Jim DeMint: Conservative ideas need a new message

[DonViejo]

By Jim DeMint, Published: January 10

Jim DeMint represented South Carolina in the Senate from 2005 to 2013 and in the House from 1999 to 2005.

The U.S. Senate reached an all-time low — a hard mark to achieve — last week as I said my goodbyes to rejoin the real world. The “fiscal cliff” theatrics ended with a predictable non-solution that raised taxes on all U.S. workers and added more weight to the millstone the federal government has hung around our necks.

A day after that “achievement,” I left Congress and moved across the street to the Heritage Foundation, where the mission is to formulate and promote conservative ideas. It is from Heritage — of which I will become president in April — that I aim to take this message directly to the American people. Why? Because the federal government will not stop spending, borrowing and growing our debt until the American people force it to stop.

Conservative ideas work. Numerous states are demonstrating that low taxes, right-to-work laws, school choice, energy development and other common-sense policies improve the lives of everyone. Conversely, progressive central planning has failed throughout history and is still failing today.

The right ideas have the power to change the course of America, which is why the place to launch a conservative revival is the Heritage Foundation. It used to be said that Willie Mays’s glove was where triples went to die. Well, Congress has become the place where good ideas go to die. In contrast, think tanks such as Heritage use objective analysis to discover why ideas work or don’t.

-snip-

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/jim-demint-conservative-ideas-need-a-new-message/2013/01/10/9d0054e8-5b54-11e2-9fa9-5fbdc9530eb9_story.html?wpisrc=nl_headlines

[BeyondGeography]

1. You can start by losing the commie rhetoric there, Jim

"Progressive central planning." You, sir, are a dinosaur. But why make constructive suggestions...

[CanonRay]

2. Note to Jim DeMint

Conservative ideas need new ideas. You "ideas" have fucked this country up for the last 30+ years.

[JoeBlowToo]

3. "Good ideas" for who?

Can anyone think of a right wing "good idea" that has actually improved the economy or created any jobs or improved the economy?

I can't.

[NewJeffCT]

4. Progressives don't have central planning

that's what conservatives have and have used so effectively over the last 30 years to sell people their tired, worn-out ideas.

[kysrsoze]

6. Kysrsoze: Conservative idiots need new brains.

Get a brain, morans!

[Erose999]

7. None of these ideas are really "new". Its just a new branding put on the same old policies of

anti-unionism, regressive taxation, dependance on fossil fuels, etc etc.

Its less than a "conservative revival" and more like always having somebody get out and push, or parking on a hill to roll it off because the battery is dead, instead of just getting a new battery.

[sinkingfeeling]

8. They need new ideas, new language to describe things, and a new definition of what 'works'.

[LeftishBrit]

9. I have a new message for conservative ideas: Go off to extinction!

[Tombiag]

10. "think tanks such as Heritage use objective analysis"

[gkhouston]

13. Oh, but they do. They use "analysis" that serves their objective.

What? That's not what it means?

[Brother Buzz]

11. You just keep thinking, Butch. That's what you're good at.

[gkhouston]

12. They need a new message?? How about some new ideas?

Dude, if you feel a need to publish the phrase, "Conservative ideas work," in the newspaper, it's pretty damned clear they aren't working. If they were, there'd be no need to declare it.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

14. Right

methinks he doth protests too much! If conservative *ideas* worked it would be self-evident to everybody living in Republican-dominated states. Things like high rates of poverty, low rates of health insurance, low pay and little or no benefits are the hallmarks of (mostly) Republican-dominated states. According to people like DeMint, the Republican-dominated states should be utopias that we clearly know they are NOT.

[MrSlayer]

15. In what fucking world do these fascist moves "work"?

Work for whom? The richest assholes for sure. Not the regular folk.

Alvin Greene where are you?

[and-justice-for-all]

16. Cons have no ideas...

other than to drag us back to 1950. The "conservative' ideology has no place in the future.

[FleetwoodMac]

17. So I guess the message about making Mr. Obama a single-term president didn't work out, huh?

[Jamaal510]

18. The only thing I got from this is that

the GOP still wants to sell people Shit Sandwiches, except wrapped up in fancier-looking wrappers. Jeez...when is it ever going to occur to them that their policies stink and must be changed in order for their party to remain competitive in the future?

[TeamPooka]

19. Hey DeMint, we don't have to listen to you anymore. You're not a Senator, just a corporate shill

[Angry Dragon]

20. Jim DeMint lost in the fog of his mind