I’d also like to turn your argument on it’s ear…instead of “staying home” causing the election of Obama why isn’t the argument “forcing a completely offensive candidate to the base” gave us Obama?

McCain wasn’t playing nice; he was playing at pandering, in hopes that the lefties would love him. Silly idea from a confused man, as the results showed.

Ripping Crist in the vicious sense isn’t necessary; his record speaks to his insufficiencies. And given the mood of the voters, it might be counter-productive slinging a lot of mud in the primary season. Criticizing Crist on the issues is entirely fair game, and his feet should be held to the fire on his agenda.

I don’t fear a straight-up comparison between the two men on the issues; Rubio wins that exercise walking away.

Most of what is written here at Redstate and across the blogosphere makes not one bit of difference to who wins and loses at the ballot box. What goes on here is not “party politics.” It’s mostly preaching to the choir. Whoop dee do.

What REALLY matters is active participation in party politics. Making sure the BEST conservatives win the primary elections. Making sure the Party has leadership that respects and supports the Constitution and the Party Platform.

Why hasn’t that been happening? Because, for example, in the 2008 election cycle we had a Party at HALF STRENGTH with a mushy-moderate message. Why? Because HALF the precinct committeeman slots in the Republican Party were VACANT in the 2008 election cycle. And, the Party was split nationwide in the PC ranks about 50-50 between conservatives and moderates. Look at our “leadership.” Look at our Party “spokesmen.” They are a reflection of the mushyness of our Party — an ideologically split and weak Party.

Conservative? Want to strengthen the Party and wrest control of it from the moderates? Then, create a conservative working majority in it. By joining it at the grass roots level as a precinct committeeman. So we conservatives can vote in better leadership at the legislative district, county, state and national levels. So we conservatives can vote to endorse conservative candidates in the primary elections. Party-endorsed candidates usually win the primaries. Those of you here who are precinct committeemen understand what I’m saying. Those of you who don’t — please, please get into the real ball game of politics and become a voting member of the Party. Every state has different rules. Get in contact with your local GOP and tell them you want to become a precinct committeeman.

Oh, and by the way, even most “conservative” officeholders don’t want you in the Party. They like the status quo. It means reelection. Even the “conservatives” FEAR an influx of new conservatives into the Party. Because they might get challenged by a REAL conservative. Think of it. The voters get to choose between two candidates in the primary. One is an incumbent who voted for earmarks and had earmarks of his own and voted for all sorts of unconstitutional legislation for years and years while he was “going along to get along.” His adversary is a brand new guy or gal who pledges to never compromise their principles, to take their oath of office seriously and to never vote for an earmark or ever request one. In the present political climate, who’s going to win?

THAT’S THE SCENARIO that TERRIFIES the incumbents and why you NEVER HEAR any of our so-called conservatives imploring the unwashed masses, the mere registered Republicans, to come into the Party and become a voting member of it as a precinct committeeman. Because even the conservatives FEAR a backlash against THEM — and that will more likely happen if conservatives flock into the Party and help the conservative primary challengers. And help get out the vote. And help turn the anti-incumbent sentiment of the Tea Partiers into a real political power punch in the Republican primaries.

Ask yourself: When was the last time you heard an incumbent Republican Party conservative tell you the Party has 50 per cent of its PC slots vacant and then implore you to become a PC? If it’s happened, I’d like to hear about it. A few good conservative state legislators here in AZ are saying it, but I know of no others.

If we conservatives would fill up the vacant PC slots, we’d have a very strong working majority in the Party. The Party is there for the TAKING. Think the moderates don’t know this? Guess again. The moderates ae trying to take over the Party in this way, too. Unless we stop them. Will we? Will YOU?

Thank you.

ColdWarrior
www.theprecinctproject.wordpress.com

You were more coherent than me, Art, but I agree we’re making the same basic case – and pushing back revisionist propaganda that calls black, white and vice versa. Your last paragraph should be framed.

And Orwell in 1984 spoke about presentism too as a tool of totalitarian control.

My earliest memory of a Presidential race goes back to 1960 when my parents took my sister and me to see Kennedy speak – probably the only time I’ve actually seen in person a President speak live.

And please check your email. I’ve finished the first 50 pages.

I also recall this being a battle between the old-guard “Rockerfeller Republicans” country-club (East-Coast, WASP, big business) who were accomodators to the post WWII Roosevelt welfare state versus the upstart free-market. non-East coast, salt of the earth, declassé conservatives who wanted to upset the apple cart.

I don’t recall the “social conservatives” being a distinctive or recognizable element – we really hadn’t started the culture wars and there was a general societal consensus about public standards of morality (personal morality, of course, was another story).

Rather we had a political class battle; the upstarts lost, but started an intellectual movement that eventually won over enough people that Reagan was able do the first significant blood-letting of the welfare state – after Johnson with his majority moved the country significantly to the left with his the “Great Society”.

