GOP impurity is no myth
Since the 1990s, even some of the biggest Northeastern moderates — Rudy Giuliani, William Weld, Christine Todd Whitman, and Chris Christie — have run as conservatives on the big issues: crime, taxes, welfare, the cost of public sector unions. Their more liberal positions, no matter how sincerely held, were issues that were peripheral to their agenda. …
Yet somehow the federal government keeps getting bigger even when Republicans are in power. No matter how many Republican Supreme Court justices are appointed, Roe still stands, as do many of the major liberal precedents dating back to the Warren Court. Guns and taxes are two domestic issues on which conservatives have made inroads. Those inroads now appear to be in danger. …
Conservatives are often mocked for being overly sentimental about Ronald Reagan. But the conservative policy accomplishments that approach the significance and endurance of the New Deal or Great Society mainly date back to the Reagan years. In fact, aside from the Reagan economic program, winning the Cold War, and passing welfare reform in 1996, much of what Republicans have done at the national level is neither unimpeachably conservative nor indisputably successful. …
But the bottom line is that on some of the biggest issues that inspired conservatives to get into politics in the first place, the GOP has accomplished remarkably little.
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Bingo.
ddrintn on January 22, 2013 at 11:58 AM
The quoted portions aren’t the best from that column. These are:
ddrintn on January 22, 2013 at 12:02 PM
Because the GOP craves POWER over anything else.
astonerii on January 22, 2013 at 12:03 PM
Too many pc, finger in the wind, get along to get along, math is hard, enablers…
Gohawgs on January 22, 2013 at 12:03 PM
Communism has ALWAYS been a Fifth-Column movement.
logis on January 22, 2013 at 12:04 PM
Romney/Ryan weren’t perfect, but they laid out a credible policy plan to get our economic house in order. The American people rejected them despite the obvious bad economy and 16 tril in debt. There’s only so much the GOP can do with the American electorate as it is.
IR-MN on January 22, 2013 at 12:07 PM
They did no such thing. Romney was a northeastern statist at heart and people knew it. Ryan is one who’s always talked a good game but folds like a cheap card table.
ddrintn on January 22, 2013 at 12:10 PM
Purity vs Unity
thebrokenrattle on January 22, 2013 at 12:12 PM
“Unity” is just code for “fall in line behind this squish, you rubes”.
ddrintn on January 22, 2013 at 12:17 PM
Unity is a myth. When people like Romney, Christie, Powell etc. attack those in the party they are “supposed” to support more than the enemy– then unity doesn’t exist.
melle1228 on January 22, 2013 at 12:19 PM
Sure it does, they are at unity with the regressive illiberal socialistic communists.
astonerii on January 22, 2013 at 12:34 PM
What unity are you referring to, General Powell?
aryeung on January 22, 2013 at 12:39 PM
What unity indeed. When you’re out of power, you learn. Thats normal behaviour. Not in the present pub camp. But no, unity is underisable. When in a minority, you gotta draw folks to our side. But no, thats hispandering and compromise. No wonder the GOP is compromised. Limited vision, decades old rhetoric.
tommy71 on January 22, 2013 at 12:57 PM
*undesirable*. Sorry for the typo.
tommy71 on January 22, 2013 at 1:00 PM
He’s not a team player, he should just leave.
thebrokenrattle on January 22, 2013 at 1:36 PM
Follow the Buckley doctrine and you can have a good balance of purity and unity.
thebrokenrattle on January 22, 2013 at 1:37 PM
It is neither Unity nor Purity that is at issue.
What is at issue is Loyalty!
Loyalty to those who elected them is what is missing.
There is an old saying, “You Dance with who brung ya’.”
It would be nice if the Republicans learned what that meant.
Essentially the one Lesson that the Republicans still have not learned was the lesson of, “READ MY LIPS.”
jaydee_007 on January 22, 2013 at 1:39 PM
Have the Democrats learned it?
thebrokenrattle on January 22, 2013 at 1:47 PM
All this “Buckley Rule” has become is a rationale to throw the squishiest candidates out there possible. Just as “Reagan’s 11th Commandment” has become nothing more than “don’t criticize moderate losers”.
ddrintn on January 22, 2013 at 2:13 PM
Of course they have.
They know wihtout a doubt that if they can get Republicans to Capitulate on Core Principles that thier base will stay home!
jaydee_007 on January 22, 2013 at 2:14 PM
Have they capitulated? Why doesn’t their base stay home? Obama p!sses them off all the time.
thebrokenrattle on January 22, 2013 at 2:24 PM
What’s your rule?
thebrokenrattle on January 22, 2013 at 2:24 PM
Vote your principles/ don’t be a self-deluding whore.
ddrintn on January 22, 2013 at 2:39 PM
Akin voiced his principles, loud and clear.
thebrokenrattle on January 22, 2013 at 3:47 PM