Republicans Steele themselves for the future

Craig Strachan

Yes, Steele was the best (well, the only halfway decent) candidate for the job.

He'll have his work cut out - especially if Obama's economic package, passed without significant Rep support, seems to be turning the economy around

elf

He doesn't have any of Obama's charisma. This might be cynical but is the GOP just playing shallow colour politics? In a comparison with Obama this guy comes off pretty badly.

TGF UKIP

Well, James, I was delighted to see this week that by unanimously resisting the Chosen One's "stimulus" package, the GOP is determined to resist your wish to see them become a pale pink version of the Democrats.

By putting clear red water between themselves and the fiscally incontinent Dems, they are putting themselves into a perfect position to comprehensively carry the political argument when the great American public turn angry,as they will, when they see their tax dollars blown away for highly dubious political purposes.

In short, they will be able to carry a policial conviction denied to the Cameron Tories who stupidly not only went along with Brown's tax and spend but carried on going along with it even when borrowing was heading to £812bn in tax 2013, long before the present crisis arrived.

Everything was stacked against the Republicans at the last election but their loss was not disastrous and certainly not in the terms of the Tory loss in 97. Moreover, not only do they have the Democrat Congressional Crazies to help them, the puncturing of the grossly over-inflated Obama myth will greatly help them on their way.

They need a leader and they need to re-engage with the patriotic conservative working classes who were Reagan's and GW's natural constituencies but who were enticed by the siren calls from the Chicago Messiah this time around.

Verity

Elf - I have a feeling that soon - very soon - Americans are going to start feeling charisma-ed out. I thought this man, in comparison with Obamarama, came across rather well.

I think the more Republican black people are noticed, the more shrieks of "racism" against those of us who distrust Obama will deflate. Not enough people on the British side of the Atlantic are familiar with Thomas Sowell, for example. The British left actually thinks the only black person in the United States with power and a popular following is Obonkers.

Verity

TGI UKP - Governor Palin. But the leftie screechies have loaded so much baggage onto her that I would say Bobby Jindal.

But who knows? Two superb individuals.

John Lofton, Recovering Republican

FYI, might want to listen to my exclusive interview with Michael Steele and comment. Thanks. JL.

http://www.theamericanview.com/index.php?id=1205

And forget, please, "conservatism," please. It will not “save” us because it has been, operationally, de facto, Godless and therefore irrelevant. Secular conservatism will not defeat secular liberalism because to God both are two atheistic peas-in-a-pod and thus predestined to failure. As Stonewall Jackson's Chief of Staff R.L. Dabney said of such a humanistic belief more than 100 years ago:

"[Secular conservatism] is a party which never conserves anything. Its history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is today .one of the accepted principles of conservatism; it is now conservative only in affecting to resist the next innovation, which will tomorrow be forced upon its timidity and will be succeeded by some third revolution; to be denounced and then adopted in its turn. American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader. This pretended salt bath utterly lost its savor: wherewith shall it be salted? Its impotency is not hard, indeed, to explain. It is worthless because it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of sturdy principle. It intends to risk nothing serious for the sake of the truth."

Our country is collapsing because we have turned our back on God (Psalm 9:17) and refused to kiss His Son (Psalm 2).

John Lofton, Editor, TheAmericanView.com
Recovering Republican
JLof@aol.com

Craig Strachan

elf: "In a comparison with Obama this guy comes off pretty badly."

Maybe, but in comparison to DNC Chair Tim Kaine he does better in the charisma stakes.

Verity

I liked the clip. He has a nice, strong face. Elf, is he laden with any political baggage?

Jenny

James, I have a lot of respect for you, but I have to take issue with this:
"As the Tory experience shows, the real challenge to those who wish to reform a roundly rejected party comes not in the immediate aftermath of the first defeat but when modernisation does not bring instant results. It is then that the voices clamouring for a return to the party’s comfort zone and a core vote strategy will be at their loudest."

I am a huge fan of David Cameron's political skills. I think his interviews are first class as is the tone he has struck with slogans, ads etc. Yet none of that seems to have been substantially influential.

Here is Matthew d'Ancona in today's Telegraph:
"It is not as if the Opposition has pulled off a series of spectacular political stunts, dazzling the nation with its hunger for power and flawless blueprint for recovery. These polling figures form a very clear statistical map of a country seriously fed up with the incumbent and preparing itself mentally for an alternative government. They do not suggest fervour for the Tories. But they do suggest, strongly, that a collective decision has been made."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/matthewd_ancona/4413199/The-week-Labour-lost-the-next-election.html

That is what is so staggering. It's something that the Conservatives have - even after a decade - so utterly failed to grasp. Every time you abandon ground, it becomes that much harder to reclaim it when the public go 'oh, that was right all along'. The classic case in point is equalling Labour's commitment to public spending. The Conservatives should have moved decisively ahead in the polls last autumn, yet Brown has been allowed a second bite at the cherry. That is just amazing.

It would have been game, set and match to the Conservatives if they had not made errors like that commitment to equal public spending. Too often with the Conservatives, it is not their ideas that are poor, but the way they are articulated. This is hardly surprising when so many in the shadow cabinet are such poor media performers, but it's true. Outside of Cameron, Hague and Clarke (I am not a fan of his), the rest are, at best, second-rate advocates. Running away from ideas does not help.

