I understand that, which is why I said "I MIGHT, maybe even PROBABLY vote for the republican candidate in 2016"......Charles L. Cotton wrote:There are two choices when you get to the polls; vote for the Republican or vote for the Democrat. Sitting out a contested election gives the Democrat candidate a better chance to win. Democrats stand for everything I despise and I will never do anything that helps put or keep one in office. This includes voting for a Democrat, sitting out an election, voting for a 3rd party candidate with no chance of winning, or doing anything that diminishes support for the most/more conservative Republican candidates.The Annoyed Man wrote:Sorry...... I was a huge proponent of this view all the way through this past election, but no more. I even vociferously supported that view on these very pages. But that has changed. I MIGHT, maybe even PROBABLY vote for the republican candidate in 2016, but I rejected membership in the party after the 2012 election, and I quite deliberately do not want the Republican Party to ever again assume that it can count on my vote.tomdavis wrote:In 1980 we had 5 choices.
We have to get over something we do not like about the "conservative" candidate as we absolutely do not want the other one. We also have to get our friends who are giving up and do not plan to vote to get out there and vote. Their vote is their shot for freedom. To not vote is to join the other side.
. . .
The Tea Party movement brought a badly needed breath of grass-roots fresh air and enthusiasm to the party, and what happens? The party leadership devotes more energy to try and destroy the Tea Party than it does to trying to reform the way business is done in DC. Rice bowl politics at its finest. Republicans DO eat their own.
I understand that too. BTW, I'm not a libertarian party member, nor will I ever likely be one. I've been describing myself lately as a "liberative conservatarian" ....... which I know sounds like foolishness to some, but it does come closest to what I am..... which is a libertarian-leaning conservative. That might be another way of saying "Tea Partier". Back in the day, the term was "Goldwater Republican". I want four things from DC: 1) a recognition that the Constitution needs no interpretation, that is says what is says, no more, and no less; 2) a vast shrinking of the bureaucracy and the budget, which are a self-feeding system; 3) accountability, including no special exemptions for politicians from the laws that they burden the rest of us with (think "Obamacare"); and 4) term limits. I think that partisanship is only partly responsible for the mess we're in. As long as we've had parties, we've been a partisan nation, and yet that has not stopped us from becoming the premier nation on the planet. Partisanship is a natural consequence of parties, and it doesn't have to be a nation-killer. A much bigger issue is politicians treating their office like it's a birthright, and sacrificing the principles they ran on to get elected, in order to accrue and keep power. The natural consequence of that is that they lose touch with the people who sent them there. None of that changes the fact that the republican party leadership does not tolerate "uppityness" from the rank and file......which is at the root of their attempts to crush the Tea Party movement. In other words, they are trying to eliminate partisanship, which can ONLY be eliminated by joining the other side's initiatives. That dog won't hunt.Charles L. Cotton wrote:The Republican "old guard" cannot destroy the Tea Party movement within the Republican Party. If enough of the voting public support their positions, then Tea Party candidates will win. If they lose, it because they don't appeal to enough voters to win. (I'm a Tea Party-leaning Republican, but that doesn't change the facts.) The original Tea Party movement was infiltrated by Libertarians in many states and this is why they do well in some states and poorly in others.
Chas.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government ... -Tea-Party
What the article leaves out is that Jamestown Associates is NOT a "tea party" organization. They had been working with all parts of the party.....including the Tea Party. Because of that, party leadership tried to cut off ALL of their work for the party. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot! It is hard to believe that McConnell could have been THAT stupid.....except that he's a politician with a "birthright", so.....The National Republican Senate Committee, the GOP campaign arm responsible for Senate elections, has decided to use its political power to block consulting firm Jamestown Associates from receiving political work from GOP candidates or incumbents.
Jamestown's "sin" is working with the Senate Conservative Fund, an organization that supports conservative candidates for the US Senate.
NRSC communications staffer Brad Dayspring, a former spokesman for House Majority Leader Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), told The New York Times on Friday, “We’re not going to do business with people who profit off of attacking Republicans. Purity for profit is a disease that threatens the Republican Party.”
Jamestown Associates has done work with the Senate Conservatives Fund (SCF), a conservative group largely responsible for the elections of Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Mike Lee (R-UT), Jeff Flake (R-AZ), Marco Rubio (R-FL), Rand Paul (R-KY), Deb Fischer (R-NE), Pat Toomey (R-PA), and Ron Johnson (R-WI), among others. Former Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), who left the U.S. Senate last year to become the president of the Heritage Foundation, founded SCF.
"In a warning shot to outside conservative groups, the National Republican Senatorial Committee this week informed a prominent Republican advertising firm that it would not receive any contracts with the campaign committee because of its work with a group that targets incumbent Senate Republicans," the Times wrote.
Cantor's statement in red above is as fine a case of the pot calling the kettle black as I've ever seen before. Well, Virginia's voters weren't having any of that now, were they? He's gone.....to be replaced by a Tea Party candidate. I view that as an encouraging sign. If republicans at the top levels want to keep their jobs, perhaps they should learn to make nice with the grass roots. That movement to punish Jamestown Associates began with Senator Mitch McConnell. Apparently, he has learned from Cantor's lesson, and now he is desperately trying to make nice with the Kentucky Tea Party: http://www.courier-journal.com/story/ne ... l/9513361/. More encouragement for me. But that's just two party heavyweights.....one gone, the other struggling because of their political sins.
