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The war between the conservatives and the GOP — 64 Comments

1. If the Republicans become just like the Democrats and by doing so manage to win every election, who really won?

   Honestly, who you vote for at the present really doesn’t matter very much. The real battle will be won or lost long-term through culture and education. It all comes down to cultural themes and at an even more basic level, world view.

2. I can’t bear to analyze the data, but I suspect that the election was lost largely because a few big states are in the bag for the Dems, who then only need to win a few smaller ones to put them over the top. And statistically, a few of the wobblers are inevitably going to go their way.

3. Yawn…
   Wondering if israel will act b4 3pm….
   The bombings and act of war are being ignored as escalation continues

4. The people staying home aren’t conservative, they’re the far Right. And they’re no more serious about governance than the Left.

5. Yeah that’s pretty much how I see it. I also strongly suspect that you’re right neo about there being less small government conservatives than perhaps folks like rickl think, which if true means that a third, small government party just can’t win.

   The explanation that makes the most sense to me as to why the GOP establishment has repeatedly disappointed small government conservatives is because the big donors to the GOP aren’t small government conservatives but instead are fiscal conservatives who wish to maintain a favorable status quo. And that is why, when push comes to shove on the issues small government conservatives care about, the GOP caves, as they have to maintain the large contributions from donors who don’t care about the growth in government etc. and because those large contributions are critical to the election process. (66% of Romney’s contributions came from big donors)

   Given that reality, unless the republican’s big donors wake up before both their income and their assets are permanently seized (the left and liberals don’t believe in other people’s private property) the GOP won’t otherwise change and so we’re stuck with the GOP merely trying to slow down the rush to the left.

   As we all know, that’s not working.

   I’m also not hopeful that a fiscal collapse and/or another 9/11 will result in the American public awakening and finally rejecting democrat’s ‘solutions’. I now think it more likely that both the democrats and their supporters (that growing 47%) will double down, “expecting different results”.

   I’ve reluctantly reached the conclusion that we’ve collectively passed the proverbial ‘tipping point’.

   There’s far too much evidence in support of that possibility and I see little to no evidence otherwise.

   Nor will a secession movement or even a civil war succeed. To do so would require the backing, or at least abstention, of the US Military and there are significant developments that indicate that the officer core (especially at the top, newly graduated and cadet level) are increasingly sympathetic to the left. Political correctness now and has for decades, ruled the military.

   Unless the left attempts to seize power in an attempted coup (unlikely) the US Military will support whomever has been ‘lawfully’ elected.

   We’re screwed because the American people are destroying themselves and using their votes to “trade a little liberty for a little [economic] security” and too many Americans have fully bought into the left’s narrative and memes.

   If we’re going to have any chance at all, elected republicans have to awaken and perform much better but what’s the likelihood of that when the SecState nomination of John Kerry was only opposed by three (!) Senators…

   So the only hope I see and it’s a slim one is that democrats will at some point, badly “overplay their hand” and create an awakening among that 47%.

   But you don’t win wars, not even cultural ones by counting on the other side to screw up.

   A depressing assessment? Sure but reality cares not for either optimism or pessimism.

   It is, as they say, what it is…

6. Concur with the saying. Still, It should have been glaringly obvious that 4 more years of The Won would be far, far worse than anything Romney could do.

7. Romney fell afoul of the excitement factor. Like his father, he really didn’t have a reason for running for president and it showed. He still saw himself as a good manager who like Jeff Imnelt of GE could get along with the liberals by co-opting them. Thus Romneycare along with a slew of other programs in Massachusetts. He forgot he was elected in Mass because the Dems had just gotten too crooked. It happens every so often then after things cool down they elect another Dem governor to keep the party rolling!

   This is what alot of conservatives were afraid of, not that he wasn’t better than Obama, but that he would end up doing about the same things with better budgeting.

8. It doesn’t matter how well you communicate if people do not agree with your message. I do not believe this problem is merely a failure to communicate.

9. Steve D: I agree wholeheartedly about the importance of culture and education.

   I vehemently disagree when you say that it doesn’t matter much who wins at this point. The parties are not dissimilar enough to please either you or me, it’s true. But saying that Republicans have become “just like the Democrats” is hyperbole, and incorrect, IMHO. Do you really think Romney and a Republican Congress would be doing what Obama and the Democratic Senate are trying to do right now? Or that foreign policy would be the same? Or the Cabinet (Secretary of State, for example)? Or Supreme Court appointees (maybe especially SCOTUS appointees).

   I simply cannot understand such assertions. To me, they seem transparently incorrect. Meanwhile, it matters very much. Simply put, both parties can do damage, but the Democrats do far more damage on many levels. And some of this damage may indeed be irreversible.

10. ‘Nor will a secession movement or even a civil war succeed.’

    All that is left is civil disobedience on a massive scale.

11. He still saw himself as a good manager

    God forbid we have a good manager in the White House.

    Much better to have a vacuous celebritard from the Hollywood-DC axis to deliver vague vaporings (I’m on an alliterative “v” kick today, for some reason) on subjects he knows nothing about.

12. I think a lot depends on whether immigration reform “succeeds. If the democrats get another 11 million new voters, it doesn’t really matter what the republicans do.
    If the bill doesn’t go through, it will depend on the two candidates of course. The republicans are in trouble if they nominate another candidate the base doesn’t like. Unless the democrats nominate a really pathetic candidate.
    When you write about the voters that stayed home, you seem to be ignoring that huge percentage that always stays home. While continuing to point a finger at the sheep-like conservatives overly influenced by talk radio. (dead horse alert!) Saw my non-voter neighbor outside recently. He seemed surprised Obama got re-elected. Not connecting the dots with not voting himself. He was leaving it up to others but they got it wrong. And if it makes you feel any better, he used to be a defense intel analyst. Yikes!

13. To me, they seem transparently incorrect.
    They do but only if you look at the problem on a superficial level.
    If you are heading towards a cliff and you are past the point where you can stop then you are going to die no matter if you are driving at 50 mph or 100 mph. You might as well bank the politics and focus on the education to keep alive even the possibility of freedom for future generations. If you are not past the point of no return then I would l agree that buying time might make sense assuming you have some sort of decent plan to reverse course.
    But in either case focusing on education will give you a whole lot more ‘bang for the buck’ than politics.
    I wonder, did the majority of social programs get passed by a Democrat or Republican Congress? What about tax increases?

14. Steve D: I think you are wrong, wrong, wrong.

    It is not a mutually exclusive duo. Both can be worked on.

    A better analogy is if a person has, let’s say, a perhaps-fatal disease. Do you let it run rampantly out of control, or do you try treating it and slowing down its progress?

    In my opinion your reasoning shows a sort of hubristic pessimism that I’ve seen over and over again, not from you personally, but from many people all around the right side of the blogosphere and elsewhere on the right. You know, positively know, we’ve passed the point of no return? No, you do not know that at all. In the meantime, you let things get out of control and let more and more damage be done?

    It’s also not analogous to going over a cliff, which happens all at once. Smaller bits of damage are being done every day, even as we speak, making the task of recovery harder and harder.

15. By the way, in case you hadn’t noticed, the Republicans did win the last election. They have a majority in the House of Representatives and so they control the finances as the people who elected them intended.
    Just pass the budget they want and let the chips fall where they may.
    Instead they seem to behave like scared infants, bossed around by Daddy President at every stage.
    At the very deepest level is it possible the Republican establishment agrees with the Democrats? That would explain their actions very nicely.

16. Although I don’t think there is any question that Romney would have been better than Obama – if he had won I fully expected to be disappointed fairly frequently.
    I could definitely see him working on immigration reform, his tax plan wasn’t very bold, not sure how hard he would have really worked on rolling back Obamacare, he seemed too neo-con hawkish, etc.
    All moot.

17. Steve D: they did not win the election. Again, you are incorrect.

    They lost the White House, which has all-important veto power, the power to appoint a Cabinet, and SCOTUS appointments.

    They lost seats in the House. And the Senate is in Democratic control. This makes the House much more impotent than it would otherwise be. Not only that, they have been very successfully demonized by Obama and the Democrats, so that they lost in the court of public opinion.

    And they probably only retained the House because of earlier redistricting.

18. There’s always constitutional monarchy. That’s what the Romans figured out with their dual consul system.

19. I think it all comes down to your world view. I’ve known incredibly brilliant artists and scientists who are seemingly unable to comprehend the simplest economic arguments (a good example might be Albert Einstein).
    I’ve had a University Dean tell me our trade imbalance was more worrisome than our national debt. I’ve had Ph.D. scientists advocate a minimum wage. One of my smartest collogues told me that the debt was no problem because it was mostly to China and they wouldn’t let us fail because we are too big to fail. When I responded that most of our debt was to ourselves the answer change to: ‘Then why are you worried about it?” Others support the Democrats because they think they are smarter than Republicans.
    Why do people think like this? Is it because they are stupid? No, it’s a psychological phenomenon, a defense mechanism to protect a deeply held world view in which their entire psyche is invested (and they don’t even realize it). Is there anyway to break through? I don’t know.
    Some people may be able to change politically but most don’t. How much and now deeply are those that change invested in their former ideas compared to those that don’t?
    What I do know if that people were to develop a rational world view from the get go, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

20. I know, I know, you’ve heard it all before, and you don’t believe it.

    No… Precisely the opposite, to be honest. I DO believe it. It’s one of the biggest reasons that I fear for this country.

    My mom has said for years that the Republicans (in power, mainly) have no idea the stakes of the fight they are in. I think this is kind of the natural course for this. They didn’t, and I think in most cases, still don’t.

    The Republican party has been split for a very long time, going back maybe the Barry Goldwater days at least. The troops tend to lean to a more conservative side, while those in the positions of power tend to lean more towards the liberal side of things. I think in some cases, it’s because the general rot of the beltway has infected them, but that’s all beside the point, in any real substantive way.

    The point is that most of the Beltway types and leadership types tend to roll their eyes at the more “extreme” base of the right, and presume to know, much like the dems, what’s best for them. I think they often see us as a crowd that needs to be pandered to, so they say “the right things”, but don’t really believe them. Look at Lindsay Graham and John McCain for examples. In the 2010 election, you would have thought McCain was the most conservative person in the world, but then he gets back up there, and is untouchable by the voters for 6 more years, and is perfectly happy to rubber stamp any of Obama’s nominees for anything.

    I think stuff like that, the continuous sticking it in the eye of conservative values, is what has continuously pushed the base further and further away from the actual power of the GOP.

    You now have the Karl Roves, etc with their mathematical models and “here’s what we need to do” comments continuously talking us down, and telling us all we need to sit down and shut up and listen to people like him so we can win elections.

    But here’s the rub. The true conservative (and this also goes into some of your other posts recently) want to be left the hell alone, to live the life they want to live. Without the meddling fingers of government in every single aspect of our lives.

    Before, we could stomach it and laugh it all off, because the meddling wasn’t quite so blatant, and it wasn’t so all encompassing. In the last 20 years or so, that’s changed.

    At this point, the base wants to roll all this stuff back. Get back to first principles, and… well, I guess the easiest way to put it is to reinstate the 10th Amendment.

    The establishment wants to keep their power, continue to meddle (because they know what’s best), but in a more “compassionate” way than the base. IE – Compassionate Conservatism. Keep the big programs going, keep spending (but also on defense), and continue to fill out their God complexes by tinkering with all of our lives. It truly has become “Democrat-lite” at this point (Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, etc… The “Rising Stars” of the party were all left to fend for themselves while the Party put money, backing, etc. on Charlie Crist and David Dewhurst. Cruz, Rubio, et al. weren’t wanted there, but now that they’re popular with the base, they’re the “rising stars”…).

