Contempt and the GOP [RINOs loathing social conservatives, Palin]

The Washington Times ^ | 2009-07-26

[rabscuttle385]

Can this political marriage be saved?

BY GARY BAUER

Psychologists have discovered that the most important factor in predicting whether a marriage will succeed or fail is the existence of contempt. When one or both partners display contempt -- the intense feeling or attitude of regarding someone or something as inferior -- the union, ultimately and almost inevitably, will fail.

Psychologist John Gottman has even developed a methodology that enables him to predict divorce with an astonishingly high degree of accuracy, up to 90 percent. While watching a couple interact, Mr. Gottman looks for the subtle signs -- microexpressions such as an eye roll or a patronizing tone -- that reveal not just displeasure or disapproval, but also the hostile inflexibility that is a hallmark of contempt.

As a political analyst and Republican of more than 30 years, I am saddened to say this, but contempt has contaminated the Republican Party. And much of the contempt has been directed at one partner in the party's marriage, religious conservatives. If the Republican partnership is to survive, the contempt must end.

[SWAMPSNIPER]

They can loathe me until Hell freezes over, the feeling is mutual. If they want my vote, however, they’d best start paying attention to my interests.

[kingu]

More droning about the same issue as always. How to make conservatives more liberal at a time when it is being demonstated that more and more people want to be conservative. No sale here. Why would I or anyone want to try to be liberal lite? Let the liberals be liberal and lets get reasonable adults to the table who can say no.

[ansel12]

You sure make up a lot of stuff, it isn’t about who writes the check.

Pro-abortion means that you are OK with it and pro-life means that you want to stop it, pro-choice means that you are pro-abortion.

[4rcane]

Most importantly of all, a pro-choicer dont vilify pro-lifers, like Palin. Thats their choice. How could you be a pro-choicer that reject life but support abortion only. Once you move into the realm of vilifying pro-lifers you become pro-abortion

[4rcane]

Its how I seperate myself from pro-abortionist. Sure this is not a definition recongnized by most ppl

[ZULU]

RINOS are WORSE than Democrats. At least Democrats are unabashed declared enemies.
We have one of the biggest RINOs in history, Bush II, aka Jorge, to thank for the economic mess which put a racist Marxist Muslim in the White House.

Conservative Republicans must ORGANIZE and drive the Chrissie Whitmans and Lewis Eisenbergs OUT of the GOP and into the Democrat Party where they belong.

[LowCountryJoe]

This is just a small sample of threads that should illustrate what I've written. Rather than name names, take a gander at these hyperlinked threads and see if I'm correct [If you'd like, I can link to many more]:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2222209/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2223114/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2223994/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2198709/posts

[4rcane]

I’m pretty sure most GOP voters were against TARP/bailouts, but what do the GOP elites do, they voted for it

[Cheap_Hessian]

What I see here is people concerned about a lot of things in America, one of those is who we are as a people and a nation of those people.

Just to be clear about my position, I believe in life, liberty, and private property. This means I am pro-life. I also believe the abortion debate is above the big government/small government debate. Meaning it should be argued not as a right but as a question of life. Should I have the right to kill the unborn? No.

[Arthur McGowan]

Here’s an idea:

How about all these baby-killer country-club RINOs repent in sack cloth and ashes, and confess that killing babies is: evil, barbaric, uncivilized, pagan, demonic, unAmerican, utterly incompatible with the Declaration and the Constitution, and suicidal for the United States.

Once they have repented, they won’t be running around sneering contemptuously at the “low brow” “oogedy-boogedy” Evangelicals, and the Party will be unified.

[ZULU]

EXACTLY. Which is why we must organize and use numbers and dedication to counter the megabucks and political influences of the Republican Leadership Council which put these puppets in power and keep them there.

WE outnumber THEM. Only by ORGANIZING and taking back the GOP, committee seat by committee seat and nominee by nominee, can we flush the Chrissie Whitmans, Lewis Eisenbergs, John McCains, Lindsey Grahams, Olympia Snowes, and Susan Collinses down the toilette and into the sewers where they belong .

[Finny]

As a Libertarian, I don’t loathe Conservatives at all Libertarians and Conservatives have the same view on how the law apply to social issues, States decides it unless its in the Constituion Rinos on the other hand has no business being in the party. Not only are they socially liberal, they’re also for big government

Extremely well said.

