Feb

Newt Declares: “A Conservative Declaration of Independence”

Posted by: Mike's America @ 6:55 pm in Politics

Visited 514 times, 2 so far today

And warns of dark days ahead!

A Declaration of Independence for the Conservative Movement
An Address Delivered by the Honorable Newt Gingrich
Transcript
Video
Audio
at the 35th Annual Conservative Political Action Conference
Washington D.C.
February 9, 2008

…I tried in thinking through what I could say to you this afternoon to literally ask what would Ronald Reagan have said in this setting at this time, not to repeat what he said in other times, but to think about the clarity and the historic context. I went back and looked at what Barry Goldwater said in 1960 when there was a conservative eruption because Nixon was going too far to the left, and Goldwater’s name was put a nomination for vice-president, and he withdrew it and said he would support the ticket. Compared to the other party, there was no choice. I looked at what Ronald Reagan said in 1976, when having risen in rebellion against an incumbent Republican President and come within 70 votes of the nomination, he said that given a choice between Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford, there was no choice, because Jimmy Carter would be about as bad as he turned out to be.
…
Now the third number, which I think should have led to a vastly bigger discussion in the Republican Party, is 0 to 6. That’s the track record of incumbent U.S. Senators in a close election in 2006. Now if your party loses every single close incumbent election despite having raised an immense amount of money, maybe there’s something wrong. I don’t want to be too bold, but I want to suggest that if I were a stockholder and we were 0 for 6, I would like to talk about what’s going on. And yet we sleepwalk through 2007.

Now, because we were sleepwalking through 2007, we get to the last set of numbers which should sober every person in this country who does not want to have a left wing president. On Super Tuesday, there were 14.6 million Democratic votes, and 8.3 million Republican votes. Now, I want to repeat this because I want it to sink it in here. There were 14.6 million Democrats who thought the presidential nomination was worth voting for, and there were 8.3 million Republicans on Super Tuesday. That is a warning of a catastrophic election. I was in Idaho this last week, and Barack Obama on last Saturday had 16,000 people in Boise. The idea that the most liberal Democratic Senator getting 16,000 people in Boise was inconceivable. And every person who cares about the conservative movement and every person who cares about the Republican Party had better stop and say to themselves, “There is something big happening in this country. We don’t understand it. We’re not responding to it. And we’re currently not competitive. And if we want to get to be competitive, we had better change and we had better change now.”

Let me tell you flatly. I said the week before Super Tuesday, actually a week before the Super Bowl, reporters asked me, I think it was on Hannity and Colmes, and they said, “What are the Republican chances this fall?” And I said, “Well, I think they’re about as good as the New York Giants beating the Patriots.”
…
People thought I was saying we didn’t have a chance to win. I was saying, the game hasn’t started, and if we field the right team with the right issues in the right way, we have fully was much chance to win as the Giants did, but I’ll tell you, we are currently no where near being ready to do this. This is not a comment–I want to make this clear for the news media–this is not a comment about any of the current candidates for president.

This is a comment about the conservative movement, and it’s a comment about the Republican Party, and all the candidates currently running fit within those two phrases. But it is about all of us. It is about our Congressman, our Senator, our governors, our county commissioners, our school board members.

And let me make this very clear, I believe we have to change or expect defeat.
…
[T]here are two grave lessons for the conservative movement since 1980. The first, which we still haven’t come to grips with, is that governing is much harder than campaigning. Our consultants may be terrific at winning one election, they don’t know anything about governing. And unfortunately most of our candidates listen to our consultants. And so you end up with people who don’t understand briefing people who don’t know, and together they have no clue.

We win the election and then we lose the government. And this happens at every level. It happens in Sacramento, it happens in Tallahassee, it happens in Albany, it happens Trenton, and it happens in Washington D.C.

So the first lesson is that we are going to have to learn as a movement how to actually create conservative government, not just conservative politics. And that is a fundamentally harder thing.
…
There is one other declaration of independence we need and this will startle some of you. And remember I say this from a background of having been active in the Georgia Republican Party since 1960. In a fundamental way, the conservative movement has to declare itself independent from the Republican Party.

Let me make very clear what I’m saying here. I am not saying there should be a third party – I think a third party is a dumb idea, will not get anywhere, and in the end will achieve nothing.

I actually believe that any reasonable conservative will, in the end, find that they have an absolute requirement to support the Republican nominee for president this fall.

And let me remind you, I say that in the context of personally believing that the McCain-Feingold Act is unconstitutional and a threat to our civil liberties.

And I say that in the context of believing that the McCain-Kennedy amnesty bill was a disaster and was correctly stopped by the American people.

But I would rather, as a citizen, and I say this with Callista and I have two wonderful grandchildren. Maggie who is 8 and Robert who is 6. We think about their future. As a citizen, I would rather have a President McCain that we fight with 20% of the time, than a President Clinton or a President Obama that we fight with 90% of the time.
…
Let me, if I might, carry this a step further so that you understand where I am coming from. I believe the conservative movement has to think about reaching out to every American of every background. I think we have to decide that in 2010, we are going to recruit and support conservative candidates in Democratic districts, because the right answer to gerrymandering is to beat them in the primary.

Now all of you have a copy, I hope you got a copy, but if you didn’t, you can get it later on outside of the Platform of the American People from American Solutions. And it’s also at the back of my new book Real Change. And you can also get it at AmericanSolutions.com. And you can download it for free.
…
Now it turns out when you develop a tripartisan platform, it’s a center-right platform because this is a center-right country. The fascinating thing will be watching Senator Obama who is for “Real Change” and has “change” on all his slogans, and I am for it. We wrote the book Real Change last summer and I want to thank the people at Regnery for going along with the title, it turns out this February that it was really a good title.

But it was also an obvious title. But here’s the question: Are you for the right change or the wrong change?
…
Let’s talk about the right change versus the wrong change. 85% of the American people believe we have an absolute obligation to defend America and her allies.

So if we need to strengthen our intelligence capabilities, and strengthen our interdiction and surveillance capabilities, and strengthen our ability to win wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and elsewhere that would be the right change. But if we want to have weakness, under funding, and crippling of our departments of security that would be the wrong change.

Now let me give you a second example. 75% of the American people believe we have an obligation to defeat our enemies…. The Director of National Intelligence said, let me tell you, al-Qaeda is working all day every day to find a way how to kill Americans. And they’re recruiting Westerners to have more sophisticated people to come and kill Americans. Now you would think if that was on then someone might say to Senator Obama and Senator Clinton, okay if al-Qaeda wants to come here, would you like to stop them over there? And if you want to stop them over there, how can you run back home to here if we’re trying to stop them over there?
…
Just three more examples to show you the difference between right change and wrong change. 92% of the American people believe that for us to compete with China and India in an age of science and technology we have to dramatically improve math and science education. Now, I am prepared to change every bureaucracy in America that is failing our children until we get them to actually succeed, and I think the change should start today, because we shouldn’t lose a single child to prison who ought to be in college if only they had a decent school to go to.

And the question for Senator Obama and Senator Clinton is simple. Are you prepared to put the children ahead of your union allies, and actually measure achievement rather than union dues as a primary success?

Two last examples. 87% of the American people believe English should be the official language of government.

Now, 87% means an absolute majority of Democrats favor English as the official language of government. An absolute majority of Republicans favor English as the official language of government. An absolute majority of independents favor English as the official language of government. An absolute majority of Hispanics favor English as the official language of government.

Both Senator Obama and Senator Clinton voted against 87% percent of the American people, but nobody knows it.

Well, it’s not their fault that nobody knows it, it’s our fault. So I would think if you want an example of real change, I think the Senate Republicans should say you know we like this idea of working together, we like this idea of getting real change, we’re prepared to work with Senator Obama next week, and Senator Clinton next week, and then once a week I would give them a chance to vote up or down on making English the official language of government. And let it just keep drawing it out.

Because there’s a profound principle here. If something is both historically right, and has 87% of the American people in favor of it, then leadership which is prepared to stand firm will in the end be successful in getting the right change, not the wrong change, for America’s future.

Lastly, 84% of the American people would like to have a one page tax form with an optional flat tax.
…
I believe the following. And I say this having lived through the narrow defeat of 1960, the great convention victory of Goldwater followed by a disastrous defeat in ’64, the recovery in the ’66 off-year election, the very narrow election of Nixon in ’68, the stunning landslide over McGovern in ’72, the collapse of the Nixon administration, and the rise of Reagan, the loss to Jimmy Carter, the extraordinary victory of 1980.

I believe we have two futures this year.

I believe we can be for real change now. We can put the Democrats on record every day from here on out. We could use the House and Senate as opportunities to have the country focused on what’s the right change and what’s the wrong change. We can take on the bureaucracies and decide that we don’t care who the nominal head is. The permanent bureaucracy is permanently liberal, permanently obsolete, permanently incapable of doing its job, and we need fundamental deep change from school board to city council to county commission to the sheriff’s office to the state legislature to the governor to Washington, D.C., and we are the movement of real change by this summer I suspect we will win one of the most cataclysmic elections in American history. Because the sad reality is that our friends on the Left are trapped by their allies, they’re trapped by the trial lawyers, they’re trapped by the unions, they’re trapped by the big city bureaucracies, they are trapped by their allies in tenured faculty, they are trapped by the Hollywood Left.

And if there is a clear choice of which change, we will win. But if we run a traditional consultant-dominated tactical Republican campaign, like we’ve seen in the last eight years, we will be defeated this fall, and we will be having a CPAC meeting next year talking about how we rebuild for the future with either President Obama or President Clinton in charge.

I’m here as somebody who has spent his entire life practically, since I was fifteen years old, trying to find a way for us. And we’ve had great successes. We cut taxes dramatically, we re-launched the American economy in the 1980s, we eliminated the Soviet Union. The fact is we won the Cold War. People are freer.

So we have had great successes. But we can’t rest on them. And so we need to go out dedicated to insist on real change now, on the right change now, and about making sure that every American, of every background, in every neighborhood, understands that their future, their children’s future, and their country’s future, rest on creating the kind of opportunities that we are building, and that that requires real change in the obsolete, expensive, and destructive bureaucracies we’ve inherited in the past.

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20 comments so far

Curt

What an outstanding speech. Simple awesome.

I would rather have a President McCain that we fight with 20% of the time, than a President Clinton or a President Obama that we fight with 90% of the time.

And the perfect description of our liberal government right now

I believe we can be for real change now. We can put the Democrats on record every day from here on out. We could use the House and Senate as opportunities to have the country focused on what’s the right change and what’s the wrong change. The permanent bureaucracy is permanently liberal, permanently obsolete, permanently incapable of doing its job, and we need fundamental deep change from school board to city council to county commission to the sheriff’s office to the state legislature to the governor to Washington, D.C., and we are the movement of real change by this summer I suspect we will win one of the most cataclysmic elections in American history. Because the sad reality is that our friends on the Left are trapped by their allies, they’re trapped by the trial lawyers, they’re trapped by the unions, they’re trapped by the big city bureaucracies, they are trapped by their allies in tenured faculty, they are trapped by the Hollywood Left.

There is so many good quotes in it I don’t know where to begin but those two stuck out at me.

February 12th, 2008 at 7:19 pm

Skip

“I would rather have a President McCain that we fight with 20% of the time, than a President Clinton or a President Obama that we fight with 90% of the time.”

The problem with that is that they’re both lousy options. Sure, one is better than the other, but it’s like saying that getting a crown put in without anesthesia is better than getting root canal done without anesthesia. They’re both going to leave you hurt and screaming. One will just be more pain than the other, but they’re both painful enough.

From a strictly party perspective fighting with the President who is supposed to be on your side 20% of the time will leave the party demoralized, and lead to large midterm losses. See 2006 as an example of this.

At some point there’s going to be a fight for conservatives to either regain the soul of the party, or to leave it entirely. And I understand that some people say with the war and SCOTUS that now is not the time. And I can respect that decision. But the problem with that sentiment is that the same statements could be made in every single election for the rest of my life. So the logical extension of that sentiment is to accept that the Republican party will move ever leftward, without fail. I reject that. So if not now, when?

February 12th, 2008 at 7:39 pm

Curt

Newt gave plenty to chew on on how to fix the party WITHOUT putting us all through the living hell of a liberal SCOTUS for the next decade and beyond.

Read his whole speech.

February 12th, 2008 at 8:07 pm

Skip

I did. And he makes some good points. But there’s actually very little about changing the party there. His first point is that candidates that are elected running on conservative platforms don’t govern conservatively. That’s certainly true. And that, in and of itself is not a reason to support the party. It’s in my view more of a reason to throw the bums out and try for different ones.

Next quote, which was bolded:

“the conservative movement has to declare itself independent from the Republican Party.”

OK, so far, not a reason to support the party present. Now, the next bolded statement.

“I actually believe that any reasonable conservative will, in the end, find that they have an absolute requirement to support the Republican nominee for president this fall.”

The absolute only supporting clause to this was the clause I quoted in my first post, and I explained there why it wasn’t persuasive to me. And there’s certainly nothing there about fixing the party.

The next part is all about recruiting conservatives to try and take over the Democratic party from within, the way liberals have invaded the Republican party. And once again, while that’s a good idea that I can support, it does nothing to fix the systemic problems the Republican party has right now. If anything, it will erode support for the Republican party as the Democrats become more palatable.

Most of the rest of the piece boils down to ‘ooh, look, Democrats are bad, we should point that out’, and then ends with the idea that Republicans can win if they just point out that the Democrats are worse. So basically I see nothing in there about actually fixing the party.

As far as SCOTUS for the next decade goes. Let’s say that we get President McCain and we get the best case scenario. Stevens and Ginsburg retire. And lets say that McCain exceeds my expectations by about 100% in his nominations. That would give us, say, Justice Cornyn and Justice Graham, both of which would be confirmable. When you factor in Kennedy’s move to the left, you’d still be left with a liberal SCOTUS. And that’s the best case scenario. And barring some sort of illness, no liberal Justice is going to retire when there’s a Republican president, even as weak a one as McCain. So after 4 years the people who are saying ‘SCOTUS, SCOTUS, SCOTUS’ will be saying the same thing. And it will be just as true then.

So once again that begs the question. If now is not the time to try and force a correction in the Republican party, when is? I reject all answers that are, effectively, ‘never’.

February 12th, 2008 at 8:49 pm

Curt

I really find it curious how you believe that working to get hillary/obama elected is going to fix the party to your standards. You just hope this will happen? That there will be some sort of backlash, which most obviously hasn’t happened yet with the last hissy fit from the conservatives in 2006. Two years later and we’re still talking about teaching people a lesson.

Forcing a correction by forcing the rest of us to endure a massive shift to the left by the whole entire government is not the answer in my opinion, and its wishful thinking to believe this tactic would work anyways.

You appear deadset against supporting the Republican nominee as it now stands, so be it. Myself, I love this country to much to allow it to be taken over by the likes of Hillary/Obama and will do everything in my power to see this does not occur.

February 12th, 2008 at 8:57 pm

Mike's America

Skip: I only excerpted a portion of the speech and would recommend the ENTIRE thing. Newt was very clear that we need RIGHT CHANGE and he defined what it was and how we could win by advocating it.

And by advancing the issues he highlighted we WOULD be making both America and conservatism stronger.

I only agree with Newt about 92% of the time. But unlike some, I am not willing to throw him overboard because he’s not 100%.

At some point we are going to have to put aside our anger, disappointment and frustration with the poor choice of nominee that our party is about to select. The best way I can think of to do that is go back to work and start building and rebuilding conservatism, not tearing and destroying it.

I worked for John Ashbrook, one of the founders of the conservative movement. He fought for his principles for years and years with little success to show for it. And through all that frustration, he never stopped trying to build a party and a movement that would win. He died in April 1982. But that was after he witnessed the first heady years of the Reagan Administration.

We cannot relive the golden years of the Reagan era. But we can rebuild a conservative movement that will WIN and GOVERN as conservatives. It’s not going to be easy. But to say we won’t try unless it’s perfect means we will never achieve the goal.

February 12th, 2008 at 9:17 pm

Skip

“At some point we are going to have to put aside our anger, disappointment and frustration with the poor choice of nominee that our party is about to select. The best way I can think of to do that is go back to work and start building and rebuilding conservatism, not tearing and destroying it.”

That I agree with wholeheartedly. But I have yet to read a single compelling reason on why falling in lock-step behind that poor nominee is a required step. And as I said, Newt only touched that tangentially, and only by stating that he thought we should. The whole 80/20 thing is a strawman argument anyways. McCain lately is more of a 65/35 guy, but even that’s not the problem. If you’re 65/35 on a group of people and you want to lead 100 percent of them, you have to show some ability to lead the 35 percent that you disagree with. And that is the piece McCain is missing. As a counter-example,, Giuliani as another 65/35 guy had, mostly shown it, and while Romney’s actual ratio was unknown, he was definitely trying to show it.

But Newt is definitely right. We need to rebuild conservatism from the ground up. But he’s also right in that doing so will require fighting the party establishment every step of the way. And in fact, that is what we should be working on this fall. Hold your nose, bring your barf bag and vote for President if you must, but work to ensure that, maybe, just maybe, 20 years from now we won’t be in this position.

February 13th, 2008 at 5:11 am

Wordsmith

We need to rebuild conservatism from the ground up. But he’s also right in that doing so will require fighting the party establishment every step of the way.

Yes, and you don’t do this by putting more Democrats into office and allowing Republicans to lose elections in order to “teach the Party a lesson”. The answer isn’t more Democrats; we already know without actually, willfully harming the country, that more Democrats in office is not a good thing. Primaries are for teaching lessons; general elections are for winning.

The whole 80/20 thing is a strawman argument anyways. McCain lately is more of a 65/35 guy,

I wish we knew what his 2007 ACU rating is. Even so, the choice is this: the 65% guy, or the 8% guy (Obama’s ACU rating). To me, the choice is clear. We have choice A and choice B. That’s all.

but even that’s not the problem. If you’re 65/35 on a group of people and you want to lead 100 percent of them, you have to show some ability to lead the 35 percent that you disagree with. And that is the piece McCain is missing. As a counter-example,, Giuliani as another 65/35 guy had, mostly shown it, and while Romney’s actual ratio was unknown, he was definitely trying to show it.

The problem here is, you will never find someone you will be in agreement with 100% of the time. Ultimately, pushing the country further to the right is the goal; but it takes time and patience. You have to build slowly. That requires some concessions to weighing in a candidate’s electability. Remember: Half the country does not share the same values and ideology as you and I. We have to put forth a candidate in the general election who can appeal to the other half of the country that does not lean conservative. And unfortunately, during this election cycle, we did not have a GOP rock star with the same charisma as Barack Obama. So we make do with what we have, and lose elections from trying; not by giving up and throwing elections away. It’s difficult to unseat incumbents, and allowing Republicans to lose, ultimately, hurts the conservative movement more than it helps. I think it’s far easier to put into effect change, by being in power; not by being out of it.

February 13th, 2008 at 7:11 am

bbartlog

Not as impressed with Newt’s speech as some of you. But then I don’t like Newt - he’s always struck me as a sort of conservative Al Gore. Smart enough to impress 90% of the people on his side, so he rapidly acquires delusions of actually being some sort of Deep Thinker.
Maybe I will go read the whole speech later, but the excerpt you post contains absolutely no mention of limited government or small government. Instead we get what sounds like a defense of NCLB and an implicit acceptance of the idea that the federal government should be in charge of education. The problem that Newt sees is not that the bureaucracy *exists*, it’s that the wrong people are in charge. He’s not my kind of conservative.
And don’t get me started on the Contract With America and his followthrough on that… or his personal character…

February 13th, 2008 at 7:44 am

Mike's America

Skip said:

I have yet to read a single compelling reason on why falling in lock-step behind that poor nominee is a required step. And as I said, Newt only touched that tangentially.

In the excerpts I selected, I was focused on what we need to do to WIN. So, you may not have seen this from the entire speech:

Second, I think we need to get independent from this leader fascination with the presidency. Remember Ronald Reagan rose in rebellion because Gerald Ford was negotiating the Panama Canal Treaty. I voted against two Reagan tax increases. I voted against George H. W. Bush’s 1990 tax increase. It is a totally honorable and legitimate thing to say I am going to support the candidate and oppose the policy. This idea [is] that I think we [did] President George W. Bush a grave disservice by not being dramatically more aggressive in criticizing when they were wrong, and being more open when they were making mistakes.

And I don’t think it helped them or the country.

I’ve already made it QUITE CLEAR that while I intend to honor my pledge to vote for the eventual GOP nominee, I WILL NOT fall in lockstep behind policies or ideas with which I have expressed profound disagreement.

When it comes to McCain’s maverick positions, I have PERSONALLY confronted him with my displeasure on a number of those issues and also represented to him the displeasure of what he later referred to as “my blogging friends.”

And I’ll fight McCain just as hard on those issues if he is the President.

And if you are seriously concerned, as I am, on stopping some of this politically correct idiocy that McCain and every Democrat supports, you MUST KNOW that you have a better chance of stopping it by holding McCain accountable than Hillary or Obama.

That doesn’t mean we are always going to get our way in these fights with McCain. But we shure as heck stand a better chance than we do with Imperatrix Hillary or Saint Obama.

February 13th, 2008 at 8:00 am

Wordsmith

I have PERSONALLY confronted him with my displeasure on a number of those issues and also represented to him the displeasure of what he later referred to as “my blogging friends.”

Mike’ll love this:

John McCain held his first blogger call since becoming the presumptive nominee. He told us he would continue with these calls with bloggers, because,

“I’ll never forget you were the only guys who would listen to me for a few months there …”

Lmao!

In all seriousness, though, I think you actually will find agreement with the last part, given that I do believe you disagree with him on the waterboarding/torture issue and closing down Guantanamo:

He stood behind the concept that the six 9-11 Guantanamo terrorists don’t deserve the same protections as American citizens, and said they were some of the most evil people, “in the history of the world.”

McCain also acknowledged he still needs to unite the base and unite the Republican Party, to win in November.

February 13th, 2008 at 10:28 am

Gregory Dittman

I would say the conservatives are not doing well at selling their agenda. It’s been about 30 years since Carter, which ushered in the neocons. Clinton’s term was not economically that bad with him ending with a surplus on the budget (which three Republican presidents have been unable to do).
1. Abortion alienates women voters.

2. Money has been spent on the military, but people complain they have to take a detour for months because a bridge fell apart and the government is waiting for funding. The estimated funding to correct the U.S. infrastructure is listed at $1 trillion in the next five years more than what is what’s being funded. It’s a plank that Obama just seized on ($210 billion in projects)when the neocons had 20 years.

3.The necons spent more time trying to get more oil out of Alaska than promoting environmentally friendly energy sources. The idea of big oil running the neocon agenda is something that didn’t have to happen.

4. Tough on crime? With the lack of prisons, mental hospitals and staff, the criminal system is a joke. It also doesn’t help that the average drug crime sentence is longer than the average sentence for a violent crime. There is already 3 people in prison for every one person in the military. Capital punishment has led to less than 1,100 executions in the U.S. since 1976. Here the neocons talk the talk, but don’t deliver causing people associated with the criminal justice system to get a good laugh. It was Gingrich and his fellow Republicans that prevented Clinton from adding 100,000 new police officers.

5. The war in Iraq has been poorly sold plus Hillary and Barack have detailed end plans while Bush is stuck on stay the course.

6. Reagan tried to get rid of the department of education, while Gingrich is expanding on the theme (somebody has to keep track of Leave No Child Behind). Why wasn’t LNCB a Reagan program? It gets better. Clinton had a project much like Bush’s LNCB, but it was Gingrich
and the Republicans that vetoed it back in 1997.

I would have to say Gingrich was an obstructionist more than a conservative while he was a Republican leader. If the Republicans did it, it was ok, but if the Democrats did the same thing he acted upset. I would say the Republicans’ worse attempt at that was the line iteam veto. When the Democrats were in power and wanted the line iteam veto, it was the Republicans that complained. Then when the Republicans were in power, the line iteam veto became important. It will be interesting to see if the Democrats bring up the line iteam veto, if they get back into power and again the Republicans shoot down that idea.

February 13th, 2008 at 4:10 pm

jainphx

Well if a vote for some one that will take us down the wrong road immediately is wrong, how is voting for some one that will take us down that same road only slower going to help anything. Cancer is Cancer, if you don’t do some thing to eliminate the Cancer, it will eliminate you and thats a fact.

February 13th, 2008 at 4:21 pm

Devildog

I don’t know why it is that conservatives feel they have to hold their noses or vote along party lines, i.e., GOP, when there’s a conservative still in the hunt, Alan Keyes. Admittedly, he’ll not get the Republican Party nod, but he may well go independent or even go to the Constitution Party. He’s a Reaganite from the get go, has strong conservative values, is a godly man, and is a strong debaters. Like a few of the others running on the Republican ticket, he has not been afforded the media attention, but it doesn’t mean he’s not an excellent candidate.