    The Dems… Well, they are now pretty much all for top down, centralized, all powerful government. They want 1984 or maybe Brave New World, and see themselves as the answer to all ills. And if they don’t, who cares, so long as they get to keep their jets, money, power, and ability to “meddle”.

    Compare our last 2 Presidents. Now it’s no secret that I think Bush was the better of the 2, but here’s a basic truth. The biggest spender in world history is Barack Obama. The 2nd biggest spender in history is George W. Bush. And most of Bush’s spending was done with a Republican Congress. Spending was slowly coming back down towards the end of Bush’s term, until the Dems regained the Senate, and House in ’07, but that can’t cover his entire 8 years in office.

    The country is fractured at this point. I believe irreparably so. Indeed there is close to a 50% plurality who will vote for the Dem no matter what. Then there’s the 50% or so that would lean towards the GOP. But that 50% is fractured as well. It’s listless. Without a message, without a real direction, and soon to be without a voice, as more and more get fed up with the entire charade.

    This is why I have very little hope. The GOP will continue to lose major elections so long as there is no unity. There will be no unity, because the ideology of the base is still at its core, very conservative, and the establishment has morphed into what the Dems were around the times of FDR, or maybe JFK. And the Dems have gone full blown central planning, with the intent of forcing equal outcomes.

    I just don’t think that the Dem base knows or maybe just doesn’t care, because the GOP is their lifelong enemy, and they seem to be willing to do whatever they can to squash them so they can play in the sandbox alone.

    There is a movement on the GOP base’s side to get their party back on track and to buck the establishment at the State Level. That’s awesome, but… It WILL be overridden by SCotUS under the guise of preemption. Federal Law, at this point, supersedes State Law. With the makeup of the current Court, as well as any changes over the next 4 years, that ideology is not going to change.

    So you’re looking at, I think realistically, 10-15 years before the GOP is close to united again, unless it splits. That could happen either way, but if it united, I think that could be a good counter to what’s going on. In a way, I think it almost HAS to be a long term plan.

    That said, the debt bomb is ticking. Reality is closing in on the Kabuki Theater in Washington. In short, the country’s Judgement is coming. I think we’ve run out of time. The mathematics say we are out of time, especially since nothing, realistically, can be done in the next 4 years to slow spending in any meaningful way. The Dems will rebel against any cuts, chanting that we’re not spending enough all the way down. The GOP lacks the spine to take a stand on a principle that a majority of them don’t believe in. And the people of the country will be a wonderfully diverse group, left to rot.

21. Not only that, they have been very successfully demonized by Obama and the Democrats, so that they lost in the court of public opinion.
    How do you figure that? If they were successfully demonized then how in the world did they manage to retain the House? Or increase their number of votes (and Electoral Seats) for president compared to the last time; or still control the majority of state legislatures and governors?
    So let the President veto to his hearts content. A veto is just that; prevents legislation which the less of that which occurs these days, the better. He doesn’t get any money unless the Congress says so.

22. If you count up the number of votes on all ballets across the country for all the candidates at every level, I would very much bet the majority perhaps even the vast majority would be for Republicans.
    ‘The mathematics say we are out of time, especially since nothing, realistically, can be done in the next 4 years to slow spending in any meaningful way.’
    Another way to look at this is if tomorrow you woke up and the GOP controlled every office in the country what would the outcome be? Think about it.
    As regards the demonization issue; almost all of my colleagues voted for Obama, I’m pretty sure of it; but only a few of them had a particularly negative view of Romney as a person. The common assessment was that he was an honest, straight up type of guy, who would certainly get things done faster and more efficiently than Obama but seemed somewhat out of touch with the common man.

23. I can’t quite figure out what these petulant Gotterdammerung seeking conservatives really expect from the political system.

    Parties after all did not fall from the heavens; they are merely organized associations of more or less like-minded men and women.

    Is someone expecting a political smorgasbord to be provided to them from on high? On what basis?

    If Romney was not pure enough or seemed to temporize too much or if his advisers were too timid to directly challenge the media memes, then where was their candidate?

    Look, I also have had enough of Republicans who were mere drogue chutes on sleds bound for collectivist hell. But Romney was clearly much better than that.

    Where’s the take what you can get and continue to push for more, attitude?

    Expecting a Constitutional Republic Savior to arrive and wave a magic wand is not only absurd, but wrongheadedly symptomatic of the very problem the purist professes to abhor.

24. Steve D: well, I see you will continue in your dream world.

    I have no idea whether you are correct about adding up all the votes, but I am quite sure it is irrelevant. What matters is where those votes are.

    And if Republicans controlled things, I have no doubt our foreign policy would be quite different, as would the Supreme Court. And that’s just for starters. The differences would be large.

    The fact that they would be deeply flawed and would not do quite what you or I would like in an ideal world does not change the fact that they would be much better than the Democrats. If you can’t see that, even now, there’s nothing I or anyone else can say to you.

25. Steve D: oh, and virtually all of the people I know who voted for Obama bought into the “Romney is evil” line. They also believe Republicans are evil (some make an exception for me, because they knew me when).

26. I’m late to the party, so to go back to Occam’s comment, 2nd from the top, there is something happening that will make presidential contests very difficult for R’s in the future.
    Many red states are turning purple and purple states are turning blue. Witness Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Virginia and even North Carolina.
    The big prize is Texas, which is shading purple, IMO. The R to D spread was not that large in Texas this time. If only 5% of Texans switch from R to D (not hard to imagine considering immigration and large urban centers in the state), then it’s all over. As Texas goes blue, it will be nearly impossible for any Republican to win the Electoral College. Imagine Dems starting Election Night with NY, CA, TX, the Upper Midwest the Northwest and the Northeast already in the bag. Plus Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico leaning blue. There aren’t enough Southern and Great Plains states to overcome that advantage.