[4rcane]

When talking about international trade. Capitalist accepts that there will be a lost of jobs in America from free markets. American First ppl (Nationalist) won’t accept this, so they adopt protectionist socialist policies to solve it

[ansel12]

No thanks I do not want to start reading through old, entire threads, economics is not a big problem here at FR or among conservatives.

I do see a lot of liberals/libertarians that share our fiscal policies but despise us for our social conservatism and Americanism.

Most people that don’t share the values of social conservatives vote democrat, that is in that chart above.

[nathanbedford]

Well before election night I sat down in contemplation of the catastrophe to come and wrote out a long vanity about the political world which would emerge afterwards. The breach between social and fiscal conservatives was plain to see before the election personified as it was by Sarah Palin and the sulfurous reaction to her by the party elite on the East Coast.

Interestingly, my remarks presaged the author's insights about "eye rolling" etc.

Since the Obama administration has veared left as far as some of us have predicted, I think our enemy will be our best conciliator between social and fiscal conservatives. In other words, the threat to the republic posed by a continuation of Obama rule is so grave that I believe that social and fiscal conservatives, hardliners and rinos, will bury the hatchet long enough and deep enough to effect decent party unity if only through the election.

If Sarah Palin makes a run, the fundamental cleft of the party will be harder to bridge and the Rinos will have to come to terms with her nomination or leave. If Mitt Romney makes a successful bid, his candidacy will be swallowed easier by the right than Sarah Palin's will be by the left. In either case, these candidates must make their cultural obeisance is to the other side. Sarah Palin must do what we have been telling her to do since before the election, she absolutely must get serious about her persona and acquire gravitas and television presence. Romney absolutely must not pussyfoot on any key conservative issue. He has a special problem with his healthcare history in Massachusetts. But if John McCain could get the endorsement of his party, Romney certainly can. Remember, this is being said in the context of an electorate on the right desperate to save the Republic from Barack Obama.

Here is a portion of the vanity to which I alluded in which emphasis has been subsequently supplied:

I believe that the big battle in the party will not be between conservatives and moderates but between social conservatives and fiscal conservatives who are primarily libertarian. Both flavors of conservatives find common ground in strong defense. Fiscal conservatives are generally not as enthusiastic about Second Amendment rights, but the issue is not a dealbreaker. Social conservatives are almost universally fiscal conservatives but not all fiscal conservatives share social conservatives concerns about abortion and the ancillary issue of the morning after pill, education, religion in the public square, homosexual union, stem cell research, and pornography, marital fidelity as a prerequisite to public service, and evolution.

I consider myself to be a social conservative with a pesky libertarian reflex. In other words I am ferociously opposed to abortion but I am less exercised about what homosexuals are doing to each other in private. I am very concerned about the war being waged against Christians by our own governments but I'm not very exercised about adult pornography. I recite all of this because I think the way I resolved my apparent dilemma is the way everybody should do it: look for the victim and protect him. The classic arguments in support of legalizing alcohol, drugs, prostitution and gambling all point to the "absence" of a victim so the traditional conservative bias towards individual liberty weighs very heavily. But I sure see a victim in partial-birth abortion so I don't give a damn about the mother's convenience. Indeed, I see no reason to grant exceptions to prohibitions against abortion for incest or rape because those circumstances do not justify victimizing innocents, that is, to kill babies. Life of the mother exception, to the contrary, makes sense to me because one can identify the mother now as a victim. So if all conservatives would only just do as I do, (you know, be as reasonable as Henry Higgins and I) which is to weigh the balance in behalf of an identifiable victim but otherwise to respect individual liberty, we would find much overlapping common ground upon which to build long-lasting compromise.

If social conservatives would accept formulations of public morality the organizing principle of which is the protection of an identifiable victim rather than the vindication of a moral precept, fiscal conservatives and libertarians would be much more comfortable in the party. Fiscal conservatives, for their part, must go to bat for Christians when they are embattled by the secularists who would rob them of their faith through the arm of government. Fiscal conservatives owe Christian conservatives one more consideration, they must stop their smug condescension and their eye rolling whenever Christians express their faith in public. Consider for example the execrable figure of the son of William F. Buckley Jr. abandoning the McCain/Palin ticket for ill disguised abhorrence of Palin's faith. This is probably the last kind of bigotry that is socially acceptable in America but it must no longer be acceptable among conservatives. Buckley claims that he is a "small government conservative" but I claim that no matter how small his government, he is no conservative at all but something quite alien to us.

If the conservative movement is to be salvaged, this dichotomy will have to be resolved either along lines that I suggest or some other way. The alternative is a further splintering of the party and that would be very, very unfortunate.

