Rudy: Let’s expand the party by deemphasizing social issues
posted at 3:11 pm on January 21, 2009 by Allahpundit
A two-parter from David Frum’s new site, the New Majority; the key bit comes near the end of the second clip. He’s not asking the party to abandon social conservatism, just to nudge it towards the background and make foreign policy and fiscal responsibility the core of the platform. Which … is essentially the approach McCain took.
He’s right about the dwindling numbers of the base, though. I think the GOP’s tacit strategy now is to wait and hope for (1) a messianic figure of its own to emerge and build a new coalition through the sheer force of his/her charisma and/or (2) Democrats to overreach so egregiously that even minority voters who wouldn’t dream of voting Republican today will run screaming for the embrace of small government. All of which is fine, but the opposite of proactive. I wonder how long we’ll be waiting. Exit question: It’ll be good to have Colin Powell saying he’s a Republican again without qualifying it with “I think,” though, huh? Click the image to watch.
Blowback
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Republicans have been put in the political wilderness, and it is important to use this period to reinvigorate the GOP. Scapegoating particularly now does not help; heed Michael Steele’s wise words written in the Politico. In this electoral year there were “headwinds” that precluded any Republican from being elected President — (i) a financial meltdown that created economic anxieties that have historically favored the Democrats and did this year; (ii) a Bush Administration financial bailout that muddied the waters of what was a Reaganesque economic message delivered by McCain and Palin on the campaign trail; (iii) the unpopularity of Bush, which is unfair but which is the result of unceasing attack by the Left and Bush not using the bully pulpit to defend his Administration; (iv) money and more money, some of it illegal, that Obama had to pay for campaign advertising that dominated the air waves; and (v) media bias that was absurdly in the tank for Obama and that operated effectively day-in, day-out as a propaganda machine for Democrats. The “tailwinds” that should work for us of strong military and national security, strong values and strong economy based on freedom and opportunity did not blow for us ths year because of the unusual economic situation that arose. Before the financial meltdown, McCain was ahead in the polls; after the meltdown, the economic anxieties, the Obama money and the Obama loving media bias trumped all.
It is important, if we are to be successful in the future, to identify what we stand for and “teach” it from day one against Obama and the Democrats. Let’s focus on Rudy has made a proposal; as I indicate at 01/22 7:51 AM, that is not what the GOP should do. Ratrher , we need to engage in political education the wisdom of a free economy, a strong military supporting a strong national defense and the values of the American nation, patriotism, and personal virtue.
In this connection, I note two concerns from a reading of some recent articles at the American Thinker site. Paul Kengor, author of a terrific book about Ronald Reagan’s religious faith, wrote about how people were not bothered by Obama’s past radical associations and how young people voted overwhelmingly for Obama; the effect of left wing educational and media establishments was being felt. Also, another author reported the results of a demographic study: if you had (i) maintained in 2008 what were the demographic percentages in the country in 1992 for the groups whites with college degrees, whites without college degrees, blacks, Hispanics, Asians and other minorities and (ii) maintained the same voting breakdown for each group between McCain and Obama, then McCain would have won comfortably by 4 million votes. The country is changing demographically in a way that presently is not helpful to the GOP.
Phil Byler on January 22, 2009 at 8:11 AM
Imagine, a serial philanderer asking for a more “open socially” party…what are the odds…
right2bright on January 22, 2009 at 8:46 AM
Once again AP, you overestimate your importance and the people you agree with so readily. (BTW- did you know Ace won a blog award? ;->) Bloggers who start to make blanket statements without facts due to arrogance soon lose their relevance.
I think you state your facts incorrectly here and I would offer California & Prop 8 as my example. The only people voting against it were hardcore Leftists, ashamed & apologetic white people, and/or Godless Atheists. Seems that minorities voted conservative. AP, Giuliani falls into the category of ‘ashamed white person’ and I personally don’t think those types & atheist make up vastly huge numbers. I’m sure that you could probably come up with a ‘poll’ to the contrary, especially now that polling is back in fashion.
Honestly though, Atheist & white people without backbones don’t really live by a core set of principals. They go with the ebb & flow of popular opinion like American Idol watchers. I don’t think we really need to spend precious GOP resources to woe them.
Sultry Beauty on January 22, 2009 at 9:07 AM
Is it? He attacked Obama directly on abortion at the debates, and he chose the most tangibly pro-life politician in the world as VP. Let’s say you’re right, though, it would have been ridiculous for McCain, in the midst of the economic meltdown, to run on a “values” platform. He would have lost even worse by prominently featuring the canonical social issues: abortion (against), gay-marriage (against), and the one-religion nation (for).
