GOP plan to mobilize "hard core" voters may cost them

[Rose Siding]

WASHINGTON -- With votes this week on gay marriage, stem cell research and the Pledge of Allegiance, the Republican-controlled Congress is systematically working through an agenda of conservative causes, eager to mobilize hard-core voters in the months before the midterm elections.

The votes are part of an "American Values Agenda"...........

Not all Republicans are pleased with the social priorities. Several Northeast Republicans are facing strong Democratic challenges in moderate to Democratic-leaning districts where topics such as gay marriage find little resonance.

"This type of social agenda or social policy-making at the congressional level is of no interest to me," said Rep. Rob Simmons, R-Conn., who is in a tough re-election fight. "They may be successful in certain districts, but they certainly aren't successful in my district. My constituents are well-informed and well-educated and prepared to make a lot of these decisions themselves and they don't want the government to be involved."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/19/AR2006071900207.html

snap

[The_Casual_Observer]

1. They have failed to pass any of this stuff. How could failure translate

into votes? It would be different if after controlling the whole government for years had gotten some results, but they are still empty handed.

[calico1]

5. They are not targeting mainstream, more

Moderate Republicans. They are pandering to the nut job, wacko, fundies and hope that there are enough of them that will come out and vote for them in Nov. If they can get them motivated by being on record as voting against stem cell research, etc. then they hope that will get them to go vote. They don't have to win....just show that they are fighting to do the right thing, as a fundy would see it.

[The_Casual_Observer]

6. Even the dumbest and most docile of them eventually realize

that there isn't a bicycle hidden under the pile of manure. Relying of these extreme social wedge issues is unsustainable, since they will never be successful. There isn't a payoff, there will never be a payoff.

[calico1]

7. I agree.

But I am just saying that is the reason for this strategy. I personally think it will blow up on them. Just with the stem cell issue alone.

[glitch]

8. It's just cover for the planned election fraud they can claim these issues

brought out their base, whether it does or not. At most it will bring out the 23% who were coming out anyway.

Ohio redux.

[AndyA]

2. Republicans I know are saying that "Government needs to get out

of the bedroom, and mind its own business."

This would indicate mainstream Republicans are not amused by the time being wasted in Congress on these issues.

Edit: Punctuation.

[cspanlovr]

3. With the world on fire, only the backwash could support such crapolla

coming out of our congress.

[Supersedeas]

13. I have been surprise during three election cycles already at how much

backwash there is out there.

[BOSSHOG]

4. That must suck for a republican when your constituents

are well educated and well informed. Pandering to a small minority of religiously insane hateful human beings just doesn't seem like a winning election strategy to me. Hate gays, fuck people with Alzheimers' and force your religious beliefs onto public documents. Republicans must certainly be fucking proud of their agenda.

[calico1]

10. Simmons is my rep.

While I hope he gets replaced, he is no wingnut. A wingnut would have a very hard time winning in this State.

[Peace Patriot]

9. What we are looking at is part of the pre-written narrative of the

election, to be used afterward to "explain" the miraculous Bushite comeback in November. WaPo and the other war profiteering corporate news monopolies will say, "Oh, it was those appeals to the base that really got them out to vote, and overturned the opinion of 70% of the American people. Gay marriage, flag burning, hating immigrants. Real motivators. A brilliant strategy. Karl Rove, who started the year with rumors of his indictment that turned out not to be true, has done it again! The Republicans' 'miracle man'!"

In Ohio last year, they experimented with massive, blatant reversal of the true vote, with several election reform initiatives that were predicted to win by 60/40 votes, and somehow, on election day, ended up LOSING by that much, 60/40--the biggest flipover we've seen yet, with the new, Bushite-controlled electronic election theft machines, run on TRADE SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code, with virtually no audit/recount controls.

The American people are so down on this criminal regime and its Diebold Congress that they will need a massive vote switch to "win"--and lots of "explanations" for the corporate news monopolies to spout. This will be one of them. Another will be Bush's proxy war in the Middle East (where we're seeing Plan B for invading Iran and Syria--get Israel to do it.) They'll claim that the voters bought (the line we're going to hear next): 'Don't switch rocking horses in the middle of a Middle East meltdown.' American voters are not stupid, as they have time and again proven--but they do suffer a lagtime on the methods of their disempowerment and disenfranchisement. They are just catching up with the latest one--Diebold, ES&S and the new election theft machines. It is already too late for anything but a massive Absentee Ballot voting protest--which could possibly bring the rigged system down, if enough people do it. AB voting is not "safe," but it IS a PROTEST against the rigged machines that is on the rise among ordinary citizens and voters--up to 50% in Los Angeles, for instance. If it gets big enough, it will, for one thing, make the machines obsolete--since no one will vote on them! It's an indigenous BOYCOTT--but not against voting; against voting on rigged machines!

[Old and In the Way]

11. So, explain again why you are a Republican Rep. Simmons?

Is it because you are for fiscal restraint? Or against meddling in foreign nation's affairs? Or against the creeping intrusion of our government into our private affairs?

Seems you have a choice, either get with the New Republican agenda or join your constituents in the opposition party.

[rock]

12. Values can only be instilled, not legislated in

If you will, values are sold by being shown to of worth. The CONservatives very approach shows that they do not have good values.