I don’t think your that your well written, and informative post was convoluted, and or rambling at all Sir. I think overall that it was an extremely good analyisis of the current state of affairs not only in our political system and leaders, but of our society in general. Where I part ways with you is can the conservatives ever get a “real conservative” elected. I don’t see how they can, and ever will. Our conservatives leaders sold out conservative values and principals just to get elected, and or stay too in office. As a society we have gone to far down the leftist/socialist road to do an abrupt U turn. My anger and frustration lies with conservative politicians, (CINO) (excellent term too!)who use conservatives to get elected and immediately sell out to the enemy. But then what can they do in reality against the tide of liberalism in reality as you pointed out so well. But the other side of that coin is that the CINO will eventually become one party as you mentioned , just so they can keep their jobs. Its one of the best examples of “catch 22″ I have ever seen. We lose either way! Thats why I would rather vote for a indie than another CINO, and lose. Palin on TV the other nite even mentioned this very topic, and alluded to the fact that maybe it is time for the Republican party to to be replaced, and go the way of the Whigs. Palin/Cain have been able to tap into all that anger and frustration that many people like myself have been feeling for at least 20 years now as we watched our Republican presidents and politicians “compromise us”right out of the house and into the street. And I still don’t believe that many Americans still don’t see how bad our political system has gotten, and all the negative consequences that their ignorance will bring them later on. Their denial only makes matters worse. Not implying you at all. Its way past the time though that our party learn how to fight like the enemy, becuase if they don’t we will lose. And I would rather go down fighting than as the Huckabee tells us”We must compromise!.” The time for compromise has long since past, its time to really fight right now. The conservative position is only going to grow weaker, not stronger unless we get someone who can really lead.

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@Ferienparks:

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Is it just me or is spam getting more sophisticated in the flattery?

Sorry, Ferienparks, but flattery will get you nowhere.

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Wordsmith,

I think you’re probably right about us not being too far apart. I think once we get a Standard Conservative Party going, you’ll realize it was not nearly as scary as you had thought (Kind of like rappelling off a cliff…the first two steps are ULP! but after that its just pure pleasure.)

There are no doubt ways in which we can address your concerns in the framework of a Conservative mindset. And you can help keep us honest.

At times, there may be two roads, and both are fine to the Conservatives, but one is strongly preffered by one of the many groups of Moderates, and we the larger group, should naturally defer to the other group in such a case (I often do this with my wife.)

And there may be bargains to be struck. I’d be willing to talk to Libertarians about Drugs, forex.
1. I doubt any Conservative is that enthused by SWAT team raids on marijuana dealers based on druggie informants (specially considering the number of innocent joes who got their doors kicked in because the SWAT team hit next door or the informant was lying.)
2. We could talk about Medical Marijuana.

But we do this in the context of Libertarians throwing strong support for Pro-life. The Libertarians make the arguement for Pro-life, and others merely suggest that Federalism is the solution. The Conservatives push for an amendment, and for federalism.

Now, on #1, I’m against that, but we do have to prioritize our issues. If the Tarians come on board, then we have good reason to raise this issue from say #30 to oh, #12 in importance. If some form of serious improvement like Federalism or an Amendment passes for Pro-life, then the Conservatives promise to come back and support Medical M.

Deals on sticky issues like that can be worked out. But yeah, much of the divisiveness is unneccessary. Go with Standard Conservatism, and most parties are going to be reasonably happy.

(And that’s me trying to be a Happy Warrior. I’m not sure I succeeded.)

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Craig,

Yes, I’ve read it. We certainly could use less talk about the Center. There’s been too much already. The use of the term ‘Middle’ might be better as it might denote more of the shifting back and forth nature of the undecided voters. I’m not sure we can totally do away with such a term, but de-emphasizing it is a good idea.

As to your second point–Absolutely. Be not ashamed.

I think that Sarah could have won, but I think it would have been the most insane media frothing at the mouth circus you can imagine. If you can imagine a new anchor spitting on her in an interview on live TV that is. I think the media would have totally lost touch with decency, and at least one of them might try to punch her in public. That is the firestorm she would have had to walk through. Take what she sufferred, and multiply it by at least two, and probably four. My prediction boggles my own mind, but it seems logical. Maybe there is some tipping point where they back off for some reason I’m not seeing. But yeah, I’m suggesting behavior that would get some peple committed to mental institutions as deranged.

