Dear Republican Party

If you can't beat an unpopular president in a bad economy, you ARE DOING SOMETHING WRONG.

You need to change the way you do things. Most important, you need to stop trying to impose the morality of the religious right on everyone else. Religion is a very important matter, but it's also personal and individual. It is not a matter for government force.

Second, stop your war on immigration. You say you are in favor of free amrkets, then embrace all markets. This includes the market in labor. I agree as things currently stand you may get a large number of immigrants who'll want to live off welfare. That's an argument against welfare, not against immigration. Tackle that. In the meantime, push for alws allowing free immigration, but limit welfare "benefits" to citizens only.

More on this later.

Indeed. The republicans are "the nasty party" to borrow a term from UK politics. While they might say things about economics people can get behind, they drive away more people with comments like "47%" or the abortion issue or "white America". It's almost like some of the top Conservative commentators can't help themselves.

And this is why I think Romney lost. The polls seemed to suggest that a small majority thought he was the right man to lead the country on the economy, but a percentage of those look around at the people on his side, and think "he's okay, but I don't want that jerk behind him in any position of power".

Third: Face it, you've lost all credibility on the economy when W. Bush turned the Clinton-era budget surpluses into deficits. Yes, I know 9/11 happened and that meant spending a lot of money on war. But there were also bailouts for the airlines (which could arguably be justified but weren't; ie you never made the case for them), and the creation of a huge governemtn bureucracy that hasn't wored that well, and which has spawned the TSA to mostly annoy air travelers.

And that wasn't all. there was massive intrussion in education, rather than liberalization of the same. Not to mention a HUGE prescription drug "entitlement," which only added to the nation's debt burden.

Admit it: you could care less about the deficit when your guy is in the White House. otherwise you ahve no trouble saddling your children and grand children with debt to pay for your programs. Do you think people don't see that?

Fourth: You've also lost a LOT of credibility when no significant stocks of chemical or biological weapons were found in Iraq.

No, Bush did not lie, he did not cook up fake reports to justify invading Iraq, and the intent wasn't to steal all the oil in iraq (or even a barrel-full of oil for that matter). And yes, there were some justifiable reasons at the time, back in 2003, for invading Iraq. Saddam was a nasty tyrant who did support international terorism. No argument there. But even back then Iran loomed as a bigger, more insidious threat.

Come on! At the height of his power, all Saddam could do was invade a much weaker neighbor, lob some missiles at random targets in Israel and Kuwait, and run from the coallition armies as fast as possible.

Iran, on the meantime, was financing and supporting acts of terror as far as South America. And developing a nuclear weapons capability. true, they didn't like Al Qaida, but only because those are their rivals for power, not due to any essential differences in ideology. To make an analogy, If Al Qiada is Nazi germany, then Iran is Stalinist Russia; and Iraq is Mussolini's Italy.

You cannot undo that mistake, but you can own up to it and move the debate on stopping Iran before it goes nuclear.

The way I see it the Democrats seized the center of the polital spectrum, leaving the GOP the territory of extreme social conservatives like Palin, Bachman, and Santorum. Wake me when a moderate like Nixon wins the primary and I'll reconsider supporting them.

Quote: Wizard

The way I see it the Democrats seized the center of the polital spectrum, leaving the GOP the territory of extreme social conservatives like Palin, Bachman, and Santorum. Wake me when a moderate like Nixon wins the primary and I'll reconsider supporting them.

Iow get a republican who governs like a democrat and you will support him?

Obama is hardly the center. Socialized medicine and banning coal for power are not the center.

All we did was weaken a country yesterday. All the pandering to all the groups has a cost. And the bill is near due.

Quote: AZDuffman

Iow get a republican who governs like a democrat and you will support him?

Obama is hardly the center. Socialized medicine and banning coal for power are not the center.

Hmmm.. in Europe, these are policies of centrist governments. Just saying...

Quote:

All we did was weaken a country yesterday. All the pandering to all the groups has a cost. And the bill is near due.

But also, there's a large body of people around here who should be looking at the WHY... the people so convinced there man was going to win, that the polls were all wrong, but there man lost. It's easier to attack the winner. That's not going to do any good.

Quote: AZDuffman

Obama is hardly the center. Socialized medicine and banning coal for power are not the center.

Obama does not support either of those position. You really can't write two sentences without distorting things? Even after seeing yesterday how poorly that works for the GOP? Wow, dude.

Quote: TheCesspit

Hmmm.. in Europe, these are policies of centrist governments. Just saying...



But also, there's a large body of people around here who should be looking at the WHY... the people so convinced there man was going to win, that the polls were all wrong, but there man lost. It's easier to attack the winner. That's not going to do any good.

To the first part, we are not in Europe. To the second I challenge this board to explain what "reaching out to nonwhites" is supposed to mean other than the pandering the democrats do. Why does reaching out to Latinos mean allow unrestricted immigration for example? There is no tenant of conservatism that should make blacks, women, Asians, or Latinos less likely to believe it as an ideology. None. So just what keeps them liberal?ug

Oh and another point... I expect to see a lot of conservative column inches about "media bias" and "lame stream media" costing the republicans the election.

This again misses the point. As long as the blame game is thrown outwards, the republicans will not gain enough ground to make their policies about small government and saving money count. Problem is... the social conservatives may not want to play that game (and that's okay, some people feel that government should define society), and this will cause tensions. Harper, in Canada, managed this very well. He made a case for fiscal conservative approach, and got the social conservatives to keep quiet while in minority. Now he has more power with a majority, some of those more socially conservative policies are getting ahead (as are some of the more scary changes to the free-enterprise model he wants in Canada... but that's a different story...)