[ansel12]

I got you, thanks.

[ElPatriota]

Why are we, low class Republicans (social-conservatives=Religious AND NON-Religious people who care for our culture), mad about? Another hint:

We know many here voted for Weasel McLame... "the lesser of two evils... remember?" We on the other hand KNEW we were dealing with a rotten apple but the Republican-Left somehow managed to resuscitate him! Well... We did not bite!

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Let's not forget... These are the "Republican-LEFT"... Who are trying to move the party to the left... Right now. You will find they (GOP/Political hacks/Lobbyists) are all connected and trying to defend "their business" (RINO-LAND)

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Why is this important?... Because it tells me what McCain tried to hide from us social-conservatives all along. Palin was nothing more than a 'move,' a 'trick' to bring us to vote for him.

But his daughter, his wife and his ex-campaign manager and all the others linked to his campaign (like Steve Schmidt, Mike Murphy, Mark McKinnon, Todd Harris... ) have now "come out of the closet" determined to move the party to the left and in doing so, have dumped on PALIN in different publications recently... They are ALL CONNECTED... and these are the ones who want to get rid off of Sarah in a hurry, after all for them, electing RINOs and Lefties is a very good business first and who knows what else

I used to ask: WHO IS THE GOP????... (no one has ever given me a good answer) Well...these weasels ARE PART OF THE GOP... (They think they know better than us what's good for the party). And I suspect - it's only logical - that these hacks are actually very influential in the GOP since they are the ones who are supposed to have ALL THE ANSWERS.... and so weak RINOs and LEFTIES listen to them to get re-elected or elected. Well, things have changed... and the GOP will have to listen to us!... We'll no longer vote blindly for their canditate. McCain was the first casualty.

So, the battle lines are drawn...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/15/meghan-mccain-i-love-gay_n_233703.html

http://www.out.com/detail.asp?id=25589

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This is the "weasel" who tried to bamboozle social-conservatives into trying to elect Lefty-Traitor McCain and move the party to the LEFT... He thought that Palin would put MaCaca over the top... NAHHHH... We are not that dumb. And now, after the election, his CAMPAIGN MANAGER, is showing his true colors... And of course, MaCaca KNEW NOTHING of his views right?... Riiiight!

Warning: this links to the Huffinton Post!... We should not go there, but that is where the article came from)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/17/steve-schmidt-mccain-camp_n_188354.html

[Arthur McGowan]

So, it’s your position that if I am ten years old, the law should say that anyone who murders me will be punished. In this way, the law protects my life, by deterring murderers.

On the other hand, if I am still in the womb, the law says that anyone who murders me may do so with impunity. In this way, the law refuses to protect my life.

So, to be “pro-choice” is NOT being neutral. To be “pro-choice” is to be quite affirmatively in favor of lethal acts of discrimination against one group of human beings.

And clearly, this form of legal discrimination is WORSE than Jim Crow, and even worse than slavery, because neither Jim Crow nor slavery resulted directly in murders.

So: to be “pro-choice” is to be pro-discrimination AND pro-murder.

So: What is there about being “pro-choice” that anybody is obliged to respect? “Pro-choice” simply means “complacent.” It appears to be quite wicked, because being complacent about gravely unjust acts is itself wicked.

[4rcane]

Got a question. Is raising taxes on imported goods to match how much it will cost if produced locally, considered a capitalist or a socialist policy?

[rabscuttle385]

pro-choice means that you are pro-abortion.

I am pro-"choice." I believe that the individual has the right to do with his or her body as she pleases. I also believe that the individual has the right to bear the consequences of his or her actions. Those "consequences" can range from the fruits of a day's honest and lawful labor to a child born within a marriage.

If a man and a woman of lawful age voluntarily elect to engage in activities that carry the inherent risk of pregnancy, then I do not believe that they should be permitted an "abortion." Now, that's not meant to suggest that the resulting pregnancy is any sort of "punishment," but it is a normal consequence of said activities, and the two parents should accept the responsibility that they have to either raise the child themselves themselves or give it up for adoption.

It's the "edge" cases, most notably that of rape, where there tends to be disagreement. [That said, would I permit a rape victim to wait nine months and then out of the blue decide on a partial birth abortion? No!] Plus, what if the pregnancy itself threatens both the life and health of the mother and the child? [Think an ectopic pregnancy here.]

The problem with the abortionists is that they don't believe in personal responsibility. Then again, they are much like their fellow leftists in believing that one man should be forced to account for another's actions.