First, and absolutely foremost, we can not allow anyone like John McCain to ever be our candidate ever again. Republicans win when they act like Republicans, not when they do some 'reaching across the aisle' nonsense. Oh, John McCain was popular with Democrats? How wonderful for him. When Democrats got a choice between voting for a Democrat and voting for their favorite Republican who sometimes acted like a Democrat, they chose the Democrat...
Senator McCain is a true American Hero & was a better choice than Obama. However, he was not the right candidate. He did not differentiate himself enough from Obama on key issues, with the financial crisis & bailout bill being the big "surprise" of the election. We needed a candidate who would have stood up against the bailout, the global warming cap & trade garbage, & illegal immigration - that candidate would have won.
Second, the world is not ending. It's also not magically better. Liberals are dumb, let them believe that Obama is going to bring some mythical change and hope to their lives. Good on them, they fall for this kind of thing often, it's more than a little sad...
In Biden's infamous "Obama will be tested" speech, he said Obama would make "unpopular decisions. I take this to mean that his supporters won't have their mortgages paid & they may be unhappy that he doesn't do everything all at once.
This leads me to number three: don't be like them. You know what I mean. Liberals acted like animals for the past 8 years and there's this feeling among Republicans that we must make the Obama presidency hellish on a day-to-day basis...
Good advice. We must oppose the bad things, things which will hurt our country. We can oppose them in a rational manner & not be like the coarse thugs on the left. That differentiates us positively, we can discuss & debate, disagree in a civil manner.
Finally, Republicans as a party have a lot of work to do for the next four years...The next four years have to be about focus and honing our message...
We have the winning message, we simply need to get back to it. Core conservatism, individual freedom and economic opportunity for all.
However many years of the Obama presidency there are, we will have much work to do. We must not shirk from the struggle. Too much is at stake for us, our children, & those generations to come.
4 comments:
Wow, here we go again. It's that divisive talk and attitude that Americans are sick of and that's why they voted for change. If liberals are so dumb why is the country fighting two wars, the economy is in a downward spiral under the leadership of a republican president. Congress had a republican majority for the first 6 years so don't say it's because of a democratic congress.
I say let's stop pointing fingers and get to work. If liberals are dumb and I'm not a liberal, then conservatives are...?
Ignoring the actual merits of both sides' public policy, I'm a little amazed by all this conservative insistence that the right still has the "winning message."
They don't. They don't now, and, when the generation that went for Obama almost across the board becomes the average voter, they certainly won't.
Here's the thing: McCain didn't lose because he wasn't conservative enough. He may very well not have been, to your taste, but that's not why he lost. His relatively liberal positions on climate change, energy policy, etc., along with his hesitance to run with culture war issues like abortion and gay marriage almost certainly were electoral strengths, not weaknesses.
McCain's biggest problem was a lack of definition. For instance, after playing the moderate on all those issues, he chose Palin, a staunch conservative who insisted that she was going to get him to drill in ANWR and the like. Palin, in turn, ended up with huge unfavorable numbers in polls, and her image as a hard-right base-exciter turned off a ton of voters who could've been won over by McCain on national security.
Of course, it's hard to give one reason why McCain lost, because that one reason doesn't exist. Part of it was the economy, part of it was his poor handling of his message on said topic. Part of it was his relatively weak charisma on the national stage. Part of it was Bush and the throw-the-bums-out mentality.
But "not conservative enough" wasn't part of it. McCain's moderate and sometimes center-left stances on many domestic issues were smart. The number of voters who would have been horrified by huge spending cuts, a new round of the culture war, and numerous other "conservative" policies would have almost certainly outnumbered the "base" that he chased after so haltingly.
McCain's problem isn't that he was a fake conservative, whether he was or not. It's that he forgot to act like he was a moderate.
Yes, please do keep moving the Republican Party further and further to the extreme right and deeper and deeper into the rural South, rural Appalachians, rural Ozarks and the Mississippi bottoms.
Apparently, we need to make room for a new party.
America needs a party that will represent the moderate majority. We need a political party that has the intelligence to balance classical conservatism in our fiscal and foreign policy with a moderate position on domestic and social policies. We need a party that doesn't abandon the middle class to play sycophant to an elitist, ruling class. We need a party that comprehends that every dollar spent by the government is actually a tax, regardless of whether the spending is paid by raising income taxes, increasing massive debt or printing more dollars. We need a party that can wisely and respectfully balance the rights of the individual with the needs of the nation and that can show the ability to preserve our common values without legislating religion verbatim into law. We need a party that understands that while government may sometimes be able to act as a catalyst for growth and can generally be a fair referee it cannot be all things to all people and it should not try to be. We need a party that supports our allies as a fellow nation not as an expanding empire and that maintains a strong defense without engaging in opportunistic wars for the sake of corporate colonialism. We need a party that honestly values the middle class and works to secure and expand it. We need a party that grasps the understanding that poverty requires true justice and equality, not more charity.
If you look back approximately 40-60 years in the history books, you would find most of this platform listed under the Republican Party. Unfortunately, the original Republican Party has apparently ceased to exist. The Dixiecrats that invaded the party at the invitation of Nixon and Reagan have remade the party in their segregated, extremist image and destroyed the heart, mind and soul of the Grand Old Party.
John McCain, Olympia Snow and Susan Collins are among the rarest of political species; they are among the last remaining few of the real Republicans.
When the majority of modern "Republicans" call these traditional Republicans "RINOs" we know that the party is no longer what it once was. It has lost far more than its way.
Yes, folks, why be a big tent party when the narrow mind of the whole neocon klan can easily fit under one, little white hood.
Thank you all for your comments! Can't say I agree, however I'm glad you took the time to post them.
How did the Democrats gain the majority in congress in 2006? They ran candidates to the right of some Republicans - pro-life & pro-gun "talking" candidates. They were able to do this because those Republicans by in large became weak & "Washingtonized." They lost because they squandered their majority & left limited government fiscally responsible conservatism.
People tend to vote for strong leaders with a moral compass. They want leaders to protect the innocent & punish the guilty. I don't know of an instance where a fetus is guilty of anything. The truth is that most people abhor abortion sheerly for convenience, & opposing this is a winning issue in most areas.
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