Which would have destroyed the media.

As to the Dems winning, hmm, its more complicated there. Bill Clinton, in many ways, was fairly centrist, I think (Partially, he was forced to be so by Gingrich). The problem for the Dems is that this is a center-right country, and they are a center-left to far left party. However, there is probably going to be a lot of really dissapointed Dems no matter what Obama does because he’s made too many promises—or so I hear.

I think that trying to educate people through the MSM and colleges may be a bad idea. With confidence, you can scare the MSM into pretending to try to be fair. But ultimately, I think we have to create a set of parrallel institutions to replace the corrupted ones. Certain institutions like the R party are not that badly corrupted yet. Others, well, they need a competitor to steal their sunlight. MSM, many colleges, and Hollywood are my candidates for the brush fire after we plant another orchard.

One way to help replace the MSM is with bloggers. Glenn Reynolds has noted repeatedly that ‘hard news’ is the killer app for the MSM, but they don’t want to do that unglamorous and difficult job. A few years back, he also supported an initiative for creating more local area blogs that you could see as a way to replace newspapers. Of course, Craigslist is supposed to be sucking up a lot of newspapers add revenue from job listings, I think, or something like that.

I’m a SF/F writer, so I’d like to see some Conservative support for writers, but not only writers, bloggers, and other people. The laborer is worthy of his hire. Nurture some guys with fire and a bit of talent, and the right views….offer prizes and fellowships, and small online magazines, and build the next generation of talent. Now a lot of this is already happening in the Blogs. A lot of good writers are learning to be better writers.

Let me add, although I am no kind of poet, except a very bad one, that I see poetry as a probably moribund field that is waiting for some angels to bless it, and recreate a brand new poetry for Conservatives. Liberals create literary movements as a tool for their goals. We could turn the next generation into a bunch of poetry quoters, and the whole mindset of the field could be informed by Conservative ideals. Liberals would naturally fight back, but they would be out of their element because we had created the foundation, the ‘paradigm’.

Ditto, if and when someone writes a piece about Hillary Clinton spending too much on a dress, I hope that I willl be today, mature enough to laugh at the silliness. People in high places spend a lot on clothes. Its the way the world is.

In your next paragraph, you deal with much that I might call “Inside the Beltwayism”.

With Corporate Bailouts and Globalization….If I see a problem with what Business is doing, I’m tempted to look for the prior government hand that set-up the bad situation in the first place.
There are several rules of thumb to keep in mind:
1. An active government favors the rich (who can afford lawyers to lobby for special breaks).
2. A lot of CEO’s are not free marketeers. They tell the workers…your wages are not going up, its the free market….meanwhile they support illegal immigration. They tell someone….free market…you lost, get over it…..but if they lose…its time for a gov’t handout.

I have doubts that several hundred million dollar salaries are justified by the free market. I suspect there is some tomfoolery and deck-rigging cheating going on. Its an excellent point that we might as well outsource corporate CEO’s as well.

A lot of businessmen believe in the Divine Right of Business to Always Make a Profit (even when they are complete idiots.)

The Conservative position is to be for Free Markets, to accept Profit and Loss, businees formation and great growth and bankruptcy for the unlucky, the weak, the silly, the piggish, the thuggish….etc., etc.. The Conservative is neither pro-worker, nor pro-business.

Calvin Coolidge is supposed to have explained that nine out of ten people who came to him wanted something they should not have, and if you kept your mouth shut, they eventually went away. That’s Mr. Business is great Republican President.

So, I’m for Free Trade even though it hurts in the short run. However, I find it curious that its always ‘us’ that has to sacrifice, while ‘them’ don’t….

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Aside from a very poorly ran campaign, McCain shoehorned himself by trying to be a “nice guy” while his the opponent flooded the public with attack commercials. Aided by a “news” media rabidly digging up some real but mostly fictional mud to throw at the Republicans while ignoring their responsibility to hold a microscope up the Obama. It is totally ludicrous to attempt to shift the blame of a failed campaign on to VP candidate who had little control if any over the main campaign decisions. Palin had mere weeks to prepare for the Presidential campaign while the other three were campaigning for nearly two years. (As for the Palin wardrobe non-issue; public image “groomers” are an essential part of most political campaigns, and the attention this received was pure hypocrisy. Has any of the press wondered at how much has been spent to cloth the Obamas?)

