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Main Forums => Politics => Topic started by: Leatherneck on November 14, 2008, 08:38:30 AM

Title: Who's to blame for the current state of the GOP?
Post by: Leatherneck on November 14, 2008, 08:38:30 AM
Any single person or entity most to blame? Vote first; then you can see the tally.

TC
Title: Re: Who's to blame for the current state of the GOP?
Post by: cassandra and sara's daddy on November 14, 2008, 08:44:33 AM
the folks who put the leadership in power  ie the membership  just as this is our contry its the memberships party  if they are too complacent to keep em in line shame on em
Title: Re: Who's to blame for the current state of the GOP?
Post by: MechAg94 on November 14, 2008, 09:22:56 AM
I would say the guys over in Congress take most of the blame.  They were the ones who made the deals and allowed all those bloated spending bills to pass through. 

That is assuming that you want someone to blame in D.C.
Title: Re: Who's to blame for the current state of the GOP?
Post by: makattak on November 14, 2008, 09:56:07 AM
Although George W. Bush hasn't been helpful, I also would say the Republicans in congress are most to blame.
Title: Re: Who's to blame for the current state of the GOP?
Post by: Zardozimo Oprah Bannedalas on November 14, 2008, 10:10:11 AM
The Republicans in congress - who have a habit of standing up to oppose bills, not put 'em forward. That's why we lose. I believe Goldwater in the early 60s said that we had to keep all of FDR's social security and other programs for the sake of votes. We've been going downhill ever since. Our people buy into the liberal agenda, just a few years later than the democrats do.

Republicans are also to blame for trying to reinvent their party as the war party, as opposed to the party of fiscal responsibility and limited government.
Title: Re: Who's to blame for the current state of the GOP?
Post by: Ron on November 14, 2008, 10:15:58 AM
I voted GWB

He inherited what was left of Newts Republican revolution. He could have fostered, promoted, cajoled and LED congress to produce smaller government and fiscally responsible legislation.

It is GW's fault and then it is Denny Hastert's fault. Togethor they destroyed the foundation of '94 revolution that was predicated on reducing government power and influence.  

Utter lack of leadership.
Title: Re: Who's to blame for the current state of the GOP?
Post by: Don't care on November 14, 2008, 10:32:53 AM
Who's to blame for the current state of the GOP?

We are.
Title: Re: Who's to blame for the current state of the GOP?
Post by: longeyes on November 14, 2008, 10:52:47 AM
How far back do you want to go?  There's long been a faction of the Grand Old Party that was above the fray and hard at work building the foundation for plantationism.  They were always collaborators with the Left.

But of course the somnolent American voter has let it all happen.
Title: Re: Who's to blame for the current state of the GOP?
Post by: Tallpine on November 14, 2008, 11:13:25 AM
Abe Lincoln ...?   :laugh:
Title: Re: Who's to blame for the current state of the GOP?
Post by: Werewolf on November 14, 2008, 11:34:27 AM
The great unwashed masses for being so intellectually lazy that they let the MSM get away with the hatchet job they've done on Republicans for the last year.

The term easily led/herded sheep comes to mind.
Title: Re: Who's to blame for the current state of the GOP?
Post by: El Tejon on November 14, 2008, 11:46:02 AM
Fistful?
Title: Re: Who's to blame for the current state of the GOP?
Post by: MicroBalrog on November 14, 2008, 01:12:00 PM
Do I not understand correctly that, while the nominees are at least in part elected via the primary process, local party big shots have a huge rule in who becomes the nominee via their part in organizing the vote, and that that is even more true in states that have caucuses rather than primaries?

In this case, wouldn't these people be to blame?
Title: Re: Who's to blame for the current state of the GOP?
Post by: charby on November 14, 2008, 02:30:52 PM
I'm going to blame the MSM and the leftist blogger. In all the half truths and straight up fiction propaganda they pretty much did a good job of alienated a sizable core of independents that probably would have voted Rep over Dem in the last election. Every time something "bad" happened they were quick to blame Bush, Cheney or the GOP.
Title: Re: Who's to blame for the current state of the GOP?
Post by: AZRedhawk44 on November 14, 2008, 02:48:07 PM
Every single member of the Gang of 14.  Triply so for McCain, for McCain/Feingold and McCain/Kennedy.
Title: Re: Who's to blame for the current state of the GOP?
Post by: lone_gunman on November 14, 2008, 06:32:56 PM
George W Bush, completely, in my opinion.

People are sick of him, plain and simple.  And this is completely justified.

Bush is a liberal, who also happens to be a war monger.  Thats a bad combination.
Title: Re: Who's to blame for the current state of the GOP?
Post by: Monkeyleg on November 14, 2008, 06:43:39 PM
Lone_gunman, that's too simple. There's been frustration with the Republican congress for years.

