More Republican Idiocy And Sarah Palin

Hopefully, this is more media blather, than it is an actual issue. But then, so many squish Republicans are idiots, nothing would surprise me. And it's those Republicans wh aren't worth a damn. Not because of how they view Sarah Palin, so much, but for how they view conservatism in general. And they wonder why we aren't there to support them when they need it.

Sarah Palin is not attractive to Chris Christie's N.J. Gov campaign

New Jersey GOP gubernatorial candidate Chris Christie's campaign has no interest in help from Sarah Palin after the former vice presidential candidate stepped down as governor of Alaska, in part to help Republican candidates across the country.

Too many Republicans are part of the problem and not the solution today.

Comments

[Slide]

Republican idiocy? redundant

[RogerCfromSD]

To hell with Christie's campaign, then. It's not like it will make any difference to her. But way for Christie to get a public jab at her. And, why? Loser.

[Dennis D]

In this case I disagree. As a New Jersey resident I understand New Jersey Republicans are not as conservative as other parts of the nation and its still a very BLUE STATE. Christie must avoid appearing too far right wing in order to win some moderate Dem voters. This is how Democrats won. Obama appeared as centrist as possible even though he wasn't.

[Dan Riehl]

We'll have to disagree, Dennis. Reagan carried NJ twice and it was relatively liberal then. What NE Republicans do to allegedly get elected is just giving up.

Sure, there may be some policy diffrences, but they needn't be that great. If all they are are statists in the end - and many are - then, too hell with them.

[Slide]

Sara Palin is no Ronald Reagan, sorry, not even close. Again, I disagreed with Reagan but he had some substance, some understanding of world events, economics, etc. He had positions shaped over a lifetime of thinking about them. What exactly does Palin stand for? Just that she is a "real American"? Hockey mom? please she is so unqualified for any executive position never mind the Presidency. NJ would NEVER go for her.

[wally sadaber]

I worked in a White House advisory office (EOP) when Ronald Reagan was President. Not only did Reagan finish out BOTH terms in the statehouse, he was a political leader (well, for the lefty union), and spent a lot of time learning about policy and how to govern. Also, Reagan was a pragmatic center right politician - really a moderate. (He was very loyal and that is why he kept wingnut hacks like Ed Meese around.) Reagan talked a big game but he increased social spending, increased deficits, appointed very moderate people and he negotiated with the Soviet Union. The guy was a center right politician who had a way with words that appealed to a broad political spectrum including wingnuts. But HE was NOT a right winger. Now, what in creation's name is Sarah Palin? An inarticulate, red meat crowd baiting, ethics challenged quitter so please, please don't mention Sarah Palin in the same post with him.

[mark l.]

"Reagan was a pragmatic center right politician - really a moderate."

he took top income tax from 70% to 28%. bush moves it from 39 to 35% and the libs are falling all over themselves in agony.

[F Secret]

"Reagan talked a big game but he increased social spending, increased deficits, appointed very moderate people and he negotiated with the Soviet Union."

Yeah, he negotiated with the Soviets by demanding that they "tear down this wall", walking out of Reykjavik, and installing medium range nukes in West Germany. Kind of puts "negotiation" in a slightly different light when compared to Obama's World-Wide apology/dhimmi tour. But as conservatives, we do tend to forget that Reagan was not the super-conservative that we love to remember him as. Heres a good article that discusses the "fuzziness" of our collective Reagan memoirs.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/ac/?id=110005188

[unseen]

What exactly does Palin stand for? Just that she is a "real American"? Hockey mom? please she is so unqualified for any executive position never mind the Presidency. NJ would NEVER go for her.

Posted by: Slide

so NJ is not for limited government, consitutional government, less spending and lower taxes, strong national defense, and domestic production of energy. since this is what Palin has said she stands for. Do you want me to believe that all of NJ is for bigger government, higher taxes, and a weaker postion in the world?

Maybe if you studied Palin's actions as governor, her stated views on such topics and her actual writings and speechs instead of listening to MSNBC you would know what Palin stands for.

[wally sadaber]

FSecret. I acknowelged that Reagan's rhetoric was successful and appealed to right wingers among others. But he actually later became quite pragmatic. He and Obama have both negotiated missile reductions with the Russians. Why is railing against evil, walking out and spending a bunch of money on Nukes to achieve the reductions so much better than Obama's walking into office and negotiating those reductions without all that?

