By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close

Forums - General - PoliCHARTZ - Thread of U.S. Politics & the Presidential Election

steven787 on 22 October 2008

http://www.reason.com/news/show/129599.html

Why the Republicans Must Lose
Nothing short of defeat will put the GOP back on its limited government track

Radley Balko | October 22, 2008
I grew up in a particularly conservative part of the already conservative state of Indiana. I voted for Bob Dole in 1996 and George Bush in 2000, generally because—though I'm not a conservative (I'm a libertarian)—I'd always thought the GOP was the party of limited government. By 2002, I was less sure of that. And by 2004, I was so fed up with the party that I did what I thought I'd never do—vote for an unabashed leftist for president.

Since then, "fed up" has soured to "given up." The Republican Party has exiled its Goldwater-Reagan wing and given up all pretense of any allegiance to limited government. In the last eight years, the GOP has given us a monstrous new federal bureaucracy in the Department of Homeland Security. In the prescription drug benefit, it's given us the largest new federal entitlement since the Johnson administration. Federal spending—even on items not related to war or national security—has soared. And we now get to watch as the party that's supposed to be "free market" nationalizes huge chunks of the economy's financial sector.

This isn't to say that Barack Obama would be any better. Government would undoubtedly grow under his watch. And from my libertarian perspective, he has been increasingly disappointing even on the issues where he's supposed to be good. We may not go to war with Iran in an Obama administration, but we'd likely become entrenched in a prolonged nation-building adventure in the Sudan. Obama's vote on the FISA bill and telecom immunity also suggests that, for all his criticisms of President Bush's use of executive power and assaults on civil liberties, Obama wouldn't be much better. On the drug war, Obama has promised to end the federal raids on medical marijuana clinics in states that have legalized the drug for treatment, but he wants to resurrect failed federal criminal justice block grant programs that have had some disastrous effects on civil liberties.

While I'm not thrilled at the prospect of an Obama administration (especially with a friendly Congress), the Republicans still need to get their clocks cleaned in two weeks, for a couple of reasons.

First, they had their shot at holding power, and they failed. They've failed in staying true to their principles of limited government and free markets. They've failed in preventing elected leaders of their party from becoming corrupted by the trappings of power, and they've failed to hold those leaders accountable after the fact. Congressional Republicans failed to rein in the Bush administration's naked bid to vastly expand the power of the presidency (a failure they're going to come to regret should Obama take office in January). They failed to apply due scrutiny and skepticism to the administration's claims before undertaking Congress' most solemn task—sending the nation to war. I could go on.

As for the Bush administration, the only consistent principle we've seen from the White House over the last eight years is that of elevating the American president (and, I guess, the vice president) to that of an elected dictator. That isn't hyperbole. This administration believes that on any issue that can remotely be tied to foreign policy or national security (and on quite a few other issues as well), the president has boundless, limitless, unchecked power to do anything he wants. They believe that on these matters, neither Congress nor the courts can restrain him.

That's the second reason the GOP needs to lose. American voters need to send a clear, convincing repudiation of these dangerous ideas.

If they do lose, the GOP would be wise to regroup and rebuild from scratch, scrap the current leadership, and, most importantly, purge the party of the "national greatness," neoconservative influence. Big-government conservatism has bloated the federal government, bogged us down in what will ultimately be a trillion-dollar war, and set us down the road to European-style socialism. It's hard to think of how Obama could be worse. He'll just be bad in different ways.

The truth is, unless you vote for a third-party candidate (which really isn't a bad idea), you don't have much of a choice this November. You can either endorse the idea of a massive, invasive, ever-encroaching federal government that's used to promote center-left ideology, or you can endorse the idea of a massive, invasive, ever-encroaching federal government that's used to promote center-right ideology.

Sadly, if the GOP does lose, it's likely to be interpreted not as a repudiation of the GOP's excesses, but as an endorsement of the Democrats'. When the only two parties who have a chance at winning both have a track record of expanding the size and scope of government, every election is likely to be interpreted as a win for big government—only the brand changes.

