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I may disagree with how Thomas said some of these things, but it is very difficult to disagree on substance at all.

Look at states where the opposition party is very weak - I'll hold-out my own People's Republic as an example where the GOP is pitifully weak, but it works regardless of who the dominant party is.  The Mass GOP manages somehow to cling to the Governor's office (and has done so since the era of M Stanley Dukakis), but is outnumbered 7-1 (35-5) in the Senate and 5-1 (117-23) in the House.  Compounding the problem is that we're completely shut-out at the federal level and have been so since 1996.  Kerry was unopposed in 2002, Fat Teddy may as well have been in 2000 and will likely be so in fact come 2006.

It's hard to believe that this is a state that Reagan carried in 1984 and in which George HW Bush was competative against a "favorite son" in 1988.

The bottom-line is that though we're able to do OK at the top of the state pyramid, there is absolutely no foundation.  We have no farm-team and it will take us the better part of a generation to build one.

I'm not saying there's a likelihood, or even possibility, that the Democrats in Florida will become as weak and inept as the Republicans in Massachusetts (though we can hope), but the recipe for creating a weak party at the state-level is abundently clear: take-out the farm-team, the rest will follow.

Cheers.

I'm not above bare-knuckled brawls, and there is something to be said for trying to help your opponent into his or her own political grave, but wow, man.  You have a different take on the "Moynihan" experience - there have been Republicans I like and/or respect, and not just because they're squishy.  Bob Dole is foremost on that list - I was distraught in 96 when he left the Senate to tilt with Clintonian windmills.  I still miss him.  There are others, too - Hal Rogers (KY-5) is a good steward for his district, and Lord knows Eastern Kentucky needs someone who can continue to help pull them out of semi-permanent economic depression.  Every time I hear Richard Lugar's name, I have a bad case of envy for an eminently respectable Republican Senator.  Even the Darth Vader of Kentucky politics, Mitch McConnell, gets my grudging respect for being unimpeachably competent and good for the state, at least as much as a Republican can be.

The alternatives are much worse.  Compare McConnell to Bunning, for example.  I'm not happy when young Republican stars are born, but in the end I'm happier that good statesmen and women go to Washington, as opposed to hacks and ideologues.  Even if they vote party line.  I'll still vote against most of them (I might vote for Lugar if I had a chance), but that doesn't mean I can't ascertain the value they give to their district/state/country.

I get your point, Thomas.  And I know you have much more of a single issue focus, which alters your perspective somewhat.  I absolutely think you should gun for our young stars - you guys totally botched making Obama run a real race and put him 5 years ahead of where he should be - but in the end I think you're cutting off your nose to spite your face.

I knew the numbers didn't add up:  The republicans are outnumbered 6-1 (137-23) in the 160-member Massachusetts House.

That said, once you get past 3-1, does it really matter?

It would be a very bad idea for the US to become a one-party state. The GOP needs the Dems (and it needs compontent, popular, ideologically committed Democrats) in order to maintain its own edge. Else it becomes a lazy, corrupt, unresponsive power elite that will never entertain a new idea or take a risk. Can anyone really want the GOP to turn into something like Mexico's PRI or the ruling party of Japan? Or even something like the congressional Democrats were becoming during their 40 year lock on the House?

And I know you have much more of a single issue focus, which alters your perspective somewhat.

Somewhat, is somewhat underestimating in my opinion.

For what happens when politicians lose their edge.  I'm not saying any allegations are true, but the man who helped storm the barricades in 94 certainly looks a little more like Jim Wright every day.

What, precisely, is the difference between a "hack" and a "great statesman" who votes the party line every single time up? Better speeches? The knowledge that he's doing something with which he disagrees strongly, but doing it nevertheless?

Where they explained that politics really is beanbag.

Like I said, the Donkeys are big boys and girls. If they can't hold up their end of the social contract, it's hardly our job to help them.

We would not, at any rate, become a one party state. Someone else would take the Dems' place, assuming they couldn't hold it (which I rather suspect they could).

