Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Jazz Shaw, political expert

Frequent commenter Smitty nominates the assistant editor of the (woefully misnamed) Moderate Voice for his prestigious Asshat of the Day Award:
[P]oll data like this could indicate that the Republican Party is getting ready to relive the classic cycle of ruling parties who get turned out of power in a landslide: With the party base itself shrunk down, the people who are still around are the most hard-line members, and are really the least fit people to fix the situation.
"The people who are still around" represent 46% of the electorate, voters who held their noses and voted for a RINO in an election where the decisive factors were (a) the unpopularity of Bush, and (b) the media's leg-thrilling raptures over St. Obama of Chicago, whose amorphously vague rhetoric (tax cuts for 95%!) went unexamined even as a function of simple mathematics, to say nothing of more complex fiscal and economic questions. (One more time: It. Won't. Work.)

If 46% is the rock-bottom insoluble core of the anti-"progressive" vote, the GOP's problems are not as dire as they seem, and the solution may be as simple as nominating a candidate who's not a grumpy, bald 73-year-old RINO. Gee, can anybody here think of such a candidate?

1 comment:

  1. "With the party base itself shrunk down, the people who are still around are the most hard-line members, and are really the least fit people to fix the situation."

    The most hard-line Democrats, Howard Dean, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, sure brough home the bacon for the Democrats though, didn't they? The Kos Kids won this time, but good.

    Judging by results the most hard-line members are the most fit people to fix the situation when the party is directionless after defeat.

    I think the person giving the GOP the best advice now is Michell Malkin with her Maximus the gladiator picture. (link) Gird your loins, conservatives, and prove to your supporters and potential supporters that you are willing and able to fight for the things they believe in.

    Jazz Shaw's addition to this is: "But the key difference they should remember was already articulated by the new Commander in Chief. He won. A key point about Palin’s efforts should be that she … well… didn’t."

    He has to provide some blather before this though, to create distance between the "don't follow a loser" argument and the data. The data was: "55% of Republicans say the party should be like Palin, compared to 24% who say they should be like John McCain."

    It's true that Sarah Palin didn't get elected president, but since she wasn't running for the job it's much more to the point that John McCain, who was running for the job, didn't win it. Victory doesn't lie further ahead in John McCain's direction. Conservatives already get that - or let's say three quarters of them do.

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