At the same time what you don’t include is who supported all those things that made us suck. Who pushed us into the suckosphere?

I know you don’t like this question, but if we don’t get rid of those who lead us here won’t they just lead us back to sucking after they again gain power?

The cancer of suck isn’t cured by just acknowledging the suck…I think at this point maybe a regiment of suck killing chemo might be in order. Otherwise we will just see a remission of suck until it comes back more powerful. And that would really suck.

So it is nobody’s fault? What a silly cop-out.

What are we suppose to do? Get back to the basics of conservatism but with the same stupid politicians that got us into this mess?

How can you fault Republican voters when most Republican politicians ran on conservatism but governed completely different when they got to Washington?

The disaster of 2006 should have been a wake-up call for the politicians and party leaders. Say what you want about President Bush but at least he got the message and implemented the surge in Iraq. Almost every other Republican Congressman and Senator continued on their spending spree. How many two-by-four hits does it take to wack some sense into those Washington insiders?

Very well said,Achance. These are my exact sentiments. I wish more people accepted your point of view. If this point of view is accepted,it can lead to victory in 2012. If myopia reigns,then defeat will follow. Unfortunately,I fear your arguments will be rejected. The comments on this site are suggesting to me that nothing was learned from the recent debacle.

n/t

In the last seven years I have paid off my student loans, my cars, my credit cards, and a third of my mortgage, and I have remained faithful to my wife.

I quit voting for my GOP Rep when he started voting for big spending, bragged about “bringing home prime bacon“, and left his wife for a former staffer.

He’s still in office, sadly.

He sucks.

I don’t.

I guess it’s more desciptive than the stupid party. Here is the deal. We need new blood, simple as that. If new faces run at the state level, they can get elected if they run on a REAL conservative program, especially fiscal conservatism because in the next few years we will see what happens under the liberals.

We need to de-emphasise any marginal issue (by that I mean any issue that doesn’t have much popular support.)

When you are at the bottom you have a duty to just try and win elections.

Once you have won, then you have a duty to actually live up to your promises. That’s the part that seems to have eluded so many of our people.

If we just put different people in power and maybe give them more power, we’ll get better results.

If the perfect people got in, imagine the works they could create if only we supported them enough!

I’ll put my cards on the table. I’m a liberal Democrat (probably considered radical by folks on this site) who registered to see what fun I could provoke. Ended up not doing much.

However, I congratulate the author. I believe the United States needs a true, healthy opposition and the health of the Republican party can best be restored by acknowledging shortcomings so they can be addressed. No passing the buck, blaming others, scapegoating. Face facts, get your act together and then let’s have a robust, vigorous debate about the direction the country should take.

I’ll exit now (to steal a phrase from Tom DeLay) stage left.

the other day, and I agree with that. We tried to become a party of patronage. We thought that giving some people jobs and sending money to the districts would keep our “permanent majority.” Didn’t work because the other patronage party is much better at running the government than we are. They don’t have leaks and sabotage because they fire all of the opposition inside the government and scare Hell out of everyone who might be thinking of opposing them. They have little baby section chiefs, directors, and deputy assistants to the assistand deputy secretary everywhere in government and the non-profits. We have the former general counsel of a horsebreeding association, and usually we are expected to employ his wife, kids, in-laws, and girlfriend. It’s one thing to hire a friend if they can make you look good by doing the job, its another to hire a friend who’ll bring your government down.

We abandoned principle in the aftermath of the failed impeachment and just decided to “bring home the bacon.” I saw something similar with the Senator you all so love to hate, Stevens. He had a near-death experience when the folks here excoriated him over his foolish choice of embracing the Carter/Greenie Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act. After ’80, he defined his office by his ability to “fix” things and to “bring home the bacon.”

The circular firing squad is apt. I use burning of heretics. Either way, the prescription is as you stated, working from the precinct level up. It’s not glamorous like the “sound and lights” of a cultist rally. But the sound and lights campaign doesn’t bring reform and it doesn’t represent who we are, either.

There can be benefits to being the opposition party in my view. And not in a negative way. We do need to return to being the party of ideas and solutions, not the party of stasis and CYA.

---

Activists Taking Action: Unified Patriots

(I agree, by the way).

later

I have read numerous “ideas piece” articles by R’s who should know what they are talking about. Mostly governors and people being considered for head of RNC. None of them is more than a long list of what went wrong. Not a new idea or solution in the bunch. If all you need is a list of the dozens of GOP screw ups, make Rahm Emmanuel head of the RNC. I’m sure he has a very comprehensive list.

And the worst part is that their lists of symptoms don’t even come close to mentioning the underlying disease which is that every demographic possible is trending against the GOP. How in the world can you win an election if your acknowledged base is uneducated, old, white people? Do they even make those anymore? The GOP isn’t even the party of the rich anymore, because Obama carried the income over 200K demographic by a large margin.

Until the GOP strategists sit down with large groups of independent non-white, highly educated, young people and starts to listen and understand what they are concerned about and motivated by, they can hang it up at the ballot box. If you can’t win elections I don’t care what your policies and principles are. It won’t matter if you are “fiscally conservative”, “pro-life” or whatever, because you lost. Speak to me about your concerns, and you won’t get my vote. The guy who speaks to me about my concerns will. I don’t give a rat’s hiney about 18 billion in earmarks and neither do 95% of voters.

Quit pandering to your beloved “base”. They aren’t going anywhere. 80% of the country don’t vote based on guns, God, and gays. We have real life concerns and want concrete solutions. And figure out that 60% of us are avowedly and proudly pro-choice. And that the other 40% who claim otherwise are pro life in theory but in hard cold fact are pro-choice, but too stupid or scared to admit it. Let your 14 year old daughter get pregnant from a heinous rape and see how long you hold on to your principles.

Or not. That would make this Democrat very, very, happy. Palin 2012!

A.

I’d add the complete and absolute ignoring of 10th amendment principals by Republicans post Newt.

I became a Republican because of Federal intervention into school desegregation, aka forced busing, sticking the Federal government’s nose into States business. Events over the past few years by elected Republicans to step all over States rights, ignoring 10th amendment principles is one of the other major flaws of this modern crop of Republican elected types in my view.

The voters who went with McCain because Republicans delivered the prescription drug benefit.

Voters are like children. They are hard-wired to whine and complain and soak up a bigger-than-their-rightful share of the collective pie.

And the goodwill you buy with them when you deliver is nonexistent.

Screw entitlements. No new entitlements until we have an honest and complete reconciliation of our existing liabilities.

Tom DeLay was a darn good majority leader and whip in the House. For a number of years he bludgeoned bills through the house that conservatives wanted. Imagine a clean partial-birth abortion bill clearing the house under Boehner?

Imagine the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts passing without some strong-arm tactics?

The answer is not to have a circular firing squad on anyone. The answer is to have both the legislative enforcer and the policy wonk. When DeLay was whip he did a great job. Armey also did a fine job as majority leader. I agree that Newt should have been retained, but he killed his own career in congress by fatuously promising the country that Monica and company would yield another GOP landslide. He overpromised and did not deliver.

Yes, DeLay backed some faulty spending proposals, but he did some really good things for conservatives. We could only hope to have a manager of the majority again, if we ever get it.

Also, you need to know that we did not have the margin for error that the Democrats now have. Really Pelosi and company can afford to lose 30 or so Blue Dogs on every vote and still pass their liberal agenda. We had 237 at our height in 1996 after party switches. After Bush got re-elected, we only had 229-231 members. It is easier to govern if you have a bigger majority, so that all parts of the three legged stool can claim victories, without requiring ideological purity from all sides. Let’s be honest, we fouled up the governance thing, but we also took advantage of our position.

The Republican Party will be the avatar of change again in this country, if we only allow the different legs of the stool to work independently at the state level. I realize, to my inevitable chagrin, that pro-life conservatives probably cannot win elections in Connecticut or New York State. Why focus on the fiscal conservatism that these voters turn to the GOP for in the first place? I don’t think we can expect an Iowa or Nebraska congressman to vote against the Farm Bill. However, if we have a strong fiscal conservative representation from the east coast, then the subsidies can be pared back more easily. Coalitions mean that we need to stand on our principles that work in a given area.

