It's 2010, and surveying and evaluating the fortunes of the Republican Party is risky business. The Left has so successfully characterized the GOP as a morbid association of senile reactionariess and special interests that anything you say has to break through the preconceptions. I can associate Republicans with Statler and Waldorf and you'll know what I'm talking about.The GOP's favorability on generic ballots is rising from the trough, due chiefly to what might be immense contempt and fear of Obama without the mask, and the new cracks underfoot in the social landscape. The GOP seems to thrive on distrust for liberalism, rather than a coherent set of accepted ideas of its own. I don't even know what they stand for myself, although I've registered a protest vote for the Republicans and against the Donks time after time.
Compassionate Conservatism killed my reflexive loyalty forever - mainly because you can't modify "conservatism" with an adjective that suggests a defect in plain old "conservatism" any more than you can modify "liberty" in the same way.
Even today, with radical leftism rolling back, the Republicans lacks the gut instinct to rush to the kill and go for the throat. Their natural adaptation to the present, whether it favors them or not, persists. They're enfeebled, and face the inevitabilities of the enfeebled species. Vital conditions change, and when they do, that big bony sail on your back is a liability for your kind unless you've sired a few robust, smaller individuals with smaller sails. I have yet to see a single Republican change; they haven't clarified a single position distinct from the issues that Democrats have already appropriated as their own.
And why is this so? It isn't very complicated to me. Liberalism is cool and soothing and conservatism isn't. Lindsey Graham Disorder is the most serious reaction to this arrangement, the need to belong and to shmooze with the popular guys. We live in a fantastic age and liberalism is the bridge from reality to fantasy. It still is, whatever Obama has done. As long as this condition exists in a culture governed by easy popularity, the Republicans are toast.
12 comments:
I was a Democrat for 10 years
and a Republican for 30 years.
Last year when the Gop nominated that back stabbing moderate McCain I quit the Gop and joined the AIP.
http://www.aipca.org/platform.html
When the AIP starts to stand for nothing,
I guess I'll start The Old Geezer Party
you can't modify "conservatism" with an adjective that suggests a defect in plain old "conservatism" any more than you can modify "liberty" in the same way.
Well said.
Third parties are not the answer. A takeover of the GOP by conservatives is...
You got that right, Silverfiddle!
Third parties are not the answer. A takeover of the GOP by conservatives is...
I believe that the GOP is slowly waking up. But, they still need to grow spines and stand up to the Democrats and against liberalism.
I think that Jim DeMint and Michele Bachmann are two of the best GOP memebers we have out there right now.
I think its because GOP members are too nice and just want to get along, and they don't want to rock the boat. But, the Democrats don't care about citizens, are a bunch of ruthless SOB's, and will do anything corrupt to pass their agenda.
I like Sarah Palin because she is willing to speak up and rock the boat.
Hi,
Happy New Year...!
I have two awards for you,
and I posted them on 01/01/10,
so I hope you will stop by
and take them and pass them
out to your friends....
xooxox
They resisted Ronald Reagan until they could no longer ingore him.
Bill Clinton was floundering, and the Republican response was to offer Bob Dole as the presidential candidate. In a fight against the Left for leadership during a time of war, they coughed up the John McCain hairball.
I'm waiting to be impressed.
The Republicans cannot change because they need the approval of their masters to do so, same as the Dems. Most politicians are bought and paid for and they stay that way. And when they finally are driven out they do not wander very far from their original political paycheck.
I wish there was a magic formula or incantation or reset button that would reshape the party, but apparently we're gonna have to go out there and weed the garden ourselves. Rip those SOB's out of the ground and throw them in the fire. By this I mean massive investigations of everyone in Congress and all political appointees.
Rewrite/tighten the political corruption statutes in the CFR and maybe even throw in a death penalty or two; something to give federal prosecutors some real leverage to make them squeal on each other.
Nickie, TOG, Sig and Teresa raise the Darwinian point that the party has selected out the courageous and imaginative and advanced the dullard.
Silverfiddle has suggested the way to chlorinate the Republican gene pool.
GOP= Whigs.
They cannot even step up to help REAL conservatives Like Hoffman for NY 23 or Scott Brown. The GOP is in slow motion. They cannot strike while the iron is hot. By the time they get around to doing anything the lights and heat are turned off and the room is locked up for the night. Reaction times are glacial.
This "We are the only other game in town" nonsense has got to stop. Do not even tell me that Romney is going to be the next GOP door mat at the house marked 1600 or I will puke. Leadership is needed. And if you cannot find someone we will.
As Rush would say - "checked pants Republicans"
Being a liberal requires that you suspend rationality and reality and embrace a utopian philosophy that has been tried many times and failed just as many times.
The Republicans in office are just as comfortable with their sinecure ad the Democrats are. They are comfortable with even the "evil empire in office" status quo because "life is still good". They are well fed, and many of them are a hair's breadth away from being Democrats themselves. The all seem to unite under the "progressive" rubric - which means they are enemies to liberty.
Brilliantly put, couldn't have put it better myself.
The Republicans are cord wood for the bonfire the Donks have set in DC. It's an old leftist strategy - scapegoating - which works as long as the scapegoats allow it to work.
Scapegoaters have the advantage because the first job of the scapegoat is to disprove the charges. That's complicated and difficult to do...often because it involves disproving a negative.
Scapegoated groups normally just ride out the accusations until time changes the facts.
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