We can blame all sorts of people and circumstances, but we can only control what we can control.

I think at this point it is wiser to assume more responsibility than less.

You did help usher in the Obamanation, and you do suck. Deal with it.

I actually laughed at the herding cats description. Never thought about it that way, but yes that phrase about covers one of the conservatives problems.

I actually laughed at the herding cats description. Never thought about it that way, but yes that phrase about covers one of the conservatives problems.

high on recommends low on comments…you said all that needed to be said brother.

In your comment to Achance yesterday you wrote that the media were a conspiracy and made “a decisive difference”. I agree completely with that,but I think the conspiracy,if we choose to call it that,extends far beyond the media. There were a lot of people who sabotaged John McCain. Including Republicans. The bailout was timed in such a way that it would undermine McCain. He had a slight lead at the time,but the sudden,desperate call for a bailout terrified the public and it destroyed McCain. This was not an accident. People in power wanted Obama to follow Bush because Obama would continue the fleecing of the American Treasury which Bush began. They knew McCain would not go along,so McCain had to be sabotaged. I am doing some more research so I intend to write a long diary on this topic. Yes,the media was out front in the parade to destroy McCain,but there were other forces at play. McCain never really had a chance. In boxing they would say the match was fixed.

…steal this and distribute it to family and friends in lieu of Christmas presents?

Also, I like your use of the word “beyotch”

I don’t like tearing down our party, we have to stick together.

www.conservativewomenunited.blogspot.com/2008/12/good-advice-from-old-pol.html

I’ve been hanging back for days now, but you just got my fingers on the keyboard. I have a lot of respect for Achance, and although his diary of late was thought-provoking and had merit – I could not embrace its thesis comfortably. Yours, however, gets a resounding YES! from me.

To your past comments regarding the media’s role in the election’s outcome, let me also add call attention to the role of academia, as well.

I couldn’t agree more with your diary and suffice it to say I could not recommend the other diary because WE do not SUCK….WE will either take this party back to it’s conservatives roots or WE will be in the minority for a long time to come!

We conservatives did not complain (and campaign) against the big-government liberalism and incompetency of the last eight years. Except for amnesty for illegals and Harriett Miers, as a group conservatives nary sounded a warning or even a protest against the liberalism that had infected the GOP.

And that, more than anything, is the reason why we lost in 2006 and 2008.

.

The problem was not so much that

far, far too many self-described conservatives crossed over to vote with the press and the Democrats to nominate the ‘electable’ one.

The problem is that many of those “self-described conservatives” either voted for Mike Huckabee, who Fred Thompson himself accurately called a “pro-life liberal” (and who I personally think is, ahem, ethically challenged) or Mitt Romney, who has never ran (nor ran for) anything as a conservative before this year.

I’ve seen other people mention your figure of 60% of the GOP being moderates, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a citation. Do you know where it comes from?

All the numbers I’ve looked at on this indicate just the opposite: Conservatives constitute around 60-70% of the party, moderates from 25-40%, with a small sliver of liberal Republicans in some surveys. These numbers have been pretty constant over the last few decades and through most demographics. (See the chart called “Ideology among Republicans” on this page for the most recent figures. Don’t pay attention to the issue polling further down, by the way, since the questions were poorly worded and hence got weird results.)

If the numbers I cite are correct, then this is yet another thing to hang around the necks of conservatives, in that we’ve allowed a pretty small minority of the Republican party to act as if they own the place.

Consider, for sake of comparison, the chart entitled “Ideology among Democrats” on the page linked to above. Liberals don’t even come close to constituting a majority of Democrats. They’re not even a plurality (although they’re closer to that than they have been). Liberals don’t have a majority in any of the demographics listed, and a plurality in only a handful. And yet every single candidate running for the Democratic nomination was a liberal of some sort, and they managed to elect someone who might become the most left-wing president ever. Conservatives, on the other hand, had only had one guy running a semi-serious campaign in the GOP primaries; everyone else was a moderate trying to convince conservative voters that the other guys would be even worse than they would be–with good reason in every case.

I think that one important thing we need to do is to study our liberal opponents and learn how they have kept such tight control over their own party while remaining occasionally electable (as well as studying successful conservatives like Reagan who have pulled off the same feat for the good guys). Once we figure out what needs to be done, it should be relatively easy for us to do it, since the underlying numbers tilt in a decidedly conservative direction.

I guess this ended up being a little more than a question. Oops…

But only for a day…I like my liberty but I’d give it up for one day for you man…

You rock!

Thanks EPU.

I very much liked AChance’s posting because it did have a lot of truth in it. However, after reading your posting, I agree that what I believe in did not lose. I didn’t like our nominee, but I got in line for the sake of the party.

Now it is time to get back to Conservative basics. We have sorely lacked that in our recent elections.

Time to get back to business.

The one that bothers me is how so many people worry and care about what the elites in DC-NYC corridor have to say and report on the “experience” and “worthiness” of a person to be a President or a Supreme Court Justice.

Why did they say Fred is lazy? They said it because he would not kiss up to these elites, and would rather talk with a local reporter over a major reporter any day of the week.

Why did they say Sarah did not have enough experience? They said it because she had not been campaigning for higher office for the last year and a half, and she had not been interviewed and given speeches for these elites.

Why did they say Harriet was not qualified? She was not a judge who was a member of the Federalist Society.

If we are going to continue to worry and panic over what we have to do to please the elites, then we are going to continue to lose.

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Activists Taking Action: Unified Patriots

But, I still don’t give a fat rat’s $#% whose fault it was.

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Activists Taking Action: Unified Patriots

Conservatives did not turn out to support McCain “as much as he deserved”. If we would have, he would be President designate right now instead of Obama. (fyi: record black and liberal turnout + lukewarm conservative turnout amounted to just over average overall turnout) I am a die hard conservative and I would follow McCain into Hell and back. After what he has done for us and all Americans for half a century now, the very least we could have done for him is pull the voting lever.

Secondly, there ARE more of “us” in the party than there are “moderates”. I think the more fair criticism would be to say that we capitulate too much to the moderates, rather than to say they actually outnumber us 60% to 40%.

Lastly, please repeat the part about the media to any human soul you encounter ever. That can not be overemphasized enough. I truely doubt that conservatives will ever be able to get our agenda enacted until we break the media. This election has made that abundantly clear.

but Fred was a terrible candidate. He is a pretty good actor, I don’t know why he didn’t just act like a good candidate , I think when it comes down to it, he really did not want to be the president.

But I am up to my eyeballs in Kirk’s “The Conservative Mind”. Why the hell didn’t you tell me it was ten million pages long BEFORE I ordered it?

Just half kidding. Great diary. By the way, National Review’s December issue has one of the most cogent articles I have ever read on the way forward, and I will use it later -it is by Yuval Levin and is titled “Back To Basics, Ahead To Particulars”. I would love to hear what you all think about it.

There’s a place for moderation and moderates in the GOP, but there are times when one simply must stick to one’s guns on policy and damn the torpedoes from the libs and the MSM.

Moderation in moderation, I say, like they did in “Lost Horizon”.

Oh, and recommended.

I would have supported him over McCain. As a matter of fact, McCain was barely in my top five.
Conservatives, moderates, whatever. Let’s start with focusing on what we all have in common to build a strong, common sense platform for the country. We’ll find that we have more in common than we all think.

John McCain plans to run for Senate again in 2010. This is one Arizonan who – given a viable conservative alternative – plans to vote against him in the primary (presuming he doesn’t run unopposed again).

Most Arizona Republicans, it seems, have absolutely loved him. There are, however, at least two events of note which have occurred since his last re-election in 2004: The Gang of 14 and the Amnesty Bill. I guess we’ll see how that tempers the love, Arizona being a border state and all. I do not, however, harbor any illusions of McCain being easy to beat in this state. The Republican “machine” in Arizona (such as it is) is firmly in his camp, and will likely do all within its power to keep him in that Senate seat for as long as he wants to be there.

This is where I’m hoping a principled conservative with a recognizable name (J.D. Hayworth comes to mind) will decide to throw his hat in the ring and campaign aggressively against McCain in the primaries. Unseating McCain would be a coup, and whoever is able to pull it off would be in good standing to take on the Democratic opponent in the general election.

