Bob Beauprez Quotes

He was a liberal Republican in an era where the Republican paty was controlled by arch conservatives, the Tea Party extremists, and evangelical Protestants while Gullani was divorced, a Catholic, and lived openly with a woman to whom he was not married. He supported a woman’s right to abortion and gay rights.

The Republican candidates were campaigning for the Primary election in Illinois. Lincoln was the first and the greatest of the Republican Presidents and a great liberal. The Republicans used to be the more liberal of the two American major parties and even referred to themselves as “radicals.” However the political parties flip flopped over time and in the 2012 primary campaign the Republican candidates were outdoing each other to show who was the most conservative and could trash liberals the most. Pointing out this contradiction between the politics of the first and most popular Republican President and the then current crop of contenders was a little embarrassing to some Republicans and a powerful anti-current Republican message to independents and Democrats.

Republican candidates at that time, in order to win the nomination of the party, had to prove to the base of primary voters that they were strong conservatives. In doing so, they had to adopt policies and views that were too far to the right for most American voters and they would lose the general election.

At that time, the right wing of the Republican party was so anti-Federal Government, that they would de facto veto any Washington Politician who tried to get the Presidential nomination.

This appears to be the first time in American history where the losing opposition did not at least claim that they wanted to work with the elected president to better the country. In this case, the partisanship was so bad that the major goal of the Republicans was to do what they could to have the president fail in his first term. To achieve their objective, the Republicans opposed almost every presidential legislative initiative of Obama’s including those that they had supported in previous ones. In several cases, the President proposed to accept previous Republican programs and ideas, and must Republicans then voted against the proposal so that they could deny the president any legislative success even if it moved the Republican programmatic agenda ahead. The Strategy worked in the sense that that Congress passed fewer bills that any in history, but failed to keep Obama from a second term. While the voters were not happy that the President was not able to persuade the Republicans to compromise and pass needed legislation, enough of them realized that the Republicans were more responsible, and reelected the President. The constant opposition to anything Obama advocated and the drumbeat of accusations against him drove his public approval numbers way down. In the process the Republicans drove their own approval percentage under 10 percent. The Republicans followed McConnell’s leadership, hurt the President badly, hurt themselves worse, and hurt the country.

In reality, Donald Trump won despite the opoposition of the leaderships of both political parties. In the Republican Primary elections he defeated the condidates preferred by the Republican leaders and elected officials accross the country. However, once he won the promaries, most--many reluctantly--supported him rather than the Democrat. Then Tump, to almsot everyone's surprise, bested Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Candidate and became President.