The GOP Delivers Yet Another Victory for Tyranny

[_Bob Loblaw]

Are you kidding me?

It is going to be Hillary. Write it down. Bank on it. The Democrats have quite a few potential Rock Stars that seem to pop up out of nowhere at times.

But the Republicans can't seem to find a decent candidate anywhere. Who is going to run for the Republican party in 2016?

Who knows? I stand by my prediction that the next Republican nominee will be a movement conservative with strong ties to the Christian right: in short, having lost, they will incorrectly assume they can win with the anti-Romney.

[_Kevin Graham]

Reagan was a paid corporate spokesperson early in his life, and he pretty much continued that position as President, which is why the banking industry wanted him in office so badly. He was nothing more than a puppet of theirs, and he couldn't do decent interviews without mumbling incoherently unless he had a script or teleprompter.

Reagan supported unions and insisted corporations "pay their fair share." He was more a socialist than Republicans today want to admit.

[_cinepro]

As I've said before, this is predictable. The talk-radio and right-wing press will tell us that Romney lost because he wasn't conservative enough and because of a hostile press. So, watch for the GOP to nominate a much more conservative candidate in 2016--and lose badly.

I think conservatives got overconfident because in 2010, low voter turnout meant fired-up conservatives prevailed. Not so much in 2012. We can sit and cry or grouse, as Droopy has clearly chosen to do, or we can figure out how to express our ideals in ways that make sense to ordinary people.

The huge problem here is the primary process that gave us Dole, Bush, McCain and Romney. If this candidate selection method doesn't change, I find no reason to be optimistic that future candidates will be any better.

But since the Democrats also use the same process, it's entirely possible they'll nominate someone just as bad next time.

[_Droopy]

The most important thing for Republicans to remember is that they won't be running against Obama in 2016. This could be very good, or very bad, but either way, it is highly unlikely the Democrats will find another rock star with the personality and draw that Obama has.

As I've said before, the Republicans are the party that picked Bob Dole to run against Bill Clinton. But the Democrats are the party that picked Al Gore to follow up Bill Clinton.

Point taken, but I think the seemingly bizarrely irrational (given present conditions and what we know is the tsunami of destructiveness coming our way economically and very likely on the international scene) voting behavior of a clear majority of the electorate indicates that the culture has shifted - in my and many others view irretrievably, in values, psychology, and fundamental character and most of that shift favors the Left.

[_Bob Loblaw]

Reagan was a paid corporate spokesperson early in his life, and he pretty much continued that position as President, which is why the banking industry wanted him in office so badly. He was nothing more than a puppet of theirs, and he couldn't do decent interviews without mumbling incoherently unless he had a script or teleprompter.

Reagan supported unions and insisted corporations "pay their fair share." He was more a socialist than Republicans today want to admit.

Wait, which is it? Was he a corporate tool or neo-socialist?

For what it's worth, I liked Reagan because, contrary to expectations, he was an effective leader, and despite the hysteria about him being a reckless warmonger (cue Sting), he was the first president to negotiate serious reductions in nuclear weapons.

You may be too young to remember, but he was not the "amiable dunce" you think he was.

[_Droopy]

Reagan was a paid corporate spokesperson early in his life, and he pretty much continued that position as President, which is why the banking industry wanted him in office so badly. He was nothing more than a puppet of theirs, and he couldn't do decent interviews without mumbling incoherently unless he had a script or teleprompter.

Reagan supported unions and insisted corporations "pay their fair share." He was more a socialist than Republicans today want to admit.

If you want real, unvarnished, Cold War era Marxist boilerplate right out of The Daily Worker, Kevin Graham will never disappoint.

It wouldn't surprise me if Vladmir Putin himself didn't still believe this kind of vacuous dreck.

[_Ceeboo]

Hey Kevin

Just check out the electoral map. The highest percentage of Romney votes come from states like Alabama, Mississippi, Kentucky, Arkansas, Tennessee, etc. States with higher rates of illiteracy and also, ironically enough, dependency on government aid! In the meantime Obama is winning over voters with graduate degrees, and the more educated states like Mass, Conn, etc.

I used to get upset about these bigoted assumptions

Is there any irony in there?

They really do live in their own little world.

No, just in Alabama, Ketucky, Arkansas, and Mississippi.

Peace,
Ceeboo

[_Bob Loblaw]

The huge problem here is the primary process that gave us Dole, Bush, McCain and Romney. If this candidate selection method doesn't change, I find no reason to be optimistic that future candidates will be any better.

But since the Democrats also use the same process, it's entirely possible they'll nominate someone just as bad next time.

The difference in my view is that Obama was able to tack to the center after playing to the leftist base in his primaries in 2008 (not that I think he's a "centrist" necessarily), and he had no base to fire up this year. Romney had to play to the base in ways he probably wishes he couldn't have, and the Obama campaign and its allies did not allow him to move to the center without painting him as a liar and shape-shifter.

[_Droopy]

and he couldn't do decent interviews without mumbling incoherently unless he had a script or teleprompter.

This is pure, unalloyed leftist smear mythology that no one who knew Reagan, listened to his self-written speeches, or has read his voluminous correspondence could possibly take seriously. There is a large literature out there now, and has been for sometime (but you have to read it, you see) that will dispel such fairy dust in short order. Kevin might want to start with Reagan, In His Own Hand: The Writings of Ronald Reagan that Reveal His Revolutionary Vision for America, a compendium of such writings.

Reagan supported unions and insisted corporations "pay their fair share." He was more a socialist than Republicans today want to admit.

Reagan was a New Deal Democrat, until he woke up and realized the party had left him, as he said. He also realized that much of the New Deal he supported in his youth was actually not what he had once thought it to be.

He was no more a socialist than you're a libertarian.

[_Bob Loblaw]

Reagan was a New Deal Democrat, until he woke up and realized the party had left him, as he said. He also realized that much of the New Deal he supported in his youth was actually not what he had once thought it to be.

He was no more a socialist than you're a libertarian.

The fixation on Reagan by many liberals is just bizarre. On the one hand they use him to scold the GOP on how radical we've become, and on the other hand they tell us he was a senile simpleton. No one who knows anything about the man believes that about him. Perhaps it's residual resentment because he forced the Democrats to move back to the center after McGovern and Carter. Or maybe it's just that the scary saber-rattler deployed the Minuteman as inducement to the Soviets to negotiate, and it worked, rather than starting a nuclear war.