Posted on 01/31/2008 6:44:15 AM PST by Brices Crossroads
Just ... months ago, the 2008 presidential contest seemed predetermined. ...Giuliani and Hillary Clinton were far ahead... .... Sen. Clinton was all but declared the foreordained winner a year in advance.
But not now. [snip]
The result of all this has been that while Hillary still polls ahead of the surging Obama in most states, in hypothetical general-election polls she runs behind Republican frontrunner, Sen. John McCain.
End of story?
Hardly. In reaction to McCain’s own surge and the Republican windfall, the conservative base went ballistic. Soon a Republican civil war broke out over how best to lose the election.
Despite McCain’s 82-percent career ranking by the American Conservative Union, and his support for balanced budgets, an end to pork-barrel spending and earmarks, strong support for the war, and expressed regret over once supporting the Bush illegal immigration reform package, McCain was branded by the conservative media as a sellout and a near liberal. Not to mention that he was supposedly too old and hot-tempered to be the Republican nominee. The more McCain was discovered not to be a perfect conservative, the more he was accused of not even being a good one.
Even stranger, the various Republican candidates began invoking Ronald Reagan...
Were conservatives supposed to forget that a maverick Reagan raised some taxes, signed an illegal-alien amnesty bill, expanded government, appointed centrist Supreme Court justices, advocated nuclear disarmament, sold arms to Iran, and pulled out of Lebanon — but to remember only that John McCain was not for the original Bush tax cuts or once supported the administration’s offer of a quasi-amnesty?
[snip]
November’s vote may hinge on whether moderates and liberals are nauseated enough by the Clintons...to ... vote for a decorated Republican war hero — that is, if his own flag-waving party doesn’t destroy him first.
(Excerpt) Read more at article.nationalreview.com ...
“When Thomas was nominated, Mitt was busy denouncing Reagan in front of Ted Kennedy. What a guy.”
yeah and McAmnesty JOIN WITH Fat Ted to SELL OUR COUNTRY OUT TO G-D DAMNED MEXICO!
It's "McCain", and he's vain and short-tempered, to put it politely, no matter how you spell it.
“Reagan would not stand a chance in today’s blogosphere.”
You might be right. Reagan too was savaged by the establishment Eastern Republican establishment. Look where the trashing of McCain is coming from. It is coming from New York, primarily NRO, FOX, talk radio and other organs which are either based in New York or got their start there (Rush). First, this group tried to ram Rudy, a Northeastern liberal, through. That flamed out. They then turned to another Northeastern liberal, Mitt Romney, who has repackaged himself day before yesterday as a Regan conservative. Romney’s Schtick as a conservative is not seeling. So, some of them seem determined to defeat McCain and thsu maintain the grip they have ahd on the party since 1988. It’s the same old elites. The northeastern RINOs are in full attack against another westerner, with an iconoclastic streak, McCain. They have ginned up a lot of people in to a frenzy of hatred against McCain. They tried to do the same with Reaga, but the majority balked.
Isn’t it odd that Ann Coulter, trained her most withering fire against John McCain....and Fred Thompson. It really has nothing to do with McCain being a liberal (By any objective standard, he is not.). It is all about the elites in the Northeast preserving their power.
“he’s said in the past that he opposes the overturn of Roe vs. Wade, and that combined with McCain’s ‘gang of 14’ behavior is more than enough to rule him out for me.”
He made an offhand comment in 1999 about the country not being ready. He corrected it the next day. When Rick Santorum, who dislikes McCain intensely, was on Mark Levin the other day, Levin tried to use this isolated quote to get Santorum to say McCain was not prolife. Santorum defended McCain, saying he clarified it the next day and that McCain could not be accused of not being, and more importantly, voting prolife.
On stem cells, the issue is likely moot in light of the scientific discovery that embryo destruction is not necessary to extract stem cells. I do not agree with his position on stem cells, but it is the same one taken by Romney. And McCain never passed a big government health care plan that includes $50 copay abortions for middle class women. Romney did. And this was AFTER his recent conversion to prolife.
“If we’re going to get tax increases, amnesty, erosion of the First Amendment, etc, I’d rather it be done by a Dem.”
The problem with your logic is you turn foreign policy and the American military over to the Dem. That worked wonders in the 1970s, when Jimmy Carter gutted the military and turned Iran over to the mullahs. We are still suffering fort that today. It worked well in the 1940s when the Dems lost China to the Communists. We are still living with that great mistake 60 YEARS after the fact.
In today’s world of suitcase nukes and terrorism, it could mean a mushroom cloud in a city near you. Are you willing to risk that in return for the great satisfaction of seeing McCain lose??
Yah can’t “tamp down big government”when you legitimize 21 million who already know how to work the system!