I don't think we're saying you need to support our candidates - at least I'm not - just that two parties = good and it doesn't hurt to notice the good in the opposition too.  The Democratic Party is in better health than you give it credit for (although it's been better), so talk of collapse is just plain silly.

One does not win a street fight by kicking one's opponent in the knee and yelling, Ha ha!. It is won by yanking out a spiked pipe and working over one's opponent while he lies cowering on the ground.  So to speak.

Try reading that first thing in the morning before you've had your first cuppa joe.  There's a reason RedState Sure Ain't McPaper.

We will need some similar plumbing and heating work done in Illinois, and we may have to resort to angle-grinders and oxy-acetylene torches.  This is one area I want to become much more expert in over the next month, so that I can make some helpful comments going forward.  

...breath, or balance, or whatever.  I almost hope not; the thought of facing some European-style Green-ery gives me positive chills.

Because the "party line" gets adjusted by the presence of thinkers, conciliators, pragmatists, and patriots, whereas hacks are just backbenchers at best, and ideologues influence the party line toward more dogma and less government.  We're not the UK, our Congress is expected to have brains and think for themselves and not just be another vote.  I like the guys in the middle - the blue dog Dems, the northeastern Republicans - not just because I'm somewhat moderate (although sometimes I only play one on TV and RedState) but because I find compromise government superior to diktat.  Democrats and Republicans are partners in government as much as they are opposing players, and good politicians help keep the wheels moving.

We don't need the Democrats to maintain the edge. They haven't had a new idea in going on 40 years and certainly haven't proffered any in the last three presidential elections.

We could benefit from an opposition party that doesn't have the "blame America first" crowd holding the reins of power but we don't have one of those.

Our goal has to be to reduce the Democrats to a regional party and see what springs up to replace it.

What is your excuse?

what are the conservative big ideas of today if not simply reactions to liberal ideas of the past.  Most liberals who live in the real world realize that it's all well and good to spout grand designs, but details help too.  And the democrats would be foolish to think that any of their ideas would be met seriously by the crowd we have in Washington today (see "yanking out a spiked pipe and working over one's opponent while he lies cowering on the ground" for an example why).  Democrats gain nothing by introducing ideas that will just be ripped apart by the party in power holding the megaphone of the presidency.  You can't have it both ways.  Either this is a game for one side to win or a government for the people.  You think of it as a game, so don't pretend to care what liberals or democrats think about anything.  

If you're lucky and get Hilary in 2008, you may get your wish.  I personally appreciate her strengths, but that might be the Columbian necktie on the KY Dem party, among others.

Yours could be summed up as one issue, and should the Democratic party take up the 'right to life' cause and prove more proficient at it than Republicans I would welcome your conversion to liberalism.

Once we put paid to the Dems and all they stand for: kill the innocent, protect the guilty, steal as much as you can, the GOP can fracture into Libertarian, Isolationist, or NeoConservative wings, just like the Democrat-Republicans did once they trounced the Federalists, and their anti-Western policies, in 1820.

The moderates -- indeed, any of those elected officials -- only have an effect on the margins. Ultimately, the thinkers outside government and the voters decide what the party looks like. Those officials, at best, influence the edges of what the party looks and sounds like. The core is, even in a more top down party like the GOP, decided by the base and the voters.

I find it ironic that Hillary! is probably one of the most talented politicians in the national Democrat party yet her negatives are so high that it is hard to visualize her winning the presidency.

Just because I'm most passionate about the slaughter of children and other innocents doesn't mean it's my only concern. It's called "prioritizing."

I'm also against the tails-up approach to national defense the Left takes; in favor of careful bilateralism at most; a great believer that lower taxes are better than higher ones; against regulation of every little thing in sight; in favor of tort reform; want social security abolished, or at least drastically reformed; and want bunnies strangled. (Not really on the last, but what the heck.) I could actually go on. I won't.

I think he was referring to ideas, generally.