We paid the price among affluent voters in the suburbs this election because they looked at the options, liking neither, and chose to have Democrats who will run deficits over Republicans who run deficits primarily because the Democrats are offering better government services. In that Me-too race, we lose every time. People earning $100,000 or more should be the base of our party. We need to get them back, or we will probably be in permanent minority. We should tailor our policy to appeal to voters who make $50,000 per year, to Dragnet that support. A sound budget alternative will determine whether we have made the transition or not. I suspect we will need to wait until 2014 to really have an oportunity again, usually three or four consecutive losses is what it takes to get back on track.

I’ve been accused of calling for one when I haven’t…that being said…you did a great job of laying out what’s wrong…but again you leave out the people who devised the strategy to buy a permanent majority with government largess…you blame SoCons when they had little or no influence on 2006 and 2008 and you act as if there isn’t a power structure of decision makers who chose what candidates to recruit, which candidates to give money to, which primaries come first and last, whether there will be open primaries or if the primaries happen on a compressed schedule…

Maybe it’s not done in smoke filled rooms any more but the people on the Rules committee at the National Convention know each other…and the chairs of the various state conventions know each other…those on the platform committees and credentials committees all know each other and they make the decisions on how the next election will be carried out and what issues we will advocate…the 168 individuals who will vote to impose our next RNC chair on us all know each other and they network…they email one another…they strategize and the plan how they will keep each other in power. This is how things work in the Republican Party, the Democrat Party, the Bureaucratic system of government and every major corporation in this county…

To act as if there isn’t a good ole boy network that controls this party is a joke and I can’t believe you believe what you’re saying when you scoff at the idea.

Twenty percent of conservatives not only declined to vote for McCain in this election, but proactively voted FOR Obama, just to teach Republicans a lesson for nominating a sell-out candidate. Turn that 20% around, and McCain would be the one taking the oath of office in January. This doesn’t even factor in all those conservatives who chose to just stay home on Election Day for much the same reasons. No amount of reaching out to independents and moderate Democrats (getting to the heart of the “suck,” here) is going to compensate for a loss of support that great.

Seems to me it doesn’t take rocket science to figure out that the hand that rocks the cradle belongs to the conservative base, and if there’s any “pandering” (for lack of a better word) to be done, it had better be directed toward this group of people. In fact, I’ll submit that the very survival of the Republican Party depends upon it. It really just comes down to standing on the principles that brought the modern GOP to power in the first place (strong national defense, low taxes, getting government out of our business, protecting religious freedom, etc).

Failing that, it may actually be time to consider forming a third party (or migrating to a currently existing one and making it our own). Not that I’m normally a fan of third parties, mind you. I realize that a vote for a third party has historically been a throwaway vote; but we’re in a whole new ballgame now. The stakes for the nation may be as high as they’ve ever been since the Republican party was itself a third party in the 1850s. They stood for something then, and the voters responded to it. The Whigs, on the other hand, went the way of the dinosaur. The time may have arrived for a new, principled, political party to form, and be ready to become the 2nd party when the GOP goes the way of the Whigs.

I’m all for salvaging the GOP first and foremost. The party apparatus is in place, and it stands the best chance of defeating the Democrats if and when it gets back on track. A third party is a last option – but, nevertheless, an option to be considered if the GOP doesn’t get back to the principles which propelled it to power in the first place. The conservative base won’t vote for them anyway if they go down the road of being Democrat-lite (and they’ll continue to lose as a result). If that is how it’s going to be, then we may as well give Conservatives a party to vote FOR.

Having said that, I think one good place to start in salvaging the Republican Party is to get a handle on the individual state parties. Someone needs to talk some sense into state Republican parties which allow open primaries, and get them to close them to all but Republicans who have been registered thus for a minimum period of time (say, six months). This should help ensure actual Republicans choose their nominees.

Secondly, we need to be on the lookout for elected Republicans who choose to jettison the principles which got them elected, and defeat them at the next primary elections (presumably in favor of a true conservative alternative). Don’t even let them get to the general election where they’ll lose to the Democrat because the conservative base will – predictably – decline to vote for them.

Thirdly, we need to survey the landscape for Republicans who “rip off the lips” of Democrats who attempt to smear them and/or their principles (as opposed to not fighting back at all in the interest of being liked – as though that actually works), and see what we can do to propel them to national prominence. The conservative base is craving a principled fighter. Give them one, and he/she will win.

