Posts Tagged ‘Republican Party’

Whistling Past the Political Graveyard

Tuesday, March 30th, 2021

Fighting Wars Already Lost

None of you will be surprised at today’s thesis.  This has been the regular theme in American politics for a long while, and it’s ever more disheartening to see. Last night, I attended a meeting of my local county Republican Party. A State Representative had been invited to speak on the current legislative agenda, and the things he is doing to advance Republican issues. After the first ten minutes, it became clear to me that he needs to go.  He’s a long-time “good ole boys” network guy, involved for decades in local, regional, and state politics, but it’s clear he has no stomach for the fight ahead.  I’m sure he’s a nice enough fellow, but right now, we don’t need “nice guys” but instead, we need fire-breathing dragons. Nothing is so disappointing as to see a lively crowd of local activists address questions to such a politician, and have him walk out of the room with the questions unanswered. More, and I think this was the more terrifying part, most of the questions were addressed to things he’s specifically raised during his talk, but left unaddressed were all the more critical issues now facing the country.  I’m glad he’s interested in cutting taxes and slowing the growth of government, but none of that matters right now.  Just like DC Republicans, this guy doesn’t see the crisis, in part because it doesn’t affect him, but in larger measure due to a sort of intrinsic cowardice built into his view of Republicanism. Here is a man who served honorably in the military both on active and inactive duty for decades, a helicopter pilot, but he’s closed his eyes to the battle raging all around him.  These are the people we must respectfully ask to step down, and then insist if necessary. They’re doing us no good, and in fact, by yielding the battlefield to the adversary, are effectively taking part in mass surrender.

The Texas State Representative seemed to avoid all cultural issues. Whatever his particular views on them, it was clear that he didn’t want to talk about immigration, abortion, cancel culture, or any of the non-economic issues confronting the people of Texas and more broadly, the American people.  It seemed to me that those issues were such that he either had contrary feelings on some of them, or that he thought those battