Sorry, I would like to add a 6th caveat. I don’t believe government (taxpayers) should fund abortions.

technopeasant on December 9, 2008 at 2:00 PM

If only their (atheists) absolute blind hatred didn’t override their ability to reason.

BKennedy on December 9, 2008 at 4:05 PM

I agree with you completely in the area of religion and abortion. It was NOT the religious adherents who perpetrated some of the greatest mass murders in history: Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, etc. And most pro-lifers, despite how the MSM tries to portray them, are not Fascistic in asserting their pro-life position on abortion. Generally what they want in America is for Roe vs Wade to be overturned so that the states can have the finally say on the subject, that taxpayers not fund abortions, that underage women have to have parental consent, that abortions if performed be rare but safe and neither mothers or medical personnel be incarcerated for participating in the abortion process. Sure there is the lunatic fringe in every movement, but the vast majority are not lunatics. But back to you atheists or whatever you call yourselves: your outright claim that Sarah Palin is an airhead, buffoon or a moron is based on what you saw on SNL, one sub-par performance in an interview and what pundits and political hacks have said about her. You are completely irrational in dismissing pertinent facts about her record as Governor of Alaska and the many speeches and interviews she gave where she turned in flawless performances. That’s like saying that because Brett Favre performed poorly in the last two games for the Jets that he’s now a bum and has always been a bum. You people on the left just don’t get it: your irrationality is similar to the frame of mind that existed in Spain during the time of the Inquisition. You are so blind to the truth and are so willing to destroy anybody for the sake of upholding the Gospel according to Obama. If anybody demonstrates Fascist tendencies it is Obama and the fanatics on the left.

technopeasant on December 9, 2008 at 4:32 PM

The Constitution guarantees freedom of religion and the freedom to makes personal choices and decisions on the basis of the tenets of that religion but does not guarantee that a political party has to embrace the tenets of any religion. After input from party members, the party develops generically its party positions and policies to reflect the broad sentiments of its members but with the main purpose of getting as many candidates elected to national office in any election cycle. As a political party one has to address a multitude of issues to gain legtimacy. It cannot opt out of a discussion of a certain issue by saying ‘we have no opinion on the subject’. Thus many positions are taken by political parties; in a Utopian setting every position would line up with the viewpoints of each one of its members; folks let me be clear: it ain’t going to happen in this lifetime or any lifetime. On this thread 2 themes dominate in response to Michael Steele’s interview with the CBN regarding the direction the GOP should be taking. The first that dominates is what the relationship should be between moderates and conservatives. First moderates and conservatives all breathe the same air and and are all members of the GOP. In a political party no member is superior to another; thus one member or faction of the party has no presumptuous right to lord over other members or faction or disrespect any member of the party for their viewpoints. That is why I object to conservatives using the term RINO when used to distinguish moderates; the term is used only to belittle and disparage not to identify. Moderates, like every member of the party, have every right to voice their opinion on what policies they would like to see enacted and to criticize conservative positions. However, conservatives also have a right to voice their opinions and to criticize moderate positions. And within these bounds is the feeling among conservatives that McCain was too moderate and that his apparent moderation alienated conservatives; conservatives point out that 20% of voters calling themselves conservatives voted for Obama; in contrast moderates argue that McCain had to move to the right to satisfy the base (selecting Palin for VP) and thus lost more moderate voters to Obama which he could have picked up if he had not ’strayed’ from moderation. One could argue either side but what not unmistakable was that McCain was ahead by 2 points in the Rasmussen poll on Sept 15 and roughly 3 weeks later after the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, the revelations of the sub-prime mortgage mess of Fanny and Freddie, the hit that 401k’s took, the daily depressing news of the financial meltdown and the $700B bailout vote McCain fell 8-10 points behind and essentially never recovered in the polls. If you are a moderate or a conservative and objective one has to come to the conclusion that it was outside forces and the burden of George Bush that really decided the outcome of the election-it had very little to do with ideology or viewpoint. What moderates and conservatives have to do between 2009 and 2011 is to develop an overarching strategy to deal with the economy, taxation policy, future bailouts, oversight of Wall Street etc. This has nothing to do with abortion but everything to do with whether the GOP wins more seats on Congress in 2010 and the WH back in 2012. As to the talk of purging the party of the other faction: by moderates such as Kathleen Parker who want the GOP to stop being the ‘oogedley-boogedly party of God’ and conservatives who want to dispatch the moderates to the Democrats and somehow ‘purify the party; that talk is foolish and counterproductive from both sides. The main enemy is Obama and the Democrats, not ourselves. Let us never forget that. Second from a statistical point of view neither faction alone can win a general election against Obama, let alone any Democrat at any time in the future. Folks, those are the facts. Now as to the platform that the GOP should run on in the next election, an argument can be made that it should be more conservative (the defection of conservatives to Obama) and an argument can be made that the electorate is not as conservative as it once was (Catholics, including Hispanics turning to Obama and away from free enterprise solutions and towards big government)-that is what the lead-up to the primary season and the primary season is all about. Please let’s engage the process as adults and not children calling for the shunning or ostracism of the other faction. And now to abortion. The greater majority of pro-life GOP members do NOT believe that pregnant women or medical personnel that engage in abortion should be incarcerated. That one fact has to be proclaimed from the rooftops. Second the majority of Americans do not favor partial-birth abortion; third even though pro-lifers believe that Roe vs Wade should be overturned because it is undemocratic pro-lifers have to acknowledge that sending the issue of abortion back to the states does not necessarily mean that abortion will not be outlawed-all it means is that voters or legislators will have the final say, not jurists. And fourth that even if abortion is permitted that taxpayers should not fund abortions and the government should not promote abortion. These four principles, if adopted should not violate anybody’s moral concern about abortion but allow the principle of democracy to decide the issue. Still my ideas will not satisfy everybody, but even Obama’s ideas sometimes fall on deaf ears.

technopeasant on December 10, 2008 at 2:34 PM

AprilOrit on December 11, 2008 at 12:00 AM

Joel Mowbray wrote an excellent piece at townhall.com claiming that 20% of conservatives deserted the GOP and voted for Obama, giving Obama the election. Maybe you should claim that Sarah was responsible for that as well-that she wasn’t conservative enough for these folks. Here’s my take: no one competing individual cost the GOP the election: it was the extraneous events of the financial meltdown and the hatred of the Bush administration that caused the GOP to lose the election; Rasmussen had McCain at 49-47 over Obama on September 15 and then for the next 3 weeks events intervened to cause him to be 7-10 behind Obama; as one pundit put it Reagan Democrats vote Democratic in harsh economic times and Republican in upbeat economic times; independents do as well; the Democrats always do well when a bad economy is presided over by Republicans (Hoover 1932). I will say this about McCain: he may not have cost the GOP the election but he certainly didn’t make the membership of his party feel kindly towards him after the loss-you hardly hear his name mentioned in GOP circles while Sarah Palin stills hogs the limelight and apparently will also in 2009. For a person that ALIENATED so many voters as you suggest, I find it hard to reconcile it with Palin’s unprecedented popularity after a defeat and to boot as a VP losing candidate. What you have here is cognitive dissonance on steroids.

technopeasant on December 11, 2008 at 3:29 AM

What alienated the average, normal, moderate American was the financial meltdown and the hangover of George Bush. For a long time even I didn’t want to admit that. McCain voting for the bailout just sealed the deal for the voters.

technopeasant on December 11, 2008 at 11:29 AM