Let me first say that what I’m about to write probably in no way reflects the feelings of Matt, or Mark, or any other contributor to this blog. Hell, I don’t know if it even accurately reflects how I’ll feel a week from now. Call it a stream of consciousness as to what I’m feeling at the moment.
I understand the Democrats played a good ground game. I understand we were rope-a-doped. I understand that the Republicans could have done a better job of conveying why Conservatism affords the most people the most opportunity for prosperity.
My question is thus– how can you overcome an opponent who not only can raise as much as you do, but has the added advantage of literally hundreds of millions of dollars more in free advertising and cover, from a group of people ostensibly charged to serve as watchdogs for the people against the government? The media was clearly, demonstrably, more in the tank for the democrat side than I have seen in my entire lifetime. Fox News tried covering the other side. But they’re one network. Difficult when you’re competing against NBC, ABC, CBS, MSNBC, CNN New York Times, ad nauseum.
How do you overcome those kinds of odds? How do you get a fair shot at selling your message?
Something tells me if we ran Jesus Christ Himself as a candidate, he still would have gotten smeared in wall-to-wall negative ads. His Sermon on the Mount would have been misquoted and taken out of context, The networks would still have dutifully covered for Obama, stating that Jesus is just a poseur Messiah. Obama would promise more largesse, will have claimed to have lowered the rising seas, and would still have won the election yesterday. Seems the kind of world we live in right now. It may take a relatively long time, perhaps a decade, perhaps a decade in a half, until we are so far in the economic gutter that the economic Pridelands will have been picked of every life-giving force by the proverbial hyenas.
Only when the world has gone full Galt and the last of other people’s fruits wrought of productive enterprise have been sucked up and dried, will people understand the damage. By that time, I fear it will be too late. The United States, along with Egypt, Rome, Mesopotamia, Greece, Spain, Great Britain, and other great civilizations, will have been relegated to the books as just another flash in History’s pan.
Call me a negative Nelly, but at least at this point in time, I find it difficult to read the tea leaves any other way. Not that I won’t keep up the good fight, but right now I feel as if I’m taking the last stand at the Alamo.
Game over?
Blogs For Victory 
Call me a negative Nelly, but at least at this point in time, I find it difficult to read the tea leaves any other way. Not that I won’t keep up the good fight, but right now I feel as if I’m taking the last stand at the Alamo.
Game over?
Yup for the most part……….
our ONLY hope…….NOT big tents.
>
if my people, who are called by **my name**, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.
Agreed, Neo…
Too, Leo, Obama got the young voters 3 – 1, and they came out of colleges who filled their heads with idiocy. Until we can get the brainwashing stopped, we’ll just keep a going down this path. One of the tenants of the communist manifesto is for the government to control education, because they are where the future is at…well, they are the future. That’s very much the truth…but the government’s teachin’ them wrong.
There was thousands of Obama supporters in their 20s & 30s not realizing that by the choices they are making they show us the state of our country, and the state of their souls, both of which are going in one direction, and that’s down.
Man, I tell ya, I really feel bad for our country.
Glad I still have brains….but not glad for where the young people are heading this nation. It’s sad!!
Might it be possible that the American populace keeps charismatic incumbents?
Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, GWB and now Obama in the last 50 years won reelection.
Who got tossed?
Ford, Jimmy, Bush Sr.
In fact Obama was only in jeopardy of losing after the 1st debate when he looked decidedly uncharismatic.
Chris Christie could have won but he’s about the only one that comes to mind.
Too funny that you think that Obama and Christie are “charismatic”.
Obama’s thin veneer of smarm and charm wore pretty thin as we got to see more of him, and was counterbalanced by glimpses of the real Obama, the angry, surly, resentful and hateful Obama motivated by revenge and wanting to isolate some Americans and then instruct other Americans to “punish” them.
I find Christie the Hutt to be about as uncharismatic as it is possible to be, as well as a loose cannon who veers wildly from one position to another with no discernible reason. He is physically unattractive, his speaking style is annoying, and he only appeals when he stumbles upon what can be thought of as a courageous stance, though he usually undoes this by doing something stupid like letting himself get pushed into banning fracking in New Jersey.