If we hold ourselves up as the party of virtue that is one thing. Man should always aspire to virtue and high morality. But if we claim to be “better people” then we are setting ourselves up to always fail.

My religion tells me that man is sinful. That “good men” will still sin and make mistakes. If we say we will not have moral failings, then we are dumb and we are liars. If we say we will get rid of the corruption that comes from moral failings quickly, then that is a good plan, and the only one we can possibly follow through with.

If all the Democrats have to do is say they never claimed to be other than bumbs, then they have a very small hurdle to jump. We need to defeat them in the battle of ideas, we need to say that freedom works, warts and all.

It’s about damn time somebody said it. I was getting really sick and tired of the circular firing squads around here. You said pretty much everything that I wanted to say.

On a side note, the only other thing that I would add to your excellent diary is that I’m growing weary of all of the attacks on John McCain (some people want to primary him–yeah, like that will ever happen). Yes, I agree that McCain might not have run the most inspiring campaign in the world, but that’s kind of hard to do with George W. Bush and his 23% approval ratings, along with the financial crisis, hanging around your neck. Yes, McCain made his share of mistakes (suspending his campaign, not focusing soon enough on his economic message, some say not going after Wright), but Obama did too (playing the race card, his response to the crisis in Georgia, the Saddleback debate, the Berlin trip, the Greek columns, Biden instead of Hillary, “above my pay grade”, “spreading the wealth around”, etc). Remember when we all thought that Obama was a bozo? Now, the CW is that he was some kind of genius, just because he was able to stand there and “look plausible” (to quote Rich Lowry) in an incredibly favorable environment. Anyway, I still have mad respect for John McCain and don’t regret supporting him for one second.

Again, Achance, thanks for writing this diary–it was definitely needed.

Susannah,

I live in Arizona. I’ve had to swallow hard and vote for McCain numerous times (and I did so again in the 2008 Presidential Election). Respect him? Yes. Agree with him? Not so much.

I have nothing personal against John McCain. I certainly thought – once he was the nominee – that he had to win. I do, however, blame his brand of “reach across the aisle” politics for ultimately losing us this election, and the breakdown of the election results would seem to support that assumption.

Don’t be so sure he won’t be “primaried” (as you put it) in 2010. There’s a lot of buzz around here about doing just that. Whether or not it will go anywhere remains to be seen, but I had never heard this level of buzz in his previous Senatorial re-election campaigns. People around here noticed that he appeared to be quickly reverting to the same old amnesty-supporting, across-the-aisle reaching, gang-of-14 forming style politician he had been before he decided he needed the support of conservatives to win the 2008 Presidential election. I’m not so sure they’re going to sit for that this time.

We’ll see.

Yep, we do suck! Yes, Susannah, you are part of the problem if you are still trying to force the McCain issue. Yes, he is a good man, but a Republican politician NO… I would never vote for him! I would follow him into combat however; different things…

If things do not change soon, I will be another of those “use to be Republicans”…

…that the public voted for Democrats in 2006 and 2008 because they thought the Democrat party would be more fiscally responsible than the Republicans. Granted, spending like drunken sailors has irritated us conservatives, but I don’t for a minute believe that there were voters who really believed Democrats are going to be more thrifty than the Republicans.

Then again, I never thought America would elect Obama president so I could be totally off my rocker. There have been so many times during this election I find myself saying “HUH?”

Look, there is no way we lose 2008 with fair reporting. McCain was winning until the financial market meltdown. Had it been reported that HE was one of the few who try to address it and the liberals (including Obama) blocked McCains reforms, after receiving big bucks from the dirty CEO’s, McCain’s 4 point lead in the polls would have turned into a 14 point win instead of a 6 point loss.

Again, I am all for rooting out corruption and sticking to principle, but let us not forget that we MUST break the media if we are ever to win again.

http://e.blip.tv/scripts/flash/showplayer.swf?file=http%3A%2F%2Fblip.tv/rss/flash/1536208&showplayerpath=http%3A%2F%2Fblip.tv/scripts/flash/showplayer.swf&feedurl=http://fredpac.blip.tv/rss/flash&brandname=blip.tv&brandlink=http://blip.tv/%3Futm_source%3Dbrandlink&enablejs=true

That would be a chance! I mean, change. :>)

Although I will also contend that the media were absolutely a conspiracy, and made the decisive difference. Nevertheless, the GOP has a huge problem which you have well identified.

