Redstate

Sure he does: he's a fiscal conservative just like Ned Lamont!
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If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.

You can't trust the RNC or the Liddy Dole. Make your contributions DIRECTLY to the Santorum/Steele/etc. campaigns so those idiots won't waste it on someone who won't vote for ANY conservative agenda item that wouldn't pass without his vote anyway. I mean it. not one. He won't even vote to organize a Republican Majority if it is 50/50 and the Dems offer him a chairmanship. And the most important item of all, he will DEFINATELY not vote for the nuclear option on Judges if it came down to it.

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There is no theory of evolution, just a list of creatures Chuck Norris has allowed to live.

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If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"?

Yes.

Perhaps.

Sure.

Any questions?

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"I don't know." -- Helen Thomas, when asked by White House spokesman Scott McClellan, "Are we at war, Helen?"

And big enough for me to vote for Laffey, as well.

For back-up:

1. 2004 GOP Platform (source is a PDF - go to GOP.com and get it if you want): We support courts having the option to impose the death penalty in capital murder cases.

It is therefore, ipso facto, a Republican principle.

2. That it's a conservative principle should be self-evident - a little judicious use of your favorite search engine will verify that.

3. Even the Catholic Church, in spite of their squishiness on the issue in the later states of JPII's papacy, recongizes that capital punishment is doctrinally acceptable. Most Christian demominations in the US - particularly Baptists and the like - are much more forward in their acceptance of the death penalty.

4. What would make it "un-principled"?

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"I don't know." -- Helen Thomas, when asked by White House spokesman Scott McClellan, "Are we at war, Helen?"

Because it isn't consistent with "erring on the side of life", the refrain so often repeated by the President when considering abortion, but strangely neglected when considering this method of taking human life.

Executing an Innocent Man™ talking-point rears it's head - much like time and tide.

Tell you what - when we are wrongfully executing 0.00001% of the annual number of abortions in the US alone, you have a point.

Call me when we get there.

Ta ta.

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"I don't know." -- Helen Thomas, when asked by White House spokesman Scott McClellan, "Are we at war, Helen?"

According to this website, there were 1.29 million abortions performed in the United States in 2002, the most recent year for which I could find a non-estimated figure. (note this link is to a pro-choice organisation).

http://www.guttmacher.org/in-the-know/incidence.html

0.00001% of 1.29 million is 0.129 people.

71 people were executed in the US in 2002.

(source: http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?scid=8&did=146)

I was unable to find a clear example of a man executed in 2002 and since exonerated, but I can offer some examples in support of the contention that innocents have been on death row.

For example, this case,

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?did=1874&scid=64

which documents a man sentenced to the death penalty in 1992, but exonerated in 2002. Another man was later convicted of the same crime, and is serving a 56 years sentence.

That same article linked above notes there have been 123 such exoneration of death row prisoners since 1973. It seems reasonable that if the justice system can err in wrongly convicting these people, then it will not maintain a 100% record of exonerating them before execution is carried out.

Now, that isn't as persuasive as being able to definitively claim that such-and-such a number of men have been wrongly executed, but I would assert that at least one of the 1041 executions that have occured since 1976 involved an innocent person.

(source of 1041 no: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_the_United_States )

Returning to your 0.00001% argument, there have been 43 million legal abortions in the US since 1973.

(source: http://www.guttmacher.org/in-the-know/incidence.html)

0.00001% of 43 million is 4.3. That means 5 innocent people executed out of 1041 would meet your condition, or an "innocent execution rate" of ~0.4-5%. I think this is plausible, given a larger number of people have been exonerated while on death row in the same interval.

You said:

"Tell you what - when we are wrongfully executing 0.00001% of the annual number of abortions in the US alone, you have a point.

Call me when we get there."

I think we are there. But I'd rather not call, I don't appreciate being greeted with "na na na-na na talking points", which is a depressingly common response to dissent in this forum. And if you wish to make similar statements in the future, you should try using a number closer to 0.01%, which would put you safely above than the actual number of executions which take place. Even I'm not going to argue that every single person executed is in fact innocent.

Sorry if that was rather long-winded, thanks to anyone who may have struggled through it this far.

for being off by one zero.

That said, I have little tolerance for people who equate on one hand felons, convicted of crimes so heinous that multiple juries and judges over the course of (statistically speaking) decades determined death to be an appropriate sanction with on the other hand human beings who's only crime is that they happened to be unfortunate enough to be "inconvenient" to someone at the time.

So forgive me if you thought my "na na na-na na talking points" were a little harsh, but honestly I couldn't give a rip.

I'm done with this.

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"I don't know." -- Helen Thomas, when asked by White House spokesman Scott McClellan, "Are we at war, Helen?"

I'm not sure that there is really a valid comparison between abortion and the death penalty. First off, the death penalty is a judicially imposed response to anti-social behavior by an individual. Abortion, according to proponents, is a medical procedure, which in virtually any case not involving a minor (and even in some of those cases) doesn't even require anybody other than the doctor to know it was done.

Second, I will emphasize that thee death penalty is a response to behavior by the person sentenced. If you don't want to die, don't shoot a cop or committ felony murder.

As for the meme - I notice that Mr. Chafee had to resort to an undisclosed point in the "19th Century" for his "Innocent Man Executed" point. That predates reliable ingerprinting, all DNA, most of the techniques that go into forensics, etc. If we cannot all agree that the judicial system is at least considerably more reliable than it was in the 19th Century, then we can stop now because we will never agree. I also note that Mr. Chafee didn't even have a name for us. If you're going to use that as a response to the OBL question (and come on, his people had to know that kind of question was coming), you'd think they'd have dug up the name.

And while exonerations of death row inmates is nice, it is more appropriate to discussions of the process and not the fact of the death penalty. It's a nice reason for perhaps NOT doing too much in the way of expediting these cases. But since nobody can point to an innocent-man execution (and you can be sure the political Left would be all over that if it existed), there seems to be, at present a ZERO percent "false-positive" execution rate.

That's not to mention that reliable statistics on abortion are hard to come by as everybody seems to have a stake in spinning the numbers. A quick Google search turned up a news report that quoted the number at 1.6 million abortions a year. It's also not to mention that you're "estimate" for innocent executions is purely speculative based on an extrapolation of data from a diffferent subset of cases.

This is probably going to surprise you but your tax dollars don't pay for this website.

Dissent is way overrated as an activity and if you have objections to justifying your opinions (good job on the math, BTW, until you got to the point about your feelings informing you that innocent men had been executed which sort of kicked you right back into talking points mode) there are plenty of places that will hail your genius.

Staying here and insulting the forum is just juvenile behavior.

As for the griping about insulting the forum, I do feel that this place is restrictive in its debate and banning policies.

On the one hand it is a consistent theme of conservative sites and people to argue that their ideas are well-reasoned and worthwhile, and that conservative ideals are intellectual and truly popular. To combine that with an atmosphere where "dissent is way overrated" and people who don't toe the line are outright dismissed and often banned does not inspire (in me) any faith in this forum.

It is a forum, for debate, am I right?

I feel I should also say, I was briefly a member of this site some months ago, and found myself quickly banned after a friendly welcome of "moby!", "troll!", "talking points" and the like.

But when the site was redesigned you sent me an e-mail suggesting I renew my membership, despite my presumably being on a list of banned people rather than members in good standing. So I signed up again, thinking you had perhaps allowed a relaxation of the "no second account" rule due to the revamp. I do enjoy being a member of the site, I'm not a conservative in any sense but I like to read and comment on what is written here, it expands the mind.

I've tried to be polite, and argue things out civilly, and so far I've been rewarded with the description "juvenile".

We tried it. Remember? we had about twenty years with no death penalty in this country. Voters in most states overwhelmingly put it back in when they had the chance.
Still, I have a grand compromise for everyone who abhors the Death penalty (no liberal has ever taken me up on my offer).

Here it is, we remove the death penalty by constitutional amendment, but we also put all the heinous murderers, the death row guys into a special work camp in one of the artic Islands,
lets call it the Gulag. and they have no phone, no tv, no library, no work out rooms, no rec hall, no nuthin.

"Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty"
Kyle

The single best call that anyone has made since the lady in the King said to "Split the baby in two." I mean really. This was classic. Really Jump. I take my hat off to you. If I was a bleeding heart fairy liberal who actually opposed the death penalty, I think I would literally be aroused by how awesome that post was.

Back on point though. I think people who execute murderers are doing God's work and people who execute babies in the womb without just cause are going to burn in the fiery pits of hell for all eternity and the righteous will walk upon their ashes.