However, there are numerous reasons why the Republicans lost. #1 The voters did not vote for them. Yes, I know it’s simplistic, but it goes to the crux of the subject. The Republican party leadership needs to stop asking each other (or listening to the biased talking-heads on why the vote didn’t turn out for them. They need to find out WHY they are losing their appeal to the everyday people. What was it of the Republican platforms that the people liked and what did they not like.

IMO the reasons why are very simple, and go beyond labels of Conservative, Moderate or Liberal. McCain was right when he said that Washington has changed the Republicans. He neglected to realize that it has changed him as well. Just as with the Democratic Party the Republican leadership has grown into one that mostly represents the policies of their own party elite and the Limousine class. Republicans have aligned themselves with a select group of globalist social planners that is totally out of touch with the party’s base voters. If the leadership really wants to recover and reverse the trend, they had better get their heads out of the butts and start thinking about what their voter’s are concerned about.

1) Corporate Bail-outs. The people are royally pissed at this and for good reason. While some may get some token aid or support when they get in financial straights, The rest of us are usually on our own. When wealthy executives are holding their hands out, it just strikes the average person as unfairness. Especially when considering how executive pay compensation has far out-paced the wages of nearly every other worker (who’s wages have not kept pace with inflation. comparative with 40 to 50 years ago.)

2) Illegal immigration. The American public are overwhelmingly against illegal immigration and amnesty, while the Washington crowd is overwhelmingly for it. Here we all have to put up with all kinds of crap entering airports and flying state to state, while the Feds put all of us at risk by not securing the boarders.

3) “Globalization” of manufacturing. To the average American, what this really means is that factories are closed and moved overseas and their towns and family members lose the jobs. (Hell, with some companies, the only employees left in America are sales-staff and the executives. I would bet they looked, they could save more money by hiring executives overseas who will manage the companies for less pay and perks. )

4) To use a phrase by Bill O’Reilly; “The Culture War.” Destruction and demeaning the importance of families, the tramping on of traditions, and the creation of an economy that requires both parents to work. As a result, or children are raised by strangers because Mom & Dad don’t have time to raise them. Meanwhile their own family values and traditions are discounted by educators who it seems are too busy indoctrinating our kids, rather than teaching them what they need to know. (It was disgusting to me to hear Biased Media-whores denigrate Palin and consider her unelectable for being a “Christian.” They couldn’t get away with that bigotry if she was of the Jewish faith.) Republicans in all levels of government have not stood their ground well enough to staunch Democratic erosion.

5) All Government is too damn big, too expensive, too powerful, and too ineffective. It is also more concerned with regulating and controlling the people than business or itself. The people need the government to get off their backs and to quit incrementally restricting and eroding our rights. American government today is marching headlong to a big-brother society to rival the communist Chinese and old USSR in it’s telling us what we can and can do. They are supposed to be our servants not the other way around.

What are needed in the Republican party are reformers like Palin. We need STATESMEN not Politicians.

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Tennwrtiter, did you read my post #16 that is now out of moderation?

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We’re getting a lot of moderates cooperating in slamming Palin. Personally, I see a fair chunk of it as prejudgiced classism with some bigotry tossed on for spice. There is also a strong element of ‘hate Christian’ going on.

I think we don’t need to be offended and reactive. We need to pursue the Happy Warrior course, and say “Of course, I’m a Christian. Its the logical choice.” and say it with enthusiasm.

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A lot of those problems were the result of RINOism and Inside the Beltwayism. The financial crisis was, as I understand, the result of giving people loans they shouldn’t have. We could have more loudly fought against that. We could have eschewed the culture of corruption more enthusiastically.

We chose to put ourselves in a bad situation, and then we found ourselves behind the eight ball.

Yeah, the media was absolutely in the tank for Obama. But we know that whoever is put up by the R’s will be savaged. We know this like we know the Law of Gravity. So we didn’t foresee that the MSM would utterly forsake honor, still we knew it would be at least very bad. So what did we do to prepare for this? What could we have done, and why didn’t we?