Voting yourself more freedom simply isn't an option, at least if you want your vote to be taken seriously (and I'm not denigrating any third parties here; I'm just reflecting reality).

Which brings me back to why the Republicans need to get throttled: A humiliated, decimated GOP that rejuvenates and rebuilds around the principles of limited government, free markets, and rugged individualism is really the only chance for voters to possibly get a real choice in federal elections down the road.

Of course, there's no guarantee that's how the party will emerge from defeat. But the Republican Party in its current form has forfeited its right to govern.



I would cite regulation, but I know you will simply ignore it.

Around the Network
akuma587 on 22 October 2008

Great article steven. And I definitely agree for the GOP to become a viable party in the future, it needs to get slaughtered in the fall. Ideally, it should become more like the libertarian party. In reality, I think it will become more like the old guard Republican party. Regardless, it needs more than gay marriage, pro-life, and attack or threaten any country we don't like as platforms to run on.

But what really needs to quit is all the boogeyman politics. Liberals do it occasionally with things like global warming, but the GOP right now and ever since 9/11 has been the biggest bunch of fearmongerers in existence. And entities like Fox News don't help the situation at all.



We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls.  The only thing that really worried me was the ether.  There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke

It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...."  Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson

steven787 on 22 October 2008

I honestly do not agree with the article, I do not want a Republican revolution with in the party. I hope for a more moderate change in the party. If they get hurt too bad, they may fall apart and turn even further to the right in the wrong ways.



I would cite regulation, but I know you will simply ignore it.

fkusumot on 22 October 2008
steven787 said:
I honestly do not agree with the article, I do not want a Republican revolution with in the party. I hope for a more moderate change in the party. If they get hurt too bad, they may fall apart and turn even further to the right in the wrong ways.

Steven, that may happen briefly, but not for long. They will have to run back to the center within the next 4-6 years. I'm fairly certain that within that time period they will rediscover the roots of "fiscal conservatism". There's no doubt no matter who is president that there is going to be some expansion of the government because of the prolonged recession. There's also little doubt that there will be some problems with those programs and that when the worst storms of the crisis have passed there will be a shift back to "reigning in spending". If the Republicans can call some of the fiscally minded intellectuals back in from the wilderness and, while still pandering to the social conservatives in the party but ultimately giving them short shrift, things will start swinging back to their favor.



I Blame Wii Fit!

akuma587 on 22 October 2008

Great article.  Offers a snapshot like the previous article from steven of the Republican party's current dilemma.

http://www.forbes.com/opinions/2008/10/21/republican-moderate-swing-oped-cx_dg_1022gerstein.html

R.I.P. Reagan Revolution

Dan Gerstein 10.22.08, 12:01 AM ET

As a student of politics, I have been watching this campaign with one eye on the historic prospects of Barack Obama and one eye on the tenuous future of his Republican opponents.

I have been particularly fascinated by how the Republicans plan to begin rehabilitating the brand that President Bush and his allies have shredded over the last eight years, reconnect with their sunny Reagan roots and prepare themselves to compete again for the determinative center of the electorate.

Judging from the disturbing developments of the last two months, the verdict seems clear. Forget the self-reckoning and self-repairing--the Republicans seem intent on self-immolation. Indeed, instead of trying to work itself out of the deep electoral hole that Bush and company created, the GOP has apparently opted to apply the drill-baby-drill mantra to its own political fortunes--and, improbably, find ways to narrow the party's appeal to the swing voters they have done so much to alienate during the Bush era.

I'm not talking about what the hateful yahoos who are attending rallies for the Republican ticket are yelling (albeit after being egged on by a flurry of indefensible attacks by the McCain campaign and its surrogates). I'm talking about what Republican leaders and elected officials are actually saying and doing. All of which, taken together, suggests that the GOP of the moment is now far closer to being the party of Joe McCarthy than John McCain, and explains why Colin Powell and many other responsible Republicans are sending increasingly urgent distress signals over the sinking McCain ship.