The reason the republican party is divided is because the leadership is dividing it. Apparently, the "big tent" isn't big enough, and the Republican Party is having another "Goldwater Moment": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Gold ... gn.2C_1964
McCain and Romney were two candidates favored by the moderate (read that as "liberal") wing of northeastern republicans. They were touted as "not too conservative to win". They both ran against a radical democrat machine politician with ideas of radical social engineering. They both lost. The nation paid dearly for the loss. Apparently, radicalism isn't really a preventative to winning.At the time of Goldwater's presidential candidacy, the Republican Party was split between its conservative wing (based in the West and South) and moderate/liberal wing (based in the Northeast). He alarmed even some of his fellow partisans with his brand of staunch fiscal conservatism and militant anti-communism. He was viewed by many traditional Republicans as being too far on the right wing of the political spectrum to appeal to the mainstream majority necessary to win a national election. As a result, moderate Republicans recruited a series of opponents, including New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., of Massachusetts and Pennsylvania Governor William Scranton, to challenge Goldwater.
Goldwater's detractors charged that he was too radically conservative to win. He lost to a democrat machine politician with ideas of radical social engineering which took decades to undo. The nation paid dearly for the loss...... and again, apparently radicalism wasn't actually a barrier to winning then anymore than it is today. Radicalism wasn't at issue......conservatism was, and we owe that to a leftist press, who aided and abetted liberals then, just as they do now.
The lesson is this: NOT that a republican is "too conservative" to win (Goldwater), or "more electable" (McCain/Romney); rather that bread and circuses will defeat solid policy arguments every time, and have done so since the dissolution of the Roman empire. Ronald Reagan, who was in many ways a Goldwater Conservative, had a pre-existing fanbase from his days as an actor, PLUS he had two terms as a successful republican governor in a state with a resurgent democrat party. He knew how to talk to liberals, with commonsense without condescension, with good-natured cajoling when appropriate, with gentle mocking when appropriate, and with a big stick when appropriate. The result is two-fold: 1) a legacy in which he is remembered, even relatively fondly, by his then-detractors; and 2) a VERY strong republican party, not ashamed of its conservatism for the next few years.
Today, the party acts like it is ashamed of its inherent conservatism, and party leaders scramble to play catch-up, assuring the media (who don't give a damn about conservatives and hope that we all either convert or die) that we aren't making war on women, we don't hate gays, we aren't racist, and we aren't concerned about illegal immigration. In other words, they are trying to convince the running dogs of the 4th estate that (to borrow and twist a line from Reagan's history) we are all democrats inside...... and [quaver] can't we all just get along? [/quaver] They actually aid and abet The Big Lie by acting defensive about the Lie's charges. It's the equivalent of them running around shouting "I DON'T BEAT MY WIFE!! I DON'T BEAT MY WIFE!!!" to the democrat question "are you still beating your wife?" The proper answer to that question is to punch the asker right in the mouth and tell him "if you ever disrespect me like that again, I'll put you in the hospital".
But no. Republican leadership has spent the past 10 years.....longer really......in damage control mode—always reeling backwards, always reacting to false charges. Well, reacting hasn't helped. In fact, it has hurt. The proper response is to ignore it. STOP granting interviews to hostile media representatives. STOP giving ammunition to the enemy..........and they ARE the enemy. I would tell any of my conservative friends, JUST LOOK at what democrat politicians have done to this country, and try to deny that they are the enemy. They did more damage internally than all the threats from the Soviet Block ever did.
There was a time when liberals and conservatives, democrats and republicans, could disagree and maintain harmony and still do business. This new breed of democrat has proven that they are willing to do ANYTHING, say ANYTHING, to crush disagreement. Civility is no longer possible at this time, and it may have been damaged forever. That is THEIR fault, NOT ours. We might as well stop pretending that civility exists, and treat them exactly the same way they treat us. It is true that it runs against the conservative nature to act that way, but if conservatives don't adapt to the new reality, our time is finished. Why? Because they will continue to control the message AND to own the medium of its distribution. Instead of acting defensively to Debbie Wasserman Schultz's false charges about republicans, call her a lying whore, and refuse to apologize OR explain it. The proper response to a call for apology is "NO, I won't apologize for speaking the truth." The proper response to a demand for explanation is "If you're too dumb or compromised to see it, then you're one too.......maybe you should go back to journalism school." Conservatives have been trying to reason with people who aren't interested in sound reasoning. They are interested in smash-mouth politics. If we don't play by their rules, we will ALWAYS lose, because they don't care if they look like bullies in the process! They LIKE being bullies. Give them more of it! They revel in it! You can't reason with people like that. There's only one way to deal with them—by taking the gloves off, and with a big stick. As long as republican party leaders keep reeling backwards, trying to "soften" the message of conservatism, democrats will keep winning.
Wags have jokingly referred to the democrats as the "mommy party" and republicans as the "daddy party" for years. I would add one more comparison..... the voters are "the children". Well right now, the children are watching mommy verbally savage daddy, and daddy is refusing to fight because it's not the manly thing to do. Don't you think that by now, the children want daddy to stand up for himself, stop being defensive, and start ASSERTING his leadership in the family?
Okay, okay....... this IS a rant. But I'm not going to stop ranting until I see some change for the better......and that includes within the republican party. There are signs of hope, as I've noted above about McConnell and Cantor, but they are few and far between. There has to be LOT more of that before I will call myself a member again.
