republican majority you will hear the chorus singing the same old song of “the President has the right to have his judicial picks confirmed”, conveniently forgetting that the democrats will use every means,dig up any dirt real or imagined and coordinate with media to defeat any Republican judicial nominees.
When I see an actual opposition party instead of a concede and drop to your knees party then I’ll begin to believe. I live in Ohio and I get great guys like Mike Dewine,Bob Taft,Rob Portman,George Voinovich and John Kasic not to mention the conservative great warrior John Beohner! These guys can’t wait to sell conservatives out!
You vote for the candidate who represents you, not the candidate who attacks you.
They can have my vote when they show that they represent me, not just that they are the least unlike me.
-PJ
I vote.
You are on my twitlist.
Which conservatives stayed home?
Since Romney got about 1,000,000 more votes than McCain, that leaves the 1,000,000 more voters who voted for Bush in 2004 than voted for Romney in 2012.
Is it your opinion that those extra Bush votes represent the conservative base and not moderates picking an incumbent?
One has to ask why Justices like Ruth Bader Ginsberg haven't stepped down by now to give Obama his picks?
I think the answer is that even she doesn't want the kind of nominee that Obama would offer up in his last years.
-PJ
Those that write on the percentage of principled voters that don't vote in the coming election are those voters that vote for a GOPe candidate in the primaries or support same with their donations and other supportive work in the primaries.
I am concerned that we have the bi-annual opportunity to defeat the left and we may get so busy puffing our chests at each other that we don't expose the left and capture the center voters for non-leftist candidates in general.
Now, if you are essentially saying that you believe what I have posted here and elsewhere on the site makes you want to disparage me and call me GOPe go right ahead. I delivered voter information door-to-door for Goldwater and organized recount rallies in Gore v. Bush of hundreds of people -- I don't need your validation.
I personally think that the GOP needs to wander the desert for 40 years to purge from the party those who have been corrupted by being in Washington for too long.
The old guard is entrenched and refuses to leave, and the new blood is being squeezed out in the process.
We won't see any changes until the lifers pass on. We need to hasten that process along. The McConnells and McCains of the party must go for there to be real change in our favor.
-PJ
Yes, but Orin was a really snappy dresser. OTOH, I too would resist letting him pick Supreme Court nominees. It's not a perfect system and mistakes get made all the time. I remember a guy named Roberts that we all though was terrific ...
That is the Achilles Heal of the GOP. They are unwilling to fight over the big issues. All that McConnell knows how to do is negotiate the Democrat position to a lesser extent.
What many decry as being RINO is simply being afraid to fight for opposing opinions for fear of what the MSM might say.
We need to purge the battered wives from the party and put new blood in place who aren't afraid of their shadows, and who won't cower from their own power.
-PJ
That wasn't my intention at all. I think, basically, Rove is right. There are more votes in the middle, etc. I don't like it; I think the GOPe would be better at the ballot box if it swung more to the right, promising to dismantle parts of the FedGov, cut taxes, responsible spending, etc.; but I don't think that message is essential to win (see Democrats).
I don't have any faith in the Federal Government anyway. It's out of control, arbitrary, too big, way outside it's constitutional boundaries. So, taking as a given that the government won't be reeled in by those who occupy its elected offices, and making the mission one of being elected, the mushy middle and even the gibmedats are where the votes lie.
But it's also important to account for the "discreetly" part of "discretely write off." I think the GOP has to, to maintain seats at the crony table, appear to court and hold conservative principles. Even though the number of principled voters is relatively small, there is no sense in openly throwing those votes away.
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