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Bush has taken the republican party down with him permanantly

Discussion in 'Fred's House of Pancakes' started by MarinJohn, Mar 23, 2007.

  1. MarinJohn

    MarinJohn Senior Member

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    http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/na...-home-headlines
    Fewer pledge allegiance to the GOP
    By Janet Hook

    WASHINGTON — Public allegiance to the Republican Party has plunged during George W. Bush's presidency, as attitudes have edged away from some of the conservative values that fueled GOP political victories, a major survey has found.

    The survey, by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, found a "dramatic shift" in political party identification since 2002, when Republicans and Democrats were at rough parity. Now, 50% of those surveyed identified with or leaned toward Democrats, whereas 35% aligned with Republicans.

    What's more, the survey found, public attitudes are drifting toward Democrats' values: Support for government aid to the disadvantaged has grown since the mid-1990s, skepticism about the use of military force has increased and support for traditional family values has decreased.
    But other Republicans fear the poll signals a clear end to an era of GOP successes that began with President Reagan's election in 1980, saw the party take control of Capitol Hill in 1994 and helped elect Bush twice.

    "There are cycles in history where one party or one movement ascends for a while and then it sows the seeds of its own self-destruction," said Bruce Bartlett, a conservative analyst and author of the 2006 book "Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy."

    Bartlett added, "It's clear we have come to an end of a Republican conservative era."

    The Pew poll measured the views of 2,007 adults from Dec. 12 through Jan. 9. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.


    http://www.theconservativevoice.com/article/23679.html
    The Next Conservatism: A Retrospective
    by Paul Weyrich and William Lind

    We are also getting growing interest in the Next Conservatism from Capitol Hill. Senators and Members of Congress are coming to see that the supposed conservatism of the Republican Party is inadequate both intellectually and politically. It neither motivates the grassroots nor comes to grips with the problems facing our country.
    Most important and encouraging to us has been the response of the conservative grassroots. People are sick of the games they see being played in Washington. They know that Washington is not doing what needs to be done to govern our country. Spending is still out of control with vast budget and trade deficits and a pyramid of public and private debt that could create a depression if it crashes. Uncontrolled immigration is flooding our country with people whose culture and traditions are alien to our own. Some businesses along the border accept pesos as well as dollars in payment. Our economy may be going great for big international corporations but we continue to hemorrhage manufacturing jobs at a fearful rate thanks to a policy of mindless free trade. How can conservatives talk about being pro-family if we do not protect the kind of good-paying jobs breadwinners need to support a family?
    Looming over everything is the disaster of Iraq. Woodrow Wilson’s foreign policy, resurrected by a Republican President, has again brought us nothing but grief just as it did under Wilson. Conservatives in Washington may have forgotten the wisdom of Senator Robert A. Taft, but Americans in the heartland have not. The real conservatives out there know we should never go to war except to defend America’s own national security and the most significant threat to that security lies on our border with Mexico where the Bush Administration’s Justice Department is prosecuting Border Patrol agents for shooting back.
    Most encouragingly, grassroots conservatives have told us that they, too, are disgusted by a conservatism that is defined as nothing more than “I’ve got mine.†America’s coastal elites seem to sing endlessly that old song called “I Want What I Want When I Want It.†The grassroots conservatives of America’s heartland reply with a hymn that begins “Turn Back, O Man, and Forswear Thy Foolish Ways.†It is the heartland and not the elites who are in touch with reality.


    http://www.theconservativevoice.com/article/23632.html
    2008, Conservatives Abandon The GOP?
    by Chuck Baldwin

    It is no hyperbole to say that conservatives throughout America are extremely disappointed and disillusioned with the national Republican Party. This discouragement is only deepened as they peruse the field of prominent candidates being trotted out as "frontrunners."
    The Republican Party's unwillingness to advance a genuine conservative has left millions of grassroots Republicans on the verge of leaving the GOP. For example, a poll at the recent CPAC meeting found the "overwhelming majority of conservatives displeased with the leadership of the Republican Party, and most conservatives scowl at the thought of having to vote for Rudoph Giuliani, John McCain, or Mitt Romney."
    In fact, the displeasure of grassroots conservatives with the GOP manifested itself in the creation of the Conservative Exodus Project (CEP), which was formed immediately following the recent CPAC meeting. According to organizers, CEP "is a vehicle for conservatives to leave the GOP if a real conservative presidential candidate is not chosen in 2008." Members pledge either to not vote, or to vote third party (e.g. Constitution Party).

