Written in stone at West Point are these words: DUTY HONOR COUNTRY…these words actually mean something to Petraeus and men like him.

Last Best Hope, you are making a good case for General Petraeus, but it remains to be seen if he would take the job. Norman Schwarzkopf and Collin Powell also could have been President, but chose not to run.

Well, Neiman, old friend, like many others here, you are good at picking goppers apart – and sometimes rightly so – but you fail to name who SHOULD be our candidate.

[and puhleez don't drag out Fred Thompson...]

Romney won the straw poll in both of the years prior to this too, so that makes 3 years running and yet, he was not the Republican nominee. So winning the straw poll -in my opinion- unfortunately is not a precursor to success in getting the farmers of Iowa and bohemians of NH to vote for you.

As a resident of MA while Romney was Governor, I always suspected he was more conservative and had to move to the left to get elected in that uber-liberal state. I agree with one of the commenters above that his pro-life bonafides have been well established in recent years and I trust he would stick by them.

As for his health care plan, remember the one finally implemented was not100% his plan. It had to be modified (liberalized) to get through the liberal MA legislature. But I maintain it had one of the best private care solutions anyone has come up with. Many of the people crying today about not having health care are people making choices and prioritizing spending in different ways than others, i.e. they are electing to not purchase health care. The MA plan mandated that you had to buy it, in the private sector. The MA plan was by no means “Gov’t run” healthcare that Obama is moving toward.

Romney gets my vote for now. I do like Mark Sanford from SC though.

Hand job,

Real people are getting hurt by Obama’s amateur interactions in the market. Don’t expect the Obama market depression to go away any time soon. The messiah thinks he is FDR. Hmm, FDR kept the depression going for a decade.
Good luck with that investment plan, chump.

WillHuntForFood said…

Swing voters vote values. That’s why they are willing to cross party lines

What ‘values’ in the Obama campaign did swing voters approve of? Answer? Few or none.

Like most voters, they were mesmerised by a tall, charming and eloquent candidate… and they wanted to express their disdain for Bush.

You offer no new insights into John MCain… it’s all been said here again and again over the last 10 months. None-the-less, we would be far better off as a republic were he president.

It was no landslide. It was an election where everyone’s vote could have made a difference. People who are eligible to vote and don’t should be ashamed.

On this, we are in total agreement!

DocDave said…

Whatever your likes and dislikes of Romney, he would have made a better choice for president than either McCain or Obama.

He would have been a better choice , but he too would have been defeated. The national mood was for an ousting of republicans. I’m glad he wasn’t the candidate.

Romney? Petraeus? Palin? Jindal? Guiliani? Candidate X? I could care less! Get one of them elected!

Look where our Vanity Of Principle has taken us!

Ann G. is right that for good or ill, it requires image and Hollywood communication skills to get elected POTUS today. It is not enough to have the issues on your side, the facts or even the truth, people are geared to short, quick and simple answers that please their emotions. The herd mentality responds mostly to image and the devil take the hindmost (they don’t care all that much about the consequences until they get hit in the face, until then just make them feel good.)

With all due respect to Pparets and others, we just went through eight years of a Republican President, a Compassionate Conservative that grew government like any good Democrat. Romney or others of his ilk want power, but when they govern there is usually not a tinkers damn worth of difference between them and any Democrat. They are too busy pleasing people, holding on to power, getting wealthy and they have no core values. Palin is no different!

In a nutshell, the site speaks of how Romney has established a track record of talking Conservative and sticking it into the backs of his Conservative constituents once elected.

im sick of the california approach (re; arnold)…. he/shes got to be ‘a little lib’ to have a shot at winning. no, screw that. id rather lose time-after-time and let the liberals destroy themselves than give up my principles.

Conservative is yet another word that is getting dumbed down and redefined. I guess it was always inevitable.

Throw it in with the rest of the pile where the words and phrases have been perverted to be anything but their meanings:

liberal, progressive, equality, pro-choice, equal opportunity, gun free, affirmative action, racism, intellectualism, tax cut, greedy, compassion, among many more…

We’re losing the language. It’s part of the destruction of the culture and nation. They make these words mean something else, introduce relativism where ideas of right and wrong are highly subjective, take control of the schools, and then take over in power with the full backing and help of Generation DUHHH.

Exactly.

Watch that rubber glove Mitt’s slipping on. It’s not just fudge he’s after.

He’s one of those RINO’s that have been doing the watering-down you warn us against.

This post has been linked for the HOT5 Daily 3/1/2009, at The Unreligious Right

Republicans like his movie star looks, just like they did Reagan.

They need another image they can believe in.

I’m sorry but McCain was an horrible candidate.

He may have been in your mind, Whistler, but McCain was [and is] ever so much better than the socialist who now occupies the White House.

And there’s our problem in a nut-shell, every candidate on the right has to pass each individual’s little sniff-test, or we take our toys and go home.

You whined about McCain’s cap-and-trade proposal… but now look what we’re going to get!