27. Of course there was a difference between Obama and Romney – it was the difference between a dealer and an enabler.

    Addiction is the best metaphor I’ve seen for the affliction destroying our nation – addiction to Big Nanny Statism. And on a personal level, I have no tolerance for addicts. I think this is in many ways the attitude that Neo described in her post; it’s also the reason so many of us seem to be anticipating America hitting rock bottom.

28. Those of us who believe the government that governs least is the government that governs best are indeed a minority. Those of us who understand we are headed for the fiscal abyss are probably no larger than 10% of the voting population.

    Somedays I think the only course is revolution which is a road of unintended consequences, somedays I think we have to let everything crash, and most days I think we have to take small steps although I think the crash may be unavoidable. Romney is, no matter what you might think about his politics, a man with a sound character. Instead the voters returned the hollow man to the Oval Office. Anyone who thinks we are better off with the fascist wanna be behind the desk than a man like Romney….. well, you might as well cut off your nose and spite your face. And, ACA will not fund your plastic surgery.

29. I think conservatives need to work on their messaging and learn when to keep their mouths shut (Akin). Too often our arguments come out with a my-way-or-the-highway tone. It drives me crazy when I see blog comments that end with a bible quote, as if that settles the matter for nonbelievers. I like hearing people say how their religious beliefs have formed their opinion and worldview and why it has helped them form an opinion on a certain matter. But that is a very different tone, it is a sharing and not a condemnation of heretics. The idea has to be that we all face problems and we need to work together to find some answers. This won’t win over the true lefties, but it could change the minds of some who believe the warped Dem and MSM caricatures of us.

    Sure, there are Republican politicians who don’t much care about principle, but if we improve our messaging while sticking to principles, they will feel some pressure to change their ways.

    We also need to study some of our successful newer governors. They didn’t get elected to change the whole world tomorrow. They got elected to fix a problem because the old ways weren’t working. As they improve one item at a time, they gain the trust of the people, who then are willing to listen to them on other issues. People will be loyal to those who were able to make things better.

30. I, too–like nyght’s mother–have thought for a long time that the GOP has no idea at all, not even the slightest comprehension, of the stakes in this battle, of what they’re up against. There’s this hand-wringing back-and-forth about what to do, what to do . . . Do we try for a third party? Do we stay home and sit on our hands rather than vote for the lesser of two evils yet again? That last is nothing but a bunch of self-congratulatory crap from people (e.g. the Paul People) who think their mission is to require, and get, purity. Pfui.

    What we conservatives should be doing, if it’s not already too late, is to be taking over the existing Republican Party in the same way the ’60s New Left took over the Democrat Party. The infrastructure is there, everything necessary to run a party is already in place, and there’s a reasonable philosophical similarity. I guess that’s what the Tea Party was supposed to be about, but it has been far too nice about the project. There isn’t enough TIME to be nice. I myself am not optimistic by now, and the notion that studying successful conservative/Republican governors is going to turn the trick assumes a decades-long sequence of elections just like the ones we’ve already had for over 200 years. But that is not to be. These wizards have got us on a fast track to hell, and too many people think, “Well but this is America.”

    Never THINK it can’t happen here.

31. Another way to look at this is if tomorrow you woke up and the GOP controlled every office in the country what would the outcome be?

    Aside from unrealistic?

    I like to believe that there’s still some time to roll all of this back, but even in your theoretical, it would take years to accomplish. There’s no way to wave a magic wand and suddenly have a balanced budget, and even if there was, doing it would do enormous damage to the country (As in cutting off all benefits, etc. The sorts of measures overnight balance would require.).

    There’s some solace to be found in that we retained the House, the state legislatures, etc., but it’s in some ways a pyrrhic victory, and it is precisely because of what will be done at the Federal level. We already have numerous examples of state legislatures trying to fight back against some of this (see Immigration and Arizona, for instance), only to be overridden by the Courts because of preemption.

    Open revolt is about as bad a course as we could take, although in my more romantic thoughts, it seems appealing. But the truth is that, as Sangiovese and Occam pointed out, the liberals are fleeing their blue paradises, and going to the red states, and turning them purple or outright blue. In a sense, you could say that the disease of liberalism has metastasized. It would be a disgusting bloody fight that I, for one, don’t have the heart for if it came to violence, which it almost inevitably would have to. The Civil War was North v. South. There would be no regional association for a fight as things stand now. It would be neighbor against neighbor, and would do nothing but spread more hatred.

    They’re liberals, but they’re still my brothers and sisters, in a way.

    Maybe that’s one of the reasons that I can’t hate them the way that so many of them seem to hate me? I see them more as children who are so determined in their beliefs that they must learn, on their own, the consequences. Like the child who must learn on his own that fire is hot. They do not argue in logic, they argue in emotion. In a similar way that love is blind, I cannot simply point out the flaws in their ideology in a logical manner, because they will continuously try to appeal to my emotions, and in the end, deem me heartless.

    The crux of the entire matter is that there is now a demonstrable 50% of the country that, at least on some level, and regardless of understanding/history, wants what is going on. They cheer it, and like to rub our noses in the victory, just to see us all squirm.

    I, for one, have no intention of squirming. But I hold no illusions that that which is coming can be magically avoided, or that overnight, we will be able to change the minds of our liberal friends. Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.

    And I believe that the best we can hope for now is to rebuild the country, and go back to the core principals of the Constitution and Declaration after the looming collapse. I may sound apocalyptic with this, but I truly believe that our best hope lies in laying the groundwork to maintain the civil society and rebuild after the fall.

    After all… There’s nowhere else to go.

