now that the full ramifications of the republicans' losses have sunken into what must be the greatest collection of the thickest skulls of their party, the dispirited members of free republic ponder the woes of their party and the possible avenues for their roaring return to the forefront.
at salon, gary kamiya asks, do conservatives move to the right or the center? will the "true believers" or the "pragmatists" take charge? his prescription contains this dire warning:
In the coming years we will witness a war between conservatism's pragmatists and its true believers. If the pragmatists win, America will have finally arrived at the era of broad political consensus that pundits erroneously forecast after Lyndon Johnson's demolition of Barry Goldwater in 1964. If the true believers win, we may witness a Palin candidacy in 2012 -- and a likely electoral landslide that will bury the GOP so deeply it may never dig out.
to the crowd at free republic, the answer for what ails the republicans is obvious.
- don't settle for imitations
Hmm... Become Democrats.... isn’t that what we just did with the moderates running the campaign?
Here’s a hint - people don’t go with the imitation. They go with the real thing. Republicans pretending to be Democrats are not going to take votes away from Democrats.
We run a pro-amnesty, anti-ANWR, anti-offshore drilling until just before the elections, global warming nonsense supporting guy, who has spent the past 4 years attacking conservatives. Conservatives could hardly bear to vote for the guy.
And oh, we got hit by the financial meltdown in the markets.
Message is clear: Run real conservatives, especially with a hard line Marxist in the White House, and we win.
they are truly scared of Palin....isnt that very very interesting...
- time is on our side
Are these libs so feverish in their blind devotion that they are angry that not EVERYONE worships their Messiah?
... Let's see, a liberal democrat (as opposed to a self-centered Democrat moderate with lefty flirtations) wins the White House for the first time in over thirty years--and it's the OTHER side that's dead?
We'll just wait here and watch this comedy act called the DNC dismantle our nation and be prepared to pick up the pieces soon afterwards.
It is time for Conservatives to man up and stop indulging in fantasy scenarios and start spreading the reality of our beliefs and ideologies that lie at all our cores. As soon as next Summer, when gas prices have reached $4/gal. once again there will be a nation hungry to hear our beliefs and ideas.
One day... when we purge the cancer of moderation from our ranks and return to Reagan's ideology... we will kick the living sh!t out of these commies... and I will offer no quarter and take no prisoners.
- don't get fooled again
We might just have won if we hadn’t let the MSM and the Damocrats select our candidate for us...
Had it been Thompson and Palin this election would have turned out differently.
Remember how the media sabotaged Thompson's campaign with the lies and the smear tactics... Same schemes with Palin. Coincidence? I think not.
What else would you expect from Salon?
Salon is the disinformation, propaganda and dirty tricks department of Comrade Hussein's outfit.
Hussein has learnt very well from Stalin's KGB.
They are past masters at sowing confusion, and chaos amongst the opposition, Nothing new here. Just ignore it, and move on and elect conservatives to represent us.
- i yam what i yam
This one thing I keep hearing over and over just burns me up! The fact that the liberals think we are going to lose again because we are wanting to move further to the right! We are conservatives and want to be further to the right! It is WHO WE ARE!! And Sarah Palin represents our values. What is so hard to understand about that? Why should we move to the center (meaning moving towards liberals)? That’s what some of the RINOs did and it cost them!
Did the libtards ever second guess their two losses on 2000 and 2004 and decide to move closer to the middle? Nope! They moved further to the left with Obama! There wasn’t a lot of analyzing the death of the liberal movement by the MSM and why they lost!
I am tired of the MSM analyzing us and calling us dead. The one thing I know is that when you get conservatives whipped up we can kick some butt. I believe we are angry now but after 4 years of Obama we will be fed up and ready to take charge....without moving to the center.
- we are not the problem
Of course, if something isn’t done about electoral fraud and illegal immigration...
This guy is projecting more vile and hatred that the Democrats have been spewing for the last 7 years than he is commenting on conservatives. However, he has a point about the changing nature of the population sliding more towards liberalism. Conservatives have to address this point and its root cause — the university and media — before it can understand why it should win future elections.
- if we wanna beat 'em, join 'em!
I think, since 1994, the Democrats have infiltrated the GOP, especially with the behavior of some RNC people of late. I know as a fact that many local Republican central committees have been taken over by liberals.
A friend of mine suggested a massive movement of Republicans registering to vote as Democrats and completely dissolving the Republican party. (A colossal “Operation Chaos.”)
This would confound things nicely (and scare the $hit out of the fence sitters) and it would also FORCE these a-hole politicians to talk about ISSUES.
Would it work? I don’t know.
It would certainly create a huge problem for the Democrats if they were the only political party on the ballot. It would scare the HELL out of people.
- semper fi
Could be correct about the landslide.
Wrong about who will be buried though.
We are not even going to wait for 2012 ti bury the RATS. We will smoke the RATS come 2010, in the House elections.
What we need to do is get a tough conservative like Newt, to sweep away the amnesty lovers that President Bush has put in charge of the Republican Party(something that made me stop all contributions to the Republican Party), and work hard to get real conservatives to take on the RATS in 2010.
- workers of the world, unite!
Part of the problem is the disconnect betweeen the cities/suburbs and the places where raw natural resources and food are produced. The cultural values are quite different and the urbanites have no idea how dependent they really are on their rural cousins. If those rural cousins should organize and cease to produce ( “strike”) the raw materials upon which the urbanites “just in time” manufacturing and food processing and distribution is based, they might just come to a greater appreciation of the country bumpkins they so love to demonize and hate. Perhaps they might just BACK OFF the regulations they so love to bind us with.
- those grapes are sour, i'm sure of it
I think this pantload Kamiya may be right, in a sick kind of way. Given that America no longer exists as the proud nation it once was, it doesn’t deserve a rescue attempt by conservatives. It’s gone. Walk away. Every man for himself.
It’s hard to feel like an American any more because America has become little more than a land mass populated by too many people who have no respect whatsoever for our military and who sit around with their hands out waiting for big government to confiscate money from their neighbors and “redistribute” it to them.
That’s the Democrats’ America.
That’s an America not worth defending.
- whatchu talkin' 'bout, willis?
why bother reading this stuff?
(update: added "sarah palin" to the tags.)