Gamecock grows weary of fear of Hillary obsessed Republicans who conclude that current polls and the 2006 election result dictate that we best put social conservatives in the closet if we want to win in 2008.
We win when we unapologetically run on economic and social conservative principles and as strong on defense war hawks that refuse to lose. See 1980, 1984, 1988, 1994-2004 in Congress, 2000 and 2004.
We lose when we water down our message with tax hikes and moderation. See 1992, 1996 and 2006 in Congress.
We win when the Dems are McGovern or perceived as such. See 1972, 1980, 1984, 1988 and 2004. Bill Clinton ran after the Cold War and distanced himself from the far left.
The Dems running for the ’08 nomination are trying to see who is the most McGovern like.
The 2006 Year Six election was unique and is not translatable to an election of a new commander in chief in a time of war. Americans do not pick known defeatist appeasers. We picked a commander in chief in 2004 specifically on the issue of war and rejected the Vietnam loser when the issue was joined. In 2006 too many republicans were equivocal on the war and most Dems did not openly oppose victory.
So we need not fear Hillary or any Democrat.
Moreover, there is no evidence that social issues cost the republicans any seat.
Yet many republicans here at Redstate seem to want to return to pre-1980 mode when we lost elections. Many demand we settle for one of the Big Three and that we dare not even closely challenge their views on social issues nor insist upon promises to win our votes.
Hear Investors Business Daily editorialize:
The Presidency: As the race for the White House begins, a sad but inescapable fact emerges: None of the candidates with a serious chance firmly believes in the principles of either Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush.
Former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani may have gained national esteem gallantly coordinating the city’s response to the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, not to mention comforting the families of thousands of victims. But can a full-fledged supporter of abortion rights and homosexual unions win the Republican Party’s nomination without a self-destructive bloodbath?
Will GOP primary voters in the Midwest and the South really pull the lever for a twice-divorced Brooklynite gun-control supporter who dutifully marched in the Big Apple’s gay pride parade each year, and who seems to have an odd penchant for attending televised events dressed in drag?
What’s more, as columnist Joseph Farah noted last week, Giuliani in 1996 remarked to the New York Post that “Most of (Bill) Clinton’s policies are very similar to most of mine.”
Giuliani’s positions as mayor have indeed been liberal on an array of issues, from amnesty and other leniencies for illegal aliens to opposition to both the Defense of Marriage Act and to banning partial-birth abortion.
Giuliani, who currently leads Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton 48%-43% among U.S. voters, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released last week, has also refused to sign the Americans for Tax Reform’s anti-tax increase pledge.
The GOP 2008 presidential candidates who have signed ATR’s promise to “oppose any and all efforts to increase the marginal income tax rates” include former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, Rep. Duncan Hunter of California, and former Virginia Gov. James Gilmore.
But all, even Romney, are viewed as long shots against GOP front-runners Giuliani and Sen. John McCain of Arizona. According to Quinnipiac, “Mitt Romney is nowhere, actually losing to (Democratic Sen. Barack) Obama and (former Democratic Sen. John) Edwards in red states, where voters probably just don’t know the former Massachusetts governor.”
McCain, of course, voted against Bush’s tax cuts during his first term, and in 2000 ran against Bush with what was mocked as a meager “Clinton Lite” tax-cut plan. And in spite of McCain’s much-touted opposition to pork barrel spending “earmarks,” the Cato Institute’s Michael Tanner notes in his new book “Leviathan on the Right” that McCain “has shown a disturbing predilection for elevating every personal pet peeve from steroids in baseball to airplane service quality to a federal issue.”
As Tanner observes, McCain, Romney, Brownback, and even former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who also is considering running, “all support different variations of big-government conservatism.”
For the Republican Party, this is shaping up as an alarming reversal, with disastrous implications.
Viewed in historical context, the nomination and election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 transformed America’s political landscape. Reagan was the only president of the 20th century elected as the leader of a political movement.
Control of the GOP had finally been wrenched from its northeastern “dime-store Democrat” wing by conservatives who were intellectually committed to challenging rather than containing Soviet expansionism, lowering taxes, cutting government and fighting the erosion of traditional moral values.
Reagan, and now Bush, may have fallen short in some of these areas of policy, especially taming big government. But again and again they both boldly succeeded in going against the political grain in Washington and were both handily re-elected.
Reagan dug us out of a near-depression with income-tax cuts that in 1980 were considered as economically foolish as they were politically impossible. Then he won the Cold War.