32. }}} But a certain percentage will resist and dig in and say, “No! I’m not going to be the tool of the Republican Establishment any more.”

    …And they got the “spend spend spend let’s have more gun control” rectal orifice they deserved. Unfortunately, the rest of us are stuck with the ambulatory sack of excrement, and we don’t deserve him. Nor do our children deserve the legacy of — sorry, I can’t think of an more accurate word than evil — he’s going to leave behind.

    So, to every fucking one of you imbecilic cocksuckers: FUCK YOU.

    You’re even stupider than the fools who voted FOR the dumbass in office.

33. According to the numbers:
    black voted the most with over 90%
    then came Spanish and Chinese with around 71%

    If you take those numbers and apply them to the census information, you will find how it worked.

    of course those three together, while large, are not a majority until another 10 years when the same sources point out a 30% decline will occur (mentioned in an article as to California and the stuff there).

    so it took the women of one group which disproportionately voted with the other groups. (gender groups, even if 100%, would only be 3%)

    every vote of theirs counted twice, as it lowered the vote on one side and raised it on another. which is not the same as bowing out, which costs one.

    lets say you have two equal piles of 500
    now 100 of one pile goes to the other pile
    whats the spread? One pile has 600, the other pile has 400, the disparity is 200

    this is why its always been very important to get the target group to vote in opposition to what historically would have been a similar voting block (their mates).

    like the concept in the movie Moneyball

    they sit and do the math and play to the future, and help it along. what was 88% in 1980, is now less than 75% and will drop to minority levels in a short while (according to the census)…

    so this whole dog and pony show is to make sure that as the demographics switch over, these voter blocks remain unified against a single other… in that way, it mathematically would be one party from that point onwards very fast.

    things like israel and other places becoming conflicts at the same time putting women in the military and then opening draft since the limiting factor on that judgment is gone. mix in social justice, and what will be the outcome?

    you can do math from things like

    2010 demographics report
    http://www.militaryonesource.mil/12038/Project%20Documents/MilitaryHOMEFRONT/Reports/2010_Demographics_Report.pdf

    Less than one-third (30.0%) or 425,130 of Active Duty members identify themselves as a minority (i.e., Black or African American, Asian, American Indian or AlaskaNative, Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander, multi-racial, or other/unknown).
    (the above is overall, there are other areas which its different. and guess who they are using more?)

    so its pretty simple math if you can be cold blooded enough to apply it. without having to do much, you can keep the anger on the “republican party of white guys”, and hasten the iceberg inverting suddenly, and in so doing, get a super majority.

    so its very clear they know the math and the demographic future and consider it in what they do, as they are the party of eugenics, sterilization, abortion, commissions to judge the outcome of your life, etc. – just check out the history..

    this is true even if the main group that is the actuality of that math doesnt get it, nor even sees its future being played out by people who started the same path 30 or so years before them, and pulled away from it – too late..

    in todays news
    Vladimir Putin hires Boyz II Men to boost the Russian birth rate. Authoritarians know how to have fun
    http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timstanley/100200911/vladimir-putin-hires-boyz-ii-men-to-boost-the-russian-birth-rate-authoritarians-know-how-to-have-fun/

    now why would he care? why would he team up with the church and make gay propaganda illegal? why did he shut down feminism by imprisoning pus*y riot? and why is there an effort to remove the free love that was started in 1917 which is still rotting them out?

    do note that the tone of the article is to ridicule and misdirect the whole way… because they dont want people in their readership to realize that we took the same pill, but never stopped, and wont. so the telegraph article is leaving out a lot of background and putting things like this

    Putin puts the desirable figure at three babies per household and, in 2007, one province helped things along by declaring a Day of Conception. The idea was that if Russians got the day off work then they might stay at home, put on some Boyz II Men, close the curtains and help bring back the good old days of Soviet hegemony. Women who gave birth 9 months later could win a refrigerator. And they say that romance is dead?

    by the way…
    the same problem is in every liberated country being overun by the less liberated others…

    What’s Really Behind Europe’s Decline? It’s The Birth Rates, Stupid
    http://www.forbes.com/sites/joelkotkin/2012/05/30/whats-really-behind-europes-decline-its-the-birth-rates-stupid/

    you can discuss all the things you want about doing X and Y… but i have noticed no one is watching the things that count. and if you have no population, then who is going to do X or Y?

    and this is going to happen
    nothing can stop it, the math is done
    and it has to play out

    just remember..
    there is such a thing as too stupid to go to war

    and there is nothing republicans can do, other than gliechshaltung, and join the other side to see if they can get a percentage of the future.

    how many of the illegal aliens have an American education that teaches how great the US is and its principals? so how ya gonna teach them before the demographic pop over and they vote some pretty social justice kinds of things…

    if ya got a way to get around the demographics being ignored, let me know. i would love to hear it and the math basis for it. if someone does an analysis, which isnt hard, and it comes up ok, let me know, i would love to look it over.

    run the numbers..
    and you will see what the game is in one area

34. and if anyone has never known… icebergs flip.

    Rising from the depths: Tourist captures the incredible moment the bottom of an iceberg emerges from the ocean as it flips over

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2152868/Tourist-captures-incredible-moment-iceberg-emerges-ocean-flips-over.html

    The phenomenon is not uncommon for icebergs, but it is rarely seen on video. Icebergs flip because they become unbalanced after melting and changing shape.

    given whats coming mathematically, its a good analogy

35. “After all… There’s nowhere else to go.”

    There is nowhere else. We are on our own as I see no reason to believe, although I hope otherwise, a severe global depression can be avoided. And given demographics and the levels of sovereign debt, it will make the 1930s look like prosperity. The timeline is impossible to predict, but it will happen sooner than later.

