Let's talk about the Republican Party ...
The Republican Party has had close to 8 months to get its act in gear, yet they still leave intelligent people like Monique Stuart wondering, "Is the Republican strategy to win by default?"
That's a good question.
Others, like AWR Hawkins at American Thinker question Republican Chairman Michael Steele, the Faltering Leader of a Struggling Party. I think that both address valid points, but also that there's more to it ... more, quite frankly, than most are willing to accept.
Hawkins sums up his article with the following paragraph:
Steele appears to be a nice enough guy, but leading the Republican Party isn't necessarily about being nice, it's about having a set of core, conservative convictions on which he will stand come hell or high water. It seems that Steele lacks such convictions. Therefore, as long as he remains the Chair of the RNC there's a good chance the Republican Party will continue its rudderless drift toward oblivion.
While Monique says:
I'm all for hitting Obama where the polls are telling us it will hurt. I also think it might be productive to hit him where he's not vulnerable, yet, until the opinion polls indicate that those issues are going south for him, as well. While they're at it, Republicans should try pulling themselves together and bringing back some party discipline back to what are supposed to the Republican Party's principles.
I fully realize that a lot of what I say on this blog won't win me any popularity contests among the party faithful, but I can live with that. I've been a registered-Republican since the day I turned 18 and excitedly registered to vote. I cold-called night after night campaigning for H.W. Bush (sorry). I've been ridiculously loyal to the party, in spite of the fact they've never been loyal to me. And I tell you all of this to shed a little light on my background and what I'm about to say ...
The Republican Party, the bureaucracy, is not, and has never been, truly conservative.
We can talk about Reagan, but he was only one man. We can talk about Gingrich, but everything he advocates requires "policy," which is nothing more than a code word for government. Bush Jr.? Sorry for the cold shower, but he's a statist. If we're to be honest with each other, we must admit his "compassionate conservatism," was to the left of Bill Clinton!
It's time "we the people" face the music - the Republican Party does not represent conservatism. The only way to say it does, would be to completely re-write the entire history of the conservative movement. That's not to say there haven't been genuine conservatives who were Republicans - Ronald Reagan, Barry Goldwater, and Ron Paul come to mind as genuine conservatives. But these 3 men were/are the exception, not the rule.
Our fight is not just with Democrats. Our fight is with the Republican Party too!
Proof:
Almost 60 years ago, Senator Barry Goldwater wrote The Conscience of a Conservative. Spend a few bucks and buy it! You'll be amazed! The book could have been written yesterday. Same problems, same struggles ... same as it ever was ... Let's take a look at what Goldwater had to say, and you tell me if any of this sounds familiar.
I blame Conservatives - ourselves - myself. Our failure, as on Conservative writer has put it, is the failure of the Conservative demonstration ... We sit impotently while Congress seeks to improvise solutions to problems that are not the real problems facing the country, while the government attempts to assuage imagined concerns and ignores the real concerns and real needs of the people.
Perhaps we suffer from over-sensitivity to the judgements of those who rule the mass communications media. We are daily consigned by "enlightened" commenters to political oblivion: Conservatism, we are told, is out-of-date.
Was that written yesterday? Nope. It was written in 1960. Here's more:
... so many people today with Conservative instincts feel compelled to apologize for them. Or if not to apologize directly, to qualify their commitment in a way that amounts to breast-beating. "Republican candidates," Vice President Nixon has said, "should be economic conservatives, but conservatives with a heart." President Eisenhower announced during his first term, "I am conservative when it comes to economic problems but liberal when it comes to human problems." Still other Republican leaders have insisted on calling themselves "progressive" Conservatives. These formulations are tantamount to an admission that Conservatism is a narrow, mechanistic economic theory that may work very well as a bookkeeper's guide, but cannot be relied upon as a comprehensive political philosophy.
Same as it ever was ... "compassionate conservatism" ... "neoconservatism in action" ... Medicare Drug Plan, No Child Left Behind, deficit spending, inflation, "faith-based" initiatives ... None of this is conservative, and let me tell you something else ... the church doesn't need a government program. The government needs to stay out of the church!
Newt Gingrich has been making waves lately with his "American Solutions," but these are not conservative ideas. These are Big Government "solutions." Let's take a look at a few:
- A temporary new tax credit to offset 50% of the payroll tax.
