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A clear view of the Republican Party from across the pond...

badaxemoo

Well-known member
http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12599247

I respect true conservatism.

It's the anti-intellectualism that the Republican Party has embraced that I have total contempt for.

Who is going to lead the party out of its current funk?
 

RobertMac

Well-known member
Who is going to lead the party out of its current funk?
A true conservative!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!( :wink: knowing how you hate explanation points :wink: !!! :!: :lol: 8) )
 

badaxemoo

Well-known member
RobertMac said:
Who is going to lead the party out of its current funk?
A true conservative!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!( :wink: knowing how you hate explanation points :wink: !!! :!: :lol: 8) )

Who would you list as a true conservative?

There are so many names floating around right now as possible leaders of the party.

I think it will be very interesting to see who emerges.
 

Texan

Well-known member
The question I have is whether or not a REAL conservative would ever have a chance to win the general election. It seems to me that we are getting to the point where more and more people believe that the government owes them something.

More and more people have their hands out or expect the government to regulate every aspect of life. How can a REAL conservative ever get votes from people like that?

It looks to me like there has never been a better time for a third party - a moderate party. A party that would take the more centrist voters - as well as the more centrist elected officials - from each of the two major parties.
 

don

Well-known member
i think the republicans will have to find somebody with the intellect to know not just how things should be but how to repair the situation to make it what it should be. there are some very smart conservatives out there but joe the plumber and sarah aren't among them. america is wasting too much of its most valuable resource - people. until the middle class is rebuilt there won't be a lot of good things happening.
 

RobertMac

Well-known member
The thing that would truly show stupidity would be to listen to opposing intelligentsia and the intelligentsia of the wing of the party that just lost this election.
Gov. Palin is the first Republican to inspire the true conservative base since Pres. Reagan...why else would she be so venomously attacked other than fear of her "star power". Just think how effective she will be after a few years to hone her skills!!!!! :wink: :!:
But she's not the one....
 

fff

Well-known member
I vote with RobertMac. Palin for President!

Looking back, I think Rudy might have beaten Obama, but the rightwingnuts wouldn't allow him to be nominated.

With the economic crisis, Mitt would have been a much better candidate than McCain. But, again, the rightwingnuts wouldn't have a Mormon as a candidate.

Heck, if McCain had selected Mitt as his running mate he would have helped because of his financial background!

History shows that a party that got their butts soundly kicked as the Republicans did this election tends to turn to their base for a candidate in the next election. In this case, the Republican base is religious conservatives. While a huge majority of Americans, in general, say Sarah Palin is/was unqualified, the Republican base loved her. Either the party has to break from their base or nominate someone who is viewed by the majority of Americans as somewhat of a joke.

Personally, I think governing as a Conservative is dead in the water. Reagan and Bush have shown us it doesn't work.
 

RobertMac

Well-known member
fff said:
I vote with RobertMac. Palin for President!

Looking back, I think Rudy might have beaten Obama, but the rightwingnuts wouldn't allow him to be nominated.

With the economic crisis, Mitt would have been a much better candidate than McCain. But, again, the rightwingnuts wouldn't have a Mormon as a candidate.

Heck, if McCain had selected Mitt as his running mate he would have helped because of his financial background!

History shows that a party that got their butts soundly kicked as the Republicans did this election tends to turn to their base for a candidate in the next election. In this case, the Republican base is religious conservatives. While a huge majority of Americans, in general, say Sarah Palin is/was unqualified, the Republican base loved her. Either the party has to break from their base or nominate someone who is viewed by the majority of Americans as somewhat of a joke.

Personally, I think governing as a Conservative is dead in the water. Reagan and Bush have shown us it doesn't work.

RM said:
The thing that would truly show stupidity would be to listen to opposing intelligentsia and the intelligentsia of the wing of the party that just lost this election.
:roll: :wink: :!:
 

Sandhusker

Well-known member
don said:
it will take a pretty smart republican to figure out how to get elected by narrowing their base.

Only something like 34% of registered Republicans voted in this last election. Their choice was either a Liberal or a Socialist, so they stayed home in disgust. If a solid Conservative had been nominated, they would of got that 34% plus a whole lot more, and Kola and fff would of been wailing about all the racist Republicans who wouldn't vote for a black man when B. Hussein Obama got sent back to that crap hole of a district that needs "change".
 

don

Well-known member
sandhusker: Only something like 34% of registered Republicans voted in this last election.

sounds like a narrowing of the support base. how'd it work?
 