We as conservatives need to support someone that holds our values on pro life, smaller government, strong military, and enforcing our borders by what ever means. That person, by all accounts, is Alan Keyes.

February 14th, 2008 at 6:28 am

Philadelphia Steve

Re: “the conservative movement has to declare itself independent from the Republican Party. ”

That will never happen.

Liberals have walked away from the Democratic Party occasionally, as Ralph Nader demonstrated in the 2000 elections, giving America President Geroge W. Bush. And they might again, if Hillary Clinton gains the presidntial nomination through the votes of the Super Delegates alone.

The last time Conservatives showed that level of independence was in 1992 (Ross Perot), and too much has changed (including the changes in the Republican Party engineered by Newt Gingrich himself) for that to ever happen again.

Just as the “threats” being balyhooed by Newsweek in the current issue about Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity and James Dobson (the strongest thought leaders of the Conservative/Republican movement) are hollow threats, so too is the “we will stay home” Conservative talk.

Conservatives are now totally loyal to the Republican party, at least in November of election years. That will remain the same for the forseeable future, as long as Karl Rove’s dream of a “Permanent Republican majority” is the goal of the Conservative/Republican movement.

February 14th, 2008 at 6:31 am

Scott

You hope

February 14th, 2008 at 6:48 am

ChrisG

And Steve is wrong again. If he was worth it, I would post two letters I sent to the RNC with my membership card in 2003 and 2007 when the Reps abandoned conservative principles of limited government, low taxes, and responsible governance (i.e., they became “Democrat Lite”).

However, this post of Steve’s is less laced with brainwashed hatred than his others. Still full of Kos/DU programmed talking points, but less direct attacks.

On good points Steve, you are correct about the superdelegate issue. Amazing that two states have been disenfranchised by the Dems, and in the end, all the primaries may not ammount to anything for the Democrat Nominee. Conservatives tend to “sit out” votes when upset (i.e. 2006 when conservatives voted on local/state/national innitiatives but left the congressional ballot empty). I do not agree with this tactic, but I can see is it born of the feeling we have a choice of Socialist Democrat (left) and “Democrat Lite” (Republicans) on many issues. Maybe two more parties, a true Leftist Socialist Party and a Conservative Constitutionalist Party will rise to power, but I doubt it.

February 14th, 2008 at 7:42 am

David

Newt’s commentary doesn’t break any new ground, nor does it offer any solution other than declaring “independence.” Newt is paying too much attention to the polling numbers, which doesn’t reveal anything other than a frustrated electorate. Frustrated by a seemingly unresponsive government, frustrated by a media that routinely misleads, etc. It’s stuff we already know. When the country has veered left, it’s for the lack of providing fresh ideas to appeal to a nation that has always been center-right.

Newt says the President deserved more criticism, everything from the conduct of the war to domestic matters. He even declared late last year that GWBush is the Republican version of Jimmy Carter. To that, Newt needs to grow up a bit. For those of us that voted for him in 2000 and again in ‘04, we knew what he stood for. We admire him for his ability to lead based on principles and trusting to follow his own instincts. The President has not kicked issues down the road for someone else to deal with when it’s too late. He’s offered solutions, and stuck with them, even in face of opposition from his own base. That’s leadership.

We’re not exactly inspired by the line-up that’s running for president, even when Fred and Rudy were part of the field. This year’s field, from day one, represented a portion of what makes up the conservative base. May be we weren’t aware of the true composition of the base, and unsettled by its appearance.

And, though, McCain may not be everyone’s cup of tea (and certainly not mine), we need to suck it up. There’s no time for all of this “woe is me” nonsense. If we’re looking for 100% ideological purity, then we’re hanging out in the wrong place and deluding ourselves.

I’ll gladly settle for 80% conservative versus the less than 0-5% “conservative” the Dems offer anytime.

February 14th, 2008 at 10:23 am

Mike's America

David: I like how Newt said our focus should be on promoting the ideas that an overwhelming majority of Americans support (Like English as the Official Language) and run a campaign of contrasts with the Democrats.

I’m not sure McCain is up to that type of campaign as he seems to want to please his opponents on the left more so than his sometimes allies on the right.

February 14th, 2008 at 4:06 pm