Some fear GOP is being carried to the extreme

by Chevalier de Pas | September 23, 2009 at 01:01 pm
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Some conservatives are finally recognizing that they are loosing ground with all this extremism, serious conservatives are afraid that this behavior is just undermining GOP's credibility  with paranoiac accusations against The President of The United States, Barack Obama.

Amid a rebirth of conservative activism that could help Republicans win elections next year, some party insiders now fear that extreme rhetoric and conspiracy theories coming from the angry reaches of the conservative base are undermining the GOP's broader credibility and casting it as the party of the paranoid.


Such insiders point to theories running rampant on the Internet, such as the idea that Barack Obama was born in Kenya and is thus ineligible to be president, or that he is a communist, or that his allies want to set up Nazi-like detention camps for political opponents. Those theories, the insiders say, have stoked the GOP base and have created a "purist" climate in which a figure such as Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) is lionized for his "You lie!" outburst last week when Obama addressed Congress.

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Roy C

It it true. If they don't stop, they will end up looking like the democrats when they opposed Bush, which led to their electoral victory.

So, we have to stop them or they will win the next election! Must make them moderate!

Are their any examples of what that looks like out there? Just trying to think of one to be helpful.:)


4
Chevalier de Pas

Yeah, and you had Sarah Palin, what helped a lot.

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Roy C

I didn't vote. I had "Nobody".

8
Tina Kells

Really? For someone who has such strong opinions on politics this surprises me. Are you saying you didn't vote? Why wouldn't you cast a ballot? That is the key to democracy. Or did I misunderstand? You don't strike me as the type who would not exercise his rights. Sorry, not trying to be cheeky, I am just thinking I must have read this wrong...

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Roy C

I couldn't vote for McCain because that was more of and worse than Bush. I saw potential in Obama, but I knew he had too many flaws.

So, I didn't vote.

I didn't vote when I had to choose between Reagan and Mondale, either.

I really do represent the populist, and independent voters in my thinking.

3
Amy Judd

But if you didn't vote, how can you ask for change now? Don't you have to be part of that change in order to make it happen? That's what I tell my friends who don't vote anyway - they can't complain if they didn't make their own voice heard.

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Roy C

I realized that we had to go forward with the populist rebellion and get rid of the elites of the parties, both parties.

I had been saying this from Reagan's time. I did vote for Reagan to get rid of Carter and I had voted for Carter over Ford.

Reagan's domestic policies were so bad that I couldn't vote for him again. Mondale and Reagan live on, by the way, in the confrontation of Bob Beckel and Hannity on Hannity's show. Beckel  was Mondale's campaign manager.

Until we get a full paradigm shift in the mentality of the people and have political parties and governments that actually respond to the citizenry and not special interests, voting another sold-out/damaged goods  exponent of the right or the left's version of the status quo changes nothing.

That is why I keep saying that the populist revolt that began under Bush against Bush from the conservative side of the aisle has simply been transferred over onto the democrats who apparently thought that all that was just a republican problem.

Dennis Prager, a moderate consevative, once said that he had been thinking of running for the senate in California for the  republican party. He didn't largely because he discovered that the elite were very opposed to what everyday people, republicans or others, might want and that they were very determined to oppose him as well.

2
rng

How does a rebellion take place, if no one turns up and makes a stand...


3
The_Cynic

That is one massive claim to make, Roy! And I mean massive!

2
rng

I think there is a point that approaches from those that claim an absolutionist belief in the constitution..and I don't mean Roy he is far more milder a derivative...where democracy is second to adherence to some nominal purism of an aged ideal. That is the man with the gun and tree of liberty sign. They will use the word rebellion far more directly. That is the extremism to fear and in the current ferment it is palpable in the US.

It is more than race. It is a rejection of progression, engagement and integration. It is a frustration and impotence of the new geopolitical reality. It is a grief at the loss of dominance. It is a fear of change. It is a clinging to what was, rather than what is. It is a passing of an era of what was and is no longer

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Roy C

Well, that is why this "tea party" rebellion, sparked by Santelli, a business journalist and commentator at CNBC, is very important.

Nixon was a moderate conservative and Kennedy was a moderate democrat. They were so alike that both campaigns had to invent differences.

Then both parties represented the people better, but not anywhere near what I would have liked to see.

Actually, what is happening was predicted in Third Wave and Power Shift, books by Toffler. People can access information and form "action plans" to take on their politicians like never before.

That is really what is happening.

Americans have felt uneasy about our future since the late sixties, but about our economic future only since the mid-1970s. 

Funny how Pat Buchanan and Ralph Nader are both against Free Trade and NAFTA. I agree with both of them about this.

Reagan was a kind of fix for the American malaise, the low-grade depression, the feeling of helplessness, the growing poverty, the outsourcing of jobs, this incredible concept of "sunset industries", the death of whole neighborhoods in Philadelphia, for example, as the ship yards went off to Korea!

Hell, that whole neighborhood became a drug-infested mess in one generation.

Reagan helped us muster our strength to bring down the Soviet Union, an outcome I  just didn't think possible. It was a massive lesson to me about what parasitism does to a society, to their society, and now to our society.

Reagan only temporarily "cured" the economic problem as  Baby Boomer wives, unlike their mothers, went off to work, becoming the "Super-moms" who worked themselves round the clock to maintain a standard of living that our parents had had with only one wage-earner.

Bush allowed Wall Street to go nuts, though the seeds had been planted with the removal of the restrictions on Wall Street firms by Clinton-Reuben-Gingrich, a truly bi-partisan screwing of the American people.

1
eastvanray

Canada's Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, is a moderate conservative.  In spite of being a social conservative personally he does not try to force that agenda on our country (which would be political suicide in Canada by the way).

3
Rory Cripps

I think that many make the mistake of lumping in conservative Republicans with extremists on the far right. It's no different from lumping in Liberal Democrats with out and out communists. So-called "right wing" groups such as the Klan, Skinheads, Christian Identity, etc. have more in common with those on the far left fringe than they do with conservative Republicans. I don't know of any bonafide conservative Republicans that subscribe to the conspiracy theories of the far right--or the far left for that matter. William F. Buckley, who is the father of modern day  conservatism, imploded that myth years ago.

1
Roy C

Thanks, Rory.

1
Rory Cripps

Roy: Yeah! Go figure: Some Dems get bent out of shape when President Obama is called a Commie and some Repubs get bent out of shape when Bush is called a NAZI. And when people like me attempt to maintain an even keel (like a bouncer in a bar fight or a cop in a domestic violence incident) we get it from both ends . . .i.e., "You said what? You must be a right wing extremist! No doubt about it!" And from the other end, "You said what? You must be a socialist! No doubt about it!"

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Chevalier de Pas

And Obama gets called both;  Nazi and Commie, isn't funny?

2
eastvanray

Not if you understand that Nazis and communists were not that much different.  Both were liberty-robbing, big government killing machines.  Obama may not be a great President but he is clearly neither a Nazi nor a Commie.

3
Chevalier de Pas

Well, I do understand that some conservatives are very radical and are trying to spread the fear to win the elections next year. About Obama, I don't think we have enough span to evaluate his presidency yet, but you know, throwing the first rock is as old as the Christianity.

0
Hugh Askew

Stoning people to death predates Christianity by MANY hundreds of years.  In the New Testament (the beginnings of Christianity, as opposed to the Old Testament - which is the Law, the prophets, and the history, of the Hebrews - from which Christianity sprang.        Jesus was Jewish, if you needed to know.), the only ones stoned to death were Christians. I don't think they were pitching rocks at each other.


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Chevalier de Pas

I think that I used the word FIRST to illustrate my comment, did you read that? It is a New Testament story, isn't it?

1
Rory Cripps

So what? They all get called something! Sometimes what they're called is warranted and sometimes it's not! Why do people take it personally when someone calls their favorite politician a name? It's all sticks and stones stuff. I'm incredulous over the fact that many seem to have a personal  commitment  to politicians as if those politicians were blood relatives.

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Chevalier de Pas

Unfortunately this country is filled with intolerant people, I am from a time where we were used to respect each other, even strangers were respected. Nowadays everyone is a buddy, lying and calling names don't meaning anything anymore , I personally find that horrible, soon we are going to be judging people in the streets, and maybe throwing stones again. That will be the end of the Democratic state. The history shows that we are always going in circles, maybe is the end of a era.

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Hugh Askew

From my understanding, the chief witness in the Jewish courts of the time was required to read that statement when that verdict was guilty, and the sentence was death by stoning, tho i am hardly an authority on the matter.

In the circumstance where Jesus used the saying, he was basically repeating what the scribes & Pharisees (the ones that had brought the woman caught in the act of adultery) would have already known, thus exposing their hypocrisy. Note that they all, to a man, left the scene quietly.

So even tho the illustration we are most familiar with is from the New Testament, the saying itself still predates it.


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Karen Hatter
First Flagged at 1:04 PM, Sep 23, 2009 by Karen Hatter
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