Some of this may seem familiar to many of you.
— Though when I say it, it’s usually in the form of “fuck Colin Powell, fuck Karl Rove, fuck Obama, fuck the left’s useful idiots, and fuck the ‘realists’ who wish to shut us up.” Followed by a bemused “resist we much.”
I awaiit dicentra’s takedown of your inaccurate use of the word ‘bemused’ in 3. . .2 .. .
Rush is tying multiple threads here together right now. Romney lost because Romney failed to turn out the Republican base, not because single women and hispanics rejected the Republican party.
So, fuck ’em all indeed.
Sounds like (Rush, that is) he’s laying out the underlying bifurcation to me:
The party of the poor
The party of the rich
It has always been a tough nut.
I wish there was a way that young white men could become older white men. I mean, has that ever happened before?
That’s not the bifurcation sdferr:
The party of the poor/rich (i.e. the takers and the already-got-theirs-tax-sheltered, so go ahead and raise my taxes!)
The party of the aspiring middle class i.e. the makers (aka “The Rich,” because these are the income earners)
I agree that the idea of liberty predominating the idea of equality is best sold as aspirational, but I disagree that it actually breaks down this way in the minds of the electorate. I.e., I believe we would do better to recognize that it breaks down in simple opposition: poor vs. rich, as it has always done. That is, if unvarnished truth counts for anything.
Apparently it doesn’t when 8 of the 10 richest counties in America vote for Obama, the Richest Senators are all Democrats (I believe) Nancy Pelosi is worth a shit-more than John Boehner and Republicans are the party of the rich.
This is what I mean by pushing through the Democrat propaganda instead of trying to work with it or around it.
If the Democrats were the party of the middle class, why the hell are they trying to kill it?
If the Democrats were the party that truly cared about the middle class.
Getting ahead of myself in my exasperation.
Sorry if I misunderstand your meaning above, but if we care about the unvarnished truth, we need to start calling the Democrats on their lies instead of acceding to them.
Perhaps it is better to fix a different pair of terms to the problem, albeit terms now grown more or less obsolete or too antiquated to be of much use? Namely, the terms in which De Tocqueville would have understood the problem: democrats and aristocrats. The partisans of the multitude and the partisans of the comparatively rarer virtuous.
It is time to flip the apple cart.
I agree on the immigration issues, and have been saying so for years.
Insty’s floating all sorts of poison pill revenue ‘enhancers’ to call the left’s bluff on class warfare.
Herman Cain is rumbling about a third party.
Will anyone in the Republican party, or the House get the hint? If they won’t then 2018 means the end of the Republican party.
Sign me up.
Listening to Levin last night (listening somewhat distractedly and in consequence inattentively), I didn’t get the impression Levin’s on board with turning our backs on the GOP quite yet, though he did seem to suggest he may be more open to the idea down the road should the GOP not attend to what he believes it ought to do now. Anybody else have that sense?
For my own part, I should perhaps reiterate, I’m long done with the Republicans.
What makes you think the GOP has 6 years?
Now, if you mean that, if things continue to go as they have, there won’t be a Republican party in 2018, 2020 at the latest. I’d agree with that.
And what happens in 2014 will decide that.
Yes, that’s what I’m getting at. Barring major strategic moves they’ll soon be a rump party (after 2014) and consigned to history sometime after the next presidential election – which will see the Democrats dominate a badly split opposition.
“Alec Leamas says November 8, 2012 at 10:24 am
I wish there was a way that young white men could become older white men. I mean, has that ever happened before?”
Unfortunately, I have an increasingly ugly sequence of pictures that prove the phenomenon exists. :(
ThomasD, supposing such major strategic moves are to be undertaken (on the hypothetical that is), who among the current Republican leadership would be in the vanguard carrying the banner? I ain’t seeing ’em.
” I didn’t get the impression Levin’s on board with turning our backs on the GOP quite yet, though he did seem to suggest he may be more open to the idea down the road should the GOP not attend to what he believes it ought to do now. ”
Y’know if this damned stupid house doesn’t quit burning pretty soon them I’m going to have to seriously consider leaving! Oh, it vexes me!
The Senate is now where it is all at, and for all the noted political/demographic disadvantages displayed in the Obama/Romney data, overall in the 2014 Senate elections the GOP is even further behind the 8 ball. The only realistic pickup being North Carolina, and all the rest too blue to budge.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_elections,_2014
sdferr, the ‘leadership’ clearly is the problem.