That said, let's just all agree that Chafee is an abomination to the GOP and does not deserve our support.

Why do you feel they should be executed ?

In the past, I'm sure some innocent citizens have died because a government employee miswired a traffic light, and failed to test it before he left the scene. Or a highway worker took away a "Road Work Ahead" sign too soon, before removing the road obstruction ahead. I know that's happened.

Humans screw up, make mistakes, and people die. Very rarely, so exceptionally rarely, it happens with the death penalty. We should always strive to make it more fail-safe. But that's certainly no reason to leave convicted mass-murderers alive to kill their guards and kill other prisoners, not to mention put a permanent knot in the stomach of a victim's family. Also, the death penalty gives the child rapist-kidnapper, and the other assorted scum-of-the-world a real tangible reason not to kill the only witness to their crime. If they kill their victims, they face death, and that might be just enough to keep them from killing the victim.

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"I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more I have of it." -- Thomas Jefferson

Except that, child raptist-kidnappers deserve to die as slow and as painful a death as possible anyway, preferably in the village square, so I don't know how well that particular argument works.

Cop killers, on the other hand, should be executed as a matter of public safety. If you're willing to take the life of a law enforcement officer when at liberty, you'd be all the more willing to do it when serving life in prison. We shoudn't make our corrections officers take that kind of unnecessary risk.

Icythus

He will not cast any deciding votes for us anyway. Why waste money on that?

I mean, if he was like Specter, who we can at least get 50% of the time, maybe, but not for Chafee. I wouldn't give him a dime or a minute as a volunteer.

To hold the Senate we can "kiss this Senate seat goodbye" as well. Chafee isn't going to be sticking around.

You can't win if you aren't in the game. With Chafee as our candidate, we aren't in the game. The Democrats seem to know this and manage to get full-on flaming liberals elected from red and purple states.
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"I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more I have of it." -- Thomas Jefferson

In light of the free-spending Republicans are doing and the fact that we seem to think that we have to be liberals to get elected in "blue states" (zuiko is right - the Dems don't seem to feel the need to nominate conservatives in red states - Bob Casey was not recruited for being pro-life, he was recruited because his name is Bob Casey) - I think I'm going to go read Phyllis Schlaffley's A Choice Not an Echo to remind myself of what we should be doing.

We don't win by acting like Democrats. Democrats can always out-Democrat a Republican. We win by offering voters a real choice - and when we do, it works way more often than not.

This seat is not worth defending vigorously. Why aren't the RNC and NRSC putting this much effort into Pennsylvania. Santorum is 1) a member of the leadership, 2) more reliable than Chafee to stand with the party, and 3) in no worse position in his race (both he and Chafee are polling in the low 40s in their general election contests). Santorum is much more worthy of money and effort by the establishment than is the junior Senator from Rhode Island.

You sure have an odd definition of free-spending.
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If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.

I provided no definition of the term, so I'm not sure what you find odd.

I was not aware that there was a serious contention on this site that the behavior of Republicans in Congress warranted anything other than "fiscally irresponsible" labels. Congress is practically giving away money without any sign that they understand that there isn't an infinite supply.

Is that still an "odd definition" of free-spending?

I've written at length on this site about it. I've been contending quite a bit that the Bush era has seen rather ordinary spending at worst.

And the best counterargument I've seen is to slice and dice, claiming that 'non-defense discretionary spending' is up by 'too much.' But without seeing government's share of the GDP go up to any unusual or even above-average levels, or seeing deficits (even post-Bush tax cut) go to any extraordinary levels, I just don't buy it.
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If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.

I've seen much the same arguments you make. I disagree with that style of analysis and so I presume I would disagree with yours as well.

This is not really the thread to discuss the details of analyses of the level of federal spending or what the proper benchmarks are. I will however note a few anecdotal points on "increased spending." No Child Left Behind (massive increases in federal education spending); Medicare Prescription Drugs; and the abject failure to do anything about entitlement spending (something the President campaigned on twice).

Republicans are not the party of "We'll spend money like the government has always spent money." We're supposed to be the party of responsible spending. I fail to see the responsibility.

Just as I would define a private citizen who can't pay his credit card bills but eats out at fancy restaurants every night a "free-spender," that definition is just as apt for Congress. There is no ability to set priorities - they just assume that they can spend money without ever having to see the bill at the end of the day.