Look at what Obama ran on: a campaign of hope, promises of tax cuts, talk of individual responsibility, and reforming government. Take out the socialist specifics that he tried to hide and it was like Reagan's campaign all over again. Obama actually sounded conservative.

Conservatism isn't dead, it's just that there's precious few of them in congress. 
Title: Re: Who's to blame for the current state of the GOP?
Post by: longeyes on November 15, 2008, 11:06:41 AM
The GOP began to die when Bush the Elder tried to make it a "kinder, gentler" party--in another words, a "pale" replica of the Democratic Party.  The core of the Republican vision--individual rights, personal liberty, free markets, limited government, self-reliance, honest dealing--was befogged by the patriarchal "noblesse" class.  We are still chasing the rabbit 20 years later, and we always will be, only getting further and further behind, until we get our act straight. In my view GHWB was sent to make sure that Reagan didn't "go too far."

By the bye, I think the "conservative" arm needs a new name, something more dynamic than  "conservative," which to me at least implies a defensive posture. 
Title: Re: Who's to blame for the current state of the GOP?
Post by: Monkeyleg on November 15, 2008, 06:13:28 PM
Longeyes, would that be the reason that Clinton co-opted conservative Republican ideas such as welfare reform and made them his own?

Look at the candidates for congress and president this year. Every mother's liberal son ran as a conservative, favoring low taxes and smaller government. They have to lie about their records because modern liberalism (socialism) doesn't sell. Joe the Plumber sent the Obama campaign into full damage-control mode.
Title: Re: Who's to blame for the current state of the GOP?
Post by: longeyes on November 15, 2008, 06:41:10 PM
Welfare reform does not change the fact that we have a welfare state and that it will greatly expand under Obama and the Dems.  My point was that liberal Republicans have just been a lamer version of Democrat socialism.  To say that is to say the obvious.  Patrician Republicans like Bush I helped create plantationomics, which are now seeing flower in a thousand points of darkness throughout America.  He and his friends in the Rockefeller camp are playing both sides, and We the People are really not on either side, since we are neither the nobility nor the peons.
Title: Re: Who's to blame for the current state of the GOP?
Post by: stevelyn on November 16, 2008, 12:22:55 AM
HW.

The downhill decline started after Reagan left office and his mistake took over.
Title: Re: Who's to blame for the current state of the GOP?
Post by: digitalandanalog on November 19, 2008, 03:20:57 AM
They all are.

You cannot build a house on promises and failure to deliver.

I don't trust Dems or rePubs.

They have an agenda that doesn't include us...we are the the serfs and we should obey our masters who are ordained by....
Title: Re: Who's to blame for the current state of the GOP?
Post by: Perd Hapley on November 20, 2008, 02:28:52 AM
Bush is...a war monger. 

Which explains why we are currently at war with China, North Korea, Iran, and so many other nations that have been provoking us lately.   It also explains why he never even proposed that we attack Saudi Arabia, despite the 9/11 hijackers being a perfect excuse to do so. 

Title: Re: Who's to blame for the current state of the GOP?
Post by: Headless Thompson Gunner on November 20, 2008, 04:08:07 AM
Patrician Republicans like Bush I helped create plantationomics, which are now seeing flower in a thousand points of darkness throughout America. 
What does that even mean?
Title: Re: Who's to blame for the current state of the GOP?
Post by: MicroBalrog on November 20, 2008, 05:53:55 AM
Which explains why we are currently at war with China, North Korea, Iran, and so many other nations that have been provoking us lately.   It also explains why he never even proposed that we attack Saudi Arabia, despite the 9/11 hijackers being a perfect excuse to do so. 



So the fact that America is not yet at war with every single nation in the world proves Bush isn't a war monger?

And the fact that taxes are not yet at 100% of the GDP proves he's a small-government republican, I suppose.
Title: Re: Who's to blame for the current state of the GOP?
Post by: Perd Hapley on November 20, 2008, 07:59:24 AM
I named four nations.
Title: Re: Who's to blame for the current state of the GOP?
Post by: Ron on November 20, 2008, 08:43:39 AM
Bush is not a war monger.

We were still in a state of conflict with Iraq from the first gulf war when he took office.

Bush just decided the box we had Saddam in was about to fall apart due to double dealing backstabbing nature of our "allies" and that it was time to end the conflict by removing Saddam.



Title: Re: Who's to blame for the current state of the GOP?
Post by: Perd Hapley on November 20, 2008, 01:29:56 PM
I'm sorry if I hijacked the thread.   =(
Title: Re: Who's to blame for the current state of the GOP?
Post by: longeyes on November 20, 2008, 02:48:31 PM
What it means, Headless, is that your country is being run by a small swath of the uber-entitled and you and the rest of us are de facto peons being jerked around while we play at a pretend democratic Republic that stopped existing some time ago.