“Look where the trashing of McCain is coming from.”
Yeah, THE BASE.
That is just rhetotic, but Levin and Limbaugh keep repeating it. They don’t mention that McCain voted against his President and his party in opposing the big “Read my lip” tax hike rammed through by Bush 41. And they ignore the fact that Limbaugh campaigned hard for Bush 41. I never heard of Rush Limbaugh before Bush. They are joined at the hip.
Look at the whole record. You should not let people tell you how to think. BTW, where was Mitt on the Bush tax INCREASE in 1990? I bet there are quotes out here showing he supported it.
If McCain’s vote against the Bush TAX INCREASE and the Clinton TAX INCREASE in 1993 had succeeded, the marginal rate would be 28% today, instead of 35%. McCain has never supported a tax increase in his life and he is for making the Bush 43 tax increase permanent.
“That is just rhetotic”
Do you deny that McCAin used lib-speak to justify voting against tax cuts?
McCain’s not for tax increases? What do you think McCain-Liebermann (why is this vomitous ass always siding with libs?) will do to fuel prices in this nation? Have you read it?
The base is not for Mitt. You ought to know he is no conservative. Come on.
“The base is not for Mitt. You ought to know he is no conservative.”
This is true. The base is not for Mitt.
But the base despises Juan.
“McCain’s not for tax increases? What do you think McCain-Liebermann (why is this vomitous ass always siding with libs?) will do to fuel prices in this nation? Have you read it?”
I don’t agree with McCain on everything. It is really easy to make the perfect the enemy of the good. You have two choices. McCain or Hillary/Obama. That is an easy choice for me. I strongly supported Fred Thompson, and I think you will see Fred strongly backing McCain.
I don’t believe in using terms like “vomitous ass” to describe any of them. If you step back and analyze McCain’s record, instead of trusting the exegesis of Limbaugh, Levin and Company, which is selective, you will realize that he is MORE CONSERVATIVE that George Bush on most issues. The hatred and venom just astonishes me. I have followed McCains’ entire career from the time he entered the house in 1981 and he is no liberal, in spite of what the talk radio elites(most of whom are based in the Northeast...the same venue from which they attacked Reagan) have been spouting.
This is all about control of the GOP and the Bushes do not want to give it up. Neither do their media surrogates.
If the employer doesn't want to hire homosexuals, then a law saying he can't make his employment decisions based on homosexuality forces him to hire homosexuals. Is that not correct?
It's analogous to the grammatical distinction between the active and passive voice. "The law doesn't force anyone to hire homosexuals, it merely says they can't refuse to hire someone because they're homosexual".
The issue here is Goldwater's brazen hypocrisy. In 1964, he voted against the Civil Rights Act, which banned racial discrimination in hiring, on the grounds that it was none of the government's damn business (as he would put it) who a private employer fires, hires, promotes, or whatever. Then, a couple of his grandkids came out of the closet as homosexuals, and he suddenly decided that those same employers should be banned from refusing to hire or promote homosexuals. After doing this, he had the audacity to accuse opponents of his agenda of interfering in the private lives of people and of dragging homosexuality into politics.
The liberal media loved this, and repackaged the entire gay agenda, which largely involves using government power to force people to acquiesce, as being libertarian (!!!!). Thus, when the homosexual activists try to force the Boy Scouts to send little boys on camping trips with homosexuals, we're now told that it's actually the right-wing fundamentalist Christians who are "intruding into people's lives" and "dragging homosexuality into politics" by resisting. Ditto when parents object to gay indoctrination of their kids in school. And we're now being told that by wanting to preserve the 5,000 year old institution of marriage, and by opposing the use of raw judicial and/or political power to change it, we're the ones who are being intrusive. We're supposed to be "Barry Goldwater conservatives" and simply give the homosexuals anything they want.
There was a thread here the other day about a case in New Mexico. A lesbian couple tried to hire a photographer to tape their "commitment ceremony". The photographer refused, saying her Christian faith prevented her from doing this. She's now being hauled before a state "human rights" tribunal to defend herself. Yet, according to the rules of logic Barry Goldwater helped to establish, it's the photographer and her defenders who are intruding into people's privacy and are using government to pursue an agenda.
No, it doesn't... forcing the hire of homosexuals would be a quota system, a.k.a. - affirmative action. (You must have 5% of your workforce be gay!)
This is simply forcing employers to base hiring solely based on competence. What's truly sad is that we need a law to force employers to apply sound free-market principles to their business practice.
It's simply the same as eliminating religion as a basis for hire. I'm sure that you'd have no problem with a law declaring that employers cannot refuse employment to Christians, yes? (or fire them for being one, either)
Michael Reagan is supporting Romney. Who do you think has more sense - Nancy or Michael?