We Suck Less strategy.

Breaking up is hard to do.

But sometimes it's the right thing to do.

So what's going on here: Erick says the RNC is mobilizing for Chafee. Krempasky says the NRSC is doing it.

If you're both right, then this is bad heh.

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If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.

They are both doing it. The NRSC is pouring money into ads that are trying to savage Laffey. The NRSC had its staff file a complaint with the FEC against the Laffey campaign. The NRSC is wasting money on a spineless twit.

The RNC is going to now waste money to pay out-of-state party workers to stay in RI for the next 2 weeks with the job of getting Republicans to vote for the spineless twit over another REPUBLICAN. If this were October 28th and they were being sent to protect the twit against Sheldon Whitehouse, that would be fine. But they're using money to convince Republicans that Chafee is a good Republican so that he can beat another Republican who is arguably a better Republican than the incumbant.

All this is doing is making the NRSC's substance-less meme ("Chafee's the only one that can win") a self-fulfilling prophecy. They're demonizing Laffey - which will only serve to depress his ability to reach out to the voters after the 12th. Laffey certainly would have had a tough road even without this pernicious intervention, but there's no need to make it tougher in order to save one of your own.

"I fail to see any appreciable difference between 52 with Chafee and 51 without."

52 with LC not much different than 51 without
51 with LC not much different than 50 without
50 with LC possible big difference vs 49 without, except that he'd no doubt do a Jumpin' Jim Jeffords (Leapin' Lincoln Chafee?) to make it 49 Republicans without him

... that's a sign of a minor "sea change", in which case Chafee is almost certainly going to lose anyway and this discussion becomes academic.

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"I don't know." -- Helen Thomas, when asked by White House spokesman Scott McClellan, "Are we at war, Helen?"

To get Virginia into play for the Democrats, we could lose Ohio, PA, Missouri, Montana and VA, putting the Senate up for grabs even without losing RI. A bit of a long shot, but sort of realistic.

Also Chafee would be a senator for six more years, which could come in handy for future majority leader type decisions. The overarching point that a senator who supports you 25 percent of the time, including on the vote to organize every session is preferable to one who never supports you, which is exactly what a Laffey primary win guarantees.

Can you recall the last time five incumbent senators from the same party lost their bids for re-election in the same year? Heck - can you recall the last time 5 incumbent senators regardless of party lost their bids for re-election in the same year?

I know. I know - things are going to be different this year. After all, in those past elections the Demos didn't have Kos doing their bidding, right?

Finally, your logic assumes Chafee stays GOP for 30-seconds in a 50-50 senate. That's awfully thin beer upon which to gamble precious resources that could be used to instead keep VA, MO and MT in our column, no?

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"I don't know." -- Helen Thomas, when asked by White House spokesman Scott McClellan, "Are we at war, Helen?"

Five incumbents lost in 2000. Four of them were Republicans (Gorton, Abraham, Ashcroft and Grams) and Robb was the fifth. That was also the last time there were so few Republican retirements that most of the vulnerable seats were defended by members rather than open seat challengers. Senate incumbents lose a whole lot more than house ones do. I have no idea of when the last time 5 incumbents of the same party lost, 1986? 1980? 1974? and I'm not gonna go flipping through wikipedia to find out, but the point is it isn't impossible.

As far as resources go, Allen, Talent and Burns are all doing pretty well on the COH front. I know Allen and Talen have their opponents dominated money wise, and Burns has more than he needs to spend in such a cheap money state. People like Kean, Bouchard, and Steele are going to need money, but the RNC has lots and lots of money, spending a few million of it to protect a seat where we have no business having one isn't the end of the world.

Finally, I think Chafee would remain a Republican. He's a lifelong member and bound by some odd sense of duty either because his dad was a Republican or because the party is supporting him. I think if he was going to switch, he would have done it by now, assuring himself of an easy reelection.

Of course, as I don't live in MI I don't have to deal with Sen. "Dangerously Incompetent" - so good catch. No need to bother with Wiki.

I wasn't saying that it was impossible - I was saying that it simply doesn't happen very often. Further looking at the lay of the land, a swing toward the GOP of not a whole bunch of points in the country (as seems to happen after every single stinking Labor Day) puts VA (Allen's attempts to the contrary), MO and perhaps OH out of reach while making MN, NJ and perhaps even MD (depending on the primary outcome) and WA competitive.

