November 5, 2008
With Barak Obama winning the presidency by a huge electoral margin and the Democratic controlled Congress increasing their power by several more seats, a message was sent to the Republican Party they must not ignore; American voters are very unhappy with the way they have been governing for the past 8 years in the White House and, up until two years ago, in Congress for 10 years. If the Republicans want to regain any respect among voters they have no choice but to make a decisive change in their governing policies.
For 16 years the Republicans have been setting policy that only served themselves and, by population comparison, a small handful of their friends, while ignoring the working class citizens. They did this with their neo-conservative agenda. Although neo-cons have been around for a long time, this latest tenure was spearheaded by Newt Gingrich of Georgia, John Boehner of Ohio, and Tom Delay of Texas (among others) back in the mid 1990′s. They attempted to hide their real agenda with their so-called “Contract With America”, written by the neocons and their current home base, the Heritage Foundation.
For months before this year’s presidential election the voters were telling the Republicans how unhappy they were, but the Republicans weren’t listening. Their neo-conservative arrogance was blinding them and affecting their hearing ability. This in itself shows how detached they were from the American people. But then came November 4th 2008.
The day before the election, November 3rd, and the day after election, November 5th was of great interest to me relative to watching and listening to the Republican talking heads. The day before, they were still just as arrogant in their attitude and what they were saying as they had been for more than a decade. Then today, the day after the election, those same talking heads are saying something altogether different. It’s as if someone hit them in the head with a two by four and got their attention.
By comparison, only a small few of the Republicans are neocons, but they have been controlling the Republican party. When Newt Gingrich and Tom Delay were running the show, they not only aggressively attack those old Republicans conservatives (the ones who built the party), they severely punished them if they did not totally submit to the neocon agenda. The neocons made it very clear that you were either with them or against them; no other choices were accepted.
The neocons will soon be out of power, but I fear it won’t quite them. Their public relations sources will be on full frontal attack for the next four years, with powerful emphasis placed on the next two years in hopes of regaining control of Congress. So it’s up to the Democrats just how successful the neocons will be. If the radical liberal Democrats, such as Nancy Pelosi and a few others, continue to impose their far left wing views & policies they will hand control back over to the neocons. Not that the voters will want the neocons back, but because they will be just as fed up with the extreme liberalism then as they are with the neocons now. This far left group is also a minority in the Democratic Party, but they too have controlled the majority, which are conservative Democrats, or as some call them, Blue Dog Democrats. So if they have any sense about them at all, they will learn from the fate of the neo-conservative extremism of the Republican Party.
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I find it ironic that if Pelosi and Reid and other radical liberal democrats are “a minority” in the democratic party , how did they manage to gain total control of both houses of congress and now the Presidency? The democratic party has been marching to the far left for years. I can’t imagine the christian right hijacking the Republican party and getting elected.
The Republicans tried a populist candidate who worked with both sides…and lost.
They need to go back to their core values.
Lower taxes
Less regulation
Self reliance for both companies and individuals
Energy independance
Border and National security