Rudy raises some more compelling points, IMO, about conceding California and New York and the disappearance of the urban Republican. If Republicans are going to revive their support in the nation’s metropolitan centers, they either have to embrace urban values (yes, they exist, and yes, they’re good) or they have to sell urban voters a positive alternative vision.
RightOFLeft on January 22, 2009 at 9:14 AM
Who emphasized social values?
Reagan & Bush.
Who de-emphasized them?
Rudy, Dole, McCain, & Ford.
Sure, Rudy, that’s a winning strategy.
jgapinoy on January 22, 2009 at 9:18 AM
California voted overwhelmingly for Obama. How was Prop 8 a winning issue for Republicans? Most Democrats oppose gay marriage, at least on the record. If anything, this should prove to social conservatives that their agenda can succeed at the local level without dragging down the national party.
Woo them.
RightOFLeft on January 22, 2009 at 9:23 AM
The Republican Party . . . are they still a viable political entity? If they want influence the action then somebody needs to chase their cringing butts out of their holes.
rplat on January 22, 2009 at 9:32 AM
I know I am repeating statements already made – but they bear repeating!! The Republican nominees in many races this past fall FAILED exactly because they embraced the middle!!! Many voters out here in USA-Land have conservative core beliefs, yet there was nobody (perhaps except Sarah Palin) who stood for just those beliefs! So how is this a winning strategy when we muddy the waters even more, just to gain a few votes!!! I would hope our yet to be elected representatives – on ALL levels – would truly represent what their constituents, or employers, think and believe! Be conservative!!! In all ways!!! Only then can we start to rebuild our country – but as I also said many times before, we cannot set our sights on the office of the President, but have to start at home – on our school boards, city councils, township and county boards, and spread out from there. I know this is going to be a lot of hard work, but we CAN do this!! We cannot say we have four years, but have to start right NOW!!!!
mkosin on January 22, 2009 at 9:45 AM
this blinkered thinking again.
listen: this past election day, an overwhelming majority of blacks in california went into the booth, and pulled the lever against gay marriage and for the democrat party. you seem to think christian identity is a wedge issue for blacks and the democrat party. it’s not. it is an effective wedge between the evangelical right and the suburban middleclass.
latinos are another story. the gop was increasing it’s share amongst latinos before it was decided by somebody that screeching about illegal immigration from a white nationalist viewpoint was an essential conservative policy plank. a continued obsession with this is mutually exclusive with the aim of reclaiming latino votes. no matter how many empty promises about reversing roe v. wade the party faithful issue.
if you really need to continue writing off blacks and alienating latinos to pander exclusively to one leg of the traditional reagan coalition, then live with and love the consequences.
if obama only manages to not drive the economy deeper into a hole and only manages to not utterly bungle the next security crisis – if he manages to vault the lowest bars possible on these two issues, then that’s game over. it’ll be forty years, not four, of liberal dynasty. and the gop may as well explicitly consider itself solely as a lobbying group for the dwindling demographic of small town whites who value their biblical orthodoxy over all other matters.
this is not because the gop lost a black vote it hasn’t controlled since hoover or even the 22% of the latino vote it lost in the last twe election cycles, as pathetic as that was. it is because the most signifigant demographic leaving the gop is suburban whites, for whom ted haggard has come to be emblematic of the christian right, and for whom the conceits that conservatives are fiscally prudent and strategically wise are shattered tropes.
and … i’m straining against adding something in here about the belief that the earth rests at the center of a 6,000 year old universe and that jesus rode a dinosaur, or about illegal immigration being a racialist conspiracy to collapse the u.s., canada and mexico into a singular superstate under the amero, with everyone fitted with rfid tracking chips, but really, this is how the sparse expanses of deep-red america are percieved by the vast majority of the voting public. the locus of crazy and paranoid no longer resides in the jfk conspiracy believers in san fransisco. it’s in kentucky and texas. and if there’s a concerted media campaign to force this perception on people, you may as well attribute it to fox news channel, who has nutters like jerome corsi on as if they’re serious investigative journalists. sorry to have to point this out, but it’s true.
eh on January 22, 2009 at 9:46 AM
Well, you are really on to something there. How can we de-emphasize social issues when the majority of our budget is spent on social programs. Welfare is a morality/social issue. When people would rather get handouts than work,, that is a social issue. Divorce is a social issue. Single parenting is a social issue. Abortion is a social issue. Premarital sex, 12 year olds having babies is a social issue. Rape, murder, robbery and their causes are all social issues. Politicians feeling so powerful and untouchable they can openly abuse their offices, trample the constitution, commit crimes,,, all of this,, it is all morality and social issues.