Then why do you use the word "force" below?:
This is simply forcing employers to base hiring solely based on competence. What's truly sad is that we need a law to force employers to apply sound free-market principles to their business practice.
So the law doesn't force employers to hire homosexuals, it merely forces them to hire based on competence and sound free-market principles. Again, a distinction without a difference. It's simply a rephrasing of the issue.
As for the affirmative action issue, there will be affirmative action for homosexuals under the law Goldwater supported, which, by the way, is currently pending and will surely become law in 2009 because McCain, Obama, and Hillary all support it. How do you think we ended up with affirmative action and quotas? Under the Civil Rights Act, if the government snoops stop by your place of employment and find that there aren't enough minorities on your payroll, you have to explain yourself. The "solution" for this "problem" was affirmative action and quotas. It'll be the same when homosexuality is added as a category to these laws.
And I'll also note that homosexuality is nothing more than a sexual deviancy. Should other such deviancies be covered by the Civil Rights Act? Should it be illegal to refuse to hire someone with a leather fetish?
Did he correct it or did he clarify it? The statement in support of Roe was fairly straightforward, not convoluted or confusing. Not much to clarify there. I suppose he could have corrected it, but that would mean "I was wrong and I've changed my mind", and he denies that any such change took place. Anyhow, I deny that the data point is "isolated" given his statements about his daughter during the 2000 debate season.
I do not agree with his position on stem cells, but it is the same one taken by Romney. And McCain never passed a big government health care plan that includes $50 copay abortions for middle class women. Romney did. And this was AFTER his recent conversion to prolife.
So? I don't support pro-abort Romney any more than I support pro-abort McCain.
“If you step back and analyze McCain’s record......you will realize that he is MORE CONSERVATIVE that George Bush on most issues.”
McCain-Liebermann
McCain-Kennedy
McCain-Fiengold
Gang of 14
Yep, really more conservative than Bush, thanks for turning me around there./s
(and btw, I hated this pond scum long before this primary...it just so happens that the radio guys agree with ME on the cretin, NOT the other way around)
It is YOU who are simply spouting “talking points”, and they appear to be taken directly from McCain campaign headquarters. This debate has absolutely nothing to do with Sean or Rush or the “Northeastern media”. These are simply distractions from the substantive objections to your candidate. And as an attorney, like most other conservatives here on Free Republic, I can THINK FOR MYSELF. The talk radio hosts you mention are merely REFLECTING popular conservative discontent with Sen. McCain, not CREATING it.
Furthermore, you are missing the point with your attacks on Romney. Most of us here at FR did NOT support Romney initially nor do we consider him to be a true conservative. I supported Fred Thompson (And no, I’m not convinced that you ever were a TRUE Thompson supporter yourself - you obviously are involved in some capacity with the McCain campaign). I only support Romney as the lesser of two evils between himself and McCain. Romney has not spent the last 8 years working AGAINST conservatives at every turn.
McCain’s 83 percent “conservative” voting record is largely due to his EARLY voting record, when he usually did vote with conservatives, even on major issues. That has NOT been the case since 2000. You conveniently ignore that in the last Congress he was the 45th most “conservative” Senator out of 49 Republicans - hardly something to brag about.
As for McCain’s “changing his position on McCain/Kennedy”, he has NOT substantively changed his position on the bill, (instead, disingenuously talks about “enforcement first” as if this were simply a TIMING problem), and in fact on Meet the Press last week explicitly said that (although of course it “won’t come up”, wink, wink, to the liberal media) he WOULD sign the bill if brought before him. If he truly has changed his position, why not pledge not simply that he will “enforce the borders”, which even the DEMOCRATS promise, but that he will NOT sign any “legalization” bill whatsoever for 4 years and instead focus on securing the border, as he claims he wants to do.
The fact that Sen. McCain has not done so (and if anything, shown every indication otherwise) demonstrates to me that he STILL thinks he is right (as usual), has NOT heard our voices in opposition, and will move full force ahead with his amnesty plan the minute he were in office. I would anticipate he would also move forward with “global warming” anti-competitive regulations, tying the hands of our military, higher taxes, etc as he has advocated while in the Senate for the last eight years. Since 2000, he has done everything possible to betray conservatives and I don’t see any reason to believe this will change one iota if he were elected President. He has certainly done NOTHING to dispel that belief during this campaign.
It is, of course, a “lesser of evils” situation, but if McCain is the GOP nominee I think the presumption for conservatives should be AGAINST supporting him in any way, shape or form for the long term good of conservatism, the GOP, and the country. I think I speak for many conservatives in this view, and your attempts to blame “talk radio” are just as disingenuous as the Senator you obviously represent.
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