Because of our ‘principled’ mindset, the left will get to screw this country for the next four years and maybe more.

Compromising on principles, also known as pandering, is what got the republican party booted. The only way to regain the trust of the electorate is to deliver on principles. Values and issues are stylish fads, but principles are fundamental. If you don’t have principles you don’t have anything.

Why the fixation with Limbaugh?

Because he is your leader, your voice. If any of your candidates waver from Rush’s ideal conservative Republican mold, he rips them to shreds. Rush lost you the election, not McCain. Ann Coulter said she’d rather vote for Hillary; Rush Limbaugh claimed he’d kill the GOP. When they discredit the middle and only hold the far-right as any viable option, your rabble listen and obey. They don’t vote.

The American people are afraid that you would not only turn over Roe V Wade, but any other law that you deemed as contrary to Bible. You might not see it as a Theocracy, but most people do.

You advocate killing Muslims because they aren’t going to your heaven anyway. You hate them not only because of there political beliefs, but mostly because they are not Christians. Which makes them not really human beings. And therefore worthless in your eyes. Once you are willing to kill Muslim non-believers solely because of that they are, it is not much of a stretch to turn your hate to Democrats, which you see in the same light.

This might shock PParents but I voted for Romney in the ND primary. He was my least acceptable candidate.

McCain was unacceptable, not as much for some of his stances, but because much of his political career was about betraying the conservative cause in order to gain acceptance among the Washington types, especially the liberal press.

Aside from that McCain was running to lose. While defeat has many fathers, McCain himself is the one to blame for his loss. Blaming voters that found him unacceptable, is in itself unacceptable.

While I don’t like everything that Romney’s done, he was a Republican governor of a Democrat state. I’m sure he had to make a lot of compromises.

The other thing, a perfect candidate from my point of view is unlikely to get nominated much less elected.

Buzz: Not one word from your last comments was correct. They are all false images in your mind created by the lies of your leaders on the Left. You are seriously, terribly, completely, fatally deluded!

subhuman urges?

well..I guess you are da expert on those.

F*** Mitt Romney.

Massachusetts’ money-sucking, piece of shit healthcare scam is all his. Bottom line…he signed it. He owns it.

Mitt Romney did more than his fair share of shitting on the rights of the poor to own guns when he was governor, jacking the cost of ASKING FOR (not necessarily even GETTING) permission to OWN a gun from $25 to $100.

When he was running for governor, he stated emphatically that he supported Massachusetts’ bigoted and unconstitutional gun control laws.

F*** him.

Moving out of that dump of a state was the best thing I ever did.

Compromise is not pandering!

Pandering is the art of telling differing ‘groups’ of people what they want to hear.

Compromise is the art of giving as little of your position as possible, while inducing the other party to give as much of theirs as possible.

‘pandering’, like ‘rino’ is a favorite buzz-word of those
who are willing to let the left screw this country rather than give an inch.

WillHunt,

You can pretty much resign yourself against convincing PeePee that anything other than voting RINO is the way to go.

He remains completely oblivious to the fact that it has been the RINO problem that got us here in the first place, incidentally, driven in large part by two generations of the Bush family. Before this we had Bob Dole as the milquetoast RINO candidate, which left Conservatives completely unimpressed, as did McCain.

When you vote RINO you haven’t won anything at all. You do manage to drag your party to the Left and eliminate all difference between liberalism and the GOP, to liberalisms’ favor.

That is destructive on many levels, perhaps more so than allowing the Leftists to man the tiller for a space.

Why?

Because now, the Great Unwashed, swing voting, mildly-interested-in-politics Republican and Centrist voters can no longer distinguish between the parties. The Conservatives have noone to vote for and even worse, with each RINO administration, they bring with them a whole RINO establishment who become the Party Mandarins.

They, in turn, serve as the party gatekeepers and prevent any true Conservatives from attaining any influence in government, making sure that the faux-GOP is infused with faux-Republicans and true Conservatives filtered out.

From time to time there must be a flushing of the Augean Stables which have been corrupted with RINOs. Also, Leftists ALWAYS screw up government by running up huge deficits, and for no good reason, become synonymous with corruption and lead to military and political setbacks for freedom both here and abroad. But now the general population is put on notice that the Democrats, the Liberals or whichever camouflage name they are using at the moment, are not to be trusted with power.

This informs and invigorates the general electorate, which is quite the opposite of what you get in RINO / Democrat-Lite / faux-Republican / Stealth Democrat administrations. This sets the stage for 1994-style sweeps and was also illustrated by the Reagan slaughter of Carter.

Bottom line: we need a few, really good candidates. The people hunger for good leadership. If Palin had not been saddled with that idiot Leftard McCain, we would not be in this situation.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, the Great Outdoors is calling.

Because of our ‘principled’ mindset

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!