Is not slavery a moral issue??? Is it not hypocritical to condemn one form of slavery, that of man to man, while embracing another form of slavery, that of man to government?!
Life is morality. I do not care whether you are an atheist or not,, you want to be treated well by your neighbor, you want your government officials to be trustworthy, you want your tax dollars spent wisely.
I am sure there had to be more than a few German politicians who viewed Hitler’s rise to power as no big deal. As long as he helped the Germany economy and strengthened the deutsche mark, everything was ok.
JellyToast on January 22, 2009 at 9:54 AM
here’s the essential fact in response to the idea that deemphasizing “social conservatism” is somehow what lost elections for gop candidates historically:
the turnout for mccain amongst christians was greater than it was for bush in 2004.
in other words, you can have all of the “social conservatives” and still lose by wide margins. as we just did. as we have been. as we will continue to.
eh on January 22, 2009 at 9:55 AM
you’re half-way to a point worth making there. the fact is that most social issues are completely secular economic and criminal justice matters. this is how conservatives addressed social issues in the 70′s and 80′s when their share was increasing.
this is why i put “social conservatism” in scare quotes now – because the term has been corrupted into a euphemism for the agenda of a narrow band of religious belief. when people say “social conservatism”, they mean abortion, gay marriage and creationist curriculum resolved to biblical chistians’ strictures.
eh on January 22, 2009 at 10:06 AM
RightOFLeft: your name serves you well and your point is stupid.
I live in CA. The point being made is that socially conservative ideas are the GOP’s problem not a lame a$$ RINO who loves to stick it to conservatives every chance he gets. So, YES, Prop 8 means something in this debate but Obama winning does not.
Nice try though with the side step but I’ve played this dance with liberal Republicans more than your average person. I live on CA remember?
NEXT!
Sultry Beauty on January 22, 2009 at 10:16 AM
BTW- something non-CA don’t understand, how easy props get on the ballot. Why do we govern that way? Cuz there are lots of toe-tag Democrats who pull the lever for Dem candidates but absolutely hate their policies. Props are used to keep them in line from doing stuff against the majority view. That effect is dwindling though as liberals get more savvy with their tactics. Republicans would do good out here if there were any with money who weren’t hardcore RINOs pretending at conservative so to get at the GOP coffers or corrupt.
Sultry Beauty on January 22, 2009 at 10:23 AM
I’d like to respond, but you didn’t even bother to make an argument.
RightOFLeft on January 22, 2009 at 10:47 AM
This kind of made me laugh. Uh, yes, it does… that’s why I chose it. Thanks.
RightOFLeft on January 22, 2009 at 10:50 AM
for these people, puffing up and going, “ROWWRRR” suffices as q.e.d.. their most sophisticated argument is to respond to everything with “‘cuz” like a twelve year old girl defending why one boy band is cuter than the other.
i thought that was funny too.
eh on January 22, 2009 at 10:58 AM
Except that you’re not straining, because you did add it. Congrats on raising smug condescension to an art form. Now cite some sources to support your assumed knowledge of the voting attitudes of “the vast majority of the voting public” or admit that it’s something you heard in a political science class at your local community college and be done with it.
PS. If you really believe that nonsense about “the locus of crazy and paranoid” it might be time for a reality check; zombietime.com will clear all of that up in a hurry.
TheUnrepentantGeek on January 22, 2009 at 12:11 PM
Great posts eh. Way, way, way too rational and sophisticated for the army of fundamentalist “thinkers” around here though I’m afraid.
dakine on January 22, 2009 at 12:19 PM
Legislating morality is more fun than redistribution of wealth. The GOP has been doing both and the public is tired of seeing the “grumpy old white men” having so much fun. It’s time for the GOP to give a little to gain a little. Take your pick – less legislation of morality, or less “big government”. That’s what it’ll take for the GOP to win in 2010.
popularpeoplesfront on January 22, 2009 at 12:19 PM
If, by rational, you mean makes completely unsupported claims and takes cheap shots at large cross sections of the conservative movement by citing the beliefs of crazies on the fringe, then sure.
TheUnrepentantGeek on January 22, 2009 at 12:26 PM
Your assumptions are false Geek. The beliefs he cites are pretty mainstream among the Christian right. Are you a fundamentalist Christian?
dakine on January 22, 2009 at 12:46 PM
Bah. Tired of RINOs and all their whining. KMAGYOYO, Republican Party. I’ll be sitting out the political process henceforth. They’re just taking turns, anyway.
Venusian Visitor on January 22, 2009 at 1:05 PM
thanks
eh on January 22, 2009 at 1:13 PM
And all that Law and Order and opposing Corruption stuff, that has got to go too.
We need more Politicians on our side; and all this opposing corruption and bribes and handouts and kickbacks is having a negative effect. Lets get rid of worrying about those “social issues” too. And high spending.
Wait, isn’t that what we’ve run with for the past 2 elections? Big spending, corruption, etc. at least?
Yeah, more of that, it works great… idjits.
gekkobear on January 22, 2009 at 1:30 PM
okay.
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/yt-Ap367QmPJHU/barack_obama_takes_presidential_oath_cnn/
i don’t know what zombietime’s work documenting the crazies in san fran has to do with the crazies elsewhere. my point is as i stated it: the general electorate doesn’t any longer view progressives by light of their deranged elements like they did coming out of the 70′s. rather, they now view conservatives by light of their deranged elements.
it never had to be a mirror effect like that. it could have been that people came to see both conservatives and progressives as rationally motivated. it took a lot of pandering and coddling of the fringe to get us here.
you’re deluding yourself if you think young earth creationism is a fringe viewpoint amongst the christian right. i used to pretend it was too – that all the christian conservatives i knew were rational about this and that they viewed the book of genesis from an interpretive, allegorical lens. then i asked them. just as it requires willful blindness to deny that much of the force behind the immigration issue comes from white nationalist goons and conspiracy nuts.
eh on January 22, 2009 at 1:35 PM
You can’t force morality upon people.
The abortion issue gives me great pain & I would hate to see a state where the voting public voted to make it legal (other than letting the courts legislate like they have been doing), but I also believe that there would be states, if actually ALLOWED to govern themselves, would stand up & do the right thing in many cases.
That is where hope lies. State’s rights.
But I fear we are too far gone. The feds have us.
Less govt I believe should be the main focus & state’s rights.
Badger40 on January 22, 2009 at 1:40 PM
geej. last two elections? i guess we’re contending that bush was thrifty now.
you liked him. you hated mccain, who actually was against capricious spending.
that’s because it’s a red herring. fiscal conservatism is not something you care about. in the case above, you use it like contact paper – a superficial covering for your assertion of “social conservatism”. let’s parse it out:
in the course of making a strawman argument of what you suppose “rinos” want to expunge from the agenda, you say, in order…
sentence 1) Law and Order, opposition to Corruption
sentence 2) opposition to corruption, bribes, handouts, kickbacks
sentence 3) social issues, opposition to high spending
sentence 4) opposition to Big spending, corruption
now, i could have just pointed out the strawman fallacy of claiming that conservatives who want to deemphasize the christian right’s social agenda want to similarly deemphasize opposition to corruption and big spending – that itself was quite a dishonest try at poisoning the well. in fact it seems that so-called “rinos” are the last people left in the gop who care about these bedrock conservative principles as “social conservatives” scramble for “faith-based initiative” handouts.
but what’s more revealing is the way you deployed them as a sort of smoke grenade to conceal your single-issue fealty to “social issues” in such a starkly cynical fashion.
really. you should be ashamed for that sh*t.
eh on January 22, 2009 at 2:02 PM
The one thing I most detest about political commentary is the contention that one has to radically alter what one believes in so as to be better suited ‘to a changing demographic’. Right is right in 1776, 1876, 1976 and 2009. America must continue to stand for individual freedom based on the natural rights of man, the rule of law and the constraints in the Constitution that prevents the government from tyrannizing and terrorizing its citizens. I don’t believe that politicians should wear their faith on their sleeve but neither do I subscribe to Giuliani’s proposition that the GOP must abandon the traditional planks of social conservatism to appease the MSM (which you can’t appease)or to perhaps attract more secular type conservatives (speculative) to put the GOP over the top. In politics I have always believed you have to stand up for something fine and noble: standing up for the life of the unborn and standing up against the ‘bad people’ of America isn’t a bad place to start.
technopeasant on January 22, 2009 at 2:03 PM
the problem is with politicians and political actors who wear their faith on their sleeves. it is proposed that “social conservatism” be deemphasized, not abandoned, to bring it back into proportion with the other planks of traditional conservatism.
the secular types are here, as they’ve always been, though in reduced strength. this blog was posted by one. at issue is the way the gop and the movement are losing these people without whom the gop loses support and the movement loses intellectual share.
the word “secular”, by the way, is not a synonym for atheist or heathen. it simply refers to the public sphere separate from religion. all conservatives should be secular because conservatism is a political disposition, not a religious sect. that people are confused about this is evidence that the “social conservative” plank of traditional conservatism is problematically out of proportion.
eh on January 22, 2009 at 2:31 PM
Oh right, right. The Obama victory had nothing to do with Bush’s dismal approval ratings, the tanking economy, an unpopular war, or corrupt GOP politicians. It was ALL THOSE CRAZY CREATIONISTS. Please. I’m sorry, but you fail. Try again, this time with some actual statistics about voter attitudes from a credible source. Throwing that crap out like it means something is intellectually lazy and you know it.
And you point happened include some other things than young earth creationism. Let’s see how “mainstream” white nationalism/NAU/RFID tag crap is, hmm? And if you could try to do so without citing “Stormfront” as a credible barometer that might be appreciated.
TheUnrepentantGeek on January 22, 2009 at 3:00 PM
Why? Just because you say I didn’t make an argument?
Your argument to my Prop 8 point was that because CA voted for Obama we should shelf social conservative agendas and candidates who emphasize it. My argument is that a social conservative issue was put on the ballot because Democrats and judges want to subvert the will of the people and it won during this last election due in large part to minorities. The candidate who lost is a social moderate who agrees more often with Pres. Obama than he does with Social Conservatives. This is proved by witnessing his current agreements, along with Sen. Lindsey Graham, with much of Pres. Obama’s executive orders that most Social Conservatives would find unacceptable.
Now where didn’t I make an argument? I suggest your argument is an ugly, smelly, red herring.
I assure you I’m not a 12 year old girl. My apologies for messing with your RINO Elitist sensibilities but I happened to be typing on my iPhone and, so as to get into work on time, tried to type my point as fast as I could. Now that I’m on a PC, I hope my response suited your high-minded requirements.
BTW ~ No matter how much you tell conservatives to see it your way and how many times you act condescending and insulting, it won’t work. We have principals and ideology and that trumps your thought process.
Sultry Beauty on January 22, 2009 at 3:01 PM
The idea that moral beliefs are necessarily based on religion is fatuous. To hell with religion. Have you ever seen photos of tiny arms and legs severed and jumbled in a dead red pile? Why do you need God to tell you that was a human being? You can look and decide yourself based on the evidence. But you won’t see that evidence because it is too compelling and it goes contrary to the wishes of the political establishment that controls the media.
If you look and reason and decide that those arms and legs were living and human, then you will be led to the conclusion that we are permitting mass murder on an unprecedented scale. If you don’t need God to tell you that Hitler’s extermination camps were immoral, you don’t need God to tell you abortion is immoral. And yes, we can and do legislate morality every day; if we didn’t,a lot of people who post on this site would be off smoking crack and the debate would be more sensible.
Venusian Visitor on January 22, 2009 at 3:06 PM
here’s the trendline: http://pewforum.org/newassets/images/reports/summer08/image002.gif
i already noted jerome corsi (nau/rfid) being lifted from the pages of wnd to appear on fox news.
and i’ve frequently discussed the troubling relationship between michelle malkin and the openly white nationalist anti-immigration website, vdare. i’m not going to give the splc a link but they document as well as anyone could john tanton’s white nationalist associations.
eh on January 22, 2009 at 3:51 PM
LOL!
eh on January 22, 2009 at 3:55 PM
you’re talking about virtual candidates. we’re talking about actual candidates.
if opposition to that official plank of the democrat party is impotent to split them off from the democrat party, by what reasoning do you suppose the issue has the power to draw them to the gop?
eh on January 22, 2009 at 4:03 PM
you’re quite right.
http://www.godlessprolifers.org/home.html
eh on January 22, 2009 at 4:06 PM
I’m not agreeing with you, eh, I’m just saying that you are wrong no matter how you look at it. By reason or faith, we determine what is right and what is wrong. And, although it really doesn’t matter from a political standpoint how we arrived at our views of morality, the particulars of our moral beliefs matter very much when it comes to forming a political party. Your focus on the source of moral values rather than the substance thereof is simply disingenuous.