But, as with all things, it’s not about who visibly carries the banner, but who makes the command decisions.
It was bad for me to sum using “carry the banner”, my fault.
I meant would a Paul Ryan, say (just to pick one recent model sort), stand up to threaten to depart the party while making the fundamentally principled arguments in depth to advocate for the strategic shift people are yearning for? Poorly expressed on my part, I regret, but hope the sense comes through.
Some skeleton in a blonde wig says Mitt was great and it’s the social conservatives who cost him the election, so they really need to shut up.
I am sick of people that describe themselves as “fiscal conservatives to whom solving the debt problem, addressing entitlements and shrinking the size of government are the MOST IMPORANT ISSUE FACING AMERICA” but say they can’t vote for someone who opposes homosexual marriage and/or abortion and/or [insert name of social issue].
For the wigged skeletons/Fiscal Conservatives/establishment Republicans, there has to be “flexibility” on social issues. What they really mean is that social conservatives have a duty to support the GOP candidate no matter what his position on social issues may be, but they have no corresponding duty. Election after election, it’s always the social conservatives’ issues that shouldn’t matter. Right, Mitch Daniels?
It would be interesting to see how the GOP would do without social conservatives.
20-25% tops?
Paul Ryan in the House, and Rand Paul in the Senate would be my picks for most visible, and also most able to advocate for real shifts in the GOP’s approach to governance. But what it really takes is people behind the scenes tying it all together into something cohesive and constructive.
It used to be popular to say, “I’m fiscally conservative but socially liberal.”
What that really meant was, “I wish those enumerated powers like national defense weren’t so expensive so there could be more money for goodies.”
Anybody who claims to believe social liberalism can coexist with balanced budgets and tolerable taxation is just really really really bad at math.
Smoke, that’s gonna be the fault line of the party. The ruling class types will soon further drift towards the Democrats. This will be marketed by the MSM as there presence ‘moderating’ the ‘slight’ leftward tilt of the Democrat party – thus creating a ‘new moderate center.’
The TEA party types and sundry others (Ronulans) will go their own way.
The rump party left behind will be the socons.
ThomasD, the socons are in the Tea Party. Socons are the ones who do the ground-game work that used to win elections for the GOP.
This has been pointed out before but the “shut-those-icky-socons-up” fringe keeps insisting on denying the facts.
I just started listening to the full podcast, and I already feel better.
They are increasingly not fringe but mainstream. Just take a look around here.
I assume that you’re talking about Ann Coulter here.
Who does she think is buying her books?
“Who does she think is buying her books?”
If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say that when she looks at her book and article audience she sees frustrated and emotional, but very forgiving assholes with a gold fish memory.
Contempt for your audience.
Why not? Works for Hollywood.
Good point McGehee, the groups are not entirely exclusive. But politically we are known by our acts. If people who happen to be socially conservative visibly leave the party to ally with organizations that are silent on such matters then, while they have not abandoned their principles, neither are they reflected in their politics.
Or maybe silence is assent to social conservative principles.
It’s not clear.
And just to be clear, I think that surrendering on those fundamental issues is a loser, both short and long term. A party of principle should, you know, hold them.
Which is exactly why the left, and the dividers among the squishy country club class, want the split.
Part of the problem is that the left is hell-bent on forcing everyone to go by their “morals,” so they think that social conservatives are of the same bent when that is not true. That helps drive their narrative, to our detriment when we don’t explain in simple terms what we believe.
I think abortion is murder, but I thinking making it illegal is a non-starter. I think rampant promiscuity damages those involved, but I’m not interested in using the law to stop them. Just don’t make me pay for the consequences of others’ actions.
Levin is none too happy right now. But then he’s reading from a transcript of a Boehner interview with ABC, so no surprise there. He just walked up to the line of writing off the GOP and . . . halted.
here’s some orangeman
Boehner: Obamacare ‘Law of the Land’
Yes Cranky, we’ve let the left get away with their framing of that very issue. When all we have advocated is a return to a Constitutional approach – that it not be decided by some tortured reasoning back from a pre-ordained result, but instead returned to it’s rightful place – within the police powers of the individual States.
They wanted it all along, newrouter.
so much for mittens competency
The Unmitigated Disaster Known As Project ORCA
The Unmitigated Disaster Known As Project ORCA
I’d laugh if I wasn’t so sad for my poor country