...I really hate to say this, but I feel that a Rick Santorum nomination would be the best thing that could possibly happen to the GOP in this cycle.
Santorum is a social Conservative with little to no chance of actually defeating Obama in the general election. His ideas on religion, culture and social issues are outdated and anachronistic. He is, in short, everything that I despise about the Republican party. His position on the separation of church and state is shared only by a small, vocal minority of Americans. He is a Neo-Con warmonger in the vein of Bush and Obama. And he constantly alienates 50 percent of voters with his attacks on abortion and contraception.
If the Republican party is ever going to break the shackles of the religious right on it's party, this may be their best opportunity. Romney is a moderate. Pure and simple. He's nothing close to an ideologue, even though he tries to play one on TV. And if he held firm to his moderate roots, he could pull independents and conservative Democrats away from Obama. Santorum, on the other hand, is a right wing ideologue through and through. He has strong support among the hard line right, but little support elsewhere. His ultra-conservative rhetoric actually serves to drive moderate and Libertarians like me away in droves.
A Santorum victory would demonstrate two things. First it would hand the election to Obama on a silver platter and would serve to issue a clarion call to Republicans that the days of social conservatism are over. Second, it would show moderates like Romney that moving to the right, away from their moderate stances is not only ill advised but disastrous.
Perhaps a landslide Santorum loss to Obama, and another four years of rampant spending, government intrusiveness and expanding government 'entitlements' will be the only way the GOP can learn these valuable lessons.
Well said, but for the final sentence with regard to rampant spending, government intrusiveness and expanding government entitlements and reality.
A valuable lesson might be to be as clued in to one's self and one's own party and actions as much as they might think they've got their opponents pegs.
Denial and delusion are the pitfalls of those with substance abuse addictions. They like to deny they have a problem and are often suggesting it's those that have a problem with them and their habits that are the one's that have a problem.
The way I see it, we're all humans and in our system of government, those elected to office come from the body of the people and are elected to represent "we the people". The question we might all ask ourselves is what the truth is. Are we NOT being represented by people who we elected to represent us or is it that we are actually being represented very well, but because some of us don't take the time for introspection and check to see if we might be doing unto others, that which we wouldn't what others to do to us and instead obsessing about how we're the victim of others (It's a me, me, me, all about me world), we don't like our images when reflected back to us by the actions of our representatives.
Rampant spending did not start in the present administration and some of the spending that is occurring now is the cost of clean up, from some who were into rampant spending, like the cost to clean up the streets in Times Square after a night of partying or the cost of having to bail out managers that wanted their 7 figure salaries and stock options (claiming they were worth it) while they drove their businesses and industries into the ground or greedy people looking to get-rich-quick. The private sector and government are not mutually exclusive from one another as there is big government money to be had in defense contracts and all kinds of contracts that go out to private business for goods and services that tax payers pay for, in cash, on credit or because of those in the private sector that defraud the government (and thus taxpayers). The government is distinctly different than the private business sector as there is no built-in line for profit, but like businesses, it can borrow money and pay a fee for paying over time and having the cost of their bills covered by someone else, until the total debt is paid off. One thing taxpayers can be sure of, the government is not looking at a profit margin, just working to meet expenses.
With regard to intrusiveness, if all people strived very hard to give one another a fair and just deal on all transactions and did not try to sneak one, two, three, four or five under the table and then talk about how easily they squeezed their customers or devised plans to nickel and dime them or get them addicted and if all people simply did "the right thing", "government intrusiveness" would not be needed. While it is unlikely all people will "do the right thing" all the time, humanity, societies and nations seem to go through eras and trends where attitudes and philosophies lean in particular directions. I believe we're now sorting ourselves out from a long period of greed and gluttony, where life itself has taken a back seat to opulence and people lavishing themselves with material wealth in a strange dichotomy, divergence or delusion of moral values.
What more and more people seem to be noticing is how those with the strongest claims to moral righteousness seem to be standing buck naked or with their pants down when they speak of the immoralities and faults of others, but ignore their own. It's not a question of one group being free of sin and the other all sinners, all groups contain sinners and have faults, those that deny that in so many words or by inference and attitude would seem to be deluding themselves, so all the arguments where any group is calling the other kettle black are
vanitas vanitatum omnia vanitas. All groups are imperfect and all groups do many of the same imperfect things, but there are things that distinguish groups from one another by degree or level with which they do things or whether they do things that others do not.
I was once a registered Republican and grew up in a Republican family with lots of Republican friends, many of whom, like I, after various degrees of tolerance or faith, have left the current “new” “republican” Party as a result of what many have expressed is a scary, fascist sort of Jack-boot, conform and agree attitude or we’ll reject you, insult or maybe assault you, if not physically, with words intended to intimidate for the purposes of causing one to tow the party line. It may work in some instances, but many in my family and some friends basically see it as goon tactics and mentality and don’t see that as a successful means of attracting anyone to an idealism or the political policies behind that come from such ideals. In addition, another turn off was an apparent abject denial of one’s self and one’s faults to the point of taking on an attitude that seems to totally wash one’s own faults and frailties from one’s mind, all while building a platform on the immoralities, faults and frailties of others.
Once again, both sides build platforms built on the immoralities, faults and frailties of others, but there seems to be only one distinctive main political platform that also seems built on total loss of memory about one’s own immoralities, faults and frailties.
A propensity toward that characteristic mixed with a produced or presented expectation formulated by self-promotion of higher moral values or standing than others, serves to serve its intent, that what all will see, is what one is led to believe they should expect. Based on the advertisements, one might expect that there would be very little imperfection or fall from grace, but when it occurs, even if it is less or no more than in incidence per unit of population in any political group, the expectation serves to enhance the failure to meet expectations.
When they fail, the fall is harder for those that build up expectations about themselves and what they can do than it is for those who did not build up great expectations about themselves and what they can do.
All sides build up expectations to a point, there seems no denying that and they all pay the price when they don’t meet those expectations, but the contrast between the two main parties now is when one leans more heavily on religious belief, moral value righteousness than the other and people begin to notice the difference between the talk and the walk, especially when if comes to the two main driving factors in our recent era, greed, gluttony and the use of material wealth as a measure of success, not to mention where pointing to one’s own accumulation of material wealth a measure of their “success” or strangely, “conservatism”, sits in the realm of “morality” and discussion of vanity and pride and where they sit on the lists of deadly human sins and virtues.
Perhaps a valuable lesson for what now passes for some as what some others used to think of as a once Grander Old Party (with all its faults) might be introspection. If one cannot honestly and truly look themselves in the mirror and not be afraid of seeing their own faults, then why would they be any more honest and truthful with anyone else?
Hey, who am I, but a former Republican, now an Independent, along with a number of other former Republicans who are now Independents. You could call us all RINO's like Olympia Snowe has been and is being called or you could maybe check out to see if that serves to attract people back to the party (numbers are a necessary component of winning votes, unless one knows a way around that) or pushes them further away. Us RINO's and old (as opposed to "neo") Republicans are all just human beings with faults and frailties and we could just as well be wrong as be right..