Venusian Visitor on January 22, 2009 at 4:24 PM
Thanks for your post. You make good points
tartan on January 22, 2009 at 4:25 PM
+1
tartan on January 22, 2009 at 4:26 PM
1. The leap of logic it requires to infer from that graph that the public’s fear of creationists was the deciding factor in this election is staggering. Yes, it’s a trend, but “Churches should keep out of political matters” is quite a bit different than “I voted for Obama because of crazy creationists!” Hell, I think churches should keep out of political matters. They sort of have to – that whole tax exempt status thing. Am I an Obama supporter terrified of creationists now?
2. So an article from a WN guys shows up on Fox and Malkin has “troubling ties” to another little known website and suddenly WN is “mainstream?” That fails the logic test. Blog readers account for a vanishingly small portion of the electorate in the first place. So no, you fail here too.
One. More. Time. Real statistics from a credible source on why people voted the way they did that support your claims. Because it’s pretty obvious to anyone that there were a lot of reasons more important than “OMG teh Creationists!”
TheUnrepentantGeek on January 22, 2009 at 4:27 PM
* sigh *
Another excellent thread on another important topic. Sometimes I wish these threads would stay online for longer than 2 or 3 days. I don’t have two hours at the moment to read everything that’s been said… :o(
tartan on January 22, 2009 at 4:27 PM
of course it does. what, are you a utilitarian?
and don’t misread me. there are a couple of “moral” issues which “social conservatives” would like to see translated to public policy which i find to be arbitrary, unreconciled to reason and unacceptable. “teaching the controversy” in biology class, for instance.
eh on January 22, 2009 at 4:35 PM
No, Presbyterian.
Have you ever voted for a Republican, or are you just trying to marginalize people who don’t agree with
MoveOn’syour ideas?Venusian Visitor on January 22, 2009 at 4:49 PM
it’s unfortunate that my snappy reply gave you an opening to exaggerate the significance i’m placing on the “social conservative” agenda. you’re right that it wasn’t the sole deciding factor in the election. i never said it was. i just noted that obama’s win can’t be evidence that “social conservatism” can put the gop over the top.
in fact, what i noted upthread was that the christian right turned out in greater numbers for mccain than they did for bush. and yet…well, you know what happened.
that’s where i came into this discussion: amidst wails of indignation at giuliani’s mere suggestion that the social conservative agenda isn’t helping us.
the lead issues this past election were the economy, corruption and the war. you want figures on those? look ‘em up. they’re not germane to the argument i’m making and you’re just trying to chewbacca the discussion.
as for your bs under your second heading, would you believe that people who are very concerned about illegal immigration are also a vanishingly small portion of the electorate?
it’s true! it’s a niche obcession, which unfortunately has become a definitive issue for the mainstream right these past few years.
with that as context, let’s look up the web ranking of the center for immigration studies, essentially the flagship hq and lead policy think tank for immigration obsessives.
cis.org – ranked 167,157
now let’s look up vdare, the cis-associated white nationalist website michelle malkin publishes on and links to from her own blog.
vdare.com – ranked 64,229
your characterization of vdare as “little known” is so off that i suspect you’re blowing smoke. ditto with your seemingly deliberate mangling of my reference to jerome corsi being invited onto fox and the ingraham show to present his bircherite delusions as respectable conservative opinion.
i can’t take you seriously in light of this sort of thing, and i don’t take you to be amenable to reasonable arguments anyway.
eh on January 22, 2009 at 5:45 PM
i suppose a rimshot goes there.
bush, dole, bush, bush, mccain.
thanks for playing “disagree with me? your a liberl!!!onw1″
eh on January 22, 2009 at 5:49 PM
DUDE! Seriously, adjust your meds. I have no idea why you think my previous comment was funny but I’m not talking virtual anything. You’re an idiot. I was talking about McCain. What planet are you living on?
Sultry Beauty on January 22, 2009 at 6:15 PM
What I’m not amenable to is snide, smug, condescending commenters who can’t be bothered to cite credible stats for their claims – instead they choose to rely on their unerring knowledge of the zeitgeist of opinion. That makes it a touch difficult to “take you seriously” – but in my refusal to let spin stand uncontested I soldier onward … somehow.