Next, "resources" is more than money - it's people. The ire over this action by the NRSC and RNC (at least on my part) is that people - activists, volunteers - are being sent into RI to try to push a liberal republican over the top in an election he has no business losing but for his own idiocy against a challenger who is far better aligned with the mainstream of the party. The only way these Republican activists are going to accomplish this feat is to convince independents and Democrats to vote in the open REPUBLICAN primary for the liberal.

Couple of problems with that:
1) You are using limited resources (that being people) who may not be available to someone else (again VA, MO, MT or even NJ, WA, MN) down the road because you can only go to that particular well so many times
2) There is something inherently distasteful about using Republican resources for the sole purpose of convincing independents and Democrats to vote in a Republican primary, isn't there?

As to the final point - Linc is nowhere near as loyal to the party as was his father. He is also not nearly the man his father was, but that's another story. I have nowhere near the faith in his loyalty you have, and I would still find that awful thin beer upon which to hang control of the Senate.

Let us all hope it doesn't come down to that.

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"I don't know." -- Helen Thomas, when asked by White House spokesman Scott McClellan, "Are we at war, Helen?"

We are in complete agreement

We're a stronger Republican Caucus WITHOUT Lincoln Chafee even if Steve Laffey eventually goes on to lose to Whitehouse.

is about as exciting as a dishrag, but if you listed to the content of what he says he is often right on the mark. Regardless of how boring his demeanor was, I thought he was brilliant in dealing with the much more charismatic pathological liar George Galloway.

Whether or not the Senate GOP lost the majority when they elected Dole remains to be seen - but you're right in that at the very least, they certainly shot themselves in an area of their person much more vital than the foot.

Norm Coleman would have been golden.

The only way he matters in theory is if he is the 50th Republican.
- If it's 51R-49D then we didn't need him. (At least not in 2007-08.)
- If it's 49R-51D then he doesn't help.
- The key situation is if it's 49R + 50D = Chafee. At that point if he makes it 50-50 he was worth it. But if he pulls a Jeffords - which I would certainly expect - then we're screwed.

So the NRSC is savaging Laffey in order to try to avert an unlikely worst-case scenario, and even then they'd need to keep their fingers crossed that it wouldn't backfire on them anyway.

Maybe they're doing it to make it harder for Chafee to pull a Jeffords. If he holds his seat it will be in no small part because of the President's fundraiser, the NRC and the NRSC. For all of Chafee's faults, I don't know that I could see him go back to Washington in January and then bascially dump on the very people who made sure he got to stay.

(This is unlike Jeffords who was a popular figure in VT, having served as AG in VT and then in the House for 14 years, as well as two prior terms in the Senate - Chafee does not have such a long history of statewide service and personal popularity).

Jeffords bailed what, 4 months after he was reelected as a Republican? Had he bailed before the election, you can be sure a very large chunk of the money and votes he needed to win would not have been there.

Jeffords didn't come out and publicly vote against our party's Presidential candidate in the general either. That move alone shows there isn't a bit of party loyalty in Chafee to depend upon. Supporting Chafee as insurance is like buying a homeowners insurance policy in cash, with no paperwork, from a bum living in a cardboard box that hates your guts... In other words, not the best insurance buying decision you can make.
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"I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more I have of it." -- Thomas Jefferson

True, I gave Chafee a little credit, and perhaps more than I should have. But my real point was in trying to divine what rusty bolts are rattling around in Mehlman's and Dole's heads when they make these decisions.

I wouldn't trust Chafee as far as my grandmother could throw (a significantly shorter distance than I could throw him). But there has to be some reason for what the RNC and NRSC is doing. I just wish they would marshal better arguments to support it.

1. I'd like to address your "regional party" straw man. If you look at the election map from 2000 and 2004, you will see that Democrats are the "regional" party while the GOP is the national party whose support spans over the vast majority of the nation - between the Democratic Party's strong regions.

2. I think that the GOP could actually start winning more seats in Democratic Party strongholds if they started running socially liberal, Club for Growth fiscal conservatives who are strong on national security, homeland security, and crime issues. Chafee is not a man in this mold.

3. You're right that it is hard to hate Chafee on a personal level, but not because he is likeable. It is because it is difficult to hate such a hollow, pathetic excuse of a man. To pity the existence of someone who is so proudly pathetic is a much more natural reaction.