I'm sure the Democrats will have a new idea other than Kill Tom DeLay some time before 2015

Big ideas are out of the question.

Can be the difference between success and failure.  The moderates are the canaries in the coal mine.  The moderates help staunch the excesses of the ideologically pure.  The moderates are the routes to compromise.  The moderates blunt the razor edge of party mentality.  They are the sinews that maintain the partnership and prevent Congress from flicking the safeties off.  They are few in number and growing fewer, but they serve a valuable role.

I calculate you would be willing to compromise all those worthwile ideals for the one true cause, am I not right?

Not saying that's wrong by the way, it's your choice after all.

But my point has very little to do with what you said.

Let's cut the legs from under the moderates and let the people see the true representatives of the gerrymandered districts they serve.

his point had everything to do with what you said above.  You just choose not to hear him.

as I read it is that moderates really only affect the margins.  I think they are the equivalent of a restrictor plate or engine governor on ideology, which is much more than marginal.  I also think they are the source of compromise and agreement, which is not marginal.  To the extent that they are compromising between fixed positions developed on the left and right wing rather than articulating their own, I accept the bulk of that premise.  But that does not make them marginal.

I think I'll write her a check.  Today.

Cheers -

If you've written it down here already please just tell me where to look.

Thanks.

Not just in the past 2-4 years, but in the past 20 years.  What new ideas have Democrats put forward?  Here are the Republican ones that come to mind:

School choice, vouchers, and homeschooling.

Personal Retirement Accounts.

Health Savings Accounts.

Flat Tax Proposals.

Tax Payor Bill of Rights (Colorado).

Term limits, committee chairmanship limits, subjecting Congress to the laws they pass.

Those come to mind right away and that leaves off modifications to liberal programs such as welfare reform.  The only Democratic proposal I can remember that is new is universal health care, which didn't go so well for Dems.  But I'll give credit to them for the new idea.

is good.  I'd be very happy to see Libertarian vs. Republican as the breakdown of the country or even Libertarian vs. Constitution Party.

It doesn't take a rise and fall of a party to do it either.  The liberals could actually reach out to libertarians by embracing limited spending and small government.  Tie it in with the anti-war sentiment and the anti-Patriot Act group, toss on the irresponsible spending going on now and it might be a winner.  But it would require giving up on ever-higher-taxes and class warfare which still seems to be too much to ask from Democrats.

The liberals could actually reach out to libertarians by embracing limited spending and small government.

Libertarians will see no march in that direction from the presently constituted Republican party.

That none of those politicians matters all that much.

that is ripe for the picking, is the anti-illegal immigration crowd. If someone (one of the two majors) doesn't pick up this torch and run with it, it may become it's own political party and movement.

She'll have funds out the yin-yang, but go for it.

that I'll bring out here.  Sorry it is longer than I prefer to post but here goes:

Some of you delight to flaunt in our faces the warning against [factions]  given by Washington in his Farewell Address.  . . . Bearing this in mind, and seeing that [a cultural divide] has since arisen upon this same subject, is that warning a weapon in your hands against us, or in our hands against you? Could Washington himself speak, would he cast the blame of that [divide] upon us, who sustain his policy, or upon you who repudiate it? We respect that warning of Washington, and we commend it to you, together with his example pointing to the right application of it.

But you say you are conservative - eminently conservative - while we are revolutionary, destructive, or something of the sort. What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried? We stick to, contend for, the identical old policy on the point in controversy which was adopted by "our fathers who framed the Government under which we live;" while you with one accord reject, and scout, and spit upon that old policy, and insist upon substituting something new. . . . Not one of all your various plans can show a precedent or an advocate in the century within which our Government originated. Consider, then, whether your claim of conservatism for yourselves, and your charge or destructiveness against us, are based on the most clear and stable foundations.

. . . It was not we, but you, who discarded the old policy of the fathers. We resisted, and still resist, your innovation; and thence comes the greater prominence of the question. Would you have that question reduced to its former proportions? Go back to that old policy. What has been will be again, under the same conditions. If you would have the peace of the old times, readopt the precepts and policy of the old times.

. . . Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will destroy the Government, unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution as you please, on all points in dispute between you and us. You will rule or ruin in all events.

Guess which American President said it?  Do you agree with what this gentleman says?

Now tell me.  What does the Republican Party stand for?

1. We don't know this speech was ever given.
   
2. Without knowing who, when, and where thus depriving the snippets you post of any possible context.
   
3. Analysis of anything without context is just stupidity.

So provide a cite or take your silly game elsewhere.

Re: Someone else would take the Dems' place, assuming they couldn't hold it

In the best of all possible worlds the US would have four parties: a libertarian, small govermment party; a social conservative party; a moderate let's-get-things-done party; and a looney-left party. I pesonally cannot stand voting for peole that pander to either Michael Moore or James Dobson, but I would love to vote for either a small government party (as long as it was moderated by common sense and did not propose anarchist things like privatizing the money supply) or a good government party that got necessary things done without hurricane-strength gusts of improvident bombast.

Purge the Dems of the Michael Moore cult, and the GOP of the James Dobson sect and we're back on the road to common sense and good government again.

Term Limits? Gee that one got dropped faster than a radioactive hot potato once the GOP got its majority. Yes, "politician" and "principled" do not live under the same roof, but they should at least have a nodding acquaintance.

Lincoln speech, the 1860 Cooper Union Address.

This seems to be the speech being cited.

Now I am really baffled. What does this speech have to do with any issue facing the US or the Republican party or the conservative movement? This is 2005? Right?

It just wasn't worth the effort of chasing it down.

the expansion of slavery into the territories.

for chairmanship of the Ethics committe, though I expect that had absolutely nothing to do with the leaders current embattled situation.  No siree not a 'ting, nad, zip, we are the party of responsible government bringing honor and integrity back to government yada yada yada!

here

it is very pertinent to the thread.  Are Republicans the party of Lincoln?  Or are Republicans the party of DeLay?

There is a HUGE difference between the two.

I'd rather go back to the old more government - less government axis and deep six the social bs.  If stuck between (L)ibertarian and Republican I'd probably just pay more attention to football in November.  I like a strong federal government, even in the hands of you yahoos, than a bunch of penny-ante state despots, and I have no problem voting to fund what I want.  As for "class warfare," a tiresome and fraught with meaningless phrase if there ever was one, I continue to insist that to those who have been given much, much is expected.  And no, it ain't voluntary charity either.

the Civil War is over. So it is all very relevant.

are reactions to programs or policies that are moving on a liberal track and conservatives want to arrest that progress and move in a different direction (or backwards):

School choice, vouchers, etc... = instead of trying to fix the system for everyone let's create wealthy enclaves of education and ensure all good teachers will want to work in them.

Privatization = undercutting one of the most successful liberla ideas of the 20th century

Flat tax = move away from the more liberal progressive tax

The country has moved to more liberal ideas slowly over the course of the century, most new liberal ideas are more about fine-tuning policies that are already in place.  Most conservative ideas are about destroying those policies and programs (which makes it easier to speak broadly and in black and white terms)

Pity.  It applies to today just as much as when it was spoken.

And you make my point about context. You can read a modern context into the speech if you wish, personally I think to do so is balderdash. For instance, I don't see how you could even suggest that Lincoln would have understood the word "conservative" the way we'd use it today. He wouldn't.

And just to be up front with you, it isn't just Lincoln's speech. I feel much the same about George Washington's Farewell Address. Completely relevant at the time, but the times and circumstances have changed.

although I presume someone downthread beat me to it.

Needs a new founder, I nominate Reagan.

Not all ideas are implemented (see credit for Universal Health Care as an idea).

And the chairmanships of all committees are term limited for Republicans (although Dems allow chairs to go on forever).  

A libertarian would want to get rid of SS, public education, and all income taxation.  Most conservatives these days agree with the goals of those projects but think using market-oriented policies will be more successful.

