Shut Up and “Sing,” Right Wing Edition

7 Responses to “Shut Up and “Sing,” Right Wing Edition”

1. tgirsch Says:
   November 14th, 2008 at 10:14 am

   Gotta “love” the Nuge!

2. DaveP. Says:
   November 15th, 2008 at 7:16 am

   Love him or hate him, he is right. It’s time and past time to stop sending money and votes to the “Democrats with other friends” in the RNC and the congressional republican delegation. I don’t donate or vote Republican in order to support “Bipartisanship”.

   We just ran a “Moderate Republican”- one of the most moderate of the lot, much in agreement with President Obama and Nancy Pelosi on the evils of capitalism, the role of big government, the hatefulness of Conservatives, the greatness of full amnesty and the acceptability of gun control… and he got beaten like a redheaded stepchild. The only thing that saved him from a rout was his veep choice, a thoroughly conservative woman. If the RNC had told McCain to toe the line or run on his own dime against a RNC-backed primary opponent back in the ’90s maybe history would’ve been different.

3. Xrlq Says:
   November 15th, 2008 at 9:32 am

   Whether he is “right” or “wrong” depends on what you are trying to accomplish. If your goal is to end up with a Republican Party consisting entirely of Real Republicans^TM whose candidates are as ideologically pure as the driven snow, but who never win elections in any but the most conservative districts in the country, then by all means, let’s follow singer/political strategist Ted Nugent’s sage advice. But if the goal is to get as many conservative policies implemented as possible, we need to win elections. Lots of them, and more than can be won by conservatives alone. Going moderate doesn’t guarantee that we’ll win any particular elections, of course, but wide-scale ideological purges like the Nuge advocates would almost certainly guarantee that we won’t.

   If the GOP had been dumb enough to primary McCain in the 1990s, I’m sure history would indeed have been different. Maybe Bush’s out of control spending would have been even worse, as McCain was pretty good on that count. Maybe amnesty wouldn’t have happened … oh wait, I almost forgot it didn’t happen anyway. Gun control? McCain’s not perfect on that front, but he’s better than any Republican President who has served in my lifetime, all of whom endorsed “assault” weapon bans before or after they were in office (IIRC Nixon was dead by then, but made no secret to his aides that he loathed gun owners generally). And there would have been no Gang of 14 deal, no Justice Alito and, per Heller (still a 5-4 decision, but the other way) no Second Amendment at all. Yup, history would’ve been different all right.

   BTW, email addresses don’t display in comments, so you can’t get spam from using your real one when commenting here. Please use it from now on.

4. DaveP. Says:
   November 15th, 2008 at 11:55 am

   “But if the goal is to get as many conservative policies implemented as possible, we need to win elections’

   Problem is- as I’m sure you’re aware- that the elections we’ve won have NOT led to conservative policies.

   Also, note your own choice of adjective: CONSERVATIVE, not REPUBLICAN. You keep electing Republicans… and then get surprised when they’re not Conservatives.

   Why would people vote for a “moderate” Republican when they can vote for a Democrat, get all the same handouts from the public trough and overbloated government and get feelgood soundbites too?

5. Xrlq Says:
   November 15th, 2008 at 1:56 pm

   Problem is- as I’m sure you’re aware – that the elections we’ve won have NOT led to conservative policies.

   Compared to what? Compared to a conservative theorist’s wish list, no. Compared to the policies we would have seen if we hadn’t won those elections? Certainly. The optimistic view is that the perfect should not be the enemy of the good. The pessimistic view is that if the choice is between evils, better to take the lesser evil rather than the greater one. Either way, the conclusion is the same.

6. tgirsch Says:
   November 18th, 2008 at 1:52 pm

   Xrlq

   Yet another way in which we agree — we’re both political pragmatists, even if our goals are decidedly incompatible. We both want our side to make the compromises necessary to win elections, while we want the other side to absolutely stick to their ideological guns. :)

   tgirsch’s last blog post..What To Do About GM?

7. Xrlq Says:
   November 18th, 2008 at 10:38 pm

   Yup. Maybe that explains why you hate to agree with me on stuff. Inside, I’ll bet you’re saying to yourself, “Dammit, Xrlq, you’re on the wrong side, so the least you can do is stop advocating strategies that might work, and start advocating crap that almost certainly won’t!”

   The feeling is mutual, of course. Now stop agreeing with me, head back to LeanLeft, and start screaming at your fellow lefties and telling them to purge all those DINOs in Congress, especially the ones that didn’t dump the ultimate DINO, Joe Lieberman. I mean, who cares if you lose these guys, they were almost Republicans anyway, the only difference is the name. Hell, most of them hail from centrist districts, so even if they lose they won’t be replaced by Real Republicans or anything, just harmless RINOs who might as well be Democrats anyway. So let’s hear it for ideologically pure Democrats!

Leave a Reply

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website

Notify me of followup comments via e-mail