BTW, NATO expansion is the stupidest thing the West has ever done. By pushing into Moscow's own Caribbean/Mexico, NATO has insured the Russians will not help with REAL threats like Iran and N. Korea. Being friends with some people who paid McCain's consulting campaign chief and all that anti Russia belligerence is not a policy. It is greed and demagoguery.

MarkL - Link on those numbers please. Also, this pretty much shows your priorities. Reagan was not the crazed social conservative or hater of government, immigrants or gay people that goes for mainstream in the right wing today. He did pay off the rich though, by ballooning spending and the deficit. Is that conservative?

[narciso]

Did he negotiate with Andropov or Chernenko or Brezhnev, the hardliner, of which then Time reporter Strobe Talbott and even Barak Obama's thesis was concerned. It's the difference between negotiating with Alexander 11, the good czar that gave us Alaska, and the pogrom baiting
Alexander 111, and Nicholas 11, which was part of the reason people didn't mind the czar's to go away.

Apparently, this is what we take from NJ'svotes for McGreevey, Corzine,Lautenberg, et al. I'll leave Christie Whitman partially out of this, since she did cut imcome taxes but raised property taxes

[mark l.]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_United_States

no offense, but how do you even pretend to understand fiscal conservatism, if you don't understand what reagan did?

let me throw you another bone to chew on
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_by_U.S._presidential_terms

reagan increased the size of the govt by 14.5% in his first term,
and by 7.4% in his second term.

gdp?
+11.2% first term, +15.9% his second term.

one more nifty item you will need to understand-hauser's law=no matter what the tax rate is set at, federal tax revenue is consistently at 19% of gdp. While it is a correlation, it is the closest correlation I have ever seen, that can't be considered as factual.

[unseen]

Wally, I would answer your post on Reagan but it is so wrong it isn't even worth the time to go thru it and pick out everything wrong with it. I will discuss the Nato, disarming and Reagan's view of government briefly.

you see Wally. there is this thing called freedom and liberty. It is what NATo was formed to protect. when the eastern european countries' communist regimes (who if you did not know did not promote freedom and liberty) fell NATo was asked by some for and offered others memebership. So that they could protect the new found freedoms of said countries. so that NEVER AGAIN would those citizens of those countries be faced with losing their newfound freedom and liberty. and at the time Nato because the USA was the lead memeber and the USA believed at that time in freedom and liberty accepted those nations into the alliance. Poland, Eastern Germany etc are not russian colonies. they are free nations that can enter into treaties like any other nation.

as far as Reagan and Obama are you really that dense. At the time of Reagan the USSR was expanding into afganistian, had divisions of tanks on the border of West Germany. Was a world superpower. Reagan had to come from a position of strength to get the treaty. today Russia is a shadow of its former self. The USA is the world's only superpower thanks to Reagan and others so that Obama is able to offer more to the Russians then they have to give. therefore Obama is able to use the position of strength Reagan, bush 1, clinton and bush 2 gave him to get a meaningless treaty in which the Russians do not have to give up anything and yet get their main objeective. Obama would never had been able to even accomplish the litte that he did in Russia this week if not for him standing on the Shoulders of great men.

and maybe you forgot that Reagan believed that government was the problem not the answer. Perhaps it slipped your mind that Reagan tried to return federalism to the states, tried to do away with the departmart of education, and the arts. Reagan's increase in spending was largly due to an increase in military spending (which by the way is one of the few consitutional proscribed areas that the federal gov should spend).

[syn]

There is nothing moderate about Serfdom, ignorant slaves are ignorant slaves no matter the political party.

I live in NY State (which is basically NYC) and like NJ, Democrats win these states because Liberals adore their corrupt politicians who ply their voters with all sorts of goodies stolen from the American taxpayer; RINO republicans figured out the game and are playing the same as the Democrats.

As such, I am fleeing the tri-state area known as Serfdom and all the suckers left behind will have to pick up the hefty tax tab I, and so many others, will not be paying.

It's the Rudy phenomenon, life will be so miserable for those living in the tri-state sewer that they'll be begging for someone to save them from the wreak and ruin they created for themselves.

Moderates are only moderate when life is good, however when their personal wallets are directly affected then they will make a sharp turn to the Right.

[Mark Thompson]

Dan:

I think you're misunderstanding what's going on here. First, NJ was not really a liberal state back in the 80s - we had a history of instead being a bellwether (aka "swing") state going back to, I think, the 1800s. The state has been getting gradually more liberal over the last twenty years, though. IIRC, in 1996, in my Congressional District, the local paper didn't even bother making endorsements in the general congressional election, instead only making an endorsement in the GOP primary, because the district was so heavily Republican that Dems were regarded as having no chance of winning. The GOP nominated Mike Pappas, who was definitely your type of conservative rather than the "moderate" who preceded him. Two years later, he was unseated by Rush Holt in the general election. This was partly because of Pappas' "Twinkle, Twinkle Kenneth Starr" blunder, but the race was going to be tight even before that.