The lesson today is that we still have the big business-big government axis of power and mutual backscratching – except that the government has fallen into the hands of the Marxists and the big business think they can still do “business as usual” not realizing they’re “selling the rope to hang themselves” (or hoping that they’ll escape the noose – or perhaps will be the executioners themselves).

I was 15 in ’64 and lived in rural Georgia. I and many of my peers were acutely attuned to National politics in those days since much of it was about us. I’m confident I heard more sermons that year on the evils of the ’64 Civil Rights Bill than about anything remotely connected to what passed for Christianity in the Swainsboro Primitive Baptist Church.

Goldwater was a Western states’ rights, small government libertarian at a time when the Republican Party was still a firmly Northern party closely aligned with “Big Business.” In other words, the “Rockefeller Republicans” were led by a real guy who was named Rockefeller and the Republicans really were the statist party in those days. Until LBJ and the Great Society, the Democrats had to compromise on many issues with the conservative and populist South; the Republicans ignored The South. I knew a few Republicans and they were either the families of Yankee plant managers or Black.

There were two issues really in ’64: the ’64 Civil Rights Act, which Goldwater opposed on Constitutional grounds, and the escalation of the War in Vietnam. “The Solid South” cracked in ’64 for one and only one reason; Goldwater’s vote against the ’64 Civil Rights Bill. In the rest of the Country, escalation was more of an issue and the Country was opposed to it, though the presence in Vietnam had wide support at the time. The campaign produced what is perhaps the best and best known political TV ad of all time: the girl with the daisy. Afterward, it was said only half jokingly, “they told me if I voted for Goldwater, we’d get involved in a land war in Asia and they were right.” Goldwater’s campaign slogan was, “In your heart, you know he’s right,” to which the Ds retorted, “but in your guts you know he’s nuts.” Remember, this was only two years after the Cuban Missle Crisis during which we all stared at a nuclear missle target on us and we were still doing the get under the desk and kiss your butt goodbye drill at school. Goldwater’s anti-communist bellicosity scared Hell out of lots of people, most of whom fully expected to die in a thermonuclear exchange with the Soviet Union.

America in ’64 was still the land of the Man in the Gray Flannel Suit. The pill was beginning to change sexual mores, but adolescent sex was still rare. Most of what many of you associate with the ’60s only happened in the last couple of years of the ’60s and on into the ’70s. There were Beatniks and some wierd poetry in the coffee shops in SF and NY but the vast majority of Americans still thought that “Puff the Magic Dragon” (1963) was a cute kids’ song about a boy and a dragon instead of being the first popular drug song. (Which its authors swore it wasn’t – yeah right.) As late as ’66 “Ballad of the Green Berets” made Billboards #1 on all three lists. Abortion was only an issue at the edges in most places. Out of wedlock pregnance was still rare and dealt with by a vist to and aunt in Montana or grandma in Alabama with the baby given up for adoption or by the shotgun wedding. Only in the more avant garde places was abortion an issue, e.g., CA, which passed a legalization bill in ’66. Frankly, it wasn’t even a subject for politie company in most of the Country and for most political figures would have been a state and local issue, if a political issue at all.

Perhaps the worst historiographical sin is presentism, looking at the past with the eyes of the present. It is hard to look at Goldwater, or even Reagan, with today’s eyes; the World they lived in doesn’t exist anymore.

But my point is that we should limit our PUBLIC condemnations to rational comparisons on the issues, rather than “tearing him a new one” as we might privately want to do. If [heaven forbid] we are stuck with Crist after the primaries, we don’t want him so bloodied that he would lose to a far, far worse Democrat.

Practical politics. Impure? Distasteful? Yes. But we are dealing with the real world elections and consequences of same, not tossing out bits of philosophy at the Algonquin Round Table.

Bite bullet, etc.

Another discussion has been filtering through the comments that I would like to discuss is the concept of “taking back” the Party.

I speak from a perspective of one who follows Party Politics in Palm Beach County, yeah, the county that elected George W. Bush. I am proud to say that I voted for him then and not so proud to say that I voted for him in 2004. By 2008 I was sick of that shift. McCain did not get my vote. As Archer52 put it, McCain would have lost by a landslide had it not been for conservative Sarah Palin.

Currently, there is a groundswell of energy and enthusiasm for our basic political values. People are struggling to make ends meet. The economy since Bush/Paulsen has gotten much worse. Unemployment has risen to nearly 10% and youth unemployment is at or above 25%. Those jobs that American won’t do don’t exist.

The blue blood country club party doesn’t exist anymore either. There are members of the Republican Party that are successful but as Republicans we salute their spirit instead of stealing their wallets. There is a great change happening in our Party and it begins with YOU! Get involved take control of YOUR PARTY. We are not the tea party, although most of us have been their at the protests and town hall meetings.

If you are a tea party member, keep fighting, but come indoors. Come into to the one party that stands for freedom. I am not asking you to forgive the mistakes of the recent past, I am asking you to correct those mistakes. Become a committee person in the Republican Party. Work inside the house. We need home improvment not demolition. Leave the destruction to the Democrats.