    CEP adherents use a fivefold litmus test to reveal a "real conservative." 1) He must oppose the "third-world invasion of the United States and reject amnesty and any path to citizenship for illegals." 2) He must "oppose free trade, the support of which has become an ideological suicide pact." 3) He must be a "moral candidate, critical of secularism, who embodies the virtues of the Christian Western tradition." 4) He must oppose the "illegal neocon war in Iraq." 5) He must "wish to see big government reduced in size-in all three branches-and for many offices and functions to be returned to the states, where they Constitutionally belong."
    It is past time for conservatives to admit that the national Republican Party has crossed the point of no return and has no intention of nominating a genuine conservative for president. The GOP has become nothing more than a big-government, no-borders, war party. If true conservatives are going to have a voice in Washington politics, it will have to come through an independent party.


    http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=11177
    Fredheads
    By Lisa Fabrizio

    It appears the movement to draft Fred Thompson into the 2008 presidential race is gaining steam. The former Tennessee senator, lawyer and actor's appearance on Fox News Sunday a few weeks ago has re-energized the right in a way that no one else in the race has come close to doing. Why?
    TV and movie star Thompson -- with his deep voice and folksy, reassuring, Reagan-like manner -- can woo the ever-anxious, blue state soccer moms? Let's face it; the man is a six feet, five inches tall tower of walking gravitas whose rugged, rural demeanor will have the ladies swooning from coast to coast.
     
  2. desynch

    desynch Die-Hard Conservative

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    Vote Libertarian..

    anything but Democrat or Republican... This two party system we're stuck in is NOT WORKING. They're all buddy buddy.. same disease, different face.
     
  3. MarinJohn

    MarinJohn Senior Member

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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(desynch @ Mar 23 2007, 10:04 AM) [snapback]410988[/snapback]</div>
    Amen desynch!!! Personally, I wish both D&R's would run another party making it a 4 party system.
     
  4. MegansPrius

    MegansPrius GoogleMeister, AKA bongokitty

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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(MarinJohn @ Mar 23 2007, 06:28 PM) [snapback]411152[/snapback]</div>
    I'd love to see a viable third party, but in this age of advertising dollars/coporate lobbying, I can't imagine one ever getting off the ground. I expect any third party that coalesces around a polarizing issue missed by the other two will have that issue quickly co-opted as soon as the Dems and Repubs notice it.
     
  5. desynch

    desynch Die-Hard Conservative

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    Yes my friends.. it is a sad state of affairs.
     
  6. JackDodge

    JackDodge Gold Member

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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(MegansPrius @ Mar 23 2007, 06:54 PM) [snapback]411173[/snapback]</div>
    It would be the party of people who aren't swayed by the media and lobbying machines. It's when enough of us stop listening to them and they take notice that we'll get our third party in place. It won't take the cooperation of politicians and corporations, just the will of the people and then they'll be forced to follow us.
     
  7. Stev0

    Stev0 Honorary Hong Kong Cavalier

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    And here I thought it would be the Democrats who split into two parties; if I were a real conservative Republican (as opposed to a Neocon) I'd be demanding a new party.

    On the other hand, Nixon didn't kill the Republican party. On the third hand, Dubya makes Nixon look like Abraham Lincoln.
     
  8. daniel

    daniel Cat Lovers Against the Bomb

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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(desynch @ Mar 23 2007, 11:04 AM) [snapback]410988[/snapback]</div>
    Vote Green.

    Otherwise I agree with the above.

    I'm amazed, however, by all the people, every time a ruling party suffers a defeat, who predict that that party is dead forever. The electorate has a very short memory, and is very easily manipulated. And with our two-party system so thoroughly entrenched that any alternative party is very effectively locked out, the power is just going to shift back and forth between the two mafias that call themselves political parties.

    Correction: The power will stay with the people who back both parties simultaneously: the big corporations. But the two parties will trade off governmental offices back and forth. The Dems have a slight majority in the legislature, and the Repubs are down in the polls and may lose the executive in 2008, and in a few years it'll shift back, and then forth, back and forth. In 4 years, or maybe 8, the voters will have forgotten what the shrub did to the country, and they'll vote Repub if the repubs can mount a better campaign of lies than the Dems can...

    And if the voters ever elect a true outsider, the power behind the two big parties will kill him or her. Power does not let go easily, because there's a lot of money being made by running the show.
     
  9. Godiva

    Godiva AmeriKan Citizen

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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(desynch @ Mar 23 2007, 01:04 PM) [snapback]410988[/snapback]</div>

    Libertarians are Republicans without the charm.



    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Mar 23 2007, 06:18 PM) [snapback]411192[/snapback]</div>
    I think the Green Party is the most likely to become a viable third party.