And honestly … Alexa ratings? Really? That’s your metric for notability? Good God man, that wouldn’t even make it past a Wikipedia editor. Do I really need to dig up the studies on the number of people that actually read blogs for political news on a regular basis? Let’s have a real, statistically sound, stratified sample of southerners and find out how many read regularly, or have even heard of “Vdare.” I’m betting calling it mainstream is an exaggeration that borders on laughable.
Next, Fox invites a lot of crazies onto it’s political shows. Does that make them mainstream? What does that have to do with the price of tea in China? Who Fox invites to it’s shows or who Malkin occasionally links to is no reasonable proxy for measuring the attitudes and perceptions of the mainstream.
Yes, the economy, corruption, and the war where the big deal. Pushing the social con agenda probably won’t help much. But it’ll certainly hurt to ditch it. And “teh Creationists” were probably barely present as a motivating factor. Because the only people that (at least claim to) espouse this visceral terror/disgust of them are militant anti-theists and the far left. Not exactly going to get all that many of the latter part of that group, and if the former can’t vote for candidates whom they agree with on every other policy they’re as irrational as they claim the creationists are.
Now look, I don’t even know what it means to “Chewbacca” a discussion. If you’re going to make accusations, just make them instead of relying on these oh so cutsie terms. Besides, Chewbacca’s dead now. They dropped a moon on him in the current book continuity.
TheUnrepentantGeek on January 22, 2009 at 6:17 PM
Can you please say something coherent. The problem was the socially conservative issue to which the citizens of the Great State of California agreed with the GOP but the the GOP Presidential candidate who held a very limited equal view of the GOP platform. Have the candidate and the social issue be one in the same and you have a winner quite similar to Ronald Reagan.
In a very Pro-Democrat state Ronald Reagan is still an extremely beloved President. I went to Simi Valley to walk past his casket and I stood in line for 9 hours to do it. There were Democrats in that line much more than liberals would have you believe. Your suggested course of action is the antithesis of anything Ronald Reagan espoused.
Sultry Beauty on January 22, 2009 at 6:23 PM
publishes. she publishes her articles there, has aknowleged that the site is controversial on account of its racialist views, and shrugged the matter off churlishly.
it would be. glad i never said it was.
the chewbacca defense
eh on January 22, 2009 at 6:31 PM
geez, sultry. when will we get a republican candidate who supports measures like prop 8?
oh, yea…
“I support the efforts of the people of California to recognize marriage as a unique institution between a man and a woman, just as we did in my home state of Arizona,”
- john mccain (83% rating from christian coalition)
so, why didn’t bush carry california in 2004?
eh on January 22, 2009 at 6:47 PM
Eh, you’re just attempting to control the message by dealing in abstraction, like religious belief v. reasoned principle. It would be much more effective simply to say something concrete like, say, “I want to be in your club but some of you guys don’t like me because I’m a homosexual so kick those religious guys out and a lot of my friends will join too.” Now, that’s an issue people can sink their teeth into.
The answer to that question is simple: count up the potential losses and add the potential gains. If you come up with a positive number, make the change. So long as the Republican Party has no core principles other than getting candidates elected at any cost.
But please keep it concrete, OK? You’re not fooling too many people with your abstractions, and they’re not nearly so clever and incontrovertable as you might think. On the other hand, if your goal is simply to burn bandwidth and confuse the issues, stick to abstractions.
Venusian Visitor on January 22, 2009 at 7:48 PM
/sigh
Call people on their irrational terror of “the religious right” and they retreat and call you stupid for calling them on it. Sheesh.
TheUnrepentantGeek on January 22, 2009 at 7:55 PM
Why do I bother posting when other people often do so much better of a job?
TheUnrepentantGeek on January 22, 2009 at 7:56 PM
you gotta help me out with this. what was too abstract for you?
eh on January 22, 2009 at 8:02 PM
never called you stupid. not even in the passage you blockquoted.
eh on January 22, 2009 at 8:05 PM
That’s brilliant!
I can’t wait to be kicked out for not following the party line! =)
This party should be a CHRISTIAN CONSERVATIVE PARTY ONLY! People like me should be cast out, derided, and never allowed back in again! People like AllahPundit too! How dare we speak up about what we think the party should be like when, obviously, our votes made no difference. In fact, I bet our votes had a mysterious negative tally on the election! You wouldn’t want that to happen again, would you?
Yes, by all means, throw us out. Us stupid atheistic dupes need to go somewhere else. Like, say, the Democratic party. I’m sure by kicking us all out, the Democrats will suffer even more in the next election!
