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"At CPAC, conservatives still can’t admit they have a problem"
At CPAC, conservatives still can’t admit they have a problemPosted by Jamelle Bouie at the WP
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/03/15/at-cpac-conservatives-still-cant-admit-they-have-a-problem/
"SNIP................................................
Yesterday at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Texas Governor Rick Perry made a claim that goes a long way toward explaining the current state of the Republican Party. When speaking to the crowd at CPAC, he hit back against the idea that the Republican Party needs to change its ideas if it wants to appeal to a wider swath of voters. “The popular media narrative is that this country has shifted away from conservative ideas, as evidence by the last two presidential elections,” said Perry. “That might be true if Republicans had actually nominated conservative candidates in 2008 and 2012.”
It’s hard to overstate how much this flies in the face of what we know about the previous two presidential elections. Relative to the current GOP — and the platform Mitt Romney ran on — the John McCain of 2008 looks like a moderate. But at the time, even McCain was well-positioned on the right of the Republican Party. In addition to choosing then-Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate — who would soon become a conservative icon — he ran on a platform of tax cuts (he pledged to permanently extend the Bush cuts and lower corporate rates), partial Social Security privatization, opposition to Roe v. Wade, support for school vouchers, and a plan that would provide tax credits to families to purchase health care.
Romney, as we know, moved far to the right of McCain over the course of his campaign. He touted Paul Ryan’s fiscal framework (which would slash taxes on the wealthy, make deep cuts to existing social services, and turn Medicare into a voucher program) endorsed “personhood amendments” (which would make abortion and many forms of birth control illegal) and opposed all efforts to deal with climate change, from “cap and trade” (which was endorsed by McCain) to new emissions standards.
In other words, there’s no way in which the most recent Republican nominees for president haven’t been conservative. They may not have originated with the right-wing of the Republican Party, but they did their best to represent it, with Romney going as far as to choose the architect of the GOP’s radical budget policies as his Veep candidate.
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10 replies
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Maybe next time, Perry. Bring your A game.
Before the primaries ..I kept hearing about this "gov good hair" in Texas.. what a farce.
Keep digging, Perry.. and keeping company with your buddies, the mushrooms.
Honestly, we can't let such enthusiasm go to waste. Keep on talking, Ricky!
Low informed idiots. 