In fact, Obama nearly DID lose, winning by (the last time I looked at the tally) only a million or so votes instead of the ten million or so last time, and then he did win because of his alleged “charisma” but because of the success of the Chicago Slime Machine and its relentless drumbeat of attack ads filled with lies about Romney.
Obama did not win the election. The Complicit Agenda Media handed it to him. If any of the networks had had a Kyle Clark asking the tough questions for the past six months, much less four years, Obama would have been buried. Where were the media questions about his whispered promise to be passed on to Putin that once he was reelected he would be “more flexible” in dealing with Russia? Do you think a true investigative journalist approach to that might have whittled that margin down a little?
Or rigorous investigation into why taxpayer money was dumped into failing “green energy” companies even after agency warnings? You know, the kinds of questions Clark asked, about how these companies were chosen, and if their campaign contributions to Obama played any role in the White House decision to hand over many millions of dollars to failing companies, money which disappeared without a trace and without any apparent interest from the administration about where it went.
Or a real investigation into the Fast and Furious debacle, a scheme which I predict will prove to be one of the most shameful and inexcusable abuses of executive power in the history of the nation, once it is uncovered. Don’t you think that a real investigative journalistic approach to Fast and Furious, with its inevitable conclusion that the White House made the callous decision to put thousands of innocent Mexican lives at risk to promote a political anti-gun agenda might have influence the Latino support for Obama?
Harry Reid commented yesterday on the “Obama victory” and then went back to correct that to the “OVERWHELMING” victory, which was pretty funny.
I just think credit should be given where credit is due. Obama did not win because of his stellar record, and certainly not because he is so “charismatic”. He got more votes because he had a massively organized and unprincipled machine behind him, which trucked in bogus voters after fighting successfully to prohibit screening of voters for citizenship or even residency, and which blanketed the nation with so many lies that were never even addressed by the weak GOP opposition because they wanted to stick to the “high ground” and focus on actual policies and principles of government. He got more votes because the Complicit Agenda Media not only carried his water for him, they dug the wells and pumped it and made sure it went where they needed it to go.
The whole complicit media blather is as boring as the George Bush lost Florida blather from the left or that Clinton should have been impeached or that Reagan was a criminal for Iran-Contra.
Maybe you aren’t the judge of charisma for the American populace. People, especially women found Barack quite charming and Christie is hugely popular in NJ.
Romney had an acting coach to teach him how to relate to the average person. That’s not me saying it. Mark Noonan said so.
Again, the Supreme Court voted along party lines to give Bush the presidency over Gore. I agree with their decision in Florida, but one has to be uber gullible to believe if the hanging chads had went in Gore’s favor that the 5 GOP supremes wouldn’t have found another wisdom. And people like you and I would have digested that wisdom in a heart beat. Bush would still have been made president.
In any case there will still be the same complicit agenda media in 4 years so whining about it like you do won’t help the GOP.
dolf, you and casper cast a very dark shadow over the teaching profession.
You claim that women were charmed by Obama, I claim they were gulled by his lies. Since exit polls stated that they voted on the alleged reproductive issues and not because they found him cute, I suggest that you are projecting the fan-club adoration of 2008 onto this election cycle, where his persona was pretty well established as far less charming than the original illusion.
Christie IS popular in NJ—who says it is because of “charisma”? You seem to have a very cynical attitude toward people, assuming that everyone bases political decisions on hormonal reactions to people.
“Romney had an acting coach to teach him how to relate to the average person.”
Well, not quite. Romney had someone coaching him on mannerisms which might have affected perception of his "ability to relate to the average person". His personal history is one of relating to people on a one-on-one basis, and the fact that he did not project that adequately at a distance was addressed.
Nice spin, though.
“Again, the Supreme Court voted along party lines to give Bush the presidency over Gore.”
What absolute crap as well as glaring ignorance of fact and reality. I am not going to explain the decision to you again, as it has been gone over so many times, in so much detail, and you prove by this sentence that your resistance to truth is far stronger than fact itself.
You further prove this with this tinfoil hat gem: “….one has to be uber gullible to believe if the hanging chads had went in Gore’s favor that the 5 GOP supremes wouldn’t have found another wisdom. ”
Are you really saying that if the recount, once the Court ruled that all votes had to be treated equally according to the Constitution, had proved Gore to have more votes, the Court would have reversed itself and then……what?
Ruled that only Republican-leaning districts could be recounted?
Just how, Mr. Brainiac, could the Court have reversed a decision that dealt solely with the Constitutional requirement that all votes be treated equally, and that therefore either all votes are recounted or none are?
You guys need to put your posts in a different file and go back later to reread them before posting, if you want to disguise your bias and ignorance. When you just blurt out what you really think, the result is a pretty clear indictment of your intelligence as well as your honesty.
And one goal of the conservative movement is to try to get at least SOME representation of actual journalism into the media by the next election cycle. But we do know that yes, the media will still be dominated by people who do not view journalism as the duty to reveal the truth but merely as a mechanism for promoting an agenda.
Little Amy said, “I find Christie the Hutt to be about as uncharismatic as it is possible to be, as well as a loose cannon who veers wildly from one position to another with no discernible reason. He is physically unattractive, his speaking style is annoying, and he only appeals when he stumbles upon what can be thought of as a courageous stance, though he usually undoes this by doing something stupid like letting himself get pushed into banning fracking in New Jersey.”
Oh my. Our principled Amy is going after a politician’s appearance and speaking style? After lecturing us for years that only liberals play that game? Have you changed sides and not told us?
wattle, you really need to work on your reading comprehension, or at least your attention span, so you can track from one post to the next.
It was dolf who brought up “charisma” and I merely responded that I did not find his choices charismatic or attractive.
My comment had 80 words, and of these 80 three indirectly referenced his weight (“Christie the Hutt”), two referred to his physical appearance (“physically unattractive”) and one was the scathing indictment of his appearance as “uncharismatic”. The rest of my commentary on Christie was about his behavior and policies.
If dolf had not claimed that “charisma” is a deciding factor in elections I would not have spent those six words in reference to his appearance, and the only way to challenge dolf’s assertion was to offer a contradictory opinion.
I know you are a fragile flower of hyper-sensitivity, super-concerned about your own definition of “civility” while going after anyone you can identify as a conservative, even though you don’t know what that means. But do give it a rest.
Little Amy said, “wattle, you really need to work on your reading comprehension, or at least your attention span, so you can track from one post to the next.”
Um, no. We all see you for what you are. You are as self-deluded as the Romney campaign staff was. But do continue keeping us entertained.
You and the freaky clown and mitche are all the same—–addicted to hate, obsessed with irrational and unprovoked attacks on whatever you have decided defines conservative depending on which way the winds of your pathologies are blowing on any given day, and completely incapable of giving up the cheap thrills you get from your endless, mindless, attack mentality.
You won. We lost. Just go cold turkey, walk away from the hatred and the attack mode, go be happy with your glorious victory.
OR…..stick around here and prove the truth of my theory that you have no interest in real politics, but just get off on hurling insults and wallowing in your hatreds.
Whatever. It doesn’t matter. You won, so you INHERITED the worst recovery in the history of the United States. You bought into the Magical Thinking that although whatever your hero has been doing has not worked, maybe it will work if he just keeps at it for another four years. It’s your baby. You fought for it, you lied for it, you moved heaven and earth to get it, and now it is yours. You own it. Go enjoy. Celebrate the Glory That Is Obama. Sing, dance, write sonnets to express your joy. Wallow in happiness and celebration for a change, instead of in surly hatred and resentment. Gee, even your celebration is nasty.
I think the best thing about this win is how it exposes the reality of the thin and never-convincing veneer of political discourse that you and your kind have tried to cloak your pathologies with, and how quickly it has all been stripped away. Yep, all that is left is the real you, which cares nothing about how to govern the nation and is just obsessed with spite and malice.
Amazona: My comment had 80 words, and of these 80 three indirectly referenced his weight (“Christie the Hutt”), two referred to his physical appearance (“physically unattractive”) and one was the scathing indictment of his appearance as “uncharismatic”. The rest of my commentary on Christie was about his behavior and policies.
Well, I’d put a few more words in the negative tally. Either way, ya gotta love Amazona! She regularly claims that “identity politics” should not matter, and then she shoots herself in the foot by playing identity politics. Again. One wonders when she’ll realize that in order to logically claim “identity” doesn’t matter and only arguments do, focusing on “identity” as she so regularly does only weakens her argument and opens her up to charges of hypocrisy.
You’re a better woman than the trivial pursuits you too often allow yourself to stoop to. Let your ideas stand on their own. There is merit in them. And you only diminish it by wallowing in the mud of identity politics — or identity anything, for that matter. Let your thoughts reign supreme, not your vitriol.
gawd
Chris Christie could have won
rico, I think your perception of “Identity Politics” is as incomplete as your understanding of real politics.
If I notice that a candidate is a woman, I am not playing Identity Politics. Not unless I base my decision to support her, vote for her or not vote for her, on her appearance, her affairs, her race, etc. can my acknowledgement of her gender be considered Identity Politics.
In this case, dolf stated his opinion that a kind of Identity Politics played a role in the election, saying, among other things, “Might it be possible that the American populace keeps charismatic incumbents?”
I did not argue with the concept that Americans tend to vote on personality, “charisma”, etc. All I did was offer an opinion that Christie is not charismatic.
The closest I came to discussing his qualifications for office were my comments on his vacillations and his stance on fracking, neither of which is even remotely related to personality or identity.
One would think that someone as smug as you, so impressed with your analytical prowess, would have immediately seen that the subtext of my comments was that Christie is clearly NOT popular because of charisma, and therefore not the beneficiary of Identity Politics.
Is there any chance that the message combined with the messenger might be the problem here?
No?
Well, just thought I would ask.
Onward rino soldiers!! We’ll get em 2016 with über rino Chris Christy!!!
Good question GMB.
If only there was a way to tell if many Bush GOP voters who stayed home when McLame was running also stayed home with Mittens running.
Wait, there is lots of evidence that many conservative voters stayed home. Maybe they are part of the 47% or maybe they didn’t like the flip flops or maybe their issues were relegated to the back of the bus. Those rigid guys screw everything up.
How do you blame the EVIL MEDIA for keeping conservative voters at home?
“How do you blame the EVIL MEDIA for keeping conservative voters at home?”
I am sure at least one person will find a way. Let’s not mention that viewership and readership of the msm is at all time lows. Somehow, the msnbc’ers depressed us evil socons so much that we just could not leave the house to vote.
Well crap. We did vote. The vast majority of us did vote. You want our votes but don’t want to do anything to earn it. Social conservatives are truly the blacks of the republican party.
You want 100% turnout from socons? Give us someone we can believe in or keep suffering defeat.
Defeat. Got it? Defeat. Learn to live with it. Mitt lost because of Mitt. Nobody else was to blame. It was not us evil socons, it was not the TEA Party, it was mot Gary Johnson. Mitt was the top man. Mitt was in charge.
Mitt lost because of Mitt. He can now join the list of rinos that got beat.
BLOOMBERG!!!! 2016!!!
December 2009 – PM George Papandreou announces programme of tough public spending cuts.
2010 January – Government announces second round of tough austerity measures, including public sector pay cuts, fuel increases, and a crackdown on tax evasion.
2010 February – Government austerity measures prompt series of general strikes and protests that continue into March.
2010 March – PM George Papandreou likens budget crisis to “wartime situation”, announces third round of tax rises and spending cuts totalling $6.5bn.
Three years later, Greek austerity CLEARLY didn’t work. It’s worse there now than then.
America, 2008 has a financial meltdown of Biblical proportions. The unemployment rate skyrockets. We throw a stimulus package of tax cuts, infrastructure and technology investments at the disaster, and now, years of private sector jobs growth. Slow, sure, but compare it to Greece. Heck, compare it to the entire Eurozone.
Yeah, I know, it’s all gonna fall apart any day now…any day now…inflation will skyrocket any day now…any day now…but the simple explanation is that without the stimulus – had we gone the austerity route – wouldn’t we be more like Greece NOW?
And the media bias thing…we can all agree that so-called journalists have been xerox machines for political strategists from both parties, but all along the entire MSM has been predicting a razor-thin margin of victory for both candidates. Polls by CNN/ABC/CBS/FOX/PPP/EIEIO all UNDERESTIMATED the final margin of victory (except for Nate Silver who was belittled and ignored). If they were all in the tank for Obama, they’d have OVERESTIMATED his margin to pump him up, and tell Romney to pack it up and go home. Election afternoon they were ALL still projecting paths to victory as wrong as wrong could be for Romney, or Obama winning the electoral but not the popular vote, etc. Virtually no one in the MSM woke up election day and said, “forget it, people, Obama’s got this one.” As far as polling was concerned, there was no liberal bias – in fact, underestimating Obama’s win is statistically a conservative bias.
The online betting sites were dead-on, too. Not that I condone that sort of thing, but referenced it repeatedly because international betters have no left or right bias. They have a win-lose bias. They don’t bet on the guy they want to win, they bet on the guy they think will win. Big diff.
Paul Ryan for Speaker! That Boehner guy – lame. Hey, even I don’t want a one party system. It’s the fight that gives us purpose, exposes our faults, and leads to a stronger nation.
blowzo
had we gone the austerity route – wouldn’t we be more like Greece NOW?
yeah IF we had paid off that ole credit card and not borrowed on three others to the max…… look we wouldnt have all these Ubama phones….OOH the HORROR!!!!
We throw a stimulus package of tax cuts, infrastructure and technology investments at the disaster, and now, years of private sector jobs growth.
The only part of that statement that’s accurate is the word “throw”. The tax cuts were for a year, so they weren’t really cuts, just a temporary reduction, and after that year, 95% of the people didn’t even realize there had been a tax cut — most still don’t. Infrastructure? as GMB would say, what a LOLzer. Even the President admitted publicly that shovel-ready jobs weren’t as shovel-ready as they had thought. And technology investments? Even a bigger LOLzer. Green energy boondoggles, most of which are struggling or went bankrupt? And there has been SO MUCH private sector job growth in the last 4 years that fewer people are employed now than when Obama took office, The clown image never fit you better. What a doofus!
“The clown image never fit you better. What a doofus!”
And that my friends was the first usage of a “shovel ready LOLzer” ever.
LOLzer!!!!
🙂
Ok. You got me with all the obligatory insults. Woe is me. I’m such a doofus.
But, seriously, our crash started before Greece’s. Why aren’t we worse off than them? We chose stimulus. Us lefties thought it should have been bigger, sure. You are right, very few people knew they even got a tax cut, and the righties still claim there never was one. I never said propaganda wasn’t effective.
Laugh at shovel ready and green boondoggles, but most of the Eurozone has been rolling out austerity for years now, and we are kicking their economic behinds.
I know it’s all going to crash any day now…any day now…and there are a gazillion variables between us and the EU, but unless you’re claiming their economy has to crash harder before austerity will kick in and bring prosperity, in purely objective terms, stimulus won out over draconian cuts.
“In other words it took more than $5.60 of debt to create $1 of economic growth” Unknown
That’s an interesting statement. If it takes almost $6.00 dollars of gobmint moolah to create $1.00 of gdp, how long until it will cost a couple of billion to buy a loaf of bread?
“Ok. You got me with all the obligatory insults.”
You are right. I apologize. I will try not to do it again.
It is another of my freely admitted failings.