Bush has remarkably protected the homeland from attack for more than five years, and he’s the first president to face reality on the disaster that awaits the country if we refuse to use private investment to reform entitlement programs such as Social Security.
The challenges ahead require a president who believes deeply in those principles. Right now, that candidate is nowhere in sight.
But let’s look at Reagan’s Secret Formula:
I’m about to commit speechwriter sacrilege and reveal the secret formula to all of Ronald Reagan’s most powerful speeches.
But first, let’s address the elephant in the room: conservatives’ lugubrious mood heading into the 2008 presidential election. Ask yourself this question: which Republican delivered the last speech you watched or read that surged with spine tingling, foot-stomping excitement while crackling with core conservative values?
No, I mean other than Ronald Reagan.
Was it John McCain, Mitt Romney, or Rudy Giuliani? Probably not. And that’s the point.
Conservatives’ current gloom is, in part, a symptom of a perceived “eloquence gap” among the top Republican presidential contenders. Moreover, it is a sign that somewhere amid the Donkey Party’s 2006 congressional stampede, Republican rhetoric got knocked off-key and is in desperate need of tuning.
Looking across history’s arc of great Republican speeches, one finds that they all contain three key themes three communicative “pillars” that when combined create powerful and enduring messages that transcend time.
Read it all at Townhall.
The conservative message is a winner. It wasn’t heard in 2006. If it had been heard louder in 2004, Bush would have won 3-4 more states at least.
There has been some sentiment expressed that maybe young voters will vote in larger numbers and that this means the GOP should soft pedal the social issues. Yet, wasn’t it Reagan that especially appealed to youth?
Right now, Romney and Hunter best fit the bill. Rudy will never completely fit the bill, but he could make himself acceptable with some rhetorical changes and promises to conservatives not to advance a liberal social agenda, and appoint judges that will uphold the free speech rights of the faithful and uphold the right of the people to govern themselves in their states and not have judges make up federal rights to kill developing lives in the womb.
What must not happen is for social conservatives to dummy up at the behest of Chicken Little Republicans that fear Hillary or any other McGovernite.
Mike Gamecock DeVine @ The Charlotte Observer
“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson
The HinzSight Report
Race 4 2008
The Minority Report
February 25th, 2007 at 3:09 am
I think that many in the GOP fail to realize how vital and fragile, is the social conservative attachment to the Republican party. These are a group of voters who aren’t open to pragmatic compromises of their defining principles.
It is not enough to have a President who is “functionally pro-life”. They want a President who actually shares their values and articulates them. That’s the only way they know that President will stand with them when many in the GOP tries to sell them down the river.
February 25th, 2007 at 11:17 am
I agree that a Giuliani candidacy would be disastrous for the GOP. If there is anyone in the field less Reaganesque in the field, it is he. Not only does he PERSONALLY(not politically) stand against Reagan’s beliefs, but he has none of Reagan’s charisma–he leaves most people (myself included) completely unenthused. Further, if a Rudy supporter wants to rebutt, PLEASE do not just give me poll numbers or recite me his record. I want to hear genuine arguments based on what the American voters will think of him (aside from a uniting centrist– the above article did a fantastic job of showing that America wants a conservative, NOT a “whichever way the wind blows” centrist).
February 25th, 2007 at 11:33 am
econ grad stud
meet summa cum laude phi beta kapp econ grad curve breaker
it is pragmatic to prefer a president that shares one’s values
February 25th, 2007 at 12:10 pm
econ grad stud,
The polls indicate that social conservatives are being pragmatic. They realize that Rudy has the best chance to defeat Hillary next year. The only other candidate that comes close is McCain.
So it comes down to this; McCain, Rudy or Hillary?
February 25th, 2007 at 12:32 pm
http://nh2008.blogspot.com/
RON PAUL! He’s the only one getting any attention in NH of the GOP.
February 25th, 2007 at 12:34 pm
Liberty,
Ron is up to 1% now.
I like your optimism.
February 25th, 2007 at 1:28 pm
Liberty Lover:
GOP loves optimism in general. Take it for what it’s worth.
With that being said, I love GOP’s optimism!
February 25th, 2007 at 4:14 pm
GOP,
Did you not read my post mentioning that if you wanted to back up Rudy (or attack Ron Paul) you shouldn’t use poll numbers? No one on this site, with the exception of you, KT, and TM, bases their support on who is winning in the polls. If you want people to warm up to Rudy, ranting on and on about polls and “tough political environments” is not the way to do it. Nothing personal, I’m just getting tired of your ad nauseum spewing out of poll numbers..
