Category — Republican Party

With the ordaining of McCain by the GOP, the RNCC is having a bit of a problem with the rank and file.

For your schadenfreude, here is a list of e-mails to Cole at the RNCC, 633 comments and growing.

Republican Solutions and a Positive Agenda
Posted By: Tom Cole, May 16, 2008 - 9:52 AM

Everyone needs a lift, this supplies it.

Country club Republicans, led by Bush and McCain, look they’re on the road to Waterloo this fall. Continuing red district special election losses don’t bode well for the November elections. Abandoning conservative principles for liberalism-lite will keep them in the minority for years to come.

Really, is there much more you need from these “conservative” republicans?

Grover Norquist, the California Republican Party, and an open-borders debacle continued

Last June, I noted the mortifying open-borders debacle in the California Republican Party. Michael Kamburowski, an Australian immigrant who served as the California Republican Party’s chief operating officer, resigned last summer after the SFChron reported that he had been “ordered deported in 2001,…[snip]

A former California Republican Party official who resigned last year in a controversy over his immigration status had no valid visa or work permit during his high-profile career as a Washington lobbyist for conservative icon Grover Norquist, newly filed court records show.

Is it any wonder conservatives are fed up with party leadership? These people are incompetent, sloppy, arrogant–and they couldn’t care less about following immigration laws.

And this is no coincidence: Republican Party registration is down in California. The party is in turmoil and in debt as it heads into its annual spring convention. Via the SacBee, the California GOP will decide whether to hold to a conservative agenda or turn into a California Democrat Party-lite: [snip]…Records show Republican registration in the state has dropped from 35.6 percent to 33.3 percent since 2004 as more voters seek independent status unaffiliated with any party. Democrats suffered only a 0.2 percent decline over the same period.

Move to the center? Become more like Democrats? Join the global warming fear-mongering crowd? Adopt “centrist” social positions? Marginalize conservatism as “divisive” and “strident?”
Yeah, that’ll boost GOP donations and registrations!

We need to form the Libertarian/Conservative party and pull the plug on the RINO’s and moderates. Start the ball rolling with a (W)right in Romney campaign in the general election.

This will provide one with a positive vote.

The punditry think McCain should be shoring up conservative support. Camp McCain doesn’t quite see it that way:

“Every single thread of the Republican blanket has covered John McCain,” he said. “The grand gesture I think is really being made on the part of conservatives to John McCain, saying, we believe that you would make a good president and are willing to put our political capital to your disposal.”

Camp McCain thinks having the “Republican blanket” automatically entitles them to conservative support. This may have been true in years past, but this is a different year and John McCain is a different candidate.

This year was preceded by 8 long, painful years of “compassionate” conservatism. President Bush burned up a lifetime’s worth of political capital and conservatives are tired of being taken for granted. That’s why assuming Republican is synonymous with conservative will cost McCain the election.

McCain is a different candidate. Instead of building up conservative good will, he partners with Ted Kennedy, Russ Feingold, and Joe Lieberman. Now that it’s crunch time, Camp McCain is starting to realize that you don’t make many friends by jabbing people in the eye all the time.

McCain might want to reconsider his conservative “outreach” program. Liberals and independents are not going to push him over the finish line in November. And if things don’t radically change, neither will conservatives.

Politics is like horseshoes. They don’t always have to be ringers, some leaners are OK. But ALL of them have to be close!
Whom is Bush talking about when he mentions conservative? McCain bashed Alito, voted against the tax cuts and gave us these three conservative items namely:

• McCain Feingold
• McCain Liberman
• McCain Kennedy

He reached across the aisle, but that was all one way. Try the Gang of 14 too. While you are at it, add the Keating Five to this list.

Watch Bush push conservative programs » The only place Bush pushed conservative ideas was out the back door, except when the voters bludgeoned him into backing them.
Conservatives yes, McCain NO. Bush, no more years.
Now Bush is a comedian coming up with this:

Bush: Keep a conservative in White House

WASHINGTON (CNN) — President Bush, in a rousing speech to fellow conservatives, exhorted his ideological cohorts to “fight for victory and keep the White House in 2008.” [snip]

The two-term U.S. leader, who addressed the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, leaves office next year and said it is important that the next president continues to reflect the conservative political principles he represents. [snip]

Bush’s address highlighted his conservative credentials in similar language to that McCain used when he spoke to the same group Thursday.

McCain noted his support for Bush’s policies, including permanent tax cuts, the appointment of conservative judges such as Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito and his early call for the addition of troops in Iraq as part of the so-called surge. [snip]

When cooking up a wonderful soup, you cannot start with contaminated water.
The GOP is contaminated. Toss it and start over. I do not care where the RINOs go as long as they go.

Put McCain’s candidacy in this box and slam the lid.

Looks like one of his fund raisers.

I read John McCain’s CPAC speech, and I’m struggling to find the positives.  Hugh Hewitt describes it as “superb” and Ed Morrissey says it was “excellent”.  However, it strikes me as arrogant and condescending.  In a nutshell, McCain will seek conservative “counsel”, but won’t change his mind unless he’s “convinced” his “judgment is in error”.  And judging from his actions, he hasn’t found too many of those over the years.  It won’t be long before he’s swearing at us and calling us “racists” again.

Sorry, folks, but one speech does not erase McCain’s history.  I know some of you are desperately trying to put your fingers in the dike this election season.  But if I was interested in supporting a good orator, I’d jump on the cult of Obama bandwagon.  That’s his main qualification as far as I can tell.

So what will John McCain say at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) tomorrow?  Some are of the mindset that he’ll make peace with the conservative wing of the party.  I doubt it.  Everything he’s accomplished so far has been on the backs of moderate Republicans and cross-over independents.  Why tack right at this point when the nomination is clearly within reach without conservative support?

And let’s pretend he promises Supreme Court nominees in the mold of Samuel Alito and tax cuts galore tomorrow.  You’d be a fool to believe him.  Examine McCain’s actions on taxes, judicial nominees, global warming, and illegal immigration.  If after that examination you’re placing any value on the CPAC speech, I have a bridge I’d like to sell you. 

A leopard doesn’t change its spots, folks.  A President McCain will pay homage to the groups he’s always loved—liberals and squishy independents.  Invoking President Reagan’s name won’t make room in John McCain’s Big Liberal Tent for conservatives.

So John McCain is the new face of the Republican Party. If true, count me out. I just spent 8 years watching President Bush sabotage the conservative movement on almost every major domestic policy issue. I’m not going to shot myself in the foot over and over again just to get a Republican elected.

It’s time for conservatives to reexamine their relationship with the Republican Party. The old platitudes about any Republican being better than a Democrat just aren’t true. I didn’t derive much consolation from the fact that George Bush was a Republican when he was partnering with Teddy Kennedy on illegal immigration and education.

It’s also well past time to look at the bigger picture and not blindly accept the notion that nothing matters besides the War on Terrorism. Conservatives need to resist the temptation to become single issue voters. That’s not to say that you’ll agree with everything a particular candidate does, but you do have to look at a much broader canvas.

And that’s why the Republican Party and John McCain have lost me. When you look at the broader core of what John McCain and the Party under a McCain presidency would represent (global warming, illegal immigration, socialized medicine, higher taxes, expansion of government scope and size, etc.), there’s very little reason to support it or him. The ever so prized independents and liberals are welcome to it.