As conservatives prepare to do battle with President Barack Obama and progressives in the 2012 election campaign, do conservatives really know what they are up against, or are they setting themselves up for another defeat?
Judging from the way the battle is shaping up so far, despite the lessons learned from Barack Obama’s defeat of John McCain in the 2008 election and three years of the progressive army at work, you have to question if the Republican candidates for president and the conservative cognoscenti yet really know their “enemy.” (Read the full column at EWRoss.com)
Filed under: Politics, 2008 election, 2010 census, 6th century BC, adept at dehumanizing their enemies, adoring media, American Revolution, anathematizing, Ann Coulter, ape the left, battleground states, blue states, Bolsheviks, candidates for president, charismatic, Chinese general, climate change, cognoscenti, communists, compelling vision of America, conservatives, control the mob, Demonic, double standards, Ed Ross, electoral votes, enemy, ewross, free contraception, French Revolution, Glenn Beck, Gov. Romney’s conservatism, how progressives bait conservatives, How the Liberal Mob is Endangering America, imagery, income-inequality, incumbent Democratic president, Jacobins, John McCain, know your enemies and know yourself, left’s perspective, liberal mainstream media, Machiavellian approach to politics, Mensheviks, Newt Gingrich, Occupy Wall Street movement, Peggy Noonan, portray Republicans as anti-science, President Barack Obama, progressive army, progressives, red states, religious freedom, Republican candidates, Rick Santorum, Rush Limbaugh, Sandra Fluke, sarah palin, self-righteous, silence its enemies, sink to their level, slogans, soulless view of life, spinning illusions, squabble like teenage boys, strutting his stuff, Sun Tzu, super political action committees Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission, The Art of War, The Wall Street Journal, totalitarian left, we are human beings, We’re More Than Political Animals, 孫子
LinkedIn Group: Republican Professionals
Discussion: CONSERVATIVES VS. PROGRESSIVES 2012
Karl Rove answers this quit nicely
In an American election focused on a lousy economy and high unemployment, conventional wisdom holds that foreign policy is one of Barack Obama’s few strong suits. But the president is strikingly vulnerable in this area. The Republican who leads the GOP ticket can attack him on what Obama mistakenly thinks is his major strength by translating the center-right critique of his foreign policy into campaign themes and action. Here’s how to beat him.
First, the Republican nominee should adopt a confident, nationalist tone emphasizing American exceptionalism, expressing pride in the United States as a force for good in the world, and advocating for an America that is once again respected (and, in some quarters, feared) as the preeminent global power. Obama acts as if he sees the United States as a flawed giant, a mistake that voters already perceive. After all, this is the president who said, “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.” Voters also sense he is content to manage America’s decline to a status where the United States is just one country among many. As he put it, his is “a U.S. leadership that recognizes our limits.”
The Republican nominee should use the president’s own words and actions to portray him as naive and weak on foreign affairs. Obama’s failed promises, missed opportunities, and erratic shifts suggest he is out of touch and in over his head. For example, before he was elected, he promised to meet with the leaders of Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, and Venezuela “without precondition.” Nothing came of that except a serious blow to the image of the United States as a reliable ally. During the 2008 campaign, he also argued that Iran was a “tiny” country that didn’t “pose a serious threat.” How foolish that now seems.
At the same time, the Republican candidate should not hesitate to point out where Obama has left his Republican predecessor’s policies largely intact. He will be uncomfortable if the nominee congratulates him for applying President George W. Bush’s surge strategy to Afghanistan, carrying through on the expanded use of drones, reversing course on the handling of terrorist detainees, and renewing the Patriot Act after previously condemning it as a “shoddy and dangerous law.” Such compliments will give the Republican candidate greater ability to be critical of Obama’s many fiascoes — not only his proposed outreach to tyrants in Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela, but also the disastrous “reset” with Russia, mismanagement of the U.S. relationship with Pakistan, politicized timetables for withdrawing troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, and neglect of important traditional allies such as NATO, Canada, and Mexico, as well as key rising powers like India.
Obama recognizes that he’s seen as “cold and aloof,” and the Republican nominee should hammer this point home. The president has few real friends abroad (excepting, of course, Islamist Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, as he told Time magazine’s Fareed Zakaria). The Republican nominee should criticize Obama for not understanding that the U.S. president’s personal engagement is essential for effective global leadership. Obama’s lack of regular close contact with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and Afghan President Hamid Karzai, which has destroyed relationships with America’s erstwhile allies, is simply the most jarring, inexplicable example of this president’s hands-off approach.
Because the fall campaign must be devoted to promoting the Republican message on jobs and the economy, the GOP nominee must share his big foreign-policy vision no later than early summer. Giving voters a sense of where he wants to take the country is important to cementing his image as a leader worthy of the Oval Office. Merely projecting the right image is not enough. END Rove
Posted by David Tippie
LinkedIn Group: Tea Party Bloggers
Discussion: CONSERVATIVES VS. PROGRESSIVES 2012
Well made point Ross. Very much on target.
Posted by Mark Hallenberg
Oil is $70/brl in North Dakota as the exiting pipeline is full, still it is $120/brl in Europe. That is $50 differential, but you got to get it to the gulf first. Maybe a pipeline would help? Nat gas is $2.50 in America and $12 in Europe. However, our president and the crazed academic environmentalist want windmills and solar trash at 4 times over. Well well well, what did you expect from big government coupled with a half socialist? The term half socialist is more to reality from my view.