Tax credit? Temporary? Just who's money does Gingrich think it is in the first place? A conservative idea would be to eliminate 50% of the payroll tax (if not the whole thing all together)!
- Provide tax credit incentives to responsible home buyers so they can keep their homes.
More of the same ...
- Invest in affordable energy for the future, including clean coal, ethanol, nuclear power and renewable fuels.
Whose money does Gingrich plan to "invest?" The government doesn't have any money of its own to "invest," it must first be taken from the American people. This is not conservative, it's progressive!
- Replace Sarbanes-Oxley with affordable rules that help create jobs, not destroy them.
Replace? Rules that create jobs? Really? How do "rules" create jobs? We'll let Goldwater respond to Gingrich's ideas, as a test to see if they're conservative or not.
Here we have, by prominent spokesmen ... an unqualified repudiation of the principle of limited government. There is no reference ... to the Constitution, or any attempt to define the legitimate functions. The government can do whatever needs to be done; note, too, the implicit but necessary assumption that it is the government itself that determines what needs to be done. We must not, I think underrate the importance of these statements. They reflect the view of a majority of the leaders of one of our parties, and ... the leaders of the other, and they propound the first principle of totalitarianism: that the State is competent to do all things and is limited in what it actually doesn only by the will of those who control the State.
It is clear that this view is in direct conflict with the Constitution which is an instrument, above all, for limiting the functions of government ...
Senator Barry Goldwater then tells us why the Founder's restricted government:
Throughout history, government has proved to be the chief instrument for thwarting man's liberty. Government represents power in the hands of some men to control and regulate the lives of other men. And power, as Lord Acton said, corrupts men. "Absolute power," he added, "corrupts absolutely."
So what would genuine conservative solutions look like?
Once again, Barry Goldwater's famous words:
I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution or that have failed their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is ``needed'' before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents "interests,'' I shall reply that I was informed that their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can.
Goldwater lost his 1964 bid for president in a land-slide, but don't let that cloud your vision of his success. Lyndon B. Johnson ran one of the dirtiest campaigns in American history, and the Rockefeller Republicans piled on with venom and hatred towards Goldwater of their own, that it almost made LBJ look like his ally in comparison.
Establishment Republicans don't like people who threaten their power. From Taft to Goldwater to Reagan to Paul ... the Establishment fights them all.
Donald Rumsfeld, who was Nixon's US Embassador to NATO was named as Cheif of Staff to Gerald Ford's transition team. Dick Cheney worked for Rumsfeld and came with him to the White House as his assistant. In 1975, Rumsfeld talked President Ford into appointing George H.W. Bush as CIA director. Ford then appointed Rumsfeld to Secretary of Defense and Cheney to Chief of Staff.
Cheney eventually became Gerald Ford's campaign manager in 1976, and they painted Ronald Reagan too "extreme." Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush I were also responsible for having the CIA mislead the Senate Church Committee, in order to protect Ford in his bid for the White House. They lost the election, of course, but then Bush I ran against Reagan in 1980, calling his ideas "voodoo economics," favoring a more statist approach.
Bottom Line:
Conservative voters and the Republican Party Establishment have always been at odds. And an important question to ask ourselves in the"land of the free": Why do all the same names continue to hold office, almost 40 years later? The odds of that happening by chance is next to zero. Senator Barry Goldwater wondered the same thing, writing in his 1979 book With No Apologies:
Since 1944 every American Secretary of State, with the exception of James F. Byrnes, has been a member of the CFR. Almost without exception the members of CFR are united by a congeniality of birth, economic status, and educational background.
When we change Presidents, it is understood to mean the voters are ordering a change in national policy. Since 1945 three different Republicans have occupied the White House for a period of sixteen years. Four Democrats have held this most powerful post the world has to offer for a period of seventeen years. With the exception of the first seven years of the Eisenhower administration, there has been no appreciable change in foreign policy direction.
I'm not suggesting any sort of conspiracy here, afterall, a conspiracy takes place in secret. This, however, has been out in the open, right in front of our eyes the whole time!
So you tell me, does the Republican Party really hold conservative principles? Or perhaps, do they have a different agenda, than those of us in the conservative movement?
I'm convinced they do have a different agenda. The evidence is overwhelming!
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