South Carolina doofus Mark Sanford changes his tune
I guess I can re-write this story everyday for as long as the Republicans want to keep sewing their empty-headed lies. Far right kook, Mark Sanford from the Know Nothing wing of the Republican Party, the governor of a small, religionist-obsessed former slave holding state, says conservatives didn't lose the election last week. It was just two weeks ago that Sanford and his smarmy ilk were warning Americans, hysterically, that Obama was either the "most liberal senator in America" or a socialist. Yesterday South Carolina's Bible-quoting wingnut explained how voters were just punishing Republicans for not being true to conservative ideals and that the nation voted for "the socialist" to chastise Republicans for slacking off on the rigors of the road to pure Know Nothing fascism. And, anyway, it was all Ted Stevens' fault.
"[I]t goes without saying the Republican Party took a shellacking nationally. Some on the left will say our electoral losses are a repudiation of our principles of lower taxes, smaller government and individual liberty. But Tuesday was not in fact a rejection of those principles-- it was a rejection of Republicans' failure to live up to those principles. [And not knowing how to use them damn computer thingies and Teleprompters.]
I believe in the Biblical notion of taking the log out of your own eye before worrying about the splinter in someone else's. Accordingly, let me focus on my own party and the way Ted Stevens personifies what went wrong in the election.
As a senior ranking Republican from Alaska, he was a proud champion of pork barrel spending and bridges to nowhere, and stayed so long that he developed a blind eye to ethical lapses that would be readily seen by scout leaders and soccer moms alike.
Republicans have campaigned on the conservative themes of lower taxes, less government and more freedom-- they just haven't governed that way. America didn't turn away from conservatism, they turned away from many who faked it.
Sanford's theory doesn't stand up to another standard rejected by the Know Nothing wing of his party: the scientific method. Analysis of the election returns show that voters in every part of America did reject conservative values-- in the form of the far right politicians the GOP ran for office. See, we vote on politicians and on what they stand for-- or what we're told by their opponents they stand for, not on social or economic systems. Last Friday, when fellow rightists David Keene, Tony Perkins and Grover Norquist tried making the same point about how the election wasn't a rejection of true conservatism, we looked at the election results in congressional races where the GOP tried replacing retiring "moderates" with aggressive right-wingers of the Sanford mold.
In every single instance where the GOP tried slipping in a far right replacement for a retiring mainstream conservative Republican, the Democrat won. In New Mexico Pete Domenici has been a mainstream conservative, one of the dozen least extremist members of the Senate Republican caucus. Given the opportunity to run another mainstream conservative, his protege, Heather Wilson, the far right of the New Mexico GOP instead chose one of the most radical right members of Congress, Steve Pearce, whose extremism turned the entire state bright blue. Obama bested McCain by 15 points. Pearce lost his own race by 22%, one of the worst drubbing anywhere, and helped drag down 3 congressional candidates, clearing the way for a 100% Democratic congressional delegation for New Mexico-- like Massachusetts. And none of the races were close.
Similarly in Virginia, the retirement of mainstream conservative John Warner who was just a tiny bit less conservative than Domenici, led the far right radicals in control if the Virginia GOP to trash a mainstream conservative candidate, Tom Davis, in favor of a right-wing extremist, James Gillmore. That worked out great-- for the Democrats. Obama beat McCain by 6 points in a bedrock GOP state, Gillmore, of course, was defeated by a mainstream conservative Democrat, Mark Warner, by a startling 31 points! And 3 far right Republicans-- two of them incumbents-- were beaten in congressional races, Congresswoman Thelma Drake, Congressman Virgil Goode, and crazed religionist fanatic Keith Fimian (a 12 point landslide). Even the right-wing incumbents who won, all felt the heat-- all but one of them scoring less voter support than they had in 2006. Randy Forbes, for example, was challenged by Andrea Miller, an African American teacher who had headed Dennis Kucinich's presidential campaign in Virginia. In 2006 Forbes was re-elected with 76% of the vote. This year he was down 16 points. Goodlatte went from 75% to 61%. The new Minority Whip, radical right nut case Eric Cantor, dropped down a percent this year.
The Republican party-- particularly the more right-wing dominant faction-- suffered tremendous rejection at the polls. Only by keeping their heads firmly up their own and each other's asses could right wing hacks and their friends in the media deny that. And that's where they're comfortable keeping their heads... so they will.
UPDATE: FORGET PALIN-- THE GOP TICKET FOR 2012 SHOULD BE TED NUGENT AND THE PLUMBER GUY
Yes, Nugent's a moron but we'll quote him anyway because there are loads of morons just like him who trust the same sources of information that are claiming its a center right nation and conservatives weren't defeated and all that hogwash. Nugent just declared open season on RINOs. With Chris Shays defeated and a dozen mainstream conservatives retiring because they couldn't stand being near the neo-fascists any longer, I'm not sure who he's advocating killing. Olympia Snowe? Snarlin' Arlen? At least with the stinking, treacherous Mormons, we know who they're teaching their brats to kill.The elderly ex-rocker-- please don't tell me it was him who the Enquirer photographed in a lip-lock with Cindy McCain-- is out of step with the American people. Like many of the most hateful bigots on the far right of the GOP, the wing that has destroyed that party, he says "Consensus building is for wimps and soulless people who stand for nothing. Compromise is not about being tolerant: these days, it’s about giving up conservative principles."
RINOs reach across Fedzilla's aisle to cut deals and build consensus with the liberals. Consensus building means compromising values and cutting deals with the socialist prankster punksters whose goal it is to turn America into EuroAmerica.
Although he was campaigning for McCain aggressively last month, today he's demanding that the party's recent standard bearer be given no voice in the future of the GOP. His idea of the agenda-setters? "Conservative leaders and thinkers such as Newt Gingrich, Jed Babbin, Governor Jindal of Louisiana, Thomas Sowell, Glenn Beck, Michelle Malkin, Governor Sarah Palin and others need to turn up the heat and bring this less government, more individual freedom and strong national defense revolution to a boil. It is time."
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