We have seen the party that gave us Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Eisenhower and Reagan nominate a woman for vice president who could not answer an interviewer's relatively gentle question about what news sources she regularly reads. This is not a matter of class or gender, but rather seriousness and credibility, which Sarah Palin lost with many voters who were willing to give her a fair shake the minute she claimed that seeing Russia from her state was a foreign policy credential.

We have seen Palin go on to falsely accuse her Democratic opponent of "palling around with terrorists." The most outrageous thing about this assertion is not the gross exaggeration of Obama's relationship with Bill Ayers, but the shameful, purposeful use of the plural: "terrorists." These are the kinds of loony accusations we are used to hearing from members of the ultraconservative John Birch Society, not running mates of John McCain.

We have seen one of McCain's campaign co-chairman, former Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating, use the racially loaded term " guy of the street" to try to paint Obama as extreme to white America. This about a black man who grew up in the suburbs of Hawaii, graduated from Columbia University, was the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, taught constitutional law for 12 years and was attacked as an elitist by Republicans for talking about the price of arugula in Iowa? He is about as "street" as the late William F. Buckley, Jr.

Just last Friday, we saw a Republican congresswoman from Minnesota, Michelle Bachmann, explicitly attack Obama and his wife as "anti-American" and call on the media to investigate members of Congress to " find out if they are pro-America or anti-America." Then Palin repeated this patriotism-questioning line at a rally in North Carolina, saying she was glad to be in a part of the country that was "pro-America." One has to wonder what made these women think that this was acceptable in the United States of 2008?

And most recently, as if the overt hints of McCarthyism were not enough, McCain and his allies are now openly calling Obama a socialist because he wants to raise the top tax brackets back to their Clinton-era levels (when the country enjoyed the greatest peacetime expansion in our history) and provide a cut in the payroll tax to middle class workers.

These digs about a Democrat who has raised more money from Wall Street than his Republican opponent and been endorsed by notable red diaper babies like Warren Buffett, former Federal Reserve Chairman and Reagan appointee Paul Volcker, Bank of America CEO Hugh McColl and Google CEO Erik Schmidt? These attacks from a Republican Party whose president just called for nationalizing much of our banking system and whose nominee endorsed that same extreme government intervention in the marketplace?

Some will want to write off all these bizarre deep-end diatribes--to borrow a favorite Cheney-ism--as the last desperate throes of a dying campaign. Something is near death all right, but it's not merely the McCain insurgency. It's the Reagan Revolution.

Those blue-collar Democrats that Reagan stole away with his potent mix of unshakable optimism, John Wayne strength and cultural grievance are now coming home--some of them, albeit, grudgingly. They have been pushed back as much as won back by the incompetence, intolerance and crony capitalism of the Bush reign, which McCain is doing more to repeat than repudiate. As these Reagan Democrats and centrist independents flee, and as the country cries out for the bigness and confidence of the best of Reaganism at this time of economic crisis, all the Republicans seem to offer is the smallness and suspicion of Reagan's low-road assault on welfare queens.

How bad has the backlash gotten? According to the New York Times/CBS News poll that came out on Tuesday, while Obama now has the highest favorability of any non-incumbent candidate since Reagan in 1980, Palin's negative rating is the highest for a vice-presidential candidate in the history of that poll. What's worse, McCain's disapproval ratings have risen 10 points since September.

But the best measure of the Reagan Revolution's kaput-ness, and of the damage being done by the latest events in this politics of paranoia, is how many prominent Republicans have been willing to openly violate the Gipper's 11th Commandment--and criticize other Republicans.