The trouble today is that we have an increasingly urbanized population with prevalently liberal views. The population centers are where the votes are. This is disturbing to ruralites like me. There are many who would like to eliminate the electoral college. The electoral college was a very wise move by the founding fathers. It ensures that the entire nation gets a voice in a national election and not just the urban centers. If this country goes to popular vote only then we will become a permanently socialist country.

What is happening now is a set back to conservatism that can be overcome, but not by abandoning the principles of conservatism. We lost by becoming democrats who call ourselves republicans. It doesn’t work that way. Adopting some of the values of your opponent in order to win temporary popularity only underscores your lack of conviction. You have to live by principles.

What we need is a charismatic leader to step forward that lives the principles of conservatism and we can win and reverse the perilous course Obama and the liberals have put us on.

Like I said, PeePee is set in their ways, and those ways have been the same path that has led to failure by way of uninspiring and often infuriating betrayal by RINO.

Long ago we laid out a punch list of what it was to be Conservative and McCain failed on many of those points. Most tellingly, his failures were colossal: Amnesty of Illegals, Cap and Trade, Gang of 14 and so on.

I am not going to waste my time re-arguing that which has been argued. The bottom line is that the worst of all scenarios did not come to pass (we get an Obamoid agenda under the faux aegis of the GOP, forever consigning Americans to the dustbins of history)

A more productive use of energy will be to work on the following:

1) Maintain political resistance to the current agenda of the Uber-leftist Dims;

2) Maintain a steady and open line of communication to the public as to what the Left is actually up to and the damage that they will foreseeably cause. This is important since the Left will always camouflage their most damaging plans, as has been clearly illustrated by calling the most massive and wasteful spending effort in American history “Stimulus” when it is exactly opposite of a stimulus;
Much of this work is being carried out by Rush, Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham, Ollie North and so on (which is why the camouflage-termed Fairness Doctrine must be defeated)

3) Locate, select and support actual and true Conservatives and get them in position for the 2010 mid-terms. This is the most critical of all efforts, although none are truly optional.

This last one is where I will be focusing my efforts.

Neiman/HuntForFood…

there’s the problem. We can wax eloquent on why any number of goppers SHOULDN’T be supported… but we lose our voice when it comes to naming who SHOULD be.

Meanwhile, standing on our precious principles, we help pave the way for the Obamas of the left.

Ann G. is right that for good or ill, it requires image and Hollywood communication skills to get elected POTUS today

In one of his newscasts, I heard Rush say approximately the same thing and for the same reasons. Americans are hooked on idol worship and if the Republicans want to reachieve political power they will have to recognize this.

Reagan had that celebrity look and charisma and going back to his first election, Bush Jr. had it too especially as compared with Gore.

HuntForFood said…

Some of our best presidents have been from the military.

… like Grant and Eisenhower?

David Howell Petraeus

Hmmm, I wonder how he is on the issues?

Well, Whistler, at least we agree on this…

a perfect candidate from my point of view is unlikely to get nominated much less elected.

DAVID PETRAEUS 2012

visit my URL…his BIO is bullet proof

jimmypop reveals the conservative nihilistic mind-set…

id rather lose time-after-time and let the liberals destroy themselves than give up my principles.

He, along with some others on the right, seem to overlook a number of things…

1. Its not themselves the liberals are destroying, its our nation!

Obama is doing exactly what many of us on this blog predicted he would do. He is using the power of the executive in harness with the legislative to move this nation to the left, and at a pace far swifter than most thought possible. The so-called stimulus bill is a massive investment in socialized medicine, affirmation of global warming and redistribution of wealth. Next will come the assault on the Supreme Court and the federal bench.

2. Principle without the power to impliment it becomes a vacuous parlor exercise.

For all his faults – and they were many – Senator McCain and Governor Palin would have directed stimulus money at job creation, not social engineering. He would have pursued a policy of off-shore drilling and mining of our own resources and he would never have gone to a military base to announce our capitulation in Iraq. The federal judiciary and the SCOTUS would be safe from a liberal transformation, and he would have wielded the power of the veto on the Pelosi/Reid crowd.

As long as the right pursues the self-destructive “my way or the highway” mentality, we will remain on that highway and it will be a long and futile road to travel.
Ultra-conservatism has the power to destroy, but it does not have the power to win.

When Mitt Romney emerges as the front-runner among 9,000 conservatives gathered at CPAC, that should be a rallying-cry to us all, and not the next opportunity to wield the long-knives of litmus-test self-destruction.

Oh, and Mickey….if you had any balls, you would know that the market crash is always an opportunity to invest and make money? You been paying attention?

Better jump on the Obama boon that is coming in the future and make yourself some cash. I will be.

Petraeus is what leadership is always about…actual experience and real world accomplishments.

I am in agreement about General Petraeus, the problem is would he want the job? Has he hinted he would? Some of our best presidents have been from the military. Those of us who have served know that leadership is a core principle of the military. I often think that in order to be Commander in Chief military services should be a requirement. Of course this would virtually eliminate the democratic party, but I have no problem with that.