    For me the big question is what will be the response of the population at large. In metro areas it will be chaos and the attending violence as local, state, and federal governments attempt to placate the unprepared, lazy, ignorant ones with dead batteries on their Obamaphone. I like to think that in Iowa, a state with strong rural roots and no real metro areas, we can work things out with our families and our neighbors provided HLS, FEMA, and the rest of the alphabet soup gang leave us alone.

36. Well, no,

    I don’t believe Romney was a straight talker. He played politics by the numbers, consequently, he lied by the numbers. Nothing personal, just business. I never forgave him for misrepresenting Perry.

    But you seem convinced that Romney was a good candidate. I disagree, a good candidate would have made friends with fellow republicans, not alienated them. You can argue that he was the best of those trying for the Republican nomination, you can argue he would be a competent president, but if you don’t grade on a curve I think it near impossible to make the case that he was a talented politician. He could not connect to people at large, a rather serious deficit in a political leader. And where I lived you would never have known that he was running for office. Being taken for granted didn’t inspire confidence in the man, but it did indicate a penchant for cold calculation.

    But enough, I’ve already forgotten the man. There is enough crap coming down the road that I haven’t energy left to debate an election already vanished into the foggy past or to worry about a man who vanished along with it.

37. “But 2012 was the last chance for the Republican Party, and they blew it. There are too many voters who are sick and tired of voting for the lesser of two evils.”

    What I’m sick and tired of are conservatives who whine about how the Republican party or candidate is not good enough for them. If this is the case with you, then two points

    One, I hope you’re getting off your butt and away from the computer and are active in your local Republican organization. I hope you’re out there trying to recruit good candidates and if you see one you volunteer your time and give your money. Real money

    Two, the party is far more conservative across the board than it was in times past (just as the Democrats are more liberal across the board than in times past) but it’ll never be good enough for some people. Accept that the entire party will not bow to your demands and rarely will we nominate the perfectly pure candidate for anything.

38. But the truth is that, as Sangiovese and Occam pointed out, the liberals are fleeing their blue paradises, and going to the red states, and turning them purple or outright blue. In a sense, you could say that the disease of liberalism has metastasized.

    Precisely the metaphor — cancer and metastasis – I employed in speaking with a friend earlier today.

    Open revolt is about as bad a course as we could take, although in my more romantic thoughts, it seems appealing.
    …
    It would be a disgusting bloody fight that I, for one, don’t have the heart for if it came to violence, which it almost inevitably would have to. The Civil War was North v. South. There would be no regional association for a fight as things stand now. It would be neighbor against neighbor, and would do nothing but spread more hatred.

    The Spanish Civil War would be a closer model than our own. It started when the Reds over-estimated their strength and made a premature grab for power (recall that this was only 19 years after Lenin had seized power), and pitted neighbor against neighbor, and to a much lesser extent region against region, with Barcelona being their NY/SF. It was a bitter and brutal fight, made more so by the involvement of Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin backing their respective proxies. Ironically, the Reds lost in no small part because Stalin ordered the purge of the Republican (irony of ironies) side of POUM (originally a Trotskyist party), anarchist parties, and all other leftist parties that did sing from his hymnal.

    While it’s fashionable to disparage Franco, one could argue that he did pretty well by Spain: thanks to him, Spain avoided a Communist takeover, and despite soliciting and obtaining support from Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, resisted pressure to join them as allies and sat out WWII. It seems to me Franco played a lousy hand about as well as anyone could have hoped for.

39. In general, the comments above demonstrate why we are where we are. On one hand I can easily agree with those who are sick and tired, if not down right rebellious, with the lameness of the GOP establishment. OTOH, the only way forward, within the political process, is to work at the grassroots level and when that is not enough, vote for anyone who does not have (D) after their name.

    Tired of the political process? Get an accurate rifle, at least 30 cal, and train to consistently produce 1 MOA at 100 yards with a 5 shot group. Otherwise, stay home if/when is all come down to dust.

40. It’s tiresome. If the fight is futile, if they’re all just the same, if we’re past the point of no return…why are you here? Eat, drink, be merry!

41. 1. the GOP is reviled in a majority of the country, and is a busted brand

    2. maybe the people that “sat out” are disgusted with the entire GOP and not just Romney (i.e. it’s not a purity thing)

    3. why is it that GOP let the left take over the culture and the schools?

    4. why don’t the GOP ever punish the MSM for their bad behavior (like by not going on CBS, NBC, or ABC)?

    for me personally, the GOP never fights for anything and seems to be just as bad for the country as the DEMS. the DEMS flood the country with illegals for political ends, while the GOP floods the country with illegals for commercial reasons.

    given that there have been no mass protests over the number of non-citizens being openly employed during this unending recession/depression, I have to think that some kind of tipping point has been reached.

    if the GOP couldn’t win the WH in this economic climate, what would conceivably have to occur to put them back in power? And how would the bumblers and mumblers of the GOP avoid being blamed for anything bad that does happen because of DEM policies?

    No, the GOP is dead and anyone who thinks that rotting corpse is their ticket to power is high on denial.

42. GOP, GOP….what are you doing? Nada. Zip. Zero. You’re not taking over the local party apparatus. Or the school board. Or the local paper.

    For a people who believe in personal responsibility, civic duty and the burdens of citizenship, I’m seeing very little of it revealed in this discussion.

43. doesn’t mean it isn’t there, just that you don’t see it.

44. I remember well the independent candidacy for US President of John Anderson in 1980.

    He tapped into the sentiment described in neo’s piece and in countless other piece), when he remarked that voters should not have to be put in the position of choosing between “the evil of two lessers”.

45. ooooops — I mistakenly hit “Submit” before I got to proofread.

    —–

    I remember well the independent candidacy of John Anderson for US President in 1980.

    He tapped into the sentiment described in neo’s piece (and in countless other pieces), when he remarked that voters should not have to be put in the position of choosing between “the evil of two lessers”.