4. Sometimes companies have to contract in order to get stronger and come back better than ever. Kicking Lincoln Chafee out of the party will make the party stronger. Arlen Specter infuriates me sometimes, but I would never insult him so much as to compare him to Lincoln Chafee.

I think that the GOP could actually start winning more seats in Democratic Party strongholds if they started running socially liberal, Club for Growth fiscal conservatives

Large chunks of the Democratic base would be far more upset by talk of cutting government than by the idea of stopping gay marriage. They work for the government. They hear the CFG talk as a direct threat on their own job security. The union guys don't give a rats patootie about abortion, but they do care about their paycheck.

In other words, the Democratic base is socially conservative and fiscally liberal. They have exactly zero interest in supporting fiscal conservatives. Which is why the type of people you describe constantly run for office in liberal states and lose.

I take issue with your characterization of the Democratic base as socially conservative/fiscally liberal. The base itself is probably both socially liberal and fiscally liberal, but our best chance of picking up voters seems to be with the fiscally conservative/socially liberal pairing which would help with suburban upper middle class voters, of which there are an abundance in states like NJ and throughout the Northeast. As far as unions go, you're more likely to run into an angry mob of unionized state employees or teachers than the typical lunchpail, blue collar folk.

I think the type of candidate which was described (fiscal con, social mod to lib, hawk) would do well, or at least better than the average GOPer we tend to run.

that this, exactly as Jon lays it out, is certainly the case in Massachusetts.

A bill to overturn the 2003 SJC decision on homosexual marriage (should the legislature ever allow a vote) will, in all likelihood, pass - with margin. (And allow me to pre-empt the multitudes who will swoop-in and argue about polls showing it failing, yadda yadda yadda: First, it's a threadjack. Second, it's bunk - if it were going to fail the legislature, dominated by unhyphenated liberals, would allow it to come to a vote. That they won't is all the proof we need that it will pass, easily). Were many hot-button social issues ever put to a referendum here in the People's Republic, I think many would be very, very surprised to find us up there with the reddest of the red.

But while MA has voted in the recent past to roll-back the state income tax (from roughly 6% to 5%) and a much larger than expected percentage voted to repeal the state income tax (41%), there is no appetite around these parts for any cuts in federal largesse.

None. Zero. Zip. Zilch.

If anything, people are griping about not getting Our Fair Share™ from the federal trough - not exactly the sort of environment conducive to a successful CFG candidacy.

Just saying.

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"I don't know." -- Helen Thomas, when asked by White House spokesman Scott McClellan, "Are we at war, Helen?"

As a lifelong Texas resident (who is nonetheless very well traveled), I'll admit that I may be wrong. That said, I also have a touch of the g-a-y, and thus spend a lot of time in the most liberal of liberal social circles in Texas (where I'm tolerated because I'm good looking - otherwise, I'd be completely ostrasized because of the headaches I give them when politics comes up. LOL.) My hunch is based on my interaction with liberals in Houston and Austin. Ask Houston Liberals why they dislike Republicans or vote for Democrats, and they'll go on and on about social issues. Try to nail them down on fiscal issues, and I often find a lot of common ground with them until they point out how innefectual Republicans have been on cutting spending. At that point, I'm check-mated.

Austin Liberal beatnicks are a different story altogether. I'm convinced that they're straight from San Francisco. When it comes to fiscal issues, they align themselves solidly with Stalin and Marx, and when it comes to social issues, they're more in line with the Mayors of Sodom and Gamorrah.

In my estimation, Houston Liberals are more like northeastern/midwestern liberals, and I think that Austin Liberals are more like West Coast Liberals. It is this analysis that leads me to believe that the northeast can be taken back with candidates that are tolerable to them on social issues, but that West Coast liberal bastions are generally a lost cause.

If the GOP in Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin and the Northeast started running candidates whose social views were more moderate to liberal (depending on the state,) but whose fiscal views were stridently in line with the Club for Growth - and then proceeded to run on platforms detailing the crisis that would be reflected in the federal budget if it had to abide by GAAP accounting standards instead of the accounting rules that it writes for itself - while also taking a strong position on national security...I think that type of candidate would do well.

In other words, someone who is for abortion on demand, but doesn't want to see one red taxpayer cent spent to fund one.