Some of the more biting critics of Palin's selection have been conservative-thought leaders like George Will, David Brooks, Ken Adelman, David Frum, Peggy Noonan and Kathleen Parker, who said in her column on the National Review Web site that the Alaskan governor " makes George W. Bush sound like Cicero." More recently, Republican senators Norm Coleman of Minnesota and Susan Collins of Maine, who are locked in tough re-election fights, strongly voiced their discomfort with the conspiratorial robo-calls the McCain campaign has been using to mass-produce its bogus Ayers attacks on Obama.

The most damning indictment, though, came from Colin Powell's appearance Sunday on Meet the Press, which was as much a rejection of the Republican Party's current direction as an endorsement of Obama. The import of Powell's candid comments--embracing the inclusiveness of Obama's campaign, criticizing the narrowness and offensiveness of the McCain campaign and its tactics, condemning the conservative whisper campaign alleging Obama is a Muslim--was that he believes his party became something alien to him as it went about deforming Obama into something alien to America.

If this complaint sounds familiar, that's because it fatefully mirrors the wagon-circling, vote-hemorrhaging meltdown the Democrats experienced at the height of the Reagan Revolution in the mid-1980s. Now the cement shoe is on the other foot. More and more in this campaign, the Republicans are the ones who look hopelessly out of touch with the mood of the country (along with the demographic and economic changes it is undergoing), totally bankrupt of new ideas that respond to the challenges of the moment and reflexively driven by their side's most extreme purity-demanding partisans.

The upshot of all this is that the Republicans have a lot more to fear now than Barack Obama or losing this one election. Most immediately, the Republican Party has to be afraid that swing voters and the moderate voices within its own ranks are growing afraid of the Republican Party. Longer term, they have to be even more worried that they are turning off a whole generation of young voters by clinging to the outdated remnants of Nixon's Southern strategy. Indeed, the millennials are not just flocking to Obama--they are registering as Democrats by overwhelming margins. And by all indications, tired tropes about taxes and terrorists are just not going to put them back in play.

What will? That is the central question the Republicans will have to confront once this campaign is over and the denial on the right--as evidenced by the widespread shoot-the-messenger reaction to Powell's break from the party--subsides.

Will they reassess their relationships with narrow-minded interest groups and rebuild their intellectual capital in these out years, as the Democrats did after 1984 with the creation of the centrist, free-thinking Democratic Leadership Council that midwifed Bill Clinton's middle class agenda? Or will they follow Sarah Palin's lead and limit their pitch to the ever-smaller slices of "pro-America" America that embrace their anachronistic politics?



We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls.  The only thing that really worried me was the ether.  There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke

It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...."  Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson

Around the Network
Final-Fan on 22 October 2008

That's a pretty devastating takedown. Linky?  [edit:  Never mind.]



Tag (courtesy of fkusumot): "Please feel free -- nay, I encourage you -- to offer rebuttal."
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
My advice to fanboys: Brag about stuff that's true, not about stuff that's false. Predict stuff that's likely, not stuff that's unlikely. You will be happier, and we will be happier.

"Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts." - Sen. Pat Moynihan
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The old smileys: ; - ) : - ) : - ( : - P : - D : - # ( c ) ( k ) ( y ) If anyone knows the shortcut for , let me know!
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
I have the most epic death scene ever in VGChartz Mafia.  Thanks WordsofWisdom! 

The Ghost of RubangB on 22 October 2008

The Obamanation shall have their revenge on Reaganomics!


You guys see that recent article that said our wage gap has been increasing since the 80's and is now the 3rd largest? We have the richest rich and the poorest poor here, and it's not only killing our poor, it's killing our economy.



twitter.com/evaneldeneller

Sunday Fundays

steven787 on 22 October 2008

I didn't see that article, I've seen it in the real world.



I would cite regulation, but I know you will simply ignore it.

steven787 on 23 October 2008

Fox news and the Examiner: CNN` "warped" this comment:

‘I can't tell if Sarah Palin is incompetent, stupid, unqualified, corrupt, or all of the above.'