46. I spent about two hours staring at the screen trying to figure out what to say, then another hour writing a long comment which I deleted. I just don’t have anything to say any more.

    I’ll let Subotai Bahadur speak for me.

    We are beyond the point of fixing this with elections.

47. “I’m seeing very little of it revealed in this discussion.”

    I attend all school board and city council meetings and I am not bashful when it comes to expressing my opinion. That is my responsibility as a citizen. In my county, ‘tea party’ concepts dominate the republican meetings. Your mileage may differ.

48. Parker- and I applaud your efforts, and that is the way to go. Not this fantasy talk about a revolution which is really a way to justify doing nothing since that is not happening and is patently ridiculous.

49. Steve D Says:

    “All that is left is civil disobedience on a massive scale.”

    Yep. Its the reason there is private healthcare in the UK btw.

50. cjm, rickl, and others:

    Okay, I understand your POV you are pissed off. I’m royally pissed off. But are you truly ready to walk the walk? If you are, at a minimum, you are capable of shooting 1 MOA at 100 yards with something with more knock down power than a measly .223. Seriously, are you ready? Can you take down a jackbooted thug in kevlar with your rifle of choice at 100 yards? Can you make the forehead shot?

    If you can not answer yes 100% please do not stand within 1,000 yards of me should it all come down to dust. Meanwhile, vote R and stop your sobbing, bitching, and moaning. Pull up your panty hose and stop complaining.

51. Had the voting age been dropped to 8 years of age in 1960, we would have had this national unraveling in the 1980’s.

    Well that didn’t happen. But we got very similar results from pop culture media forever demonizing crotchity old, reponsible grownups.

52. As one of those who really wanted to stay home, but ended up going in and voting, I have to think I… grudgingly agree with your assessment. Either we pick the lesser of two evils or we get the worst of the two, every time. In this case I didn’t even vote for Romney, as I think was the case for many who voted R for president. I merely voted no on D.

    I have to wonder, though, after this mess of a final term, if some conservatives and third-party folks won’t reconsider their ’12 vote, or non-vote. I have to think that a good strong whiff of absolute leftism, communism really, won’t change things. Then again, I would really love to see some heavy shake-up of the GOP. I’m not even sure if that is possible from a grassroots perspective? It is definitely needed, and I think it would entice others to come back. Then again, I am not sure the GOP cares to win if it can’t have stooges on the ticket, as a Dem stooge win is as good for their interests as their own stooge win, almost?

    I am sweating things, currently. I definitely live in a climate of fear, from my own government. I never thought I would be saying that, quite like I am. That is something that only happens in 3rd world banana republics, I thought. For what it was worth, at this point, I am pleased I DID vote, did try. I hope more come around, sooner rather than later. If it would be good to see my former party do it’s part and reform the party.

53. I can’t wait to see how they sell us out on guns and immigration. Because they’re all about “reasonable compromise”.

    But here is the main reason why we need a new party to replace the Republicans:

    No Virginia, the RNC CANNOT Monitor Polls for Ballot Security

    We all know that the Democrats routinely engage in vote fraud, and this explains why we never hear a peep out of the Republicans about it. A new party organization would not be bound by that agreement.

54. I love this blog and all the thought and work Neo puts into it.
    BUT
    We are talking to ourselves. It makes us feel better, as if something were actually being accomplished. The fact remains, however, that we sit at our computers by ourselves, venting and opinionating. against little disagreement. We are not making converts here. We are in the same church, all preaching to each other. We may be crystallizing our thoughts as we post, but what have we produced?

    It is past time to DO SOMETHING. Otherwise, “rickl”s 2014 fears will be visited upon us, and the Constitution and Country will be forever lost to us.

55. Don Carlos, 11:35 am —

    Bro’,

    There is a time for taking up arms, and a time for fortifying the troops with encouragement. (See Ecclesiastes 3:1-8)

    At neo’s site, yes, we do mostly the latter — but the latter definitely has its place. As to the former, we each do what we do as individuals.

    (Some, like moi, are a little older now [how’d ^that^ happen??], and just do not have the stamina for the gut-wrenching battle(s) we see ahead. But we’ll do what we can, nevertheless.)

    Peace and all that,

    M J R

56. “They’re liberals, but they’re still my brothers and sisters, in a way.”

    ” (I)n a way”

    At least you qualify it somewhat. Others who bewail what is being done to them don’t. They just cannot grasp how far the mentality of the leftist has migrated from their own. Don’t conservatives read leftist lit? Do they imagine that leftists don’t really believe what they are saying?

    Yeah, sure, the run-of-the-mill liberal voter probably is motivated by emotion to a greater degree than say a well informed libertarian or conservative; especially when the question at issue can be pleasingly framed as one of “community values” or “human flourishing” or whatever collectivist trope de jour is being served up.

    But, the left do have ideas which to their minds “justify” a subsequent emotional gauging of questions.

    And come on, we are all familiar with these intellectual themes: the dethronement of reason as the arbiter of value, the marginalizing of consciousness to an epiphenomenal status, institutionalized skepticism about the intelligibility of reality, etc., etc. … everyone here knows the subjectivism relativism anti-rationalism drill and can recite the litany of “intellectual” positions which have brought us to the brink of the post modern abyss.

    So, where’s the supposed mystery as to their contempt for the rubes who still believe in a world found as objective fact, rather than one formed amid chaos as an act of artistic human creation?

    Now to those conservative types who cannot process these facts, or who are committed to a self-sacrificial moral gesture on behalf of a communion only they seem to still feel, I say you are welcome to climb up on a crosses of your own fashioning. And, perhaps while doing so you will gain some sympathy or even converts from among the more sensitive of the jeering left-wing spectators .

    Old movies would lead us to think so.

    But those who wish to humbly suffer should at least recognize that the game they are investing themselves in is being played with two different sets of rules and moral perspectives.

