Look, I know my hearing isn't quite what it used to be but the silence from the Republican party 'over there' is deafening! Roger Simon at PJ Media puts into words what I have been sensing for some considerable time:
Given the current state of the USA, Republicans should be winning every election from Seattle to Key West. The economy hasn’t moved for years with the labor participation rate at record lows — people have given up – and bankruptcy over entitlements looming. The international situation is in free fall with China becoming the global power, Iran making a mockery of faux negotiations and Putin on the way to reconstituting the Soviet Union. Al Qaeda is not only alive, it’s growing. (GM is dead.) Optimism about our country is in the proverbial toilet. More Americans feel threatened by their own government than proud of it.
But they’re not. And you don’t need Strother Martin to tell you why – it’s a failure to communicate.
I'll go that far with Mr. Simon, a usually shrewd observer, but I do think that the message you communicate is just as important as communication for its own sake. So far, I don't see or hear a clear voice proposing a well-honed set of ideas to rectify the wasteland created by a degenerate and destructive Democrat party. It seems to me that the 'good ol' boys' who sit on the sacks of money at the top of the GOP are totally bereft of any new ideas, or even any old ones that once worked so well for Ronald Reagan. Instead they continue under 'Rove-control' to attack the Tea Party who have, hidden somewhere inside their ranting and ravings, some absolutely right, and Right, ideas but are incapable of expressing them coherently.
The Republican party needs to pick a runner for 2016 as early as possible and then get behind him or her because 'HillBilly' will be a difficult opponent - not unassailable but still formidable. Failure to hold the House and take the Senate this year, and then lose to 'HillBilly in two years will, I fear, spell the decline of North America to South American standards.
Good post, but I'd like to add three points.
First, republicans are not the small government people you seem to think they are. It is true that small government types are more likely to be found among republicans than democrats, but overall the party is as bad as the democrats. And that's because ...
Second, Americans have turned a corner. They -- we -- want entitlements. I see it everywhere. You can not discuss such things as minimum wage or subsidized healthcare without finding out that the other person simply believes that things are free, and should be free.
Third, the press in this country! They want liberal big government types in office, and they make no pretense about it. Remember how we were told that McCain was too old at 70 to run for office? Guess how old Hillary will be when she runs?
Posted by: Dom | Thursday, 24 April 2014 at 12:58
The Republican party like all centre right parties have nothing to say because they cannot give vent to the truth as most of the public do not want to hear it. They also cannot come up with an alternative message to something for nothing that the left have so successfully been spreading which the intellectually challenged, gullible and ignorant have come to fervently believed which again is most of the public. Left wing parties can now all be labelled the welfare, dependency and entitlement parties as they have engineered society so that now the public have a vested interest to embrace the left in perpetuity and ignore the right out of fear that the right will force everyone and the state to live within their means and once again take on the burden of self-reliance and personal responsibility.
Posted by: Antisthenes | Thursday, 24 April 2014 at 13:08
Sara Palin. Always vote for a good looking sheila with great ... ideas. On that basis Hillary would have two thirds of three fifths of not much chance.
But then I'm not an American so I guess that rules me out of voting.
...and before all the smart posteriors [I'm way too polite to say "smart arse"] ridicule the gorgeous Sara who was it that predicted what Vlad the Impaler would do? Not the limp wristed fn Dimocrats.
They have some funny ideas about being able to shoot each other and other quaint notions but on the whole our US cousins were a pretty good bunch until Barry O'Barmy moved into the free lodgings.
Posted by: AussieD | Thursday, 24 April 2014 at 13:25
"They also cannot come up with an alternative message to something for nothing ... "
That's it in a nutshell. Once a party promises "something for nothing" there is no going back.
Posted by: Dom | Thursday, 24 April 2014 at 13:55
Gentlemen! Gentlemen! Your job is to cheer me up but after that lot I'm going to have to lay down and take some Prozac!
I do understand what you are saying but it is important to remember that as more and more of the socialist agenda is put into practice the greater the looming disaster which eventually 'The People' (dread words!) will be unable to ignore. It happened 'over here' and just in time 'that woman' burst on to the scene. Things were never the same.
What I cannot tell from here is exactly what effect 'Obamacare' is having at 'street level'. 'Farx Noos' and sundry Right-wing news sites play up the 'shlock-horror' tales but the Lefties keep repeating that most people most of the time are well pleased. Which is it?
Posted by: David Duff | Thursday, 24 April 2014 at 15:36
No Condoleezza?
No Libertarian Candidate?
Oh, and how is the New Hampshire Project going?
Posted by: Louise | Thursday, 24 April 2014 at 23:16
This blog is embarrassing - for me, that is! Courtesy of my long-suffering readers I am constantly learning new things of which I should have known. Today my e-pal, Louise, mentions "the New Hampshire Project" (eh? what?) which takes me off to this Wiki site which is worth a read:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_State_Project
Thanks, Louise.
Posted by: David Duff | Friday, 25 April 2014 at 08:42
Who's sending you that damned Prozac?
Somebody in Arkansas I suspect.
Cease and desist at once. It's doing you no good at all.
Posted by: Andra | Friday, 25 April 2014 at 08:53
But ... but ... he told me that all I had to do was crush the pills into a powder and sniff it up my nose, he reckoned it would do me a power of good!
Posted by: David Duff | Friday, 25 April 2014 at 11:01