The Bushes are as big a part of this problem and the Clintons and Obama are just their political spawn.

***

No, Bush is not a warmonger, but that is only because he doesn't know where the real theaters of war are or how to engage them.  He enables the American Left, he throws sops to the internationalists, cozies up to the Saudis and the Chinese, both of whom can't be trusted, and fails to recognize that we are in a de facto war with Mexico.  No, you're right, he's no warmonger, but maybe he should be, while there's still time.
Title: Re: Who's to blame for the current state of the GOP?
Post by: AZRedhawk44 on November 21, 2008, 12:20:36 AM
Quote from: Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
Jim boasted that this had been the most prosperous six months in Taggart history.  Listed as profit, on the glossy pages of his report to the stockholders, was the money he had not earned – the subsidies for empty trains; and the money he did not own – the sums that should have gone to pay the interest and the retirement of Taggart bonds, the debt which, by the will of Wesley Mouch, he had been permitted not to pay...

"You have always considered money-making as such an important virtue," Jim had said to [Dagny] with an odd half-smile.  "Well, it seems to me that I'm better at it than you are."

Any "Republican" that would have signed the "Equalization of Opportunity Bill" or "Anti-Dog-Eat-Dog Bill" is not only at fault for the current state of the GOP, but for the results of the bailout, the failure of Wall Street, and the collapse of American economy.

Why is that damned book so prophetic?
Title: Re: Who's to blame for the current state of the GOP?
Post by: Perd Hapley on November 21, 2008, 01:23:38 AM
The stupid electorate.

John McCain, and those who gave him the primary.

The slavish electorate.

Big-Govt./Neocon Republican politicians, and those who nominated them.

The spineless electorate.

G. W. Bush.

The evil electorate.

The Media that told us that G. W. Bush, his associates and his policies were far, far worse than they actually were.

The holier-than-thou-my-vote-is-pure-and-useless, third party electorate.

Those conservative and libertarian stalwarts, who wasted no opportunity to cut Bush to pieces, regardless of what it would do to conservative unity, or to any hope that third-party types might vote for the Republican this year.

The gullible electorate.

The Media that built Obama into something more than just a freshman Senator with a radical background, out-to-lunch foreign/economic/RKBA/and-everything-else policies and a thorough-going lack of any accomplishments for anybody but himself. 

The ignorant electorate.

Those who mindlessly chanted the mantra of "Everybody should just go out and vote, it doesn't matter who you vote for, or whether you know Joe Biden from Joe the Plumber from Joe Stalin.  JUST GO VOTE, OR AMERICA WILL EXPLODE!!"

And fistful
Title: Re: Who's to blame for the current state of the GOP?
Post by: Perd Hapley on November 21, 2008, 01:25:35 AM
On second thought, what is the difference between Biden and Stalin? 
Title: Re: Who's to blame for the current state of the GOP?
Post by: AZRedhawk44 on November 21, 2008, 10:08:43 AM
On second thought, what is the difference between Biden and Stalin? 

About a 50 degree Fahrenheit temperature variance.
Title: Re: Who's to blame for the current state of the GOP?
Post by: longeyes on November 21, 2008, 10:44:50 AM
And:

Ted Kennedy

Pierre Trudeau

Jane Elliott

Justice Lewis Powell
Title: Re: Who's to blame for the current state of the GOP?
Post by: Perd Hapley on November 21, 2008, 05:51:06 PM
Big ups for knowing a Canadian Prime Minister.   =) 

The first time I read that, I was thinking Gary Trudeau. 
Title: Re: Who's to blame for the current state of the GOP?
Post by: gunsmith on November 29, 2008, 03:16:36 AM
Fistful?

yeah! why was his name left off the list?
Title: Re: Who's to blame for the current state of the GOP?
Post by: gunsmith on November 29, 2008, 03:25:16 AM
anyway, I voted RNC because I smell a fix.
I always thought that primary voters who vote Republican are the most conservative, but they picked McCain?

Also, I think Soros was in the background fiddling the economy to screw things up.

Maybe if Rommney had gotten it...

It's too late now, the best we can hope for is a long shot removal of Obama before the electoral college due to his alleged illegal alien status.
Title: Re: Who's to blame for the current state of the GOP?
Post by: KD5NRH on November 29, 2008, 05:58:51 AM
Same guys that are to blame for the state of the Democrat party:
http://www.usconstitution.net/constframe.html

They expected a general outline with no real teeth to be enough, vastly overestimating the honor and patriotism of later generations.

If the Constitution spelled out in 250 pages or so what it attempts to summarize in just a few, and specified that any attempt to abuse or expand the powers it permitted the government should be treated as treason, none of the recent candidates would have had a chance at any elected office.  Most of them wouldn't even have the nerve to try, since any attempt at a power grab could end very badly for them.