I think that if such a candidate ran on a campaign that emphasized a narrative that compares the financially destructive power that credit card debt has on people's personal financial situation to the debt problem that the federal government has would be extremely powerful and persuasive.

Don't get me wrong...I'm a social conservative, too, and I don't want to have to compromise a single seat to a social moderate/liberal that I don't have to. (Well...I'm actually more socially libertarian with a strong conservative bend.) That's rare for someone of my persuasion, I know...but I guess my Baptist roots run deep. :-) But, if we can't win with social conservatives in some areas, that shouldn't impede the progress that critically needs to be made when it comes to getting a flat national income tax where everyone pays the current lowest rate, privatizing social security and medicare, increasing free trade, and cutting subsidies and other wasteful government spending.

The budget is in crisis, and we have got to find a way to get more Club for Growth fiscal conservatives who are strong on national security in power in DC.

Most liberals are in for the package deal... liberal across the board (and the same can be said for conservatives). There's plenty of Karl Marx anti-business sentiment in the NE and upper Midwest to go around.

I would guess there are more fiscal liberal/social conservatives in the upper Midwest than the inverse... that group consisting of much of the WWII generation and a portion of the union voters.

Can't say I can think of any major group that is fiscally conservative/socially liberal (at least in the upper Midwest) that isn't already voting for Republicans, though.
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"I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more I have of it." -- Thomas Jefferson

The GOP has been running social liberal/fiscal conservative types in the North East for a very long time, and it gets them exactly nowhere. The GOP candidate for the CT senate seat seems to be just as socially liberal as Lamont or Lieberamn. Kean in NJ would fit in with any NE Democrat on social issues. Rudy is more socially liberal than many Democrats, and they only held their nose and made him mayor because of the disaster named Dinkens. Now NY has Bloomberg who is "fiscally conservative" in the Lamont sense.

So I just don't see any evidence that your strategy (which seems to be SOP for the Republican party) has any chance of success.

The Democratic party is made up of the rich and the poor. The rich are socially liberal. To the limited extent they care about fiscal matters they are slightly conservative. But what they really care about is being in power.

The "poor", who are not exactly poor, are much more socially conservative but fiscally liberal. They make up the black vote and the unions.

Club for Growth fiscal conservatives - when it comes to the size of the Federal government I am much more of an extremist than those wimps at the CFG. Were I to be absolute ruler there would be practically nothing left of the Federal government. And that includes the Interstate Highway System.

But I'm not so foolish as to think that there is any degree of interest in such ideas among the public at large. The CFG agenda might get ten percent of Congress behind it.

Socially liberal ideas got us into this mess, leading to larger government as night follows day. I think the only way out is to retrace our steps.

I'd need to see a larger sample than that.

1. Schesinger, CT Senate candidate, is a joke for reasons other than ideology.

2. Kean is competative - but as much as for his name than anything else. Plus, I'm not aware of him being the type of militant fiscal conservative out warning people about the dangers of federal spending that I'm envisioning.

3. As you note, Rudy won.

4. Michael Bloomberg is a lifelong Democrat who switched parties just before running for Mayor in order to get Rudy's support and get the most bang for all the bucks he was going to sink into the race - which proved a good move.

Rhode Island could prove to be an interesting test case. If Steve Laffey beats Chafee in the GOP primary and then runs a well-funded campaign mirroring Sheldon Whitehouse on social issues, he would be a good test of my theory. After reviewing his website, he makes no mention of social issues, however. That leads me to believe that he is probably conservative on social issues as well. Good for him, but bad for testing my theory.

If you would name me a good, credible Republican who was stridently socially liberal/moderate and stridently fiscally conservative...I'd like to look into it more.

You're right in that a populist fiscal liberal/social conservative would find a lot of traction. The day that fiscal conservatism gets unwed from social conservatism, however, as a platform for candidates is a very, very scary day for the fiscal health of the nation.

I'm very much afraid that if we don't do something drastic very soon regarding spending and the budget, we're going to be in the position Argentina was in in the late 90s. It is going to be scary, destabilize the country, and negatively impact every aspect of American life.

And we'll have the pork of politicians like Ted Stevens as well as Tom DeLay's and Dubya's Medicare Part D to blame for adding to the problem. Those who aren't working to fix the problem are a part of the problem.