    What I'd like to see is a fiscally conservative, socially liberal party. The closest I can find is at Centrist Party. But they are so small they are not likely to become a strong third party.

    Until there is a strong enough third party, a vote for a third party basically becomes a vote for Republicans as they are votes that are not cast for Democrats.

    Centrist Party
     
  10. daniel

    daniel Cat Lovers Against the Bomb

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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Godiva @ Mar 23 2007, 06:20 PM) [snapback]411237[/snapback]</div>
    This is really very amusing, since it makes just as much sense if you turn it around and state that a vote for an alternative party is a vote for the Dems because it's not a vote for the Repubs.

    In fact, a vote for an alternative party is a vote AGAINST BOTH parties. It is a statement that when two mafias are battling for who gets to rob the shopkeepers of a neighborhood, we don't think either one should be allowed to do so.

    Republican = criminal
    Democrat = criminal

    A vote for either party is a vote for crime. :angry:
     
  11. burritos

    burritos Senior Member

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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Mar 23 2007, 09:23 PM) [snapback]411274[/snapback]</div>
    Democrat = murder
    Republican = rape and murder
    Green = smoking dope
    Libertarian = illegal possession of an AK
     
  12. qbee42

    qbee42 My other car is a boat

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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(MegansPrius @ Mar 23 2007, 06:54 PM) [snapback]411173[/snapback]</div>
    Our current winner-take-all election system virtually eliminates the possibility of have more than two real parties. Voting for a third party essentially throws away your vote. I'd like to see some sort of progressive or preferential voting system where voters vote for more than one candidate in the order of preference.

    Tom
     
  13. Chuck.

    Chuck. Former Honda Enzyte Driver

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    When a party get to this ebb, the opposition can run on their failures 2-3 general elections. Then they either stay on their accomplishments or get run out themselves.
     
  14. livelychick

    livelychick Missin' My Prius

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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Godiva @ Mar 23 2007, 09:20 PM) [snapback]411237[/snapback]</div>
    Thanks for the post, Godiva. I first joined their lists last year. Woefully small. Insufficient support. But we'll see.
     
  15. sharkmeister

    sharkmeister Junior Member

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    I used to like Repub fiscal responsibility, but now I see it as a lie, just an excuse to limit democratic power.

    I used to like Repub competence in defense matters. Today there is no such thing.

    I tend to be an old-fashioned person in my approach to values and responsibility and that was once a Repub value. Today they are twisting Christianity into the service of hatred. Hatred for gay people, hatred for Muslims, hatred for liberals and in their actions, hatred for American Soldiers. I may have hated out of weakness at times, but I would never call it family values.

    I used to like that Repubs were aware of how hostile foreign leaders really were behind their friendly facades. Today dubya gives pootie-poot BJs that Monica could only envy. I don't doubt that when the visit is over, pootie-poot chuckles at "Monica's" talents. An American critic of Vladimir Putin's was killed only a few miles from here. The police said it was a robbery, his wife said nothing was taken. Pick one.

    I used to like that when Repubs favored white successful, accomplished and educated males, it was usually about posting intelligent, experience and competent people who knew what they were doing and cared about doing their jobs well. Today the incompetents posted by the Bulsh administration harbor contempt for the people who actually do know what they are doing and care about doing a good job. The Repubs are too busy "creating realities" to notice that they have taken the world's most advanced and capable military and used it with such utter incompetence as to render it ineffective.

    By the way, for what it's worth, the new Secretary of Defense who wants to get rid of the prison at Guantanamo and who fired Army VIPs over the mess at Walter Reed -- you know, actually holding people accountable -- I like him, he's old school and he knows what he's doing.

    Make fiscal responsibility real, don't torture, no rendition, EVERYONE honors the laws, honor the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, LIVE by family values (instead of talking about them), honor freedom of religion (don't foist the most ignorant and simplistic interpretations of Christianity over the general populace!), strengthen the economy (not profligate spending!) -- these were all consistent with Repubs that I would vote for -- but those guys are gone and one fears they may never be back.


    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Delta Flyer @ Mar 23 2007, 10:46 PM) [snapback]411291[/snapback]</div>
     
  16. Stev0

    Stev0 Honorary Hong Kong Cavalier

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    You folks have it backwards. A vote for the Greens is NOT a vote taken away from the Democrats. A vote for the Democrats is a vote taken away from the Greens.

    Although it looks like they FINALLY got it. Unless they nominate Hillary "Show me the money" Clinton. Although if nominated, I'd probably vote for her anyway, since even though she's a walking example of every negative stereotype about politicians, anyone who upsets Rush and Bully Bill so much is someone worth supporting.
     