Take education.  The existing monopoly system creates what you describe "wealthy enclaves of education and ensure all good teachers will want to work in them."  By allowing school choice, students and teachers can both find the best place for them.  Maybe a school with a good rep for special ed, arts, or science.  Maybe a school close to home.  It would be more like college (where we have a system that is the envy of the world).  Public and private side-by-side and competition driving them to do better.  That is radically different from getting rid of public education.  The new ideas are coming from conservatives.  Liberals only response is to throw more money at schools (and unions).  Despite significant amounts of literature that shows money spent per pupil is weakly related to achievement at schools, it is the only proposal liberals have because anything else upsets their special interest group coalition.

I can do a similar explanation of SS, welfare, or taxation.  No mainstream Republican is proposing to end any of them.  They want to use the market to achieve their goals better.  More ownership, less governmental dependency.

scare the bejeezus out of me.

"We are winning."

Life is not a zero sum game.  

Has not been lived in vain.

But it's nice to have 2 when someone else has 1.

You have decried the incivility of Democratic post at dKos.  This post seems to have the same level of animosity.....

In what she said.

It is won by yanking out a spiked pipe and working over one's opponent while he lies cowering on the ground.

You were addressing her.

It's a "metaphor," funny boy. Have fun with it.

that you are referring to?  I addressed my comments to Adam....No matter, it probably does not make a difference.  

I would be interested in Doverspa's take on your metaphor.  

We hold out hope for you.

I was not referring to MSOC, nor would there be any reason to infer that I was commenting on her post.  My post was attached directly to Doverspa's and it is obvious that I agree with MSOC so there would be no reason to assume I was saying that her comment was uncivil.  I suppose my use of the term "post" was not all that clear--I should have sused the term "diary" instead.

Sorry, your humor is too oblique for me.

I will say that Doverspa has acquitted himself well over at dKos.  No one has troll-rated him there, and although I have been a fierce critic of his, I have come to see him as sincere conservative who avoids name-calling.  I hope I can receive a similar treatment here.  

To the right post, and try to make sense, I think you'll do ok.

But I'll be danged if I let you guys run the place. Eventually you'll figure out that the power of destruction is the power of control, and we'll be back in the same spot all over again.

I once wrote this. It's a good opening. (This is a rather pointless musing.) I've gotten a tiny bit more hyped up since then -- fast food class action lawsuits will do that -- but it's a good starting point. I'd favor reworking punitives; completely redesigning the class action system (which has blessedly already started); cap (with an inflation index built in) some kinds of damages; and set up mandatory presuit mediation in a lot of places. Some other boring things, too. Most of it would be inside baseball to non-lawyers, and even more boring to them than it is to us.

Thomas -

Followed the link to your post on tort reform, which I actually did not find.  I did find a link to the political stereotype quiz.  So, I took the quiz.

There were one or two questions that I was on the fence about.  So, I took it twice.  Once, I was a Republican, with Reagan as my role model.  Once, I was Green, with Nader as my role model.

Go figure.

Cheers -

Try this and this and scan for "medical."

This is the first pro-school vouchers argument I've ever read that actually makes me reconsider my opposition to the idea.  I'm not saying you changed my mind, but definitely made me reanalyze my position.

Good post!

I have recently heard comments coming from the general public that the current administration and even the minority party are no longer concerned with America. Reading the original post confirms that, it is no longer about governance and serving the people it is rather about power. The function of government has changed from a government of the people to a government of parties who can only agree on the enemy or agree on a topic. This is a sad movement in our country it is only about them against us, us against them.

I don't see the wisdom of using Mafia language to talk about political tactics (unless you're talking about the other side's tactics, of course.) If we use the vocabulary of brutality then most people will not support us; and those who do, may do us more harm than good.

Between winning and losing, then there is no value to policy, it is simply a matter of spin.

And I would posit that those who would shun a whole Party's platform for such words don't vote anyway.