I would think that the powers that be on this forum might frown on that as THE goal, rather than focus on the dangerous people in Washington DC, who are destroying this nation.Yes, there are many very dangerous people who are destroying the United States, but not all of them live and work in Washington and New York.
Unfortunately, your willful and unrepentant admiration for some of them, e.g., the RINO George W. Bush, despite their well-documented, non-conservative, statist records in office is beyond disgusting. It's downright repugnant, because you know exactly what they did, yet you prefer to perform the virtual equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears, looking away, and yelling "la la la la that never happened la la la la."
Now, frankly, if there's anything I think that the powers that be here on FR would frown upon, it's pushing a bigger, more intrusive, activist Federal government over the inalienable, Creator-endowed rights of the individual human being, or in other words, pushing an agenda of statism in direct contravention of individual freedom.
Reagan once said:
...but I would like to suggest that there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down--up to a man's age-old dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order--or down to the ant heap totalitarianism, and regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would trade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course.
So, as far as I am concerned, the goal here is not to blindly elect more Republicans, nor is it to elect nominal conservatives, irrespective of political allegiance, who either don't have a problem with abusing their power to accomplish what, on the surface and in the short run, appear to be desirable conservative outcomes, but in the long run are nothing more than political daggers that can be wielded in the future against conservatives by other American social factions.
The goal is to elect people at the Federal level who are willing to actually follow through with the oaths that they swear to uphold and defend the Constitution. That is the only way that we can accomplish the real goal of preserving and enhancing the freedom and sovereignty of the various States, and more importantly, the individual American, obviously, and in agreement with Reagan, in a manner consistent with law and order.
Merely replacing "the dangerous people in Washington DC...who are destroying this nation" with more dangerous people of a different stripe will accomplish nothing otherwise.
Furthermore, focusing too intently on achieving social outcomes by leaning on the power of the centralized Federal government--and mind you, centralized, concentrated power is extremely dangerous, no matter who holds it--completely misses the point that lasting social change can only be effected by voluntarily convincing people that adopting your worldview, or at least, parts of it, is in their self-interests. The reason for the so-called "culture war" and the "moral decay" that many social conservatives thoroughly abhor is not because of any lack of laws or restrictions at the Federal level; rather, it has come about because various Churches have lapsed and the right of the parents to educate their children has been surrendered to State-run educational institutions. No amount of Federal government this or that will solve either one of those two problems; in fact, giving the Federal government more power might very well make them even worse. After all, government is straight-up force, and all it can do is manipulate, control, and cajole people by threat of force.
Now, as a last word, in order for conservatives to move forward, particularly if they intend to continue using the Republican Party as the primary--but not only--vehicle for an agenda of small, Constitutional government and of individual freedom, then they--we--must repudiate and cast off past sins, much like, as Christians, in order to be cleansed, we must genuinely and throughly repent of our sins. Unfortunately for Bush apologists like ohioWfan, that means having to confront the Bush political record of RINO-ism, something that, based on her comments as of late, she seems unwilling to do.
Those are wise words Rabs.
I submit some hypothetical scenarios for consideration:
1945 - World War II is over in Europe, and as France begins to rebuild, the provisional government led by General Charles DeGaulle nullifies all past acts by the Nazi-collaborating Vichy government as illegal and anti-constitutional. However the vast numbers of Vichy-collaborators are kept in the many government agencies and departments, and proceed to sabotage and undermine the efforts of the new government.
So:
What is wrong with this picture?
1980 - After defeating Jimmy Carter in a 44 state landslide, President-elect Ronald Reagan chooses NOT to fire and dismiss all of the Carter appointees and staff, keeping a goodly number of them in their jobs and positions as a 'friendly gesture of bipartisanship and cooperation'. The leftist Carter crew immediately gets to work by throwing road blocks and obstacles in the path of the Reagan Administration, and by the Fall of 1981 the question is being asked "how did the Gipper fail so quickly?"
Once again I ask:
What is wrong with this picture?
2009 - After Free Republic's Founder Jim Robinson declares with absolutely clarity and purpose that FR will NOT support
RINOs, and states without equivocation that George W. Bush was (and is) a RINO just like Mitt Witt Romney, Mike Huckleberry Hound, Juan McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Goober Graham, Olympia Snow, Susan Collins, etc., etc., etc., Freepers who continue to sing the praises of George W. Bush and worship the ground he walks on, continue to post their sly suggestions that anyone who criticizes GWB
must not be against the current 0bamunist regime in Washington, hints that those who are calling a spade a spade (as in GWB being a RINO and greatly responsible for the colossal mess America is now in) are actually
liberals,
Bush-haters,
trolls, et al.
So once more:
What is wrong with this picture?
What we are witnessing is nothing more than a replay of the disgusting RudyBot campaign here on FR which ended with them leaping off into eternal
ZOT-dom with their clownish opus posts, practically begging to be banned, and they got their wish for the most part, thanks to the famous
'FR Bug Zapper Thread'. It was a necessary step to eliminate the infestation of liberal-RINO trolls and sleeper accounts from (clearly stated too) a
"conservative website".
As I see it, this is the most logical next step for FR:
