The Pink Flamingo :: Voters, Trends, and What Could Happen? Part I

What do we really know? Hard line anti-immigration “reform” is a loser for the GOP. Last night Lindsey basically slaughtered hard-line CofCC racist Buddy Witherspoon. There are indications that additional hard-liners went down in SC, but I don’t know enough about the races yet to make a blanket statement. What I do know is it appears (and I say appears) that hard line conservatives in SC in the state house and senate did not fare as well as was expected. This makes the latest Jim DeMint move a little puzzling. He is forming a PAC for Senate Conservatives Fund, to help funnel money into what now appears to be a losing proposition. Captain Ed has more.

“…This new PAC allows conservatives to be heard in the aggregate. Rather than hope that silence speaks louder than words, a significant fundraising effort by the SCF would demonstrate the desire of conservatives to financially support candidates who do not stray from limited government and who do not want to spend tax money in a manner which embarrasses drunken sailors. The SCF, if successful, could help find a stalwart class of conservative Senators like DeMint and Tom Coburn. This could have a negative effect, as CQ Politics points out. The SCF might wind up weakening some Republican incumbents, or forcing primary contests in seats that the GOP would be hard pressed to hold. That only seems like a risk in this cycle, when Republicans will be the most vulnerable in the next three cycles. DeMint also says that he wants to avoid intraparty conflict with SCF, preferring it to be a positive channel for conservatives without necessarily damaging the party — at least in the short run….”

After looking at some of the rather pathetic election returns from SC, from a very low turnout, it might behoove Senator DeMint to start crunching a few numbers. In a primary where we were told the conservatives were pulling out all the stops to unseat Lindsey, they failed miserably. If that is all the conservatives in SC have to offer, perhaps their strength is greatly – shall we say, extremely over-estimated.

If South Carolina, the most Republican and one of the most conservative states in the nation, cannot produce the legendary conservative vote that was going to unseat Lindsey Graham, that vote DOES NOT EXIST.   If this is true, the worst possible mistake John McCain could make is choosing Mitt Romney as a running mate. We don’t need him on the ticket. We need someone like Sarah Palin.

There is a possibility, and I’ve been thinking this for some time now, that the only place the hard-right conservative is active is on the internet, the radio, and the blogs. If you crunch the numbers, and take them with a dose of reality,

I don’t like Technorati. Thus said, if you Google “Technorati GOP Blogs” you come up with 537 blogs that use the GOP Tag. You do the same with “Republican and come up with 2718 blogs. Use “conservative” and there are 4,594 blogs that use the tag. Liberal produces 5151. Democrat produces 2,232. What this means, is open to interpretation. But, if you use the tag politics you come up with 36,509. The tag “McCain brings up 965 blogs, Obama 2,446.   There are 1,533 with the Hillary tag.

I think to prove my point, there are only 74 blogs with the tag “immigration reform”. There are 260 for “illegal immigration” and 1,965 for “immigration”. Using the tag “border” there are 1,426 blogs. The tag “illegals” is used only 27 times. “Minuteman” pops up 45 times. “Ron Paul comes up 1,125. The tag “libertarian” comes up 1674 times. “Republicans” comes up 924 times. There are 69 about ‘libertarians’.

I think the bottom line here is the fact that we are seeing more conservative and libertarian blogs than Republican and GOP. The problem is the fact that our Republican politicians see all the above blogs, hear from all the above people and take it as a matter of fact that all of those people are Republican, when in fact, they are not.

And so, we hear that Republicans are facing disaster in the fall. Why not? They are pandering to the extreme among us and not the Republican voter. The Republican voter has gone elsewhere.   What happens, they keep going back to their losing bankrupt hard line conservative theology. Republicans aren’t the problem, conservatives are. Unfortunately they are so darn self-righteous they can’t see the truth.

The world has changed. Evolve or become extinct.

Why on earth do some people think they control the whole party?

“…Bottom line: Even if all of us political junkies hold our nose and vote for McCain, he's going to have a hard time. Why? Because as I have been saying for months and Limbaugh points out in his article the conservative base are the foot soldiers in campaigns. Unless McCain can elicit some excitement, passion and trust among the base he's going to have a hard time getting people willing to volunteer. And without volunteers to get out the vote, you'll have an extremely difficult time winning….”
There is something I do not understand. Do you really want a POTUS who scrapes and bows to the whims and demands of one group of people? This is the problem we are dealing with in the House, especially. They are so cowardly that they wave with the wind.

THE OBAMA VOTER
We hear so many ideas and so much waxing poetic about the young Obama voter. I am not sure if these kids are as liberal as we think they are or if something else is going on here. Have you noticed the age of Obama's most vocal supporters? College, right? This the generation of smiley faces, gold stars, and feel-good education. They cannot be told anything that is negitive. They are the generation of the coddled. In steps Barack Obama with his feel good & lofty rhetoric and they do not have the intellectual tools necessary to seperate rhetoric from flim-flam. We may be able to reach a few of these people, but not many. In many ways, if they do not learn how to think and grow up to act like adults, we're in for some problems. They expect everything to be given to them, not via welfare, but just like school, with a smiley face and happy claps.

OBAMA DEFECTORS
How many Barack Obama defectors are there? Are we even going to know before the fall? If they are defecting, doesn’t it make sense to maybe tailor some of our House and Senate races to appeal to them – just a little. Are Obama defectors going to contribute to a realignment of the GOP? Is it possible the non-Republican conservatives who are holding us back are going to finally have the intellectual honesty to identify themselves as something other than Republican? Is it possible the anachronism like Jim DeMint can figure out they are the ones behind the curve, before it is too late?

I like the name “PUMA” It fits right in with the NOBAMA movement.

AJ Strata has some fascinating information about some Dems switching parties.

Dime con quien andas y te digo quien eres.

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