This is the full quote:

"Watching press coverage of the Republican candidate for vice president, it's sometimes hard to decide whether Sarah Palin is incompetent, stupid, unqualified, corrupt, backward or - well, all of the above."

They claim that the original was aimed at the press... it was, the article was pro-Palin.

But guess what.  That IS the question running in many people's minds.

How can people really be defending this person's intelligence?  OMG, the world is ending.

Are you a Republican in Congress?  Wanna win re-election?  Be honest about Palin.  Be a Maverick.

 

 

In other news, FoxNews is reporting two polls tonight that are too close to call.  They are right, well kinda.

FOX News 10/20 - 10/21 936 LV 3.0 49 40 Obama +9
Rasmussen Reports 10/19 - 10/21 3000 LV 2.0 51 45 Obama +6
Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby 10/19 - 10/21 1208 LV 2.9 52 42 Obama +10
Gallup (Traditional)* 10/19 - 10/21 2384 LV 2.0 50 45 Obama +5
Gallup (Expanded)* 10/19 - 10/21 2299 LV 2.0 52 44 Obama +8
Hotline/FD 10/19 - 10/21 782 LV 3.5 47 42 Obama +5

 

None of those are too close to call.  They are talking about these:

GWU/Battleground 10/15 - 10/21 1000 LV 3.1 49 47 Obama +2
Associated Press/GfK 10/16 - 10/20 800 LV 3.5 44 43 Obama +1

These were 4 day polls, that started before the Powell endorsement and before Palin declaration of two-Americas (a pro- and an anti).  And even then they fall in with a bunch of really favorable Obama polls.

This is the whole spectrum:

RCP Average 10/15 - 10/21 -- -- 49.9 42.9 Obama +7.0
FOX News 10/20 - 10/21 936 LV 3.0 49 40 Obama +9
Rasmussen Reports 10/19 - 10/21 3000 LV 2.0 51 45 Obama +6
Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby 10/19 - 10/21 1208 LV 2.9 52 42 Obama +10
Gallup (Traditional)* 10/19 - 10/21 2384 LV 2.0 50 45 Obama +5
Gallup (Expanded)* 10/19 - 10/21 2299 LV 2.0 52 44 Obama +8
Hotline/FD 10/19 - 10/21 782 LV 3.5 47 42 Obama +5
ABC News/Wash Post 10/18 - 10/21 1330 LV 2.5 54 43 Obama +11
IBD/TIPP 10/17 - 10/21 1088 LV 3.0 46 42 Obama +4
NBC News/Wall St. Jrnl 10/17 - 10/20 1159 RV 2.9 52 42 Obama +10
GWU/Battleground 10/15 - 10/21 1000 LV 3.1 49 47 Obama +2
Associated Press/GfK 10/16 - 10/20 800 LV 3.5 44 43 Obama +1
Ipsos/McClatchy 10/16 - 10/20 773 LV 3.5 50 42 Obama +8
CNN/Opinion Research 10/17 - 10/19 764 LV 3.5 51 46 Obama +5
Pew Research 10/16 - 10/19 2382 LV 2.5 53 39 Obama +14

Funny that Foxnews isn't reporting their own poll.

 

 

Edit: Newt Gingrich just said (paraphrased): Obama is the CNN, NBC, NYT candidate, Powell proves he is the Washington establishment candidate.  Maybe all the people showing up to the McCain rallies are the Joe the Plumbers, the working americans.

Yes because all the people who show up to the Obama rallies are the elite.  Very smart.  Alienate more people.



I would cite regulation, but I know you will simply ignore it.

akuma587 on 23 October 2008

@steven:

Indeed, I noticed the Fox poll earlier. And what a joke that they aren't reporting it...that's like you can't admit that you have already admitted that Obama is doing better. Its like a logical hula hoop, or something.

Who made that quote by the way steven? I'll google it in a sec to check.



We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls.  The only thing that really worried me was the ether.  There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke

It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...."  Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson