Posted on 01/31/2007 7:22:35 PM PST by Afronaut
Conservatives are offering a curious explanation for the drubbing they took at the polls: they blame the Republicans. The 2006 elections were not a conservative defeat, you see; they were a Republican one, a rejection of a party that had strayed too far from the conservative path. John McCain put the point nicely: "Americans had elected us to change government, and they rejected us because they believed government had changed us." The corollary is that McCain--along with many other, more reliable conservative spokesmen--believes that most Americans remain quietly conservative. But this latent center-right majority, he argues, needs reassuring that in 2008 the GOP will once again hew to true-blue (pardon the term) conservative principles.
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
Yes!
Well, we can't blame them for winning Congress... what else is left?
What would make for a good strategy?
Yes. Yes. Yes. A thousand times yes.
Republicans lost congress because they are no longer conservative.
Ah yes, navel gazing is just sooo productive.
I guess I didn't search good enough... And I did search. This is the proper title. MODS>>>>> ZOT!
Everyone needs to take their share of the blame, and correct what they did wrong, or we will be having this same discussion two years from now.
Yep
Turning the general election into a second Democrat primary isn't going to cut it...
What would make for a good strategy?
How badly do you want to win?
http://www.mdtaxes.org/news-stories2003/n.h.union.leader.editorial.less.traveled.9.2.03.htm
The New Hampshire Sunday News and Union Leader
September 2, 2003
GOP, MIA:
Taking the road
most traveled
This editorial originally appeared Sunday, Aug. 31.
HAD THERE been any doubts about the direction the Republican Party is headed, they vanished last week when Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie visited New Hampshire.
During a cheerful and pleasant meeting (that’s the kind of guy Gillespie is) at The Union Leader offices, the party’s new chairman, energetic and full of vigor, said in no uncertain terms that the days of Reaganesque Republican railings against the expansion of federal government are over.
No longer does the Republican Party stand for shrinking the federal government, for scaling back its encroachment into the lives of Americans, or for carrying the banner of federalism into the political battles of the day.
No, today the Republican Party stands for giving the American people whatever the latest polls say they want. The people want the federal government to tell states how to run local schools? Then that’s what the Republican Party wants, too. The people want expanded entitlement programs and a federal government that attends to their every desire, no matter how frivolous? Then that’s what the Republican Party wants, too.
The party’s unofficial but clear message to conservatives is: Where else are you going to go? To the Democrats? To the Libertarians? They don’t think so.
http://www.terpsboy.com/archives/001842.html
Yes Rush, it’s true: RNC chief rejects GOP traditions
"RUSH LIMBAUGH read from one of our editorials yesterday, and a lot of people have asked if what he said was true. It is.
The editorial was titled GOP, MIA and it was printed in last weekend’s New Hampshire Sunday News. Because of all the interest, we have reposted it on the Web site.
We wanted to take this opportunity to assure Rush and everyone else that the editorial was and is 100 percent true. Over the course of an hour-long meeting with Ed Gillespie, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, we took great care to give him every opportunity to explain himself fully so that nothing could be misunderstood. The result was a surprisingly frank admission that the Republican Party defines “fiscal responsibility” as increasing the federal budget at “a slower rate of growth” than the Democrats (his words).
We asked him three times to explain why President Bush and the Republican Congress have increased discretionary non-defense spending at such an alarming rate, and why the party has embraced the expansion of the federal government’s roles in education, agriculture and Great Society-era entitlement programs.
“Those questions have been decided,” was his response. The public wants an expanded federal role in those areas, and the Republican Party at the highest levels has decided to give the public what it wants.
We were fully aware that publishing those comments — all made on the record — would mean we would never be invited to any $1,000-a-plate Republican dinners in Washington. But the rank-and-file Republicans, the men and women who vote GOP because they believe in federalism and limited government, deserved to know what we knew. Now they do. And they can use the information as they see fit." - Manchester Union Leader
" I didn't do my job well enough."
You couldn't have turned this around. Deficit-spending, big government bloat from the party supposedly the cure for that problem is what lost the election.
"What would make for a good strategy?
How badly do you want to win?"
Go into the primaries with Conservative candidates and beat the snot out of their RINO opponents. Call the RINOS Democrats in Republican clothing. Don't give them any room to breathe.
Hammer it into the people, over and over that the reason this country went to crap over the last 6 years was because Republicans became Democrats and Democrats became Socialists.
Make the people choose between Socialism and Conservatism. Define it clearly and make the message concise.
That is how you take back this country.
This is yet more "progressive" pap, and "the Constitution is a living, breathing document" sort of tripe, DISGUISED as a keen insight to what "conservatism" is, or should be, at least, in this arrogant and condescending writer's mind.
This is almost as disgusting and laughable as slick willie's "what the definition of 'is', is".
Conservatives hold that our CORE beliefs, especially our belief in the sanctity of LIFE, and our Constitutional RIGHTS, like our 2nd Amendment RIGHTS, are NON-NEGOTIABLE.
You HEAR THAT RINO-rudy, and your deluded, so-called "conservative" supporters?
Our troops and our allies deserved better.
None of this changes the fact that we can do better than either a loose cannon member of the Keating Five, or a corrupt, greasy control freak from LIBERAL Noo Yawk.
Republican lost congress because they started backing away from Bush. Why support a party when their own people don't believe in what they are doing. The marginals in the middle gave the Bolshecrats a narrow victory, which is no mandate. Now get your butts in motion and pull together, 20 years of Bolshecrats will be disaster, two you can hold your nose.
I believed that the polls were wrong and the American people had more sense than prove Olbermann and the rest of the vitriolic slime stream media right. I refuse to believe Americans are that dumb, at least those in the middle.
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