Liberals or progressives have spent their entire lives waiting for the opportunity to verify their academics and they surely did in the 2008 election. The public sector unions press for ever more, even as they make 50% better than the private sector. This year folks on welfare make more than the average private sector wage earner, but no matter as the liberal press just continues spewing more feel good. It is a sad day for rational observers.
What else could you expect from so much unguided money thrown to acadamia for so many decades. Half the students are biased beyond recovery. The USA is now weighed down by regulatory environmental zealots and the half socialists disguised as Progressives while the rest of the world is out there nudging a nuanced capitalism mostly forward.
We can be better but it takes truth to be told and then understood. It is not hopeful with this mostly biased electorate.
Ray Willey
LinkedIn Group: The Heritage Foundation
Discussion: CONSERVATIVES VS. PROGRESSIVES 2012
The old Republican establishment mindset of fear and intimidation continues to dominate US politics, and the time-worn leftist demagoguery of wealth equalization and contrived inequalities continues to rule Republican strategy. Recalling that the best defense is a superior offense, the party needs to abandon its efforts to appease liberals by imitating them, and launch a full-scale attack on their foolhardy beliefs. The left does currently enjoy the support of a substantial ignorantia, but much of that group is susceptible to convincing publications of truths in the Obama Administration’s corruption and failures. Another Ford, Dole, Bush 41, or McCain isn’t likely to work, and Romney is another repeat performance. The voters’ pocketbook is Obama’s greatest enemy; the public needs daily reminders with video clips of Obama expressing support for higher gasoline prices.
Posted by Ronald Bouwman
LinkedIn Group: Republican Party
Discussion: CONSERVATIVES VS. PROGRESSIVES 2012
We need to do something to light up the base.
We as a party need to get some feeling into not only primaries left, but the general election. I vote for making Joe the Plumber in Ohio a battle call nationally to get voter turn out. DDN -
“The good news for Republicans is that, right now, it’s very much an intra-party contest between the candidates,” he said. “Once we get to the general election, it will be Barack Obama on the ballot. And the fact that Republicans will be voting against Obama will be an energizing factor.”
http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/election/low-voter-turnout-may-carry-over-to-fall-election-experts-say-1341809.html
Posted by Kevin McDonald
LinkedIn Group: The Political Coffeehouse
Discussion: CONSERVATIVES VS. PROGRESSIVES 2012
Remember when young people couldn’t wait to get out on their own and make their way in the world? Remember a time when accepting government handouts was undignified? Not so long ago in America, people were excited to become valuable to an employer. Some exercised courage and vision and started their own companies and businesses. Still others took pride in hard work and good common sense to build farms and ranches. America was a great place to live. People were free to realize whatever their imaginations could conjure up.
The “Progressive” movement has put the entire American way of live on it’s head. Why would a young person want to leave home, work hard and be worth anything to anyone. That would cut into his/her X-box time. He/she would have less time to “hang out”.
Labor unions and the NLRB are now responsible for your value to your employer. Show up at work and do some of what you’re told. It now costs the employer more in fines and sanctions to get rid of you than to keep you and put up with your mediocre performance. You’ll get raises anyway, every time government raises the minimum wage.
Starting a new business/company has always been very difficult. It’s always taken years of long hours and many heartbreaks before realizing any success. It’s tougher than ever now because the heartbreaks are predetermined and designed to force failure. Those heartbreaks are engineered, implemented and enforced by government. Why bother?!
No one “accepts government handouts” anymore. Now government “owes you” more than you’ll ever receive. It isn’t fair that some rotten corporate bastard worked his butt off to make HIMSELF valuable enough to receive a six figure salary and a private jet and I have to work overtime to afford smart phones for my kids! What’s the world coming to???
Yup Ed, Progressives definitely have the easier sell. The unofficial U.A.W. motto says it all; “We demand less to do, more time to do it in and more money for not getting it done!”
Posted by George Daggett
I don’t think the comparison is quite “dead on,” “Conservatives VS Progressives.” We sometimes fall into a trap ourselves of labeling things wrong. I don’t see that the term “Conservative” means anything, anymore, because none of our spokesmen on the right care to stick their necks out and define it.
Liberal is easy because they are all “lock-step robots” that cannot disagree with even a word, or they are OUT. Conservative on the other hand can mean ignorant redneck, or constitutionalist, or moderate, or financier, or independent, or (most often) DMWC (that’s a “Don’t Make Waves Curmudgeon”). S-called “Conservatives” usually don’t have any guts.
LinkedIn Groups
• Group: Republican Professionals
• Discussion: CONSERVATIVES VS. PROGRESSIVES 2012
A nation should be managed as if it were a business entity. The mission of a great business is to become the leader in its sector. Can you imagine Microsoft or Apple saying “Our mission is to be one of many businesses.” It’s nuts! Being the greatest country in the world does not mean it must control the world, but to be an example to all nations. Somebody has to be the benchmark. As Republicans, we feel it is the obligation of the United States to be the benchmark of greatness to the world.
Our forerunners in the Primaries so far have the potential to achieve greatness for America providing they stay focused on what matters most. We can not get caught up in leftist distraction tactics. It’s just like playing sports. You can’t let the audience nor the opponents distract you from your game. The game right now is to fix the messes Obama has created.
Posted by Jim Clements
A very interesting coincidence in choice of titles
http://www.traditionalbritain.org/content/conservatism-and-progressivism-david-hamilton