  17. sharkmeister

    sharkmeister Junior Member

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    I like Edwards and think an Edwards-Obama or an Edwards-Clark ticket would win.

    I'm surprised to find a lot of other DailyKos visitors also like Edwards. The last online poll there had him at first with 38% while Hillary was at something like 8% there. I have to suspect that Repub manipulation of the media is somehow behind Hillary polling so much higher in the MSM reported polls.

    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Stev0 @ Mar 23 2007, 11:38 PM) [snapback]411323[/snapback]</div>
     
  18. Godiva

    Godiva AmeriKan Citizen

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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Mar 23 2007, 09:23 PM) [snapback]411274[/snapback]</div>
    I made the statement based on the few elections when viable third parties make a large dent. I don't remember what happened with Ross Perot. But I think Nader cost the Democrats the election by taking Democrats and independents away from voting for a Democrat to vote for him. And that's how Bush got elected. A simplified one paragraph explanation.

    A third party attracts independents that don't like either party (and who would likely vote Democrat) and it takes more Democrats than it takes Republicans. So....Democrats lose.

    I'm not saying that's a bad thing. What I'm saying is that a third party doesn't have enough clout to get their candidate elected. So it's a token protest but essentially a wasted vote. The third party candidate is going to lose.

    If there were a chance a third party candidate would win, I'd go there. But I'll vote Democrat just to make sure the Republican candidate does not win.

    note: I never used to vote this way. I used to be registered non-partisan and vote for anyone. It is only in the last SEVEN YEARS that I have changed my voting pattern. Read what you like in to that.

    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(qbee42 @ Mar 23 2007, 09:45 PM) [snapback]411289[/snapback]</div>
    I'd like to do away with the electoral college and vote direct. I'd also like to do away with primaries.
     
  19. daniel

    daniel Cat Lovers Against the Bomb

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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(burritos @ Mar 23 2007, 07:39 PM) [snapback]411283[/snapback]</div>
    From what little I've seen of the Green Party, I think Greens stopped smoking dope about the same time the Democrats and the Republicans stopped. I know a couple of people who've continued to smoke dope well into their adult years, and I know one old lady who smokes it. But mostly it seems to appeal to young people, who drift away from it as they get more mature.

    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(qbee42 @ Mar 23 2007, 07:45 PM) [snapback]411289[/snapback]</div>
    I don't remember her name, but Clinton nominated a person who advocated electoral reform along those lines, for some high government post. The opposition and the media tarred her with accusations of communism (calling it "undemocratic" to advocate proportional voting or any of its cousins) and Clinton dumped her.

    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Godiva @ Mar 23 2007, 09:58 PM) [snapback]411357[/snapback]</div>
    You are entitled to your opinion. But I say that alternative candidates do not take votes away from the big parties. You make a slanderous assumption when you assert that those voters would have voted for the democrat. Speaking for myself, I will not vote for a criminal. I will look for an alternative candidate to vote for. When there's a prominent alternative candidate I may pick him or her, but in the absence of such a candadate (e.g. Nader in 2000) I'll vote for some lesser-known alternative candidate.

    I assert that the people who voted for Nader in 2000 and 2004 would simply have stayed home had he not been on the ballot, or else they'd have voted for some other alternative candidate.

    Gore lost because he ran a crappy, stupid, dull, and lackluster campaign. And the Republicans in Florida were better at fraud that year than the Dems were. And even with the fraud, Gore would have won if he had had a competent campaign. The Dems lost because of themselves, not because of a handful of Nader voters, or even because of the fraud in Florida. The Dems have totally abandoned the values they once pretended to hold. If they just continued to pretend to believe in justice, the voters would be dumb enough to keep voting for them. But they decided to admit that they really support big business (which they have all along) so they lost to the party that pretends to support family values.

    BTW, the Republicans claimed that Ross Perot threw the election to Clinton in his first election. But that's bull also. Clinton won because Bush Sr. raised taxes after promising he wouldn't, thereby losing the greed vote, which makes up a big part of the Repub base.
     
  20. IsrAmeriPrius

    IsrAmeriPrius Progressive Member

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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Mar 23 2007, 09:50 PM) [snapback]411383[/snapback]</div>
    Just because you disagree with that premise does not make it slanderous. Many political scientists agree that enough of Nader's voters would have voted for Al Gore in 2000, had Nader not been on the ballot, to have changed the outcome in New Hampshire and Florida.

    Now, please do not try to convince me that the country is not worse off with Bush as president than it would have been with Gore.