The problem for the GOP establishment is that the unchecked adventures of the Democrats in 2009 and 2010 gave birth to an actual opposition movement, the Tea Party. As opposed to a faux opposition, a GOP which wants more or less what the Democrats want only a little slower. And so people truly opposed to what is going on are incentivized to not vote for the GOP, because more unchecked Democratic adventures will strengthen support for the actual opposition.Here’s how representative democracy works: You vote for people who represent your views and beliefs. It really is that simple. The fundamental assumption of representative democracy is that you vote for someone who generally represents your beliefs and views. If you don’t vote for someone who doesn’t share your beliefs and views, the problem isn’t with the person you voted for; it’s you.More to the point, conservatives need to realize that if the GOP isn’t going to actually vote in a way that reflects their belief and views, then there is absolutely no point in voting for them.
I've been saying this for quite some time now:
The GOP in general, and Mitt Romney in particular are big-government, big-spending, big-intrusion-into-our-business. The Republic is facing a fiscal crisis - the nation's credit has been downgraded, the Entitlement programs are just now tipping into a bottomless sea of red ink, the middle class has been hammered with collapsing housing valuations, persistent unemployment, and a higher education bubble that is ensuring that our children graduate with so much student debt that they will never be able to marry.And so people are (rightly) looking for people to vote for who will act in their interest. Which, by the way, is why exactly there is no President Romney.
And where are the bold reforms from the GOP? The best on offer is Paul Ryan's plan which won't balance the budget for three decades.
9 comments:
"And so people are (rightly) looking for people to vote for who will act in their interest. Which, by the way, is why exactly there is no President Romney."
Nailed it, right there.
I doubt if a national Tea Party presidential candidate is electable. But I wish they'd try, so that the question can be put to the voters.
So the choices are, stay at home and cede the election to the forces that want to destroy the country as quickly as possible, or vote Republican and slow that destruction down somewhat? Given that I've been looking at option A for 5+ years, option B looks marvelous in comparison.
@juvat - I'm not convinced Option B is all that marvelous; Option B delivered Bob Dole, John McCain and Mitt Romney, none of whom I would consider anything approaching a better choice. George Bush? Well, no - GWB was elected twice only because the other choice was just so much worse.
There's a synergy here - really crappy Dem candidates allow similarly crappy Repub candidates. I'm not convinced the Repubs have electable candidates that aren't crappy, but that's a very different discussion.
To reinforce the concept, Barack Obama's "pen and phone" aside, a president cannot enact laws not passed by both houses of Congress. That Obama has gotten away with the number and type of executive orders he's enacted is a demonstrable failure of Congress to respect the Constitution and their authority within it.
A majority of Americans, or, at least, a rather sizable percentage, are in disagreement with both the Democrat and Republican parties, and are waiting for someone to step up and take the lead.
Unfortunately, I don't see that happening on the non-Democrat side, unless individual alignment with Tea Party aims produces critical mass. I don't see that happening, either, at least not in a nationwide (presidential) office.
So, it comes down to voting for the completely anti-American (Democrat), the partialy anti-American (Republican), or stay home.
As has been said before elsewhere, I have strong doubts we're voting our way out of this.
@juvat - I'm not convinced Option B is all that marvelous; Option B delivered Bob Dole, John McCain and Mitt Romney, none of whom I would consider anything approaching a better choice. George Bush? Well, no - GWB was elected twice only because the other choice was just so much worse.
There's a synergy here - really crappy Dem candidates allow similarly crappy Repub candidates. I'm not convinced the Repubs have electable candidates that aren't crappy, but that's a very different discussion.
To reinforce the concept, Barack Obama's "pen and phone" aside, a president cannot enact laws not passed by both houses of Congress. That Obama has gotten away with the number and type of executive orders he's enacted is a demonstrable failure of Congress to respect the Constitution and their authority within it.
A majority of Americans, or, at least, a rather sizable percentage, are in disagreement with both the Democrat and Republican parties, and are waiting for someone to step up and take the lead.
Unfortunately, I don't see that happening on the non-Democrat side, unless individual alignment with Tea Party aims produces critical mass. I don't see that happening, either, at least not in a nationwide (presidential) office.
So, it comes down to voting for the completely anti-American (Democrat), the partialy anti-American (Republican), or stay home.
As has been said before elsewhere, I have strong doubts we're voting our way out of this.
@NosmoKing, I don't disagree with anything you said, and I probably was a bit more subtle in my sarcasm with regard to "marvelous" than can be conveyed in a blog comment. In fact, there are several Tea Party types that would be light years more qualified than our current Occupy Whitehouse person. But...They can't overcome the rules of the game as currently written and given that, it's better to vote for the party that will do the least damage than to stay home and cede the election to the party that can do the most damage. At least in my opinion.
Electability is not a quality of the candidate, it is a quality of the people. So maybe we should start changing it. Maybe we should start rewriting the game. Maybe we should spend our votes on candidates we don't expect to win, in the hopes that we'll (a) eventually shift a new party in, trading a short term tolerance of the less appealing turd sandwich for the hope of eventually not having to eat either one, or (b) become a voter block of equal priority to the "moderates" the GOP currently panders to, and thereby claim that party.
The GOPe benefits whether they win or the Democrats win. I'm not sure there's a way to fix that problem that involves the ballot box.
Here and I think the problem is the fact that to many of the voters that do vote think that voting on one side or the other side of the isle is going to make a change. We have to get the Republicans out of office because our side is so much better has been changed for we have to get the Democrats out of office. However I would point out that the amount of double standards that the Republicans were accused of when Bush was in office has been increased 100 fold with no real answer.
No I doubt there will be a unified Republican or third party candidate because most of the middle and for sure the Conservative side is way to fractured. Where on the left they will all unite even if they disagree with each other or hate each other in appearance to subscribe to the same group think the other side is much more independent of thought. As a result it is much more difficult to find a candidate that many of us can agree with even 60% of the time. Couple that with the media that is lockstep with the Democrat machine it is able to simply point and destroy any non Democrat candidate that perhaps could offer a stark contrast to what we see today.
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