Interesting dynamic playing out in the news today. The tag on my home page for an AP article says: “With election over, House Speaker plans to make large tax raises”. When you go to the actual article, the headline is: House Speaker says he’ll consider tax increase. When you dig down into the article, you get:
Gee, I just don’t see anything in there about “large tax raises”. That, my friends, is journalistic malpractice, but then, after the way 90% of the press covered for Obama during the campaign, is anyone surprised?
Spook
is anyone surprised?
NO, look at their audience…..AmeriKas DUMB and DUMBER!
Relax people, the election changed nothing. Grover Norquist is still in charge.
But I notice that now our MSMers are suddenly reporting that, hey, the fiscal cliff is bad and there is a threat of renewed recession. Wonder why those reports didn’t get filed before November 6th? Too busy reporting the big stories about binders, I guess…
I understand your feeling about this but keep in mind that in 2004 our Democrat friends were like this – except it was even worse for them as they didn’t have a House majority to console themselves with. If the idiot trio of Pelosi, Reid and Obama could engineer in four short years what happened in 2008, then we can far exceed what they did. ObamaCare is not the seal of doom – Social Security was, and is. Unless we win enough power to undo both ObamaCare and Social Security then all we’re doing is spinning our wheels… no more than conserving liberalism for future generations to enjoy. We’ve got to think in really large terms – and stop playing the game the way our Democrats want it played…a game best stated by observing that Democrats get to compete for Florida but we don’t get to compete for California. Rip up the books: time to start anew.
BE AFRAID–BE VERY AFRAID—FROM THE LIBERTY ACTION PAC:
Conservative blogs are literally on fire over alleged comments made by Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to President Obama and one of his closest friends, who was recently addressing other Obama senior staffers…
“After we win this election, it’s our turn. Payback time. Everyone not with us is against us and they better be ready because we don’t forget. The ones who helped us will be rewarded, the ones who opposed us will get what they deserve.”
Jarrett, who is considered the single-most influential person in Obama’s White House, says of her relationship with the President that the two think alike. “We have kind of a mind meld… what he wants to do is what I’d want to do.”
Jarrett’s alarming rant continued…
“There is going to be hell to pay. Congress won’t be a problem for us this time. No election to worry about after this is over and we have two judges ready to go.”
The “Uniter” in Chief. Just another two-bit Chicago thug.
Yes, a modern day Pinocchio. He lied to get elected his first term, he made numerous lies during that first term, he lied about the Bhengazi attacks…and I’ll be da-gone if the people didn’t turn around and put him right back in office. It almost comes as a shock, but not after considering that so many have been brainwashed in public education. It’s so disheartening how stupid people are that voted for this idiot.
In the words of Charlton Heston, from me to the government – “you can have my gun when you prise it from my cold dead hands”
It was a contemptible race he ran – he got his “victory” and I hope he enjoys it.
you bet leo…..
Who is going to confront this “two-bit Chicago thug” to bring him to court? Are we really a nation which is committed to “the rule of law” or only what is “popular”? Two more years until we can have another “popular” election may not be enough time to save our country. Our enemies will not be waiting and the “fiscal cliff” is not going to just get reduced to a gentle slope by the end of the year. This nation is very vulnerable, and too many of our “enemies” are not outside of our boundaries. Laws that are unenforced only allow for the rule of “thugs”. We are in a very dangerous situation right now!
Woohoo!!!
The chief stooge is ready to capitulate and create millions more donkrat voters. Well maybe just thosands since most of them voted anyway.
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/266961-boehner-open-to-comprehensive-immigration-reform-deal-with-obama
The surrender is almost complete. However I do take comfort that boys like the chief stooge are the best that the gop can do and that we should just accept it.
Maybe the gop can dig the body of Henri Petain up and run it for potus in 2016.
Onward rino soldiers!!!
GMB – it has to be done. As all know, I’ve advocated for amnesty since 2007. Bush and McCain saw the truth: we have to get the albatross off our necks. The Latino voters will start to swing to us – they are for the most part socially conservative and small business types – once we stop telling them we’re going to deport their brother-in-law.
“The Latino voters will start to swing to us”
I disagree. The vast majority of them come from socialistic or banana republics where cronyism is ingrained. There is absolute no proof they will suddenly switch their allegiance.