John Lofton makes a not dissimilar point here: the more ground you abandon, the harder it gets to move about later on.

Fraser has noted on the Coffee House just how soft the Conservatives' support is and how short any honeymoon might be. This is what the Republicans need to be wary of: don't abandon the party's footsoldiers. They will help if they feel what they do counts.

Just because the BBC sucks up to the Conservatives when it grovels to this or that strain of political correctness, that does not translate into votes.

It is hardly even what the Conservatives must be doing that should worry them. It's what they must not do. They must not have people like Derek Conway in the party because sleaze allegations affect the Conservatives much worse than they do Labour. There's no political genius needed there. Any nonsense and you're out.

Remember, it was New Labour who had to steal Conservative clothes in order to get itself elected - that was how it broadened its appeal. Once that was achieved, the Conservatives' sleaze and incompetence made the choice easy for voters.

If the Conservatives and the Republicans can get the voters to give them credibility on trust and competence, they will always be in business.

TGF UKIP

Verity, I share your admiration of Sarah Palin but also your reservation that she probably now comes with too much baggage.

Jindal, I've only once seen on TV and he was impressive and I recall how enthusiastic you were in his cause as McCain's VP until the Palin pick was made.

The one I have very great reservations about is Pawlenty principally because I perceive him to be a sort of GOP Cameron who wishes the Republicans to become people they are not. As I think you are aware one Cameron in my view is more than one Cameron too many and US Republicans certainly don't deserve the Tory Party's fate.

Verity

TGF UKIP - I will have to read more about Pawlenty, but if he is a Cameron clone, I dislike him already.

And certainly the Reps do not deserve the fate of the Conservative Party. Actually, neither did the Conservative Party.

The foundations of Cameron's failure are that he fatally accepted the Labour definition of our Party. And he then, with spine-tingling obeissance (some jolly hip-hip-hoorays in the HofC for the most destructive prime minister in our history; and a declaration that he is the heir to Blair) tried to make the Conservatives into a clone of the socialists.

So from Day One, he was frit to stand up for our principles and our country.

Other than some fairly boring jousting at PMQs, scoring tiny personal points, what has the man actually done for British Conservatives? Damn' all. Except, of course, apologise for us and our beliefs.

And try to mimic the socialists.

I know that people are fed-up with me for mentioning the ice floe incident, but it struck an Arctic chill in my heart. As did the loony lefty A-List designed to show what an inclusive kind of guy he is. To hell with merit! Let's have quotas!

It didn't work in my cold, stoney heart.

Although he constantly tries to pump his family life through our own lives, he doesn't appear to have that wide a circle of friends. If we know so much about his kitchen, surely we would know something about his friends? Especially any outside his own group?

One of George W Bush's closest friends for (I believe) around 15 years is the foreman of his ranch in W Texas. When Bush is in Crawford, they walk around the ranch together for hours, talking. No one ever mentions that the foreman is black. George W is comfortable with everyone ... as was Margaret Thatcher, although their family circumstances were light years apart.

Most of us have one or two unlikely friends, because life is such, but Cameron doesn't appear to venture outside his circle. How can he relate to the vast majority of his countrymen if he does not know us?

Given that we have been drenched in details about his family life, I feel that if he had any friends - or interests - outside his those of insider status, we would have been told about them - many times.

And to add to the above, I also don't like it that he has tried to make himself the face of the Conservative Party. There's no space for anyone else to develop a profile.

Pat

Advice for any party- in or out of opposition- consider the issues carefully, decide what you think is the correct approach to them all, state views publicly. More simply play it straight. Yes you'll take hits from short term spinners- but long term they'll spin themselves into the ground

Craig Strachan

Verity: "I will have to read more about Pawlenty, but if he is a Cameron clone, I dislike him already."

Pawlenty is hardly a Cameron clone. He's a wooden TV performer, with a noticeably asymmetric face.

Cameron's great on TV and his face is as symmetrical as the full moon.

Conservative Cabbie

Verity/TGF

I mentioned Eric Cantor a while ago as a possibility. He's just earned himself some huge brownie points with the party, whipping the unanimous Republican vote on the stimulus. He's a longshot, but more moments like that and he starts rising up the ranks.

Sarah Palin needs to do a Truman-esque whistlestop tour. Eschew the media and the big profile campaign with plane and one or two big set pieces a day. She should do a coach tour, making 10 stops a day in small towns as well as cities. She circumvents a media that will be after her whilst connecting with individual people and getting her hopefully positive campaign message and personal story across. It worked for Truman in '48 and it is Palin's best chance.

THX1138

To Quote Ali-G Is it cos I is black?

Useless fact for the day, Sacha Baron Cohen's agent is Rahm Emanuel's brother Ari" Emanuel.

David Lindsay

The Republican National Committee now has a very significantly more anti-life and anti-family Chairman than has the Democratic National Committee.

Democrats need to be out there, asking moral and social conservatives directly, “What have the Republicans ever done for you?”