Comments

Republicans vs. Democrats: does it even matter? — 80 Comments

1. Neo: You are correct. A plu-perfect post.

2. I’m completely with you, Neo. Another thing I’ve noticed is that a person can do one thing the stay at homes don’t like and that’s enough to sabotage a whole party. They think that their single issue is the most important one for all other conservatives and Republicans. Of course, a month later another issue will be front and center.

3. Sums up my views pretty well

4. Or, maybe GP is a sock puppet.

5. My chief complaint about George Pal and his ilk is that he does not REALLY have the courage of his convictions because he has no intention of following them to their logical conclusion. Is he planning to leave the country or go off into the woods and live off the land? Is he plotting an armed insurrection? He is not even attempting (the futile task at this time) to start a third party. In absence of any activity he should shut his mouth yet he continues to flap his yap and pound the keyboard in comments sections. If however the conditions he and we both suffer under are any way ameliorated by the actors he disdains he will continue to sneer at them. Remember the dwarfs in the last book of the Narnia series?

6. “profoundly destructive and illogical”

   I would typify the leftist position that way, not GP’s. He makes a valid point about long term strategy, and although that point is easily subsumed in the hot angry rhetoric of those disappointed over and over again with mushy republicans, the point is still valid.

   There has been a great lie believed and perpetuated by the compromisers that a conservative candidate cannot win because we must get the middle, the independents. So, that’s all we usually get to vote for. And you’re telling us, we’re stuck with that? And that our resistance is really illogical, destructive and fanciful.

   Sometimes to go forward you have to go back; to begin a new project, you have to tear away the old foundation. Your model has resulted in what? McCain and Romney!

   Further, the “fanciful” world of GP is more the real illogical emotional world of politics. Sorry, but your rational strategic temperament is the exception and you don’t seem to realize that. And while realizing that the George Pals of the world aren’t going to be dispersuaded, you propound a strategy requiring the persuasion of the George Pals of the world. That’s kind of illogical.

   You want to win elections? Put out a good conservative candidate. You keep telling us to vote for these RINO’s who either don’t win or capitulate. Are we supposed to resign ourselves to this tyranny?

   I suppose we should and I think in this cycle you are seeing a very broad change where tea party conservatives are voting for the Republican candidate no matter what. It was the tea party movement which made 2010 happen. It will make 2014 happen if it does happen.

   So GP and I and others may bark out of the pain of our indignation that we are the changers and the reformers who are left behind once the candidate gets to Washington, but destructive and illogical? That’s an overstatement.

7. IMO GP is committing a form of political suicide. Romney may not be ideologically pure, but I doubt he would have spread EV68 to all the 57 states via infected latinos and I think he would ban travel from west Africa. It is also extremely dangerous to believe a collapse of the economy will bring about a conservative epiphany on the part of the citizenry that routinely vote for leftists. Prepare for the worst while working for the better and hope for the best.

8. The attitude of letting things go all to hell – then people will vote for conservatives is quite simply hogwash.

   Things went all to hell in the early-to-middle part of the 20th century in Europe – and then Italy and Germany got Mussolini and Hitler. Which gave a whole new meaning to Hell on Earth.

   Thanks, but, I would much rather we didn’t try to repeat that.

   P.S. I hope I don’t end this thread with Godwin’s law so soon.

9. Neo (and her legion of supporters on this issue),

   What about the good ones [judges]

   Let’s have 100% liberal judges–because that’s what you’ll get if you go the GP route.

   people defend themselves by saying that this is not some sort of self-indulgent, unrealistic perfectionism?

   It’s a grandiose vision they have

   I am not unaware, nor do I downplay, the brief interludes of retrenchment during the Left’s long march. You, and others, commenters, can make a litany of such small victories. ConceptJunkie, for example, brought up the unlikelihood of ACA passing with more republicans sprinkled here, there, everywhere. I grant such things happen, not routinely enough to my liking, but they are not without small but real consequence — in the short term. A case may be made for many such episodes — the particulars of our successes. But my case does not hinge on the details of our failures. It hinges on the panorama, not the details; the triptych, not an individual panel.

   If ever I have belittled anyone (for voting) it was not my intention. My intention was to bring the big picture into focus. There’s much to commend about the citizen spirit; I applaud it; but I would remind the spirit that he is no longer the citizen of that nation . We are now in a different land, a different world, than the one to which we pledged our affinity — it no longer exists.

   I ask: In the span of the last fifty years, starting, say, with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, how far removed are we from the land of liberty? How far down the revolutionary road? In the thirty-five years since Reagan, whose terms of administration were mere speed bumps to the Leftist brigades, are we now as free as then? Indeed, isn’t it the God’s honest truth that we no longer have that country? Have we not voted ourselves the revolution? The final question: has any revolution ever been voted out?

   We will not vote this one out. I started it all with the observation that voting is a gin trap, nobbled by the revolutionaries for their aspirations — I stand by it. Vote your hearts out. You have this to galvanize you — I have been wrong before.

10. Edward Wagner,

    ”In absence of any activity he should shut his mouth yet he continues to flap his yap and pound the keyboard in comments sections.”

    Now what have I been saying all this time? That’s it harder and harder to tell the Republicans from the liberals, and here you are to make my point for me — the same tone, graciousness, and even a shut-up. I await your ad hominem reply.

11. @Parker – Not to pick on you in particular, but the Chamber of Commerce is all on board with amnesty, and so is a good chunk of the GOP, so it’s not off the wall to think Romney would have done the amnesty thing, or made a push for it. I’m certainly not convinced that the Romney would have had the effective open border policy that we’ve got right now, but I wouldn’t be surprised in many ways.

    As for the rest, I can relate to, and understand to some degree where GP is coming from. From where I sit, there is very little difference between the parties. The left is up front about what they want (when they’re not trying to use back doors, but in general, their ideology is pretty much there to look at for anyone willing to look), but the GOP isn’t much better. I’m pretty much convinced that most of them want the power that comes with being a part of Congress, or a Governor, or President, etc. I don’t think most of them actually care that much about anything other than winning the next election.

    From that perspective, I can even sympathize with someone like GP, because, like him, I think the system is fundamentally busted. We all know that no one in Congress will vote for term limits (or at least, not enough of them to matter), that they’re not going to “cut” spending (the fiascos with the sequester point to this, but even more, the years from 2000 – 2006 tell us the party ideology here…), they’re not going to ever look at serious tax reform, etc. The border isn’t going to get secured by them, they will not fight the COC and start deporting… I don’t even think the GOP will make a serious effort to pull the plug on Obamacare, even if they have a supermajority, and the presidency.