I think this is wishful thinking on your part.
I do not want my children growing up knowing that you can reap rewards for being a law breaker.
Go ahead though. Open the flood gates. This is the wave of the future. An opposition so impotent that it is unrecognizable from the donkrats.
Gee, thanks, I guess.
GMB,
I have to disagree with that analysis – think about those “roach coach” Mexican food sellers you see all over the southwestern United States. These are small, family enterprises – I bet of lot of them don’t have their papers in order and probably don’t report their full income to the IRS. That is, though, just the spirit of enterprise. That is why most of them have come here – because back home you really do have to fill out the socialist forms in triplicate before you can start…and then if you don’t pay off the local bully boys you’ll have your legs broken. Here, you just have to hang out a shingle and get to work. To be sure, a lot of them are being lured on to welfare but that is a project of rich, white liberals…they don’t want a pack of independent, Latino businesses…they want a welfare-drugged voting constituency. But don’t blame the Latinos who get suckered by it…we’ve got plenty of “my ancestors came over on the Mayflower” crackers who have fallen for it, too. To this day, though, I see Latinos standing out in front of the local nursery waiting to be hired for dirt cheap wages…I see my fellow Americans panhandling on street corners. Seriously, whom do you want as your neighbor – the native American beggar or the illegal immigrant who is willing to dig a ditch for you for $25?
What our liberals want is the place where the socialist forms have to be filled out and have a pack of bully boys to break legs of those who don’t vote/donate the right way. We want to stop them. To do that, we need votes. Where we going to get them except among the people who are here? How are we going to get them if we are too easily portrayed by divide-and-conquer liberals as being hostile to them?
As for proof of switching to us – even in this disastrous year for us, 30% voted for us. We got 57% of the vote in Texas where the Latino population is actually a larger percentage than it is in California, where we got 39% of the vote. They will come to us, if we do the right thing – and the right thing to do is amnesty.
Mike Rosen read part of a Krauthammer article today, and I don’t know when it was written—I got the impression it was after the election because it touched on, and thoroughly repudiated, the claim that conservatives need to become more “moderate”.
When I heard that he advocated amnesty I had an immediate strong negative reaction, but I listen to him a lot and simple amnesty sounded way too left wing for him. Sure enough, he advocates what he calls “normalization” of illegals, SHORT OF CITIZENSHIP—–and citizenship is where I also draw the line.
People whose goal was citizenship went through the process. People who just wanted better jobs and more money just ignored our laws. Well, what’s done is done, so since there are already two classes of immigrants anyway, let’s just keep it that way.
Not allowing citizenship to immigration scofflaws would do two things: It would acknowledge both the decency of not uprooting people and families firmly established here and their economic contribution to the country, and it would say quite clearly that actions have consequences and that a consequence of breaking the law in a nation of laws is that you don’t get all the goodies.
It also respects those who have sacrificed so much to respect our laws and go through the process of becoming citizens, whereas just handing out citizenship willy-nilly not only cheapens it but is a slap in the face to those who worked so hard to accomplish what we would suddenly be saying is free.
What I would add to what I heard of the Krauthammer article, which I didn’t get to listen to in its entirety, is that this “normalization” would have to be only for productive aliens, those with jobs, who have not broken the law, and that it would be only for those already here—–it would not open the doors for extended families.
His position is to implement this very reasonable law, but to call it AMNESTY, loudly and clearly and often, and to link it to border security—-that is, it would not go into effect until the governors of the four border states could affirm that illegal traffic through their states had been reduced to a very slight trickle, if that. Once the border is secured, the new program would go into place.
I would also make this amnesty conditional upon learning English and going to cultural assimilation classes to make the current “shadow people” knowledgeable and comfortable with aspects of life in this country we take for granted, like knowing how to use medical clinics instead of emergency rooms. Navigation of a foreign culture can be tricky, and it is the lack of assimilation that causes so many of our problems.