I encourage fellow Republicans in Arizona to start thinking outside the rocks. If conservatives really do intend to retake the Republican party, then unseating McCain in the 2010 primaries would be a good place to start, and it would embolden conservatives across the country to start making it happen where they live.

Read here.

Like I said there, I don’t know if I really believe it, but it’s food for thought.

Nobody have ever won a war by retreating. If anyone can call this election anything but a catastrophy for the conservatives in America, I will respectfully say they must be a little bit out of touch, but what do I know.

In terms of ‘wealth redistribution’, conservative-style, we have not figured out how to solve the distressing and chronic over-representation of beautiful women in Texas. All you other states, we are truly sorry about that, and I’d love to say we are working to solve this problem. But we’re not.

And it’s not just Texas. I’ve lived/traveled all over the South and Southwest (though my figurative hat hangs in the Lone Star State).

Now as a caveat, I have found that a great many were not birthed here, arriving only later. So, much as tax refugees are leaving the Northern States, perhaps the genetically gifted are fleeing the harsher environments.

As an aside, I have also found that the genetic wealth does NOT extend to my male counterparts distributed across the South.

Perhaps this is a graphic demonstration of Nature abhorring a vacuum; drawing the beauty down to offset the…uh..less beauteous.

Its nearly impossible to defeat a rabidly left media who is willing to sent minions to investigate Sarah Palin in Alaska and none to Chicago. After the financial crisis hit they blamed the GOP without ever mentioning the number of Dem fingerprints on the mess. How do we combat this? FOX NEWS and Talk Radio are not enough.

From reading this diary, Eric’s Diary and all others that have addressed the issues of why the Republicans lost the Presidency and so many seats in Congress, it seems that the most appropriate statement made by someone was this has been a “fine discussion.” The Moderates are still fighting the Conservatives, and the Conservatives are still fighting the Moderates. There appear to be about an equal number of comments supporting both.

The one thing that has been nonexistent is any optimism for moving forward. One of the beauties of Palin is that after facing a great defeat, within days she was out there still with a big smile, and encouraging everyone to keep the faith. She spoke at the Governors meeting with a positive and optimistic message for the future of the GOP, while not claiming it will be a cake walk. She proved that she can still draw big crowds in GA with the Chambliss win. Her message is always conservative. Her optimism should be infectious.

I see two factions forming here and on so many other sites. There is no consensus. I will always park myself where true Conservatism resides. As naieve as I may be, I am encouraged and optimistic as the whole issue is so front and center, and sooner rather than later those in the middle will have to fall on the conservative side of the fence or the liberal side of the fence. Either that or they will have to form a third party.

1) On Fred — he made mistakes on his timing that he alone is responsible for. Saying that he chose the “traditional time” is like saying that I got killed in a gun battle because I chose the “traditional brick” instead of a new fangled gun. It may be factual, but it doesn’t change who is to blame. I love Fred, I gave money to Fred, I campaigned for Fred… but Fred lost based either on bad advice or bad timing.

2) We need a three or four (illegal immigration) legged stool and everyone needs to buy into it or at least not shoot people in the back from the other leg.

3) I nit a bit with what EPU said about “we conservatives” not being the ones who overspent and went for illegal immigration.

I disagree. I think people who were ELECTED (and were at the time) conservatives forgot who they were or became someone else (and as glad as I am to see Saxby win, he’s been one of the worst).

So what do we do about it:

1) In moderate states, we elect moderates (another nit with EPU on the RI/PA senate races).

2) In conservative states and districts like Georgia, we elect conservatives.

3) We REGISTER people in conservative areas, especially in swing states.

4) We find the BEST candidates and not just the ones who’ve been playing the game the longest (see Obama,Barak vs Clinton, Hillary).

5) We take over all the Secretary of State offices … they run the elections and can have some hand in stopping the nonesense.

6) We figure out a way to raise name reconigtion of good back benchers so that when there is a statewide primary, they can win. I’m thinking West Virginia, Arkansas and the Dakotas here.

If you agree of course! It can be found in political opinion!