Do it! =)
Summer on January 22, 2009 at 8:20 PM
i really am curious about what it was that i said in the course of this thread which struck you as overly abstract. the most abstract we got was when you said something about it not mattering how one arrives at a moral standpoint, and that was something you introduced.
i was being concrete like that, though the substance of it was, “nobody wants to be in our club any more, and a big part of the reason is that the religious guys are creeping everyone out.” that’s about how i stated it way up in my post at 9:46. i’ll pull a quote for you:
feel free to sink your teeth into that.
you again:
two things to be said about this.
first, the electoral venality argument is something i usually get tossed at me from your side. it usually takes the form of some bogus statistic: “a gop without the christian right is a gop doomed to 8% of the vote in national elections!” i’ve never investigated the verisimilitude of that figure. i’d rather suspect it’s something more like 20%, though their point of course would still stand if it were.
you can imagine i hope that i’m sort of over such appeals. that i’ve long ago gotten over being sick of the “values voter” on the corner lifting her shabby skirt to show me her votes while the party pragmatists push me at her like frat brothers on a vegas bender.
and that’s my second point. it’s not your christians’ core principles which are in danger of being sacrificed for republican gains. rather it’s conservative principles which are being sacrificed for christian gains.
eh on January 22, 2009 at 8:44 PM
summer, baby!
it’s floyd!
eh on January 22, 2009 at 8:46 PM
floyd?
Summer on January 22, 2009 at 9:10 PM
floyd from SL who built our first Republican HQ? =) wow been like 2 years….how you been?
Summer on January 22, 2009 at 9:16 PM
disillusioned. but generally well.
i saw some video on youtube which left me with the impression that the slgop is doing really well. how is it there?
eh on January 22, 2009 at 9:33 PM
We’re still alive and we do podcasts every week with a Conservative host etc…. And I was on CNN briefly when Newt came to talk in SL back in September 2007. =) Gimme a comment on my blog and I’ll email you or something, or come say hi in SL I guess. =)
Summer on January 22, 2009 at 9:58 PM
i’ll swing by the blog. regular internet already takes up too much of my time to reinstall the sl client. besides, i vowed i’d never return until i learned how to script.
eh on January 22, 2009 at 10:09 PM
Rudy is a law and order, fiscal conservative defense hawk. Three out of four is enough for me to call him a conservative when our opponents score 0 out of four.
Rudy for Governor of New York! Someone has to save us.
KW64 on January 22, 2009 at 11:05 PM
The conservative bloc is not dwindling. Simple birth demographics favor conservative non democrats over moderate non democrats. The bloc of conservatives willing to call the GOP their party is dwindling because the top of the party is not conservative
I stopped thinking of Giuliani as a conservative at the point he trolled the conservative school of fish to get delegates for McCain and his slobbering dash to make sure Romney was kept off the ballot. He probably had to use a lot of cologne as he mingled with smelly rabid conservatives on the rubber chicken circuit.
Those who want to open the conservative party by including non conservatives would do better to create a non conservative party instead of what they are doing, which is castigating conservative voters for not voting correctly
You cannot make constituencies vote against their interests by telling them they are stupid to have such interests. You cannot hide your disgust from what you call ‘evangelicals’ by feeding news reports of a new evangelical movement that votes liberal
People vote their needs and find a party that suits their needs, not vice versa
This is a stalemate of fools. The only way to break this stalemate is not with another McCain or Schwarzeneger but with another Reagan, simply because the RINO’s cannot collect enough moderates to match the DEMs without losing conservatives wholesale
The arm twisting blackmail used to force conservatives to vote McCain was not successful, he lost even with Palin. This game is getting old
entagor on January 22, 2009 at 11:34 PM
So…you think less votes this election would have been better than more?
I see.
Rudy was right: there was almost no chance a Republican could have won this term. Looking at it through your “Conservatives Only” lens is seriously tinting your viewpoint. The fact is that McCain did get a very big chunk of the votes. Not enough to win, but it wasn’t a huge landslide in numbers.
That means a good portion of moderates did vote for McCain. Now you want to chase them away?
I still really don’t understand this line of thinking. But OK…chase people like me away and we’ll see. I’m willing to bet you’re wrong. =)
Summer on January 23, 2009 at 1:17 AM
fiscal conservatives are extinct.
cut out the social cons and the republican party is extinct.
jack_in_the_box on January 23, 2009 at 10:52 AM
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