Comments on Charles Krauthammer "The way forward"
Boldface = my comments
They lose and immediately the chorus begins. Republicans must change or die. A rump party of white America, it must adapt to evolving demographics or forever be the minority.
The only part of this that is even partially true regards Hispanics. They should be a natural Republican constituency: striving immigrant community Like O's father?, religious like Joe Biden, Catholic have you guys ever nominated a Catholic to the top of the ticket?? I think we did., family-oriented which distinguishes you as a party how? and socially conservative (on abortion, for example) So really it boils down to abortion, right?.
The principal reason they go Democratic is the issue of illegal immigrants and the fact that they don't buy into trickle down. In securing the Republican nomination, Mitt Romneymade the strategic error of (unnecessarily) going to the right of Rick Perry. Romney could never successfully tack back Pretty amazing since tacking back seems to have been his sole political gift.
For the party in general, however, the problem is hardly structural Oh, do please keep thinking that. It requires but a single policy change: Border fence plus amnesty. Yes, amnesty. Well hell, if for the cost of a stupid unneccesary ineffective fence we can get this done - write it up Boehner. Use the word. Shock and awe (or what thinking people would call common sense - not sending 14 million people packing one day. I find myself neither shocked nor awed {well maybe awed by the supposed intensity of stating such obvious reality}) — full legal normalization (just short of citizenship) in return for full border enforcement.
I’ve always been of the “enforcement first” school What does that mean - send them home?? Aw man, there went that glimmer of common sense, with the subsequent promise of legalization. Ah, the beauty of a subsequent promise!! I still think it’s the better policy. But many Hispanics fear that there will be nothing beyond enforcement. Oh really, suspicious folk these Joses. So, promise amnesty right up front. Secure the border with guaranteed So the promise is now a guarantee! Will you throw in a "really, no really I mean it, this time I swear"? legalization to follow on the day the four border-state governors affirm that illegal immigration has slowed to a trickle.
Imagine Marco Rubio I don't have to imagine Marco, he exists and strikes me as a pedestrian politician with an annoying voice advancing such a policy on the road to 2016. It would transform the landscape Except for the fact that O will have done it three years ago in your scenario. He’d win the Hispanic vote. Equally effectively as Geraldine Ferraro won the women's vote Yes, win it. A problem fixable with a single policy initiative is not structural. It is solvable. Cool, now you can move on to your myriad structural problems while O accomplishes this before Marco gets his shot.
The other part of the current lament is that the Republican Party consistently trails among blacks, young people and (unmarried) women. (Republicans are plus-7 among married women.) But this is not for reasons of culture, identity or even affinity. It is because these constituencies tend to be more politically liberal — and Republicans are the conservative party. Yes, why in God's name would we worry about our policy when it is roundly rejected by the people who are going to live with the fruit of it when we're dead and gone. They are silly liberal children, why would we listen to them.
The country doesn’t need two liberal parties, but it would be a damned fine idea. Yes, Republicans need to weed out candidates who talk like morons about rape {OK, one truly insightful comment Krautty, you didn't waste that psychiatric training completely}. But this doesn’t mean the country needs two pro-choice parties either you keep having these good ideas, think big Charlie, we don't need these things but wouldn't it be fine??. In fact, more women are pro-life than are pro-choice ah, yes, so long as you use the phrase "baby killing" in the question. The problem here for Republicans is not policy but delicacy Guufffucckinggffaaww! I take it back, you did waste your psychiatric training — speaking about culturally sensitive and philosophically complex issues with reflection and prudence and humility?? perhaps 'course that would mean that you don't get to make their decisions for them, whoopsie.
Additionally, warn the doomsayers, Republicans must change not just ethnically but ideologically. Back to the center. Moderation above all! If indeed moderation = good sense and logic, well OK then.
More nonsense. Tuesday’s exit polls showed that by an eight-point margin (51-43),Americans believe that government does too much. And Republicans are the party of smaller government. Moreover, onrushing economic exigencies — crushing debt,unsustainable entitlements — will make the argument for smaller government increasingly unassailable. I have always been convinced that a terror based decision making process clarifies the mind and provides grand results - no wonder you are the GOP.
So, why give it up? Republicans lost the election not because they advanced a bad argument but because they advanced a good argument not well enough. Romney ran a solid campaign, but he is by nature a Northeastern moderate. He sincerely adopted the new conservatism but still spoke it as a second language. Si, Senor!
More Ford ’76 than Reagan Iran Contra was genuinely a transformational event ’80, Romney is a transitional figure, both generationally and ideologically. Behind him, the party has an extraordinarily strong bench. In Congress — Paul Ryan, Marco Rubio, Kelly Ayotte, (the incoming) Ted Cruz and others. And the governors — Bobby Jindal, Scott Walker, Nikki Haley, plus former governor Jeb Bush and the soon-retiring Mitch Daniels. (Chris Christie is currently in rehab. tee hee )
They were all either a little too young or just not personally prepared to run in 2012. No longer. There may not be a Reagan among them from your lips to God's ears, but this generation of rising leaders is philosophically rooted and politically fluent in the new constitutional conservatism New?.
Ignore the trimmers and the limbs fall on your head. There’s no need for radical change. The other party thinks it owns the demographic future — counter that in one stroke by fixing the Latino problem as long as you think of a problem with other people as a [name the group] problem, doesn't that make it harder to fix??. Do not, however, abandon the party’s philosophical anchor swim ahead full steam with that anchor around your ankle. In a world where European social democracy is imploding before our eyes largely because they opted for austerity in the face of bad financial times, the party of smaller, meaner, more modernized (from australopithecus to neanderthal) government owns the ideological future of ideologland.
Romney is a good man no argument, just one with very limited perspective which is no fault of his own, none of us get to choose the particulars of our upbringing. He was simply deprived of opportunity to know life who made the best argument he could, and nearly won Damn you Sandy! Damn you Christie!. He would have made a superb chief executive, but he (like the Clinton machine) could not match Barack Obama in the darker arts OK, goddammit what exactly is that supposed to mean?? Just, damn! of public persuasion. Oh, I get it Obama, voodoo priest??
The answer to Romney’s failure is not retreat, not aping the Democrats’ patchwork pandering The guy who is defending Mittens is accusing anyone of pandering - Wow!. It is to make the case for restrained, rationalized and reformed I thought we were done with R's for now government in stark contradistinction cool word, man to Obama’s increasingly unsustainable big-spending, big-government paternalism ack kaff, the guys who are anti-choice are accusing O of paternalism.
Republicans: No whimpering yeah. No whining hooray. No reinvention when none is needed works for me, stay right there. Do conservatism but do it better is that kind of like doing liberalism?. There’s a whole generation of leaders ready to do just that Were it to be that we had some right leaning reasonables to work with. That would be a fine day.
