Jude 2

Newt says he might run for president in 2012 if there's a need for him to run and the vacuum isn't filled. Same thing he said in, oh, 2007?

My view: He passed on the one chance he had, and that was the 2008 election. He likes to talk about "ideas" (and I think he's genuine about that, to a fault) and he enjoys putting on symposiums (symposia?) and panels and all that think-tank, academic processing of thought. When it comes time to do something, though, Newt hasn't done anything this century. He is a high-brow, intellectual thinker with the self-promotion of Sean Hannity. He manages best to be mentioned and to appear and speak. That's about all he produces, though. When the nation needed the best ideas the most, Newt deferred to John McCain to carry the torch. That judgment, IMO, demonstrates that he lacks the leadership quality necessary to forge ahead with a new movement; heck, he won't even commit to forgign ahead with an old one. Newt is a coach, not a player. As coaches go, he's x's and o's, an assistant. His best days are past.

That would create as much excitement as Bob Dole did when he ran.

*yawn...*
Oh stop it.. now you're making me yawn.

what were we talking about?

Newt will not abandon his non profits to run.

Newt is backing a liberal in New York as we speak while a conservative that could win is left hanging by him.

Full Quiver wrote:Newt is backing a liberal in New York as we speak while a conservative that could win is left hanging by him.

Newt is a smart guy... but easily deceived.

I was in law school with a guy who decided, while still in law school, to run for Congress in Tuscaloosa County, most of which is in a gerrymandered black district. He ran as a Republican ---- and the incumbent was a walk away winner. BUT, the guy was making his first foray into elective politics. He'd been a staffer for a Dem congressman in college but this was 1994, you know -- turning Republican was the thing to do. And, with all the support the party was getting, you'd have thought the Alabama Rs would've jumped onto his bandwagon. He couldn't even get an appearance from the incumbent Republican in a neighboring district. It offended him highly, and the guy was a conservative, a Baptist deacon even. He went on to serve on the Tuscaloosa City Council after law school, and I don't know what he's doing now. But, I guess my point is that the Grand Ole Party is not that grand to some who really stand for conservative principles, be it NY or Alabama.

dolfan wrote:But, I guess my point is that the Grand Ole Party is not that grand to some who really stand for conservative principles, be it NY or Alabama.

Being a better liberal isn't an option for Conservative voters... the faster they figure this out and embrace it, defend it, practice it.. the faster they will become relevant again. The writing is literally on the wall...



http://www.jude2.com/viewtopic.php?t=26266

It is a no-win situation. You're right -- aligning with Republicans is the only politically viable option for conservatives. Conservatives are either going to have to learn to love big government because the Republicans are the party of big government too, or they'll have to settle for being a clog in the drain of the basin of liberty, hoping only to slow down the escape of our freedoms while recognizing that there's no hoping Republicans will ever actually grow freedom at the expense of government. OR, they can surrender and let the Obama-Marxists roll on by. I don't like either of those options. I'm not going to pretend that any Republican has my liberty interests as a priority. So, what's a guy like me left to do? I'm not a Republican. I really am not even a conservative, since conservatism has morphed over into a schizophrenic hybrid of morality issues and big government spending/programs/police power. People like myself, and I think Sarah Palin, (who has a lot more in common with me than, say, Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh) are left without a base of people who think in terms of real personal liberty. The bottom line is that either way, in time, the Obama-Marxists win.

Unless, that is, enough people learn that the 2-party system is really a one-party system, and they decide to resist it to the point of risking their own lives as our forefathers did. I think that's the only way forward with any real "hope" of "change".

The Tea Party nation is holding a convention here in Nashville, Tn early next year with Palin as the key note speaker. It is dubbed as the Tea Party Convention.

dolfan wrote:Conservatives are either going to have to learn to love big government because the Republicans are the party of big government too, or they'll have to settle for being a clog in the drain of the basin of liberty

I understand you're demoralized, demonized and ready to accept defeat.. but I still have plenty of fight left in me. This liberal tsunami of demoralization is the GOAL of this type of attack.. to appear so big and so vast that you don't have a prayer.

Yet I do. Maybe I'm a dreamer or optimist... but I still have ample hope. The above chart just proves where the sleeping giant is.

The first hurtle starts with us. Renewing OUR minds. Stop making excuses, accepting Global [ insert liberal Godless issues here ], proud of our Christian Faith, defenders of the most innocent and weak among us etc. Real Liberty, Land ownership, Free Enterprise, lower taxes etc etc.

The glass is half full and not half empty.

