A Republican Speaks Out on the Election

[Tarheel]

I was planning a long-winded, postmortem on this election but one other Republican expressed my thoughts more succinctly already (and this dove-tails in with a post I made in another thread here...maybe Jim DeMint, R-SC needs to run for President in 2012), this is a press-release from his website:

DeMint Statement on Election Results 
 
November 4, 2008 - Washington, D.C. - Today, U.S. Senator Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) made the following statement:

“Republicans suffered very serious setbacks in the last two years in both the Senate and the House. We have got to clean up, reform and rebuild the Republican Party before we can ask Americans to trust us again. This must begin with either a change of command at the highest levels or our current leaders must embrace a bold new direction."

"Americans have again rejected the Democrat-lite strategy of higher spending and bigger government, and it's time for Republicans to chart a new, more principled course. Federal spending must be reduced and that starts with ending wasteful earmarks. Republicans must admit the Wall Street bailouts were a trillion-dollar bust, and immediately fight for free-market solutions that create jobs and increase freedom. We must get serious about reforming our complicated tax code that is destroying jobs, and finally reform Social Security and Medicare before they take us over a fiscal cliff. We must fight to secure our borders and keep our military strong, and we must boldly defend our values for life and the family.'

"This election reflects a failure of Republicans to keep their conservative promises. Democrats didn’t run on their true liberal agenda to raise taxes, cut national defense, and undermine traditional values. They ran against President Bush and congressional Republicans whose image was tarnished by scandals and broken promises. Our party must start today to admit our mistakes, fight for our convictions, and encourage new conservatives to run for office.” 

I could not agree with you more Senator.

Link:

http://demint.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressReleases.Detail&PressRelease_id=6ad9af31-ced0-d4e0-5469-9885acafcaf7&Month=11&Year=2008

[tiger88]

Yes, a lot of this is true. It is also true that now that they have royally fucked a lot of things up it will be very hard to get another chance very soon .

The only hope is if obama truly fucks everytning up in a hurry. If he does a c minus or d + job he will be re-elected barring a groundswell from the repubs similar to the get out the vote movement the dems just had.

[AUTailgatingRules]

Very good points by the Senator, my worry is that we have gotten to the point in this country that there are just far too many people with their hand out for government help to ever get a truly consevative president elected.  until these people see that their socialistic ideals are a miserable failure, we are stuck with big government and higher taxes for a while.

The hardest thing to do is cut the welfare programs that will come out of this president and congress.  Once you give people something it is that much harder to take it back.

[Tarheel]

Yes, a lot of this is true. It is also true that now that they have royally fucked a lot of things up it will be very hard to get another chance very soon .

The only hope is if obama truly fucks everytning up in a hurry. If he does a c minus or d + job he will be re-elected barring a groundswell from the repubs similar to the get out the vote movement the dems just had.

I must admit he ran a helluva campaign, defeated the Clinton political machine, raised a shit-load of money, and got a phenomenal amount of folk really excited about him.  

The Republicans have got to learn some lessons from that.

And I'm sure that the first lesson is to NEVER take public funding again like McCain did...The Obama raised well over six hundred million dollars ($600,000,000.00)!  That's absolutely staggering!

[Tarheel]

And now Rush Limbaugh weighs in (he must've been reading TigersX or got the letter from Sen. DeMint and, as usual, all emphasis is my own); this was on WorldNetDaily.com:

Rush Limbaugh: Time to cleanse Republican Party
Says conservatism not on ballot, calls McCain's whole campaign 'concession speech'

Posted: November 05, 2008
By Joe Kovacs

Radio host Rush Limbaugh, the loudest conservative voice in American politics, today blasted John McCain's presidential campaign as weak and said Barack Obama's election as president is an opportunity to purge the Republican Party of candidates who abandon conservative principles.

"McCain's whole campaign was a concession speech," said Limbaugh in his post-election analysis. "We've now demonstrated to everyone how to lose."

Limbaugh dismissed any notion that victories by Democrats in the White House and Congress meant a repudiation of right-leaning principles.

Limbaugh explained conservatism was not on the ballot.

"We haven't been on the ballot since 1994," he said, noting that if Republicans wanted to win elections, they should not put so-called "moderates" on the ballot.

"The conservative movement does not need to be rebuilt," he said. "We had some people abandon the conservative movement, and they need to be abandoned."

The broadcaster called last night's results "an opportunity for cleansing ... like we haven't seen in a long time."

Concerning Obama's victory speech in Chicago, Limbaugh noted, "He said nothing better than anyone has ever said nothing."

"We congratulate Obama. We recognize the historical nature. We also understand that more than him being black, he is a radical extremist who is not going to govern from the center. [Nancy] Pelosi and [Harry] Reid are not going to govern from the center. What the hell do people think they wanted to win this election for? When do liberals govern from the center? The only time they do that is when they have to when there are enough Republicans around to keep their extremism in check.

"Screw defeat!" he exclaimed.
...

The link:

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=80181