    I truly believe 90% or more of Congress will be only too happy to watch everything fall down around them, so long as they get to keep their perks.

    As for my “method”… I’ll grudgingly, and I mean GRUDGINGLY go pull the lever for the GOP at large on election day, knowing that it’s at best, a stopgap. I cannot, however, in good conscience, vote for John Kasich for Gov. here in Ohio. He lost my vote when he unapologetically expanded Medicare here. Based on the polls, my vote for him will not matter 1 whit, so I fully intend to write someone in, or simply choose none for Gov.

    At this point, I hope we can stem the tide with the election, just enough to give the people enough time to organize an Article V Convention to address areas of great importance in a way that bypasses the elected in Washington. By doing that, the people and the states will be able to neuter what is happening in Washington, and no SCOTUS, POTUS, or Congressional idiot will be able to do anything about it (at least, by the laws of the Constitution).

    Also, understand that I am not talking about a Constitutional Convention, where we scrap the old Constitution. I am referring to a method of amending the Constitution to implement fixes that Congress will not ever implement.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_Five_of_the_United_States_Constitution

    Because if we continue down the path we’re on, GP is right. It will not make one lick of difference to the plebes who is in charge, and there will be no recourse at all. Certainly not trying to plug in another John Boehner or Mitch McConnell as head of a Congressional house, or a Mittens into the role of the Presidency to slow the decline.

    I firmly believe we have effectively reached a point of no return insofar as Washington is concerned, and an Article V convention may very well be our last, best, legal hope of stopping this.

    I’m 36 this year. The debt we are accruing, the rate at which we are accruing it, the unfunded liability we have, the eventual end of the Fed pumping money into the market to keep it booming… This will all come to an end in my lifetime (barring catastrophe for me on a personal level), and the result of this mess is something that I am going to have to live through. And when it comes crashing down, and I firmly believe it will, with our current trajectory, it will be ugly.

12. waitup:

    It’s not either/or, of course. BOTH positions are profoundly destructive and illogical. The left is the primary one; GP’s is secondary, but it enables the success of the first.

    And by the way, I do NOT believe that a conservative can’t be elected, nor do I believe one must play to the middle. It depends on the conservative, the state, the moment, the issues. I have supported many many conservatives (for example, I’ve long said that Scott Walker is my pick for 2016, although that could change–and I assume most conservatives would consider him a conservative, although I’m sure some would find some flaws in him).

    However, I am a realist, and if someone you consider a RINO (such as Romney, whom I don’t consider a RINO but whom I agree is not purely conservative) is nominated, I think you should vote for him/her. Of course, no one is forcing you to do anything. You make your own decisions—and we all suffer the negative consequences, IMHO.

13. Also, for what it’s worth… I don’t think the collapse of the economy will bring about some conservative revolution.

    What it will bring will be pain, suffering, famine, plague, death… I will not attempt to say what would come after, as there are far too many possibilities. But the getting from here to there, whatever “there” is, WILL be hell on earth. It is that hell which I wish to avoid, and another “Conservative” judge on SCOTUS will not avoid it, only possibly delay it for some undetermined amount of time.

14. George Pal:

    See what I mean about grandiose? “Little victories, you say”—but big victories are very often made of a bunch or a string of little victories. Big victories can also be built on the back of little victories. But you don’t want those little victories. You’d rather throw it all in the sewer, because it’s not big enough for you. We who disagree see the big picture every bit as much as you, nor are we sanguine about the prospects.

    I don’t mean to pick on you; I’m not trying to be personal. But this issue does frustrate me almost beyond belief, because it seems almost suicidal to me. Why hand the left their victories on a platter?

15. George Pal:

    Actually, as I read Edward Wagner’s remarks, he was saying you should shut up if you’re not going to do something active about the situation.

    And yes, of course, he said it rudely, and there’s no reason you need to shut up, as far as I’m concerned. But see how you jumped to saying he was hard to tell from a liberal? That strange need to make equivalences between anyone who does something that’s the least bit like what you see as what liberals think and do, and actual liberals (in other words, your tendency to not see gradations of similarities, or that similarities in one or two respects are not total similarities) is odd, and I think part of our disagreement.

    Yes, there are conservatives who are rude and tell people to shut up if they aren’t doing something about the problem. Does this make that person indistinguishable from a liberal? No. Is it a trait that resembles something that seems more common in liberals? Yes. Sometimes people say things in frustration and anger that they don’t literally mean.

    You might have responded by saying, “That was pretty rude.” Also, “Isn’t that what many liberals do? Try to silence or insult those with whom they disagree?” Instead, you wrote, “Now what have I been saying all this time? That’s it harder and harder to tell the Republicans from the liberals…”

    It seems to me that you leap into this political-equivalence thing, extrapolating from a part to the whole, rather easily and readily.

16. This is still in the political arena.

17. Neo,

    I don’t take it as picking on me in the slightest, I said it I’ll defend it — though I don’t know that I can keep up with you. I insist I am not a political troglodyte though I probably type like one.

    First

    “BOTH positions are profoundly destructive and illogical. The left is the primary one; GP’s is secondary, but it enables the success of the first.”

    and

    ”Why hand the left their victories on a platter?”

    How is not voting for enablers of the Left any more enabling the Left than voting for the enablers — the rickety RINOs, the spineless wonders, the self serving sinecurists, et al. At best, at the very best, you might say we are both culpable. But I would protest. I may with clear conscience, on the morning after the election say well… that hadn’t any of my doing in it. The voter, on the other hand, happily tallying the next Bush, McCain, Boehner, Rubio, will eventually have to say to himself, as Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guiness) — Bridge On the River Kwai said “What have I done?”

    Two

    It’s not that the little victories are not big enough for me — who the hell am I? It’s that the little victories are not big enough for the country. I take it you are aware of the trend; it hasn’t slowed, flatlined, or reversed — it gathers momentum.

    c)

    How possibly could Edward Wagner possibly know what I’ve done or have not done? Has he an NSA dossier? Knowing such would be the first order of business, no? Not knowing and spouting off — sure sounds liberally to me — no extrapolations necessary.

18. George Pal:

    If you don’t know how voting for Romney in 2012 would have been different than not voting for him and thereby allowing a vote for Obama to go unchecked and therefore enabling his election, I don’t know how to reach you. You simply don’t seem to see differences unless the differences are absolutely 100% in every single way. You don’t see the enormous gulf between them (for example, do you really think they would have the same policy on ebola and travel restrictions?). You don’t see that Harry Reid as Majority Leader is far worse than ANY Senate Republican I can name as Majority Leader. These things are glaringly obvious, in my opinion. You don’t see that a conservative SCOTUS would be extremely important and could really make a difference, and that differences like that can snowball and build? You are in another world, a world of black-and-white fantasy, where people are either in complete agreement with you or they are as bad in your eyes as the other side.