I'm with you, Mac, trust me -- on the issues. I WANT to be enthusiastic about the future, even. Beats the daylights out of despair any time. The people, though, have yet to prove they demand liberty -- true liberty. Unless we insist on peeling back not just the health care or cap-and-tax mess, but also equally insisting on shrinking the role of government in American life down to a bare minimum, then the resisting force will not be able to overcome the overwhelming weight of the Obama-Marxists. I would LOVE to see us do that through the political process. But, I've yet to see proof that the people have the long-term anger necessary to make that happen. If we want to arrive at the Framer's vision of "domestic tranquility", we need some measure of lasting domestic tumult, some serious domestic turbulence. History proves that angry people willing to sacrifice everything is a hard enemy to beat. As we sit, we are the declared enemy of our own government, and it has become ours. Without de-fanging it, we lose. How does hope without action keep us going? How does electing more Republicans do that? Don't we accept wins by Republicans as "victories" without then going after them, too? Look at how we elected big-government spenders into the WH for 2 consecutive terms. Why? Because "our guy" won. That's what it gets reduced to --- us and them. Not "liberty" vs. "tyranny". If people ever truly understood the stakes, it'd be a bloodbath, IMO. I don't want that, but I don't see how it is avoidable---unless we accept the slow route of our demise through the Republicans rather than the rapid descent offered by Democrats.

dolfan wrote:But, I've yet to see proof that the people have the long-term anger necessary to make that happen.

Sure this generation will be tested... but I have HOPE.

I also reject the argument that it's either being ate first or last. This goes back to my original statement of "mentally" ceding defeat via being demoralized, demonized via programming. You are responding exactly as the propaganda desires. Reject it.

With the Tea Parties, Rise of FoxNews ( fall of others ), WH attacks, Polls such as shown above... I am even more encouraged. Locate the root of that fear and reprogram it from DEFEAT to Highly Encouraged.

How can you expect true groundswell of anger to arise when you already cede and promote defeat?

Mac, that's a fantastic question, really. And, I'm grappling with how to answer it briefly. But, I can't. Let me oversimplify it, though, this way, just to keep from overboring you or anyone else.

The books that I have read, my own studies in getting my degree in communications, my own observations of actual conduct over time, inform my opinions about all of this stuff. Not to break into the "algebra" of it all, or even that I could do it in a way to persuade anyone that my view is correct, but suffice it to say that I see three factors that all of this boils down to:

1. The majority of the voting public is incapable of rational thought. Rather than having minds framed by the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason, they are framed by the Age of Imagery and technologies that defy the thought-processes encouraged by the printed-on-paper word and yield to the disjointed and emotive processes of instant communication. These technologies predate the internet by decades, were in place before the internet, and are aggravated by it in the generations of people who are learning about the world chiefly through the newer technologies. Thinking is image based, emotional, irrational, lacking the ability to engage in sound reasoning and not even caring about the difference.

2. Related to #1, the population of voters is too largely absorbed by entertainments and has never known the adversity of want. Even among the poor, those who have the greatest reason to desire to participate in a system that liberates people and property, the culture is propagated wtih enough distraction and illusions of "luxury" (i.e., the drug dealer lifestyle, the prospect of sustenance without labor, the subsidization of certain immediately unattainable "wants") so that people pursue other goals than their own advancement with liberty and instead pursue stereotypes encouraged by the powers that be and which entrap the poor into lives of enabled hopelessness. For those not so dependent on government to provide these niceties for them, they are killed by another kindness: parents who follow the same stereotypically desired goals and a compulsory education system that defines what "success" is in terms of feelings and expression as opposed to productivity, labor, knowledge and that set of traditionally Judeo-Christian virtues. I'll add that one guilty accessory is the church, which has adopted many of the paradigms (I'll pay the royalty later, Rambo ) for instruction from the current culture of education and has failed to counteract these factors in the generations of Christian teachers and schools that currently have our kids.

3. Lack of civics understanding. Quickly, people don't get how America works or how it came to be this way. They don't really want to know. They don't even know that they don't know, many of them, and if you try and shed a light on it, they don't care that they don't know that they don't know. The glue that made America such a great democracy was a shared, popular vision of what America was supposed to be and how so, and that vision was one of freedom, personal liberty, liberty of property. People cared because their stakes in the outcome of the government's operations were tied to their own work. Now, you can choose to never lift a finger and vote anyway. That choice, exercised over and over again times millions of people who not only do not produce but do not care to know why they ought to produce, has turned into an overwhelming tool to empower the big-government interests that now hold us all by the hairs on the napes of our necks.

Now, one man's hope is admirable. The hope of millions is infinitely more so. But, what is the reason for the hope? How does that hope turn into rolling back government as opposed to simply changing it from one set of big-government hands (Democrats) to another (Republicans)? What does that hope look like? Because, while people are mad right now, they're still pretty ignorant and indifferent about the things that matter the absolute most.

So much for brevity.