February 25th, 2007 at 4:16 pm
I’m sorry that last post sounded a bit caustic. I did not mean to suggest that the only thing Rudy has going for him is the polls. Nor did I mean to suggest that your only reason for supporting him was his success in national polls.
February 25th, 2007 at 7:46 pm
Texas Conservative,
If the Iraq War does not improve, it will be very difficult for any Republican candidate to win next year. The polls give us a better way to predict which candidate may be able to overcome this hurdle.
That said, I am optimistic about Rudy’s ability to meet this challenge.
February 25th, 2007 at 8:54 pm
“We win when we unapologetically run on economic and social conservative principles and as strong on defense war hawks that refuse to lose. See 1980, 1984, 1988, 1994-2004 in Congress, 2000 and 2004.”
Um, Goldwater, 1964? And wasn’t Bush 41 a defense hawk coming off a Gulf War victory in 1992 when he was beaten by a moderate Clinton?
February 25th, 2007 at 9:25 pm
since 1980 JayPe
In 1992 the Cold War was over. Perot assist
February 25th, 2007 at 10:10 pm
GOP,
Agreed that the war in Iraq needs to improve for any Republican to have any success. That said, McCain would be the worst person to nominate if Iraq does not improve with the troop surge. If the surge was to disastrously fail (God forbid
), McCain would be crushed in the general against ANY Democrat.
February 25th, 2007 at 10:55 pm
“McCain would be the worst person to nominate if Iraq does not improve with the troop surge”
Texas Conservative,
I’ll agree with you on that point.
February 26th, 2007 at 1:39 pm
We raised over $14,000 for him Sat evening. This is the blurb:
US Congressman Ron Paul wows crowd of 150 in NH
Pembroke, New Hampshire
Saturday, February 24, 2007
US Congressman Dr. Ron Paul was still receiving applause as he walked out the door of a private home in Pembroke on Saturday evening after speaking to 150 supporters who donated thousands of dollars to seed his bid for the presidency. Paul arrived at 9 PM and stayed to mingle with the adoring crowd until 11:30 PM as they drank coffee and dipped fruit from a large arrangement into a chocolate fountain.
While visiting New Hampshire on a presidential exploratory trip, he also appeared at the NH Liberty Forum in Concord, where he had been endorsed for the presidency on the Friday evening before by former Libertarian presidential candidate Michael Badnarik.
Paul’s speech, which was recorded professionally by California filmmaker Bill Dumas, centered around the financial state of the country, the war in Iraq, and the limited roll of government, and was met with long bouts of applause by the standing-room only crowd.
Supporters believe that Paul’s message can unite fiscal conservatives, republicans, libertarians, constitutionalists, and others who are disillusioned with the direction in which the country is headed, in the cause of less government and reasonable spending and on getting the country back on track with regard to foreign policy.
Checks should be mailed to:
The Ron Paul 2008 PEC
837 W. Plantation Drive
Clute, TX 77531
February 26th, 2007 at 2:03 pm
Liberty Lover,
I like your promotional flyer.
Sounds like you are making good progress on the fundraising, you’ll need just about $100 million more to be competitive.
Keep up the good work.
February 27th, 2007 at 6:09 pm
The Ron Paul campaign has really taken off. There will be hundreds more supporting him on 4/4 in the debate.
February 27th, 2007 at 6:10 pm
The Ron Paul campaign has really taken off. There will be hundreds more supporting him on 4/4 in the debate.
Here is a thread to follow all the action in NH:
http://forum.soulawakenings.com/index.php?topic=7416.0
February 27th, 2007 at 6:10 pm
The Ron Paul campaign has really taken off. There will be hundreds more supporting him on 4/4 in the debate.
Here is a thread to follow all the action in NH:
http://forum.soulawakenings.com/index.php?topic=7416.0
Too bad this website will be out of it with regard to Rock Star Ron Paul!
February 27th, 2007 at 6:12 pm
Hello why is Newt even on this site? He’s not running and neither is Condi Rice?
Talk about the news you wish was, as opposed to the news that really is???
Who runs this site? Is it for real?
February 27th, 2007 at 6:15 pm
Oh by the way, Rudy, Mitt, and McCain are ALL unacceptable as ‘conservatives’.
Rudy is for gun control. That won’t fly in NH nor with this packin’ gal.