Amazona,
Amnesty must not be an immediate grant of citizenship – that, of course, is what our Democrats want because they hope to clean up in the first post-amnesty election. But amnesty should normalize those illegals who have otherwise not broken our laws, have been here for a certain, long period of time (ten years?) and especially those who have children born in the United States (and those are citizens no matter what because our Constitution is written that way – I’m in favor of changing it, but that is a very long term project). Maybe setting it up with a five year visa – and in that time they can either choose to apply for citizenship (with a fine for having crossed illegally) which puts them behind the line of all those who came in legally…but if they don’t opt to try for citizenship then when their visa expires, they go home (most would, of course, opt for citizenship…but that is a good thing because they would have to learn at least rudimentary English and renounce their allegiance to their country of birth…it is just a psychological thing, but it is important; it does change perceptions and modes of thinking). Essentially, such a plan means its about 10 years before any of these people (other than their kids born in country) can cast a ballot…ten years for them to assimilate and be open to conservative political messages before they vote.
We also must make part of the package a genuine course of border security – no more gaps in the fence, no more areas unpatroled, no more “catch and release”, no more “sanctuary cities” no more refusals by local law enforcement to turn over illegals when caught…and fines and even jail time for those who are repeatedly caught crossing the border illegally.
I simply disagree with citizenship at any time, ever.
Actions have consequences. Breaking our laws really SHOULD have consequences.
So we take deportation off the table. We say OK, we’ll just look the other way, we’ll let you stay, we’ll pretend the laws never existed, and shazaam!! you’re legal!
Tossing citizenship in on top of this generosity is like adding a reward for breaking the law.
When we imprison someone for breaking a law, we agree that when the time is served, he can go free. There is some kind of balance established between the crime and the punishment. But when we let the guy out, we don’t then give him a car.
We don’t send two entirely different messages—one, that he broke the law, and two, that he gets rewarded for it.
We already have a nation with different laws for different classes of people, a situation not only very dangerous but antithetical to the very premises of our nation. If we not only set aside our laws for a group of people and then proceed to reward them for breaking our laws by handing them something others have worked and sacrificed to gain, we will not only be continuing this, we will be adding to it. It would be a gross expansion of the “some laws for some people, other laws for other people” situation we have already allowed to develop.
The only thing citizenship would add to the ability to live and work here, legally, for life, is the right to vote. I don’t see keeping that one privilege from them as a horrible punishment, but I do see the handing out of citizenship to people who defied our laws to be a slap in the face to those who DID respect us, DID follow our laws, DID make the sacrifices, because they wanted more than just the benefits of living here.
I believe that if we were to make the horrible mistake of just handing out citizenship to people who defied our laws and refused to go through our process, then every single person who DID go through it would have a legitimate legal claim against the United States for compensation for their expenses and any damages associated with the long wait and all the work involved to follow our laws. And I would support them, because no amount of repayment could really make up for the statement from us that their efforts were silly and unnecessary, that they would have achieved the same thing by just breaking our laws and waiting for us to decide our laws really don’t matter.
Sorry, but no.
A reasonable time—-three months?—to register as an illegal alien and get a temporary visa. A long-term visa issued to the immediate family only, after the heads of household and children older than 12 have passed investigation into criminal activity here in the United States, and the head of the household is employed—and after the adults have passed an English exam to show they can function in our language in our country. At the end of the visa term, either an application for permanent residence or return to the native country.
No citizenship.
Amnesty is forgiveness for an offense, not a reward for committing the offense.
However, I do support citizenship for aliens who serve honorably in our military.
I thought this was already in place. I remember President Bush granting posthumous citizenship to a young man killed in Iraq, and i was under the impression that his service would have given him citizenship if he had not been killed. I might be wrong about that.
But I do think that a means of EARNING citizenship through service to the nation is a good idea. And no, just getting a college degree is not service to the nation.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/dont-back-down-8-in-10-gop-voters-urge-hill-republicans/article/2513072?custom_click=rss#.UJ00doZSSzR
Any chance the stooges will listen? Now that is a “shovel ready LOLzer”