    Perhaps Divine intervention will justify your sacrificial forbearance. But I would not count on it. Not when the people for whom you are sacrificing figure everything you are sacrificing for is a joke or an illusion.

57. You can talk all day long about the base and a flawed candidate, but those votes only add up to a few million. The media and cultural (Hollywood, education) bias against Republicans/conservatives/individualism easily accounts for 20-30% if not more. That’s where the fight is, and we are way behind.
    Just imagine if the media did not cover for Obama, and all voters actually knew who he is. It wouldn’t even be close. It’s actually astounding that Republicans only lose by 1-3%.
    What gives me hope for the U.S. is that the Democrat party has been taken over by 60’s radicals who are frozen in time, stuck in their glorious revolutionary teenage years… and I don’t think their indoctrinated descendants will be nearly as dedicated to the cause.
    They know their time is running short. Obama is their last stand and they are going all in. But who follows in their footsteps? The Occupiers? They can’t even organize a camp out. They can’t lead themselves. They don’t know who Alinsky is. The Democrat party is controlled by a few hundred white liberals, and when they are gone there is no one to fill their shoes.

58. “A better analogy is if a person has, let’s say, a perhaps-fatal disease. Do you let it run rampantly out of control, or do you try treating it and slowing down its progress? ”

    I agree. Do what you can as you can.

59. trying to solve the country’s problems is fine, a good use of time and energy. trying to use the GOP to solve the country’s problems is a fool’s errand.

60. Obama’s winning is more evidence of the advantage the incumbent has than anything wrong with the GOP or its message. Bush won against the odds in 04 and shocked a lot of Dem here in CA who thought they had that one sewn up.

    The GOP or any other party cannot re-establish the limited government of the 19th century. And that will be true even after and assuming the Dems and their leftist economic model are thoroughly discredited.

    The average Joe/Jane is going to vote for more government/better security net simply because we live in an age when the family bonds are weaker, families are smaller, marriages are less frequent and more likely to break up, urbanization is advanced, all of which means that the individual (particularly a single woman trying to get by with a kid) doesn’t have the social support net of the 19th century, and will as a matter of necessity look towards a larger government to provide that security.

    This is something that in fact the GOP has shifted to adapt to politically and there’s no going back.

    That doesn’t mean that this country wouldn’t benefit from some serious push back on reducing government and in particular the Federal government or that there isn’t room for reforms – a lot of reforms.

61. Look, it would be very nice if we all got to vote for our “perfect” candidate – you know, the one who acts and thinks exactly like each one of us. But, here’s the news break – no such person exists!

    The choice often is, always has been, and will continue to be, the “lesser of two evils.”

    Obama (and the Democrats) ran a campaign based upon emotions, greed (free stuff!) and envy (tax the rich, they have too much). And there are enough ignorant people who bought their lies.

    The only cure for ignorance is education. I’ve started by telling some folks what I think of those who support Obama and WHY!

    Many of them do not talk to me any more. (Quite frankly, I’m better without mooches in my life anyway.)

62. Charles said:
    “The only cure for ignorance is education.”

    Charles, I’m not disagreeing with you, but my automatic reaction to the above sentence was rolling my eyes… because we hear it so much from the Left – and of course they don’t mean the same thing by it that you do – when they say education they mean indoctrination.

    The Left, specifically post modernism, has completely taken over and corrupted our language. We should avoid using their words and phrases that no longer convey the true meaning. Even words like liberty and freedom are meaningless nowadays.

    I don’t have an answer… just pointing it out.

63. tillurdizzy

    “when they say education they mean indoctrination.”

    Oh, how you read my mind!

    I actually had something like that in my comment; but, then took it out thinking that most folks here would know that.

    I so agree with you that the left has turned education into an indoctrination. Rather, I should say that they have tried. For many folks, especially the non-political, it has, indeed, become an indoctrination. But, I have also seen a lot of young folks just not buy the crap they are pushing. Going along, doing whatever it takes to get the grade . . . believing all along that the professor is full of crap.

    So, there is hope yet that the tide will turn (or should I say, there is hope that WE can turn the tide?)

    As far as using “their” language and phrases? Why not? We can, and should, redefine the terms to mean what they should mean. By “re-owning” the language we take away part of their tools, don’t we?

    This reminds me of the time I heard a black (or should I be like Ebony and Jet magazine and spell that Black or, even better, African-American?) say that she was different from the rest of us because she was, “you know, ethnic.” I asked her exactly how she was “ethnic” while the rest of us weren’t? Wasn’t someone who was white (note the lower case “w” since white and black are descriptions, not grammically proper nouns) also of some particular ethnicity?

    I consider it a victory (albeit rather small, but still a victory) in getting her to admit that she was misusing the word ethnic by not considering that everyone is ethnic.

    So, I say we need to start our battle against the left by educating others and that also means using their tools against them and their narrow-mindness.

64. Charles Says:
    February 2nd, 2013 at 12:03 am

    Look, it would be very nice if we all got to vote for our “perfect” candidate

    No, all I want is elected leaders and judges who take the Constitution seriously. Who believe in the concept of limited government, and who understand that there are vast areas of life that the federal government has no business being involved with. And are willing to say so, loudly and publicly.

    Sadly, that type is all but extinct. Nowadays, every incident results in a bipartisan free-for-all to “Do Something”, despite the fact that the federal government is borrowing 40¢ of every dollar it spends.

    But the bottom line is that people who don’t work, don’t pay taxes, and live on government handouts are still allowed to vote. That must end, and until it does, there is no electoral solution to our problems. Truly responsible politicians have no chance of winning elections as long as productive citizens can be outvoted by parasites and freeloaders. This is a fundamental problem that goes well beyond parties and individual politicians.

    The Founders were well aware of this, of course. File under “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

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