There They Go Again

8:55 pm EST November 15th, 2008 | Republicans | 5 Comments

In the past, when Democrats lost Presidential elections in part from acting like GOP-lite on far too many issues, the conservative DLC would go after them for not being conservative enough. The DLC has of course tried to tout Sen. Obama’s victory as a victory for them, even though Obama is one of the most progressive people in the modern era we’ve ever had as a Democratic party candidate.

The same seems to be true for the GOP. John McCain is as conservative as they come, and in the last months of his campaign he ran further to the right than we’re used to seeing on the national stage (you’ll remember that George W. Bush ran in 2000 as a less conservative Republican – a “compassionate” conservative). And now the right is going after him for not being hard right enough.

Look, I want the Republican party to move further to the right… but I’m a partisan Democrat so I might not have the GOP’s best interests in mind.

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5 Responses to “There They Go Again”

  1. Sean D. Martin says:
    November 16, 2008 at 12:55 pm

    Bush and Stevens, he said, had corrupted the party brand by expanding the size of government and engaging in wasteful government spending. Had Republicans not strayed from their core beliefs in recent years, DeMint argued, the election results might have been different.

    But straying from their supposed “core beliefs” is what they do. Claim to be for smaller government. Claim to be for fiscal responsibility. Claim to be for getting gov’t has no role messing in people’s personal lives. Claim to be for states rights. Claim to be for all the “conservative” principles. But once in office?

    Swell the size of government. Bloat the deficits. Advocate for discrimination. Overrule state laws (e.g., medical marijuana) that don’t agree with their real “core beliefs”. Etc Etc Etc.

    If they actually demonstrated conservative values while in office they’d be in a much better position, and the country would be as well.

  2. Sean D. Martin says:
    November 16, 2008 at 12:56 pm

    “Claim to be for getting gov’t out of people’s personal lives.”

    Fixed.

  3. PG says:
    November 16, 2008 at 2:07 pm

    This seems like a statistically determinable point: how many people who voted for Bush didn’t vote in the presidential race this year? The “we need to go further right” argument is based on the idea that the lost votes were coming from the right, not the center or left. It’s statistically possible that McCain lost a bunch of Bush voters because of his being pro- campaign finance reform, pro-immigration reform, pro-bailout, etc.

  4. JamesRaven says:
    November 16, 2008 at 3:25 pm

    (Thanks for the link to explore!)

    We know from Atrios’ and Digbys’ trenchant analysis, conservative values never fail; they can only BE failed. Ergo, when a conservative fails, they instantly become a liberal, and conservative values remain chastely pure.

    But this piece blows the code, because DeMint slams three movement conservatives as “not conservative enough” without re-defining them as “Far Leftists”, or whatever. He also fails to mention President-Elect Obama at all, as if McCain was competing against the concept of liberalism and not a solid, progressive candidate.

  5. Terrier says:
    November 17, 2008 at 1:27 pm

    “If they actually demonstrated conservative values while in office they’d be in a much better position, and the country would be as well.” – Sure, if you like living in a cardboard box and surviving on garbage!