And the solution does not involve purges of the party, but I will also contend that it does involve purges of our lazy, uninspired, and unconservative leadership.

Hard, nasty purges.

Put all Republican wanna-be Leaders on FREEDOM ISLAND! Let ‘em have fist-fights, food-fights, whatever else, mixed in with discussions and maybe some of the great-unwashed (er… general voting public) might actually pay some attention. And we’ll finally get to Vote some of them OFF THE ISLAND AND OUT OF THE PARTY!

Don’t point fingers. Look into the mirror and fix what has broken you. Republicans need to do what they tell the American people to do, and that is to take responsibility for themselves.

IMO, I think that the sins of the Republican Party boil down to the fact that they had complete control of the Federal government.

They controlled the White House. They controlled Congress. And after 9/11 they had carte blanche with the American people at least until about 2006.

And as the old saying goes, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Ideology took a back seat to the retention of power. Low taxed, high spending, nationalism that made us all feel good. Play down the costs of the war, play down the financial problems the country was facing.

So now the Democrats are being given the same situation. The question now is whether years in the wilderness will temper their pandering desire to retain power over governing according to their principles and beliefs. American history suggests that the prospects are dim.

primarily for:
‘We need to disband the firing squads. The calls to get rid of this faction or another are simply the result of losing. The socons and capital C conservatives lost not in the General but in the primaries. You never had a candidate that was viable. FDT never got his campaign in gear. Huckabee sent the fiscons into orbit. Romney never established a believable identity. Giuliani would have shattered the base. So, we got what we could hold our strained coaltion together with; John McCain, and John McCain ran a terrible campaign that basically said of the Democrats, they suck more. Kind of a hard platform to run on, huh?’

No mention of D Hunt? Am I the only guy in the whole world who was down with D Hunt?

I recommended yours AND EPU’s posts because they were both well done…highly recommended and extensively commented on. That said, let’s look at EPU’s near-final word:

you surrendered so much principle that finally nobody could tell any difference between you and the Democrats

Now, of course EPU was scolding the moderates in fair context, but let us remember the pro/con McCain debate here all the way up to the end of the convention:

We can’t afford to worry about principle and ideology, we have to focus on winning.

Well, that got us real far didn’t it? And to think honing in now on ideology and principle with the election over and even LESS people wanting to even think about politics and election campaigns is to adhere to that old thing about the definition of insanity.

I strongly support the case you have made here, and I agree wholeheartedly with EPU’s sentiments, but who and what sucks and doesn’t suck doesn’t mean much anymore. The system failed because the people it is comprised of broke it. From the media (ours AND the mainstream) to the local politics, to the national scene, we built a good old boy network that gets rewarded for lying to us and doing just whatever the bloody heck they want.

Just look at the new administration and the Clinton cronies that come with it. And Bill being looked at to fill in for the missus while she plays footsie with the UN. The system is broken.

I think we have all said “so much for change we need”…yes?

And where you and I agree is that WE suck..because we have collectively dumbed ourselves down enough to think watching the 5 o’clock news once a week is sufficient to fire that bullet called “voting” once every couple years.

We can talk about Conservatism til we’re blue in the face. The blind masses are more worried about what’s “like a really cool idea” for having as a President than whether any of it will ever effect them…or even if they are supposed to notice beyond their sitcoms and reality
shows.

Now is the time for dark cynicism about the system…not a rallying cry for an “ideology” amongst millions of dolts that probably don’t even know how to spell the word.

[Fair warning, bigots. - Moe Lane]

1) I agree that we win on being the party of conservative ideas.

2) I think that we have to be realistic and allow moderates in certain areas. For instance, I’ll take the Maine sisters any time. We aren’t going to win with conservatives there.

HOWEVER, we do need conservatives in conservative areas of the country and we need some good candidates not just the latest name on the good old boy list.

Eliazbeth Dole lost because she is a terrible candidate and not really all that conseravtive in a conservative state.

3) We do need to get back to working for all three legs of the stool (I would suggest that Illegal immigration is a big enough issue to be a 4th leg, myself).

on one of my diaries. It really ain’t cricket, but it isn’t as bad as recommending your own.