From the doorway Bush and Rove stick their heads in the door and scream: NOVEMBER SURPRISE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Then laughing they head on down the hallway, laughing harder as Hillary SCREAMS….. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!

I agree with you that there currently is a schism; however, I don’t believe it is going to be as hard to fix as you claim. I was registered as a Libertarian for many years, although I’m now a Republican. I believe that if the R’s got back to the small government philosophy of the mid 90s as promoted by Dick Armey and Newt Gingrich, many libertarians would come back to the party. I can’t imagine how a true libertarian could ever feel comfortable in the Democrat party. The Dems believe in socialized medicine, high taxes and more regulation, and are anti gun rights. Not much there for a libertarian to like.

By the way Rick, Reagan a Deist? What is your source for this claim? Reagan was a Christian, whether you like it or not.

A quick comment before I go out and march in the Veteran’s Day Parade…..

IMHO….Despite the results of this election, the Republicans still have one major thing going for them:
The Democrats - at this point anyway - DO NOT HAVE a viable presidential candidate for 2008.
Polls have consistently shown that 30% of the electorate will not vote for either a woman or African American for President. Nominating either Clinton or Obama would mean starting 30 points down and having to win at least 51% of the remaining votes (over 70%).
I also believe that Kerry is no longer a viable candidate.

Considering this, and looking at the straw polls, I believe that the best ticket the GOP could put up would be:

Giuliani for President
Gingrich for VP

I like Gingrich, but he has too much baggage for the Presidential nomination. But he would shore up the already solid South, and has some popularity in the Midwest and West as well….

McCain has lost respect, and as for Romney, I believe that fact that he is a Mormon will not sit well with a large voting block - both right and left.

I believe that Giuliani’s Pro-Choice views - which are not a deal breaker - will bring in both
moderate democrats and woman.

That’s my choice for a winning 2008 GOP ticket….

It seems to me that Republicans have to learn that “my way or the highway” politics do not fly with the public. Politics is not an all or nothing proposition — and neither is principle.

Amendments against gay marriage? Fine. Amendments that violate private property rights by telling you you can’t “emulate” marriage? Not fine, and not conservative. Amendments that tell hospitals who they may or may not consider family? Not fine, and not conservative (ever hear of freedom of association?) Amendments that specify what benefits businesses may and may not give their employees? That’s not even nominally conservative — since when did conservatives support regulating business?

But the “all or nothing” crap has to go, if we are ever to be elected to office again.

The players hated it. Drew Pearson said he just wanted Landry to yell at him once. Randy White said it got to him personally every time. He would leave the meetings and go sit by himself for several hours, thinking about what Landry had said. And it would make him so mad, he couldn’t wait until Sunday so he could get on the field and hit somebody.

A lot of people criticized Landry as being ‘plastic’, unattached to his players. But his method motivated them to achieve their very best, 20 consecutive winning seasons, 13 division titles, 5 conference titles, 21 playoff victories, and 2 Super Bowl championships. To this day no one has been that successful in the NFL, and probably no one ever will.

I think this is exactly the kind of approach we need to take as we regroup for the next election cycle. Study the game film and calmly, unemotionally examine every mistake made by every player on every play, then correct those mistakes.

I wouldn’t blame President Bush too much. He is what he is, his father’s son, not a conservative. The American people knew that when they elected and re-elected him. And considering the alternatives, Gore and Kerry, can anyone really say they made a mistake? No, the fault here lies with the leadership, or lack thereof, in the House and Senate.

The President campaigned as a ‘compassionate conservative’ (whatever that is), and he has governed as such, seeking a new tone and bipartisanship. Obviously that was a mistake in philosophy we need to correct before selecting our next candidate. I blame John McCain, who is not a team player, more than anyone else, for undermining the conservative leadership in the Senate. And for that reason I refuse to support him for national office or any leadership position. I also blame the leadership in the House for abandoning the conservative principles, especially on spending, which got them elected in the first place. That is a mistake we cannot allow our representatives to make again.

Let us not forget that it was the conservatives in the House that killed the Bush-Senate immigration proposal, and rightfully so. I seriously doubt anything resembling amnesty has any chance of making it through the next Congress, because the conservative Republicans who kept their seats and the conservative Democrats who gained theirs are not about to risk being thrown out on their asses in the next election by passing a proposal so vehemently opposed by the vast majority of Americans.

I also seriously doubt the newly elected Democrats, the majority of whom ran as conservatives, are going to push for a ‘cut and run’ policy in Iraq or the War on Terror. The jihadists are complete fools if they think these guys are going to be more ‘reasonable’ (their term) in dealing with terrorism. When given a choice between wiping out terrorists or losing their newfound power, these Democrats are going to make the Republicans look like Frenchmen in the ferocity of their attack.

What is going to be really interesting over the next two years is watching the struggle within the Democratic party between the conservatives (read Americans) who just got elected and the liberals (read Euro-socialist weenies) who make up the leadership (Pelosi, Reid, Dean). The liberals as a group are mired in a misundertanding and misrepresentation of the past. They are completely out of touch with the vast majority of Americans, and if they try to shove their ill-founded policies down the people’s throat, they are going to regret it.

I disagree that we need to start a third party. That is the one sure way to get Hillary Clinton elected in 2008, which would be an unmitigated disaster. There are far too many yellow dog Democrats who are going to vote the straight party ticket, regardless of who is the candidate, for a third party to have any chance of electing a real conservative. It will only serve to drain votes from the Republican ticket, as Perot did in 1992.

What we need to do is build a coalition of blue dog Democrats and red dog Republicans around core conservative principles–limited government, low taxation, less regulation, national security–and take the fight to the liberals. That is the only way Team America is going to win.

I experienced 1994 as a very pro-Liberty event, fuelled by HillaryCare, Waco, Ruby Ridge, and growing regulation of all kinds. I’ve been shocked (genuinely) by the antipathy the loser social conservatives have shown to the Liberty voters after Tuesday.

Democrats being what they are, it’s hard to see significant numbers of Liberty voters being content with what they are going to be dishing out.

Interesting times.