Mike Huckabee could probably out debate Obama on sheer style and wit. Rudy Guiliani could have just taken Obama’s head off and used it for a football. Mitt Romney could have just conducted an executive level seminar for the not particularly bright student facing him. Instead, we chose the most RINO and least capable of all candidates. Why? Well, one reason was that we let Dems vote in R primaries. Another reason was that the RINOs desperately wanted their candidate, and with what I understand, front-loaded with Liberal states voting first, and Dems crossover and the support of the MSM, and ferocious RINO pushing, we got McCain.

RINOs have a tendency to pick bad candidates. I’m not sure why, but I do know it seems to happen. Its like they’re embarrassed to be conservatives or something.

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A 100% conservative would be great! But, once you get there or somewhere close, you have to have the Happy Warrior. You have to have someone who can reach out, and explain to the Moderates and the Independents, and a few Democrats that what ails them has a Conservative cure.

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The long list of bad things going against McCain emphasizes one point. This is a Conservative nation. Only after the Republican Party deliberately eschewed principle, and really made a mess of things in many, many ways, and with tons of bad news, did Obama have a chance to win. In other words, with a Happy Warrior Conservative, we could be looking at something closer to a 60% victory next time.

===============

Step One: Fix the blame on those who caused the problem.
Step Two: Punish the wicked, and elevate the righteous.
Step Three….

No. In ways, you’re right. We should start with the Happy Warrior stuff as soon as we can. Now as you can see with my reply to Craig, I’m already moving in that direction. But the Happy Warrior should be able to fight against his in-party rivals as well, and quite effectively.

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Tennwriter,

I have answered you but my comments keeps getting stuck either in spam or moderation… so look at comment # 16 for my answer if it ever gets out of moderation.

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Here’s a candidate for Georgia Governor who I want to win in 2010. He’s got a masters in history. Very intelligent, articulate, clearly defined beliefs, charismatic, and will be a great Governor. He’ll have excellent future potential for national office, imo. I think he’s got what it takes to clearly state a political revolution back to our foundations in conservativism.

I loved Governor Palin, but somehow, I think this guy is a “McBerry Revolution”.

http://draftraymcberrygeorgiagovernor2010.blogspot.com/

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@laura:

Here’s a quote regarding Governor Palin and how she was portrayed: “far right Bible-thumping conservative hillbilly nut”.

Even your terminology somehow states that we, as Christians, have something to be ashamed of.

You aren’t confusing me for Kathleen Parker, are you? Nowhere did I attack Christian conservatives in this post.

@Tennwriter:

However, Moderates are frequently low-information voters, and they are swayable.

Depends on what you mean by “moderates”. I’m talking about center-right conservatives who aren’t living on the fringe of far right extremism. Their core beliefs are just as solid to the center right as extremists are in their inflexible brand of conservatism.

But, really, I don’t think we’re really that much in disagreement. My main thrust regarding election loss is that we didn’t have an adequate delivery system, and it has less to do with McCain’s supposed and apparent RINOism (I think he would have been fiscally more responsible than President Bush) than it has to do with having a candidate who can connect on the level of style and charisma. McCain was at a disadvantaged, anchored to 8 years of Bush and the perception of failed policies, the timing of the economic crisis, campaign financing, media fawning on Obama shaping the battle space, and the excitement and novelty of glass ceiling momentum. As Letterman so nightly would point out about McCain, “he’s old”.

McCain was right about the surge; but what sticks out in people’s consciousness is that the original decision to invade Iraq was a mistake and the wrong war. Hence, Obama scores.

If we had our own “Obama/Reagan” candidate with the same kind of charisma and popular appeal, it would have made a difference.

I agree that conservatism doesn’t need to be watered down. I believe the right ideas are conservative ideas. We just need the proper delivery system. It doesn’t mean running someone who is a party purist, oozing 100% conservatism. Rush Limbaugh would never win the presidency. You need someone who can deliver the conservative message with style as well as substance, that attracts people from the center and across the aisle as well as energize the base.

If it had been a “normal election”, things might have been different. But this year, the Democrats ran a “super” candidate. Someone who, no matter what you think of him, energized voters like no other candidate.

@Tennwriter:

I’ve long said, RINOs lose, Conservatives with a smile win.

That sounds like an apples and oranges comparison. This talk about “happy conservative warrior” sounds misplaced, as mostly what I see are “angry-as-hell-we’re-not-going-to-take-it-anymore” conservatives, ranting about the GOP and whining about the RINOS in their midst.

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