    During the campaign of 2012 I spent probably 100,000 or more words on the topic of Romney vs. Obama and the big differences between them, so I won’t go into it again.

19. The avowed Statists are despicable; doctrinaire Conservatives who will withhold their vote, or worse, denigrate any candidate who does not meet their accepted plateau of ideological purity are nearly as damaging, and much more frustrating.

    Does anyone not believe that the country would not be in better shape by an order of magnitude, if Romney had been elected in 2012? Don’t talk to me about RINOs, talk to me about the man, his values and his competence. Can anyone actually quantify the damage done by those with word processors and microphones who denigrated him leading up to the election; and the fools who withheld their votes in response? If you meet either criteria, look at the country today, then look in the mirror.

    The ultimate irony is that so many of the GP persuasion–and I don’t know if it fits him specifically–compare every alleged RINO to Ronald Reagan. Now, Reagan was a very good President for the times; but, if you really believe that he was above compromise, or that light years separated him from a Mitt Romney, a Scott Walker, or several others, then you just do not know history.

    It is time for anyone who is not a STATIST or aligned with some other potentially Totalitarian ideology to grow up and understand two things. First, Politicians have to win elections, and to do so have to cross ideological divides to a certain extent. Second, Presidents, and Legislators also, have to govern. Compromise is not a fundamental sin, nor is it avoidable in a representative government. (I am reading an excellent novel by Robert Harris dealing with the Stalin legacy –perhaps to be Putin’s in a more civilized version–but, we generally do not accept that model of governance.)

20. Oh, try to ignore the double negative in the first sentence of the second paragraph. Drat.

21. I tend to lean more towards George Pal’s position. I no longer believe that we’ll be able to vote our way out of this.

    I’ve said numerous times that the Republican Party is becoming like the “conservative” or “right” parties of Europe. They have no intention of rolling back the Leviathan state. They merely claim that they can administer it better than their opponents. Well, that day has arrived. The establishment Republicans have said that they have no plans to repeal Obamacare, but will pass bills to “fix” it. They are also fully on board with amnesty.

    Every time the Republicans compromise with the Democrats, the country moves further to the left. I know of not a single example of compromise moving us back to traditional Constitutional principles, free markets, or individual liberty.

    The Republican establishment is perfectly fine with crony socialism, aka fascism. They just have their own set of cronies to enrich.

    Here in Pennsylvania, I will vote for the Republican governor and my Republican state legislator. But it seems like an increasingly futile endeavor. The governor is trailing badly in the polls, and the Republican-controlled legislature wasn’t even able to privatize the archaic state liquor store system, despite the fact that the effort had wide popularity with the public.

22. Oh, and I DID vote for Romney in 2012, despite swearing that I would not during the primaries.

    I won’t be doing that again.

23. Believe it or not, I am as frustrated and weary of this argument as is neo. But it is an important one for “a house divided cannot stand”.

    Several points; I freely acknowledge the validity of the points neo and others here on her side of the issue make, I just don’t think those valid points invalidate the points I and others make on our side of the issue.

    It’s important I believe to remember we’re all on the same side and essentially want the same things, we simply disagree a bit on tactics.

    And I have yet to see someone with neo’s POV be persuaded otherwise. I offer myself as evidence of the reverse, that neo’s argument, specifically regarding SCOTUS replacements, led to my willingly voting for Romney (though to be completely honest I’ve never been anti-Romney).

    In fact, I can’t recall a single instance of anyone in neo’s camp acknowledging the validity of our main point; voting in more RINOs is as certain a path toward the cliff’s edge as voting for dems. It’s just a much slower trip.

    Neo’s argument in that regard is that it gives us more time for a miracle. Perhaps, miracles do happen, however that’s not a strategy but a prayer. And it will take a miracle because GOP leadership’s support for Amnesty… in the face of vociferous opposition from their base and 75% disapproval from the American public hasn’t budged them an inch. Arguably, that’s ‘the final nail in the coffin’ and all we’re actually doing after that is ‘waiting for the fat lady to sing’.

    “My questions about the actual real-world consequences of such attitudes and the actions based on them have never been answered except for some version of “because the parties are not different enough for my tastes, they’re exactly the same and so it doesn’t matter who you vote for,” and/or “if we let liberals be elected, eventually it will drive people towards conservatism.”” neo

    I’ll answer them now. I fully agree that not voting for a RINO Presidential candidate gives the election to a leftist democrat. I fully agree that results in more liberal judges. I even agree that the proposition that a crisis “will drive people towards conservatism” is highly problematic.

    All of that is true.

    It’s also true that the GOP leadership is collaborating with the democrats and that with their collaboration we are being slowly led to the gallows. The GOP leadership’s commitment to collaboration is inarguable. Their commitment is so firm because their values and goals are not ours. In fact, arguably our values are antithetical to theirs. Given that reality, only wishful thinking can support the notion that the GOP leadership will somehow ‘get religion’.

    So what do we do? Hope for the best? From this side of the issue that appears to be all the other side is offering.

    I do have some ideas as to what we can do, as I’m sure others do as well but until we can agree as to the actual situation we face, we’ll remain ineffective in countering the opposition.

24. rickl:

    I have no idea either whether we’ll be able to vote our way out of this.

    But for sure I will not hand a victory to the other side by not voting for the best person running in my city, state, and the US.

    I have no idea why anyone would think we would need to know we can vote our way out of this in order to vote for the better person in any given situation. Do people really have so little patience, so little ability to work in an uncertain situation? (I’m not referring to you, I’m referring to those who don’t vote, or who vote for a third-party or write-in candidate who has no chance of winning).

25. Neo,

    I see every bit… well mostly, what you see in the likes of Romney, Reid, SCOTUS. I am aware of the snowball effect. But my black and white world is not colored by disagreements with my opinions but colored by black and white polity (I don’t mean racially, but that does play not an insignificant role). And no, most emphatically no, I do not see those who are not in complete agreement with me being as bad as the other side. I see them as being, at best, living and operating as though the last fifty years had not fundamentally transformed this nation and believing that standard operating procedures (such as voting) will make things right. I repeat, for effect — no revolution has ever been voted out. And at worst I see them as utterly obtuse, unable to connect the dots, one eye blind, the other closed. In either instance, not a happy outlook.

26. Geoffrey Britain:

    No, that is not my argument. I do not think “it gives us more time for a miracle.” What I object to is the word “miracle.” I have seen things change quickly in politics, not just in this country but in others.

    Just as an example—take the Soviet Union. Was the revolution a miracle (to those working towards it, that is)? Was the fall of the USSR a miracle? Neither was a miracle. They were the result of a lot of work, work that reached a critical mass at a certain point, like a supersaturated solution.

    I have never said I could foretell the future, but I really really don’t get the opinion of so many people that they can, and that some sort of fall is inevitable. Perhaps it will occur, of course. But I absolutely will not give up and therefore facilitate its happening.

27. Here is what is going to happen:
    Obama is going to grant broad amnesty, welcome 34 million new American Democrat voters, the Democrats will achieve complete control in 2016, no Conservative candidate will ever win more than 35 percent of the vote and the US is going to become Venezuela North. The 2012 election was our last chance.

28. George Pal Says:
    October 23rd, 2014 at 8:39 pm

    I do not see those who are not in complete agreement with me being as bad as the other side. I see them as being, at best, living and operating as though the last fifty years had not fundamentally transformed this nation and believing that standard operating procedures (such as voting) will make things right.

    Yep. See Garet Garrett’s “The Revolution Was”.

    He saw clearly in 1938 that the Constitutional Republic had been decisively overturned by the New Deal. Many people today still don’t get it.

29. George Pal:

    See my answer above this.

    You seem like a reasonable person in so many ways, but it seems to me that you have come to an unreasonable conclusion. And if I counsel patience, you would probably say you’ve been patient long enough.

    Which to me sounds like an impatient response. I actually see the post-FDR conservative movement as a rather young one, that only really got going in the 80s.

    I’ve already written a post on the topic of patience and the right. As for the left, it is very patient.

30. Smithson Pierce:

    Yes, that’s been the prediction for quite some time.

    And it may come to pass that way. That’s why I was sick to my stomach around the time of the 2012 election. It felt like the last chance.

    But I certainly don’t know that’s what will happen; it really depends on the reaction of the American people to it. The best laid plans of mice and men don’t always work out—for the left as well as the right—so I am more philosophical and humble about my predictions, and I am not at all willing to give up.

31. I hope I don’t sound like a racist when I say this but this country is becoming less and less white. Somehow “George Pal” thinks a soon to be majority of minorities can be persuaded to vote conservative – HA! I will try to step gently here but seeing how certain groups of people can be easily fooled by smooth talkers (see: Ferguson, Travon, OJ, La Raza, etc etc) I don’t see a true conservative like Reagan ever being elected in this country again.

32. Thanks neo for wading into it again. There has to be push back, whether we like it or not.

    Much of what the Left has gained has been due simply to the Right abandoning the field. In field after field, from education, to entertainment, to the news media, and Wall Street, conservatives simply threw up their hands and withdrew.

    This is from memory and an over-simplification, but I seem to recall reading that, in the last election, 46% of men and 54% of women voted, where men make up 49% of the population while women make up 51%. So, men voted by less than their percentage of the population whereas women voted by more. That was the margin of victory for the Democrats. So, if you’re at all confused about why policy in the last 50 years seems geared toward women, that’s why.

    Guys, no matter your frustrations, please stop abandoning the field. You gotta man up.

33. Late to the discussion, but I’d like to comment on something that seems to have slid by the wayside. At 7:01 PM above, Neo wrote:

    See what I mean about grandiose? “Little victories, you say”–but big victories are very often made of a bunch or a string of little victories.

    While many on the GP side of the discussion confess to being too tired and impatient for little victories, consider that the lust after big victories also breeds big defeats.

    Just as Obama eschewed the mundane chores of governance to push his big-victory social transformation, his presidency now suffers both because he ignored the basic foundation (governance) needed for a big victory and his big victory (Obamacare and his apology tour) were both incompetently planned and run.

    This gives me great pause about the upcoming “Republican wave,” such that it will be. If the Republicans walk away as big winners on November 4th, will they repeat the same mistakes Obama made? Such a win could be as much of a death knell for conservatism as Obama has been for progressivism and the Democrats.

    Furthermore, it remains true that the Gramscian march which brought us to this point did not occur in only several decades. It took the better part of a century to reach this point (even longer if one begins with Marx, himself), why would we expect that it can be purged within a generation?

    Go for the big victories when they can be successfully acted upon, otherwise you’ve gotten out too far in front of your supply lines. Take the little victories anytime you can get them and use them as foundation stones on which to build the future and the big victories.

34. neo,

    I’m not surprised at your objection to my use of the word ‘miracle’ to characterize your position. I think it accurate, however distasteful it may be and here is why; Reagan’s election was an example of a sudden change for the better. But he failed in changing the country’s long term direction and I believe that to be because the cultural momentum of America was and is toward the regulatory entitlement state, toward ever larger government. Reagan correctly identified that “government isn’t the solution, government is the problem”. Unfortunately, the 2012 election proved that the lesson didn’t take because by and large, Americans want a safety net and, the larger the better.

    The fall of the Soviet Union was a direct result of Reagan’s garnering support for an arms race. That’s something a President can do but they cannot change cultural assumptions and frankly that is what is needed. It’s not an opinion but a logical certainty that America is on an unsustainable trajectory and, because it is unsustainable it will, one way or another, end.

    And I greatly admire your refusal to give up and second it.

    Vote for the RINO candidate but we must find a way to wrest control of the primary process away from the republican establishment or nothing will stop our march to the gallows.

35. Neo,

    ”I actually see the post-FDR conservative movement as a rather young one, that only really got going in the 80s.”

    I await your post on the conservative movement. I’ll have something to say. Count on it.

36. In hindsight, both Reagan and Thatcher proved to be only temporary roadblocks in both countries’ headlong slide into socialist totalitarianism.

    Both the US and England are far worse off today than they were in 1980.

37. Smithson Pierce,

    IMO it’s not the racial makeup of the country wherein the problem lies but in the failure of blacks, Hispanics and many young whites to embrace key traditional cultural virtues; specifically education, a strong work ethic, acceptance of personal responsibility, familial obligations and delayed gratification. A mix of embracing and neglect won’t do, all are critical.

    “Here’s Williams’ roadmap out of poverty: Complete high school; get a job, any kind of a job; get married before having children; and be a law-abiding citizen. Among both black and white Americans so described, the poverty rate is in the single digits.” Walter Williams

38. I understand GP completely.

    First of all, this state doesn’t even have a horse in this race as our two Dumb and Dumber senators are not up for reelection. Even if they were, it would be unlikely that they would not be reelected by our Dumb and Dumber electorate. Ma and Pa Kettle were in fact real people that lived near here.

    Secondly, this district has been in the hands of the jackass party since 1965 and if anything has gotten more liberal. The last guy had the office for over 30 years.

    And lastly, diminishing numbers of industrial workers and their replacement by liberal and uber-liberal knowledge workers and undocumented Democrats has pushed the needle from R-55 D-42 to R-41 D-56 state wide in the last 30 years. Oh and our idiot gov thinks the greatest danger is from global warming. It has become futile here and is getting worse. This state went for Kerry for bleeps sake.

    I had an opportunity after Bush-Gore to examine one county’s election equipment (OCR type), software and election processes including the Secretary of State’s testing processes. I had fixed problems or led teams fixing problems in everything from spacecraft to multi-billion dollar ERP systems so I was not without skills for this type of survey.

    I was appalled. The amount of naé¯ve trust was ridiculous. I concluded that only in-person voting, dipping one’s finger in the ink and tabulation machines with external wire and plug programming should be allowed. Of course what we got was all mail voting where the PTB get to handle our votes before they are counted by the same stupid equipment as before.

    Maybe after the whole thing implodes…

39. GB,

    . . . [Reagan] failed in changing the country’s long term direction and I believe that to be because the cultural momentum of America was and is toward the regulatory entitlement state . . . .”

    I offer that all institutions tend toward growth and expansion of themselves; it is the natural state. Given that to be true:

    1) The larger an organization becomes, the more corruptible it becomes;

    2) The more corruptible an organization becomes, the more corrupt it becomes.

    That the govt should follow this evolution is no surprise. It’s made up of regulators and just as surgeons cut and plumbers plumb, regulators regulate and then they look for more things to regulate.

    It means that the good fight is not a one-time victory, a Reagan administration or a single war but a life style. IMO the problem was not that Reagan failed to return the country to its roots, but that his initial effort received no consistent (or perhaps substantive) follow up in subsequent administrations (the Contract with America would have been a good start but it remains only a good try).

40. “. . . we must find a way to wrest control of the primary process away from the republican establishment or nothing will stop our march to the gallows.”

    Step 1) consistently wrest control away from the Progressives;

    Step 2) Replace the RINOs with true conservatives.

    I don’t think we can go from where we are directly to step 2.

41. One thing I do asset: that “these type of people” are not persuadable. This post proves to me that a major shift has already occurred and the house is being united. At least for the time being. I surely count myself as one having gone over to the other side for reasons of utility and probably just getting mellowed with age.

42. I too have witnessed the unraveling of the concepts that guided the founders as DC becomes ever more bloated and intrusive. I too am frustrated and sometimes dismayed. And yes, I recognize that the gop establishment is on board with amnesty and are in bed with crony capitalism. The long game is to defeat them and replace them with young blood such as Cruz and Gowdy. The place to do that is in the primaries. Support truly conservative candidates, become involved at the local party level.

    Some, for obvious reasons, think the situation is hopeless. I certainly understand why. I also know that the sure fire way to lose the game is to walk off the playing field.

43. Conservatives dissatisfied with the GOP do not “dismiss any idea of incremental change”, they notice that despite a two decade electoral winning streak, there was not a single incremental change in favor of conservatives. Incremental change goes only one way. In every election since the eighties, conservatives have turned out in response to warnings about what would happen in the court if they stayed. That will never change, in every election the GOP will give conservatives a choice between plummeting to destruction, or merely sliding. The GOP thinks it has conservatives whipped. For now they are correct. The path forward for conservatives lies across the dead corpse of the GOP, at least as it exists today.

44. The Left is waging war. Republicans are playing at politics. In no situation whatsoever does people winning at politics beat those who are winning at war.

    They are in the wrong arena entirely.

45. Rush today said something I related to. He mentioned when he was first making a name for himself as a radio broadcaster, and said he was naive; he was beginning to discover that not all GOP politicians were conservatives. One said to him, “Can’t you do something about those Christians?? They’re KILLING us!” and when Rush expressed surprise, the pol backed off and tried to pass it off with a laugh.

    I’ve noticed the same thing. However, we can wish they were more conservative; we can hold their feet to the fire; but we can’t do Squat with the libbies, so we have to get behind the old Elephant and push as hard as we can.

    ‘T’was ever thus.

46. Ymarsakar is right.

47. I stand by GP.

48. Randy:

    What are you taking about, two decade electoral winning streak?

    The GOP was in control of Congress and the Presidency once in that time: Bush’s first term. And Bush, unfortunately, although he was socially conservative and mostly (not totally) conservative in foreign policy, was really not fiscally conservative.

    That’s it. No other Republican president has had a Republican Congress (sometimes one body or the other, but never both at once) since Eisenhower. And he only had both houses of Congress with him for 2 years of the 8 he was in office.

    You have to go back to before FDR to find a Republican president and Congress except for those exceptions. Take a look at the charts. They are very edifying. You’ll see, also, that from FDR to the early part of the Clinton years the Democrats had smooth sailing during their presidencies, with both houses controlled by Democrats as well. Do you understand how important that was?

    Of course, part of the conservative task involves lots of other things: education, public entertainment, the press, as I’ve written many many times before.

    By the way, in some ways (such as gun control) the Court has become more conservative over time. I’m sure it’s not enough to satisfy you, though. There is no question in my mind it would become a great deal more conservative with just one more conservative SCOTUS justice on the bench. But those who won’t vote for a Republican are making sure that won’t happen.

    By the way, if we get a totally Republican Congress (both houses) and a Republican president and still things don’t improve, I’ll probably get more discouraged myself. But till that happens, I see no reason to believe it wouldn’t matter. But nothing is forever, everything is in flux, and even if the country becomes more conservative for a while it can always move in the other direction. That’s life.

49. Remember people orwell (i think it was him)
    Said “who ever is currently winning will seem
    insurmountable ”
    It only seems bad, plus the *new media* is out there now that will factor in, somehow. People aren t going to stand for the krap that government has been able to get away with thus far. I know the Dems are really looking at a radical *overhaul/elimination* of the Bill of Rights !! Will America stand for that ??
    And I have seen NY Geo Pataki with this ad lately saying “We can see that bloated government dosen t work ….. & some other remark & directs viewers to a website ” So it looks like there are somethings in the works. Stick with it, things can happen so quickly now with the new media, believe that.
    Sadly this ISIS scum may *push* things, the world will eventually have to get on board to do something about them !

50. Well I DID predict the implosion of the USSR — for mid-August 1991.

    It occurred much less because of Reagan’s build up — and much more because of the horrific debacle of Desert Storm.

    Truly MAJOR reversals in political trends occur solely in crisis.

    Barry’s executive waiver may be enough to cause a Constitutional crisis.

    The Chambers of Commerce want more H1b visas… THAT”S IT.

    They don’t want a flood of Latinos let alone 100,000 totally useless Haitians.

    {

    Haitians have a HUGE language and cultural barrier far higher than any Latino. Consequently, their unemployability is sky high.

    }

    Under no circumstance does the CoC ever imagine that Barry Soetoro is going to crush the Chamber’s own political clout.

    BTW, the CoC is larded to the hilt with DEMOCRAT businessmen:

    Bill Gates
    Michael Dell
    Warren Buffett
    Larry Ellison
    The Google boys — heck all of Silicon Valley.
    Big Construction
    Big property development
    Big Business, generally is DEMOCRAT

    The zany idea that the CoC has ANY correlation with the GOP is absurd on its face.

    The GOP is strong in SMALL BUSINESSES and FARMS.

    &&&&

    The corporatists listed above also throw big bucks to the GOP… but their hears are with Big Government.

    Eric Cantor was, and is, a perfect example of a Republican than became bent as a result of Democrat cross-over funding from Wall Street and the Chamber of Commerce.

    And he is hardly alone.

    &&&

    The end game for Barry’s economics is DETROIT.

    He’s created an unfundable government.

    When this happens the reversal is brutal, abrupt, and sharp.

    Based upon the current ethos — I expect that Barry will establish the basis for a fulsome race war… with a major civil component.

    The crisis will be global and epic, because America is the financial Atlas to the World.

    &&&

    Back to the implosion of the USSR. Why did I predict it TO THE DAY?

    No coup could possibly succeed if Gorby was in Greater Moscow. The plotters HAD to wait for his traditional mid-August vacation in Sochi. (EVERY Chairman took his vacation in Sochi… since Nikita.)

    The TRUE well spring of the implosion: the vicious infighting between the Communist Party, the KGB, the GRU, the Red Army and the entire defense production complex. This spit fest was DIRECTLY triggered by the debacle in the desert.

    EVERY SINGLE SOVIET THESIS was shown to be horrifically wrong.

    Bad politics — the Party
    Bad equipment — defense production
    Bad doctrine — the Red Army
    Bad spying — the GRU
    Bad scheming — the KGB

    The revolution turned on the exposure of failure resultant to Desert Storm.

    It DID NOT occur because of Reagan’s build up, per se. Gorby and company would have carried on in their ruinous ways for decades to come if their follies had not been exposed.

    &&&

    Which brings us to Barry Soetoro.

    He’s NOT A DEMOCRAT. He’s actively destroying the Democrat party. He’s bleeding it of funds — like no other politician. This is what his fund raisers are all about.

    He’s draining the coffers of every Democrat/ shaking them down … so that he’ll have an independent financial political base after 2017. He’s going to transform the party of Mondale and Humphrey into a creature left of McGovern and McCarthy.

    He’s also destroying the Congressional Black Caucus. It’s already the case that Latinos rank as the dominant ethnic minority. Latinos hate Blacks, just ask the Crips and the Bloods how it’s all worked out in LA.

    Consequently, Black representation in Congress will virtually evaporate. Latinos will win every Democrat primary.

    I can easily imagine a Latino president sending Blacks back to Africa — all expenses paid — en masse. Latinos are already driving Blacks out of most West Coast urban settings… the hard way.

    This ejection would very likely turn on the Muslim question, for Latinos will eject Muslims en masse, too. The inevitable Muslim atrocity will trigger the policy over night and straight out of the blue.

    It’s the way they roll.

    None of these travails will break new ground. They’ve all occurred before — in earlier times and in other nations.

    The strategic insanity of the jihadis will force events. Like the scorpion, they will not be able to stop themselves.

51. Dang typos.

52. barry does not help himself at all with his
    Muslim coddling
    Now they are saying lone wolf in NY attacks 2 police
    by a terrorist. !

53. neo….

    You left out a HUGE epic sea change in the Senate.

    Reid nuked the filibuster. !!!!

    It was the filibuster that stopped Bush dead in his tracks in the early 21st Century.

    Should a Republican president and Congress call to order in 2017, they could run right over the Liberals.

    One would expect such a time to feature massive repeals of Barry’s legacies, of sweeping investigations, devastating revelations…

    The Bourbon French regime blew up — entirely — when its financial affairs became widely known.

    For some reason the popular memory has skipped past the staggering insolvency of the French Crown.

    In a similar vein, insolvency has deposed Democrats from Detroit to Harrisburg.

    Governor Moonbeam should take heed.

54. Egads, it’s self-righteous babies…. AKA Moonbats of the Right!

55. blert,

    I like the way you think. 😉 I totally agree that 90% of today’s elected democrats are vastly different than the Jacksons and Moynihans of the past. They are not code pink commies, although they are glad to use them for the useful idiots that they are. Instead, they are fascists. Their fattest useful idiots are people like the Gates and Zuckerbergs who don’t realize the fascists are crocodiles who will eat them last.

56. Excellent, blert.

    As an aside, I am re-reading Garet Garrett’s article that I linked above. It’s been years since I first read it. It is powerful, and I strongly urge everybody to read it in full.

    I can see some eerie parallels between the 1930s and our own time. For example, compare the “stimulus” with the “stabilization fund”. Both were slush funds authorized by Congress for the President to use as he pleased.

    And the Supreme Court upheld the “gold cases” in much the same way that it upheld Obamacare:

    And when the “gold cases” went to the United States Supreme Court – the unreconstructed court – the judgment was one that will be forever a blot on a certain page of American history. The Court said that what the government had done was immoral but not illegal. How could that be? Because the American government, like any other government, has the sovereign power to commit an immoral act. Until then the American government was the only great government in the world that had never repudiated the word engraved upon its bond.

57. To those who do not vote for ideologically pure gopers, I have one simple question, are you as well prepared as me and mine if TSHTF? If not turn off the tv, get off the sofa, and hold your nose and vote gop. Me and mine are prepped and ready to make a last stand. If you are not, you are pissing up a rope with your whining and temper tantrums over ‘purity’. You are not a part of the solution, you are a part of the problem. Deal with it. Me and mine are cocked and locked, I suspect that you are holding onto only your ‘purity’. Sorry to be so in your purity faces, but YOU ARE A PART OF THE €£¥â‚© ING problem. Wither and die or take yardage. Its a slow, incremental game. Walk off the field and you lose. As you lose, me and mine will make a last stand while you will be dead, unprepared cowards. The truth is harsh. Deal with it.

58. “Republicans vs. Democrats: does it even matter?”

    That’s way I’m sabotaging the system and voting Libertarian. At least that party hasn’t had a chance to f*** things up…yet.

59. “because the parties are not different enough for my tastes, they’re exactly the same and so it doesn’t matter who you vote for,”

    a long while back liberals realized that they could just run on a rpublican ticket… that is, vote for dem, you get a liberal, vote for republican, you get a liberal.

    if you do some research you can actually find the socialist/communist articles that discuss it, and put forth this as a solution going back as far as the middle of last century

    duh

    in the game of good cop bad cop, both are cops

60. rickl @ 12:39 alludes to Garet Garrett, by the way, a must read as rickle says, here’s Garrett’s litany on voting:

    Few of the great majority that voted in November, 1932 for less Federal government and fewer Federal functions could have imagined that by the middle of the next year the extensions of government and the multiplication of its functions would have been such as to create serious administrative confusion in Washington

    And certainly almost no one who voted in November, 1932 for a sound gold standard money… less than a year later… the President would be saying: “We are thus continuing to move toward a managed currency.”

    Few of the majority that voted in November 1932 for an end of deficit spending and a balanced Federal budget could have believed that the President’s second budget message to Congress would shock the financial reason of the country.

    They did not votee for getting into World War I. They voted against it.

    They did not vote for the New Deal. They voted against it.

    There is another litany of what had come to pass in this country without the people having had even an opportunity to vote on — such as the welfare state. All of which I add as evidentiary to the statement in my initial comment — “Ultimately, people get not what they vote for but what they will stand for”.

61. GP has it right. Let it burn if the candidate of your party is indistinguishable from the actions of the other party’s candidate. It is the only way to bring it down (other than by force). Notice that Media Matters and Politico, “Tingles” Matthews and other stalwart liberals have been airing their opposition to some of Barry O’s actions and plans and that was unthinkable 2 years ago. The only way to change things is to let them have the reins and run it into a ditch and see that the train wreck that results really hurts them as much or more than us. The gutless wonders in Congress have an approval rating of 14% (Gallup poll) and they don’t care about that at all as long as they can have their pensions, their own health care plan and perk upon perk. They move to D.C. and most become removed from the values of the people that sent them there. Their new peers are others in power and they quest for power and perks is all they care about. Let it burn and we will either get a chance to pick up the pieces or a chance to start over. Either way is better than the slow death we are suffering now. Local elections are a dog of a different flavor and still matter.

62. “People are always looking for the single magic bullet that will totally change everything. There is no single magic bullet.”

    It took many years for the Left to get where it is, it did not just happen. Giving up will just ensure that we will not be able to correct the course. Life is never a straight line.

63. “IMO the problem was not that Reagan failed to return the country to its roots, but that his initial effort received no consistent (or perhaps substantive) follow up in subsequent administrations” T

    No man could return the country to its roots. Reagan ‘failed’ because he didn’t get the long term support needed and IMO that is because too many Americans are living in denial of reality.

64. Final thoughts; I am not in favor of “letting it burn” but I do foresee continued support for RINOs as conferring upon conservatives shared responsibility for the coming debacles we face.

    And with the MSM’s propaganda, shared responsibility means getting all the blame. Which will almost certainly result in America doubling down on the very policies that resulted in the crisis. ‘Doubling down’ will mean giving the federal government greatly expanded powers to deal with the crisis.

    I invite anyone whose position is in agreement with neo’s to address that point. I’d love to see a reasoned, logical rebuttal that is persuasive.

65. Geoffrey Britain:

    Actually, that’s easy as pie to answer. The answer is simplicity itself.

    The answer is that you’re in another world from the real world. In the real world, it doesn’t matter, because the MSM will blame conservatives for everything no matter who’s in charge, including Obama and the left.

    The MSM does not care about actual cause and effect. And they most definitely don’t care whether conservatives supported or didn’t support Republicans if those Republicans are in charge, either. Do you actually think the MSM (or the Democrats, for that matter, which is very much the same thing) is interested in making such distinctions?

66. Art:

    The Progressive movement started in the Republican party.

    It split out to become the Bull Moose party.

    Which threw the election to Wilson.

    He promptly brought Jim Crow to Washington and created the modern ethos of a Democrat administration in DC.

    Polk famously ran on NOT spending Federal dollars on infrastructure!

    Jackson ran on shutting down Big Banking. He got the Federal government so far out of debt that the nation went into the most severe depression in its history. (1830s being much worse than 1930s — hence “Wooden nickels” — itself an ex-post facto term — as nickel was not used for a 5 cent piece until later.)

    George Pal:

    I’ve made that point multiple times. FDR ran AGAINST — ALL — of the policies that he immediately adopted. He pulled a total one-eighty!

    For this, he stands alone.

    His campaign utterances on gold policy TRIGGERED the height of the Depression angst on Wall Street. A number of sharp, astonishing, sell-offs occurred directly as a result of FDR’s position statements.

    He ran up one trial balloon about taking the dollar off of the gold standard — and Wall Street had a fit. Hoover couldn’t get FDR to speak responsibly on the matter. The back-and-forth triggered yet more sell-offs.

    FDR’s gold antics were so well anticipated that no small amount of specie was shuttled across the border to Canada. It’s THIS coinage that is solely responsible for the collectables market in US gold that exists. FDR grabbed every last coin he could and banked them — in Fort Knox — custom built just for this purpose.

    BTW, many of those coins, stayed as coins, in Fort Knox for decades on end. They were never melted. Very much later some attempt was made to sell off — to collectors — some of those coins.

    FDR’s gold policies destroyed the money base in Europe. By 1937 America had over 20,000 tons of ‘official’ gold. It was this imbalance that triggered the Bretton Woods deal in 1944.

    At this time America’s ‘official’ (central bank) gold is touted as being 8,000 tons. During the 1960s America was shipping gold to France by the jet-plane load.

    Once FDR cut the dollar loose from gold he was free to expand the US budget like topsy.

    It’s with no small irony that FDR pulled America out of the Depression only after Hitler rampaged through Europe. Until then, EVERY New Deal policy was a dud. A full list of these duds would shock the mind. The MSM sweeps them under the rug.

    In his own way, FDR was as nutty and capricious as Stalin and Hitler. He is now known to have attacked his Democrat friends and supporters time and time again… always with under handed moves. His favorite was the IRS audit. He’s the president that first used it as a political weapon — against Democrat supporters. (!)

    { He wanted to punish them — indirectly — for not coming across with even MORE dough! In one case, he wanted a donor to put his WIFE on the donor’s payroll — in a fake job — that was to pay $5,000 per annum. Obviously, the money would’ve gone straight into the family kitty. In today’s terms, $5,000 would equate to $300,000 — strangely close to what Michelle pulled in from her fake job.}

67. My guess is that 50% of major Republican court appointees have held to originalism, as opposed to 0% of Democratic appointees. The first number may be increasing in recent years because of the Federalist Society.

68. neo,

    Sorry but easy as pie simplicity doesn’t cover the half of it.

    Of course I don’t think that the MSM will make those distinctions and of course they’ll blame the republicans and conservatives anyway.

    But your prior logic applies here as well. Why provide them with ready made ammunition and make it easier for them? A lie without factual support is much easier to expose than one with some truth to it.

    ObamaCare is a perfect example, yes the dems and the MSM try to place the blame on the republicans but that meme hasn’t much traction because as you well know, not one republican voted for it. Which is why the dems and MSM propaganda focuses upon the evil insurance companies much more than they do the evil republicans when seeking to deflect criticism of ObamaCare.

    Voting for RINOs results in the charge of shared responsibility sticking because there’s some truth to it. Republicans will be reduced to saying, well we did vote for dems bills but only because we couldn’t get them to vote for what we really wanted and we were so sure of that, that we didn’t even try… and that pathetic position means game over.

69. Geoffrey Britain:

    I disagree.

    Where the MSM is concerned, support or no support for their claims of Republican guilt really is irrelevant. I’m not joking, either: it is irrelevant. They do not care if their arguments are supported or not. If not, they will twist the facts to make it seem as though they support the argument. And their readers will, for the most part, believe them.

    What’s more, that argument (about not giving them support) is a weak one, because it assumes that Republicans in charge will be a disaster and will lead to all sorts of bad things. I don’t think that will happen. Of course, if a person does believe that, he/she wouldn’t be voting for Republicans anyway. So the “let’s not vote for Republicans because we don’t want to give the MSM support for their criticisms” argument isn’t even needed in that case. If a person thinks the results of Republicans in power will be a disaster, don’t vote for them—unless that person thinks Democrats in power will be an even worse disaster.

70. What do you call people like me: A Biblical Conservative who’s also a Constitutionalist Conservative (meaning that I subscribe to an originalist hermeneutic) who despises RINOs and when my candidate loses in the primary (as happened with Huckabee and Santorum) I will vote for the RINO I despise (McCain and Romney) only because I am so against Liberalism?

71. I believe there was voter fraud involved in the last two presidential elections. But the reason the last two presidential elections were lost is simple. Too many people, who would have voted republican, sat home. The millions who did, would have turned the tide. Both times.

72. Truth Unites:

    A sensible person?

73. br549

    I’ve previously posted why I believe 2012 was a totally hacked tabulation.

    Of late it’s come out that voting attempts for Republicans are transmuted — right at the electronic machine — into Democrat votes.

    The players claimed that the device was “out of adjustment” which is total nonsense for any digital system.

    Unlike an analog computer, digital systems can lock up — but they can’t go out of adjustment. It’s impossible. Such ‘errors’ are absolutely systematic — and intended.

    Anyone who thinks the cookie jar jumped off the shelf on its own — well — I guess some will ‘buy’ anything.

    The vote in Florida was obviously cooked… digitally… and remotely.

    Google and NSA have backdoors into all MSFT operating systems. Take a wild guess what operating system is used to tabulate the ‘secure’ vote?

    Duh!

    As Stalin put it: it matters most who tabulates the vote… not who voted… or who was on the ballot.

74. I believe there was voter fraud involved in the last two presidential elections.

    That’s conveniently forgetting Nixon vs JFK. Intentional?

75. As you lose, me and mine will make a last stand while you will be dead, unprepared cowards. The truth is harsh.

    Most of them went underground decades or years ago. Far longer than you have been prepared since you were alerted to something going on.

    30-50 years, for some of the extreme tangos spots out there. As one mark, how many years ago did you read Unintended Consequence vs how many years it has been out since its printing?

    That’s how long you weren’t as prepared as the others.

76. Y,

    You have no knowledge about me and mine. We were prepared in the 1730s (long before my time) and remained prepared through the 1800 hundreds, the 1940s, 50s, and into the early decades of the 21st century. We grow and preserve food, we learn to shoot at an early age including reloading, and we are among the do not tread on me crowd. Your smug and condescending imaginary superiority is boring. Where will you be when TSHTF? Fighting your imaginary resistance in empty handed combat? Your disdain is pathetic. You do not know me and mine, so why the criticism? YATHYRIO.

77. Voting GOP does not change the trajectory of the country. While have Democrats – especially of the variety we have seen over the past 25 and preceding 8 years – are actively destroying the country with policies and ideologies that are bereft of anything resembling reality and reason, do not forget that the GOP as it is today is NOT a constitutional-conservative institution. They believe in big government and sadly, they profit from big government.

    Just look at the Bush years from 2001-2006. The GOP had control of both chambers of Congress and the White House, yet they grew the bureaucracy and spent more than any other administration in history until the coming of Obama.

    Forget about how having a Republican is better than a Democrat in office. I get that. Now tell me, once they get into office, what will they do to reverse the trajectory of the past 50 to 100 years????

78. I don’t know what the rules about cut and paste from another blog are but Maetenloch from Ace of Spades said this:

    I’m with Neo-neocon on this. I’ve heard all the arguments for why it makes no difference who’s in charge over the years and I find them….unpersuasive. I’ve been in the trenches for conservatism for a long, long time and at this point I know who my enemies are. And they’re not RINOs/the GOP establishment or even the Republican party in general. So I’m going to keep on fighting the good fight, doing what I can when I can, pushing conservatism forward when it’s possible – stymying the Left when it’s not, and not worrying about the confident voices explaining why it’s all meaningless and hopeless anyway.

79. In organizing my precinct, I called a lot of voters. From 10-15 percent I got the “Yeah, it’s all corrupt so I’m not going to participate” reaction.

    Vanity is, I’m convinced, a factor here. I won’t get muddy and take a black eye from people I consider beneath me. I’m the pure one. I don’t play their games. They won’t drag me into their mess. And I won’t be foolish enough to think my participation can possibly make anything better.

    It may be needless to say, but I was holding their voting record in my hand as we spoke, and these people NEVER participated in the primaries, which is where 85% of Congress and the state legislatures are chosen.

    By 10 percent of the voters.

    More people need to know this, and take courage.

80. J.J.Sefton:

    Reversing the trajectory of the last half-century involves passing legislation and appointing judges (SCOTUS and federal) and having more effective borders. But even more, it involves getting more conservatives into media (entertainment and journalism) and education (higher and lower). That is a huge job, a difficult one, and beyond the purview of a mere politician. Even the best ones are far from being miracle-workers. The problem is cultural.

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