That said, the problem with Palin in NJ isn't that she stresses fiscal conservatism - fiscal conservatism is playing just fine here after the last couple years (a die-hard - and I do mean die-hard - Dem friend of mine is even expecting to vote for Christie because of the state's fiscal mismanagement and corruption over the last decade). Fiscal restraint is in fact the centerpiece of Christie's campaign.

The problem with Palin in NJ is not even really her social or foreign policy conservatism, although, since fiscal restraint is the real issue at the center of the campaign and is something that both socially liberal independents and many Dems are begging for, any emphasis on social conservatism can only hurt Christie by introducing issues that electorally favor the Dems in this state. The much bigger problem here is her style - that "real America" comment, and the possibility of Christie getting linked to it, would be absolutely toxic. I can see the opposition commercials now - Sarah Palin doesn't think New Jerseyans are "Real Americans": Does Chris Christie? I suspect Palin would be pretty effective in a moderate-to-liberal state in the upper Midwest, and maybe even some moderate-to-liberal states in the NE and NW that have sizable rural populations (NH, ME, upstate NY, OR, WA, and maybe VT). But NJ? No way.

[mark l.]

Sarah Palin doesn't think New Jerseyans are "Real Americans"-
just got back from west jersey, 4th of july weekend.

not the standard cross section of voters, but there were some older, bellweather people there...

I remember the heated discussions with them in the past, where they argued bill clinton's case, passionately.
Where it gets wierd?

these same people love palin. i thought her base would have been the 30-50 moms, but it was the 55 and over affluent catholics(or former catholics) who were the most pasionate about palin. I realize that affluent catholics might be 2% of the vote, but not exactly the worst sample to hold.

palin has created some converts in nj. would they vote for christie becuase he was supported by palin? not a chance. would they show up at a rally to see palin, with christie? absolutely.

the nightmare is that 90% of the state's population lives within 15 miles of ny, and are largely blue.

take cong. leonard lance-west jersey(07)-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Jersey's_7th_congressional_district

he wins in a bad year for the gop, in a blue state.

in comparing 2004 and 2008 for district 7, there is a noteworthy occurence:
the gop in 2008 lost 13% of the support, but also lost 2.5%.

it is an anecdote, but the implication remains that there is a disaffected group of conservatives in nj who are done with the gop, largely based on the squishiness of token gop leaders like christie.

his avoidance of palin cuts against him in support, and will cost him more than he would ever gain. Someone who wasn't going to vote dem, suddenly decides that they will to express annoyance with palin? My guess is that there is a 8-10% group of conservatives, disaffected by the state gop, who would be willing to support palin, if by only voting for christie.

The point is moot. rather than bring conservatives in from the cold, he is going to try and convert as many dems as he can? what a dipsh*t.

[mark l.]

correction:
"in comparing 2004 and 2008 for district 7, there is a noteworthy occurence:
the gop in 2008 lost 13% of the support, but {the dems} also lost 2.5%."

[Mark Thompson]

Mark L.: After redistricting I now live in Lance's district. Lance ran pretty openly as a fiscal conservative, but social moderate. There was an independent candidate, Michael Hsing, who ran to Lance's right, and who the Dems actively campaigned for to siphon votes off from Lance. That campaign succeeded, as Hsing managed to get almost 6% of the vote. Despite this, Lance dramatically improved on Mike Ferguson's squeaker of a victory in 2006. The reason for this was that he was able to distance himself from Bush, and from social conservatism. On top of that, though, was the fact that Lance was pretty well-known and very well-regarded in the district.

And you're right - the overwhelming majority of NJ lives near to the big cities and is heavily urbanized. That's exactly why Palin is toxic in NJ. Someone who lives in the Pinelands or maybe the Highlands probably won't have much of a problem with the "real America" remark; but someone who lives almost anywhere else in the state would. And that's where the population resides.

[Slide]

I will be more blunt. Sarah Palin is too dumb to be acceptable in NJ. To some people, intelligence, curiosity, knowledge, an ability to discuss actual issues is important. I think in states like NJ, competence wins out over the fluff of your winking, you betcha, moose killing darling.