Nope not a brain in the bunch

It’s hard to come to grips with. “Conservatism” used to be a synonym for pragmatism, for (as the Quakers say) planning as the path opens, never pinning yourself down to an ideology that would leave you inflexible when you need flexibility to solve a problem.

Today’s Republican Party isn’t even a ghost of what it used to be. Standard bearers like Hugh Scott, Nelson Rockefeller, Brent Scowcroft, and, yes, Colin Powell don’t fit in there anymore. Not even slightly. It’s like the GOP has become this watering hole for reckless ideologues of all sorts of varied stripes – Toomey, Palin, Barton, etc.

Who are these people? Why do we elect them? They make no sense, their views are so out of touch with reality. To the GOPers, Obama might be a liberal, but he’s no socialist. He hasn’t even raised your taxes yet…by definition, he cannot be a socialist. Even Reagan increased the tax base, albeit surreptitiously, with the Tax Reform Act of 1986.

In any event, the real loser is the nation. We need a viable two party system – what we have simply isn’t tenable.

rotfl. Really! Democrats success has always been that their base follows democrat leaders. Go to the capitol and watch the groups that come in bussed wearing matching t-shirts, day after day. Different groups, different unions, maybe even a different bus, but same party with the same unified message.

Then watch a conservative rally. A common theme, but they seem somewhat disjointed because conservatives tend to have a harder time following..they tend to be leaders. The inside joke has always been it is a miracle they won any elections because of the lack of a unified message like democrats have.

Jay, can I buy drugs from you? What Democrat party are you talking about? can I join it? Even if you look at the blogs on here you can see Democrats agree with very little. Look at the struggle with Health care, with sixty Democrat Senators, that bill was still a battle, and they had to pass it with reconciliation. Look at the primary season, we had a race for every seat in my precinct save three, and all but one seat was in play before the primary day. The only choice republicans even had to make was district state committee person. Sam Rorher did run, and I guess you had 9 Lt. guv candidates, but was it ever a race? The poll watchers didn’t seem to think so. I also know that whether I listen to John Boehner or Mitch McConnell, I don’t have to listen to both, when they usually say the exact same thing(often down the the vernacular). I try to get my GOP insights from Lindsay Graham, I like his accent, and soon he will be gone I think anyway, you know for over thinking. Reid and Pelosi often don’t even sound like they play for the same team. But don’t let me sway you Jay, despite the lack of empirical evidence to back up you hypothesis, you are probably spot on. Mean while poor Peggy Noonan, Al Frum, and all the other conservatives who can form sentences and complete thoughts have to wonder how to re-register, since the Republican Party doesn’t need them anymore.

All republicans seem to call themselves conservatives even the RINO’s. Republicans in congress save a few are spinless wimp RINO’s i.e. McConnell, Boehner, Graham, McCain. They are afraid of their own shadows.

The Tea party Republicans and Independents want strong conservative leadership and we just don’t have it in our party. But we can get it. PA is a conservative state. There are groups around the country working to turn congress around.

We got here because for 40 years people just kept re-electing the same old people and went home to sit on their sofa’s. But that is changing and we are sending a message that it’s not business as usual anymore.

mombrown1, what exactly is “conservative” about the Tea Party Movement? As far as I can tell, nothing: there’s nothing even remotely cautionary or discerning in their platform, the cynosure qualities of true conservatism, that the Republican Party used to embody.

Phrases that more aptly describe what the Tea Party is are “reactionary,” “ideologue,” and “fundamentalist.” If you’re using conservative as a synonym for “right wing,” then fine, but let’s be clear that there’s nothing about the Tea Party movement that’s ideologically conservative.

Very true Tammy. But, giving credit where credit is due, their message dicipline is a big factor in Republicans winning elections.

If their goal is not the stimulation of independent thought, but merely increasing the power of their party by winning elections, they have chosen a surprisingly successful strategy. Let me give you a current example.

Pat Toomey is every bit as extreme a candidate as was Rick Santorem, and arguably more so. Santorem, of course, was turned out by PA voters who don’t suffer extremists well. Republican leaders have learned from the Santorem debacle.

Have you noticed that, not only has Toomey moderated his rhetoric and disguised his extremist wolf self as a moderate sheep but, his campaign consistently has laid down the drum beat that Sestak is an extremist? It’s classic pot calling the kettle black; but, to some degree, it appears to be working.

How many stories and reports have you seen headlining, or leading, with the false assertion that PA’s US Senate election this year is a clear choice between polar opposites (the implication being that both candidates are equally extremists)? From Chris Matthews to Terry Madonna and beyond, the pundits have taken the Republican bit and are pulling the wagon of deception for Toomey and they are doing it because the Republican message dicipline has been successful.

The goal, of course, is to blur the (accurate) perception of Toomey as an extremist, not by refutation (an impossibility) but, by deceptively tarring Sestak with the same brush, thus diluting the issue as a factor in the election. It’s their talent for message disciplne which is responsible for the success they have had with this strategy.
Thinking, reasoning, nor analysis are necessary to implement this strategy.

So, perhaps, it is more accurate to say that, rather than one brain, conservatives have one shared voice. Perhaps they have lots of brains — all sadly atrophied for lack of independent use. It doesn’t take brains to parrot a simple, albeit false, message handed down from above. It takes the discarding of pride and what the Rs frequently tout as their (obviously phoney) “rugged individualism”.

Sheep seem to be quite prevalent in this years political environment.

It makes me laugh that Limbaugh and Barton think that the ‘slush fund’ was set up as an attempt by the Obama Administration to grease the political wheel in their favor in the Gulf states. David Axelrod, Rahm Emanuel, Valerie Jarrett, and Barack Obama himself all know that they have zero chance of carrying any of the Gulf states in ’12. They had no intention of wasting their time trying to use a ‘political slush fund’ to convince a pack of filthy red necks from the dirty South to vote for an African American for President. Obama worked to get BP to set up the fund because he knew that if the people of the Gulf didn’t get money from them now they never would get a dime from them. Bringing litigation against BP will be a fiasco; years and years of delays with very little return. Obama is doing these filthy people a big favor. If you ask me he should let the people of the Gulf rot in this mess.