Sandhusker

Well-known member
don said:
sandhusker: Only something like 34% of registered Republicans voted in this last election.

sounds like a narrowing of the support base. how'd it work?

I explained it; There was just nobody to vote for. All that is needed is a solid Conservative. One of those emerges and it's all over for the Dems.
 

RobertMac

Well-known member
don said:
it will take a pretty smart republican to figure out how to get elected by narrowing their base.
The results of Prop. 8 in Callifornia(Arnold accent), arguably one of the most liberal states in the Union, was a conservative out come!!! :wink: :!:
 

fff

Well-known member
Mike said:
Reagan and Bush have shown us it [conservatism] doesn't work.

How did Reagan show us this? :roll: :roll:

By leaving us a huge Federal deficit:

Reagan's Economic Legacy

The growing federal deficit has created apprehension even among Reagan supporters.

By: John Case - Published October 1988

Why even his supporters are worried about the future

You'd think people would be pleased with Ronald Reagan's economic record. In the early years of his Administration, he saw the United States through a painful recession. That wrung inflation out of the economy and left us with a decade of relatively stable prices. Ever since, business has been on a roll. Real gross national product has increased 22% since 1982, one of the longest peacetime expansions in history. Employment has risen more than 15 million -- "two and one-half times as many new jobs as Japan and the major industrial countries of Europe combined," this year's Economic Report of the President points out.

Despite this record, a series of new books evaluating the President's economic policies are anything but laudatory (see "What Reagan Wrought," next page). Some, to be sure, come from economists sympathetic to the other side of the political spectrum. With an election upon us, it's not surprising they've chosen this moment to attack the Administration's policies. But even the books from Republican economists offer Reagan supporters scant comfort. The titles alone show the common ground: Harvard professor Benjamin M. Friedman, a liberal, calls his book Day of Reckoning, while former Reagan economic adviser Murray Weidenbaum calls his Rendezvous with Reality. The books resemble each other in another way as well. They have more to say about where Reagan went wrong than about how the next President can set things right.

What concerns these economists most is the growing federal deficit -- "the major adverse legacy of the Reagan economic program," as William A. Niskanen, another of the President's former economic advisers, describes it. Handwringing over deficits, of course, is nothing new, although conservatives once did more of it than liberals. But this time the story is much scarier, and not just because of the near-unanimity across political persuasions. In three respects the Reagan deficits differ from their historical forebears:

* Size. Economists measure government deficits not in absolute terms but in relation to the GNP. That's only common sense: as GNP expands we can afford more debt, and if the debt is growing slower than the economy as a whole, we're in good shape. Under Reagan, however, the federal deficit expanded from 2.6% of GNP to 5.3% in 1986 (before falling somewhat in 1987), adding more than $1 trillion in red ink to our national accounts. Worse, this growth took place not during wartime or depression but in a period of peace and prosperity. That's when the national debt is supposed to shrink.

* Persistence. Reagan came to Washington promising to cut taxes and federal spending. He cut taxes. But spending rose both in absolute terms and as a share of GNP. Was it Congress's fault? Nope, says Friedman: total government outlays between 1982 and 1987 averaged only $15 billion a year more than what Reagan requested. That accounts for only 8% of the accumulated deficits.

* Effects. In the past, the government financed its deficits mostly by selling bonds to American investors. This time it has borrowed from the rest of the world. The result: by the end of 1987 the United States had completed a fast transition from the world's largest creditor to the world's largest debtor, owing foreign investors roughly $400 billion. What made the borrowing possible was high interest rates, which themselves may have been caused by the big deficits (see "On Deficits and Interest Rates," page 3). With foreigners happy to snap up high-yielding American assets, the dollar remained high, making imports cheap and damaging the competitive position of U.S. manufacturers. We therefore ran up huge trade deficits and provided overseas investors with ever-increasing quantities of dollars to lend us.

As the new Administration will soon discover, things can't go on like this. In the short run, each year's budget deficit ratchets up the next year's by adding new interest costs. ("The deficit itself has become one of the major sources of the growth of federal spending," observes Niskanen dryly.) In the longer term, simple arithmetic tells us that the deficit can't keep growing faster than GNP. Even at current levels, our dependence on foreign lenders is unsettling. "Because of the need to service that debt," writes Friedman, "we will need to live on less than what we produce and earn.''

Wouldn't it be nice, in this context, if the economists who analyze our problems so thoroughly -- and with so much agreement -- found themselves in similar consensus over what is to be done? Alas, no such luck. When it comes to recommendations, Niskanen essentially throws up his hands, devoting only one page to possible spending cuts, then bowing -- in one sentence -- to the need to raise taxes. Friedman catalogs some possible reductions on the spending side, but decides on the basis of the past eight years that voters don't want to cut federal outlays. His conclusion is short but not sweet: "America needs a tax increase." Only Weidenbaum devotes much space to policy recommendations, often spelling them out in considerable (and thought-provoking) detail. But he can't bring himself to propose new taxes, and his proposals for spending cuts probably would not be adopted.

All these books, in fact, lack political sophistication commensurate with their level of economic sophistication. That may sound surprising, given the authors' résumés. But to these economists, all America seems to need is a President who will take a principled stand in favor of whatever they happen to believe in.

In the real world, politicians hardly ever make such "hard choices." Rather, successful ones get things done by articulating a vision, then by making the trade-offs necessary to realize it. No American President, for example, can take a meat-ax to the Pentagon's budget, bloated though it might be. He has to offer a positive image -- of a leaner, better-trained military, say -- and spend money on items that further that goal. The same holds true for the ever-swelling and politically sensitive entitlement programs, such as Social Security and Medicare. No President can cut the Medicare budget unless he can couple the cuts with new measures designed to improve, not jeopardize, health care for the elderly. It's that goal, not spending cuts, that will motivate Congress.

Reagan came to Washington with plenty of vision. As these books make plain, however, he was unwilling to make the trade-offs necessary to realize many of his goals. Maybe the next President will be better suited for the job.

http://www.inc.com/magazine/19881001/5989.html

Of course, the next president wasn't better suited and Bush I was not re-elected for a second term. It took a Dem to fix Reagan's mess. We can only hope that Obama is as successful in cleaning up after Bush.
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
Sandhusker said:
don said:
sandhusker: Only something like 34% of registered Republicans voted in this last election.

sounds like a narrowing of the support base. how'd it work?

I explained it; There was just nobody to vote for. All that is needed is a solid Conservative. One of those emerges and it's all over for the Dems.

No conservatives/Repubs anywhere :???: Governors are now majority Dem- House is controlled by Dems- Senate is controlled by Dems- White House is now controlled by Dems- 7 states now have no Repub representation in D.C.- majority of state legislatures now controlled by Dems....
Is it really there are no Repubs/Conservatives- or is it that right now they have no message.. :???: Or people no longer believe in their message as promised by GW Bush- but then never carried thru on :???:

To me- and those not still in DENIAL- its apparent the current Republican message is lost wandering in the wilderness- and may be there for 40 years until they can realize they can't win on warmongering, fearmongering, and with just stirring up the extremist right social issues...While many in the country are still fiscally conservative (something the Repubs let GW throw out the window :roll: ) they are moving more and more Libertarian and Liberal on many of the social issues...The old redneck stance of we don't want to associate with those kind of folks that don't look like, talk like, or think like we do is going to have to change- or the party will shrivel more..
 

RobertMac

Well-known member
Oldtimer said:
Sandhusker said:
don said:
sandhusker: Only something like 34% of registered Republicans voted in this last election.

sounds like a narrowing of the support base. how'd it work?

I explained it; There was just nobody to vote for. All that is needed is a solid Conservative. One of those emerges and it's all over for the Dems.

No conservatives/Repubs anywhere :???: Governors are now majority Dem- House is controlled by Dems- Senate is controlled by Dems- White House is now controlled by Dems- 7 states now have no Repub representation in D.C.- majority of state legislatures now controlled by Dems....
Is it really there are no Repubs/Conservatives- or is it that right now they have no message.. :???: Or people no longer believe in their message as promised by GW Bush- but then never carried thru on :???:

To me- and those not still in DENIAL- its apparent the current Republican message is lost wandering in the wilderness- and may be there for 40 years until they can realize they can't win on warmongering, fearmongering, and with just stirring up the extremist right social issues...While many in the country are still fiscally conservative (something the Repubs let GW throw out the window :roll: ) they are moving more and more Libertarian and Liberal on many of the social issues...The old redneck stance of we don't want to associate with those kind of folks that don't look like, talk like, or think like we do is going to have to change- or the party will shrivel more..
This old redneck agrees that the Bush's "compassionate conservatism" left fiscally conservative principles wandering in the wilderness...but that was a move toward the left. McCain was a move toward the left!! So how do you "jump the ship" conservatives blame this on extremist right social issues??????? When Republicans get back on message of balance budget, smaller government, lower taxes, and helping small business, they will win elections!!!

That should give a clue who I think should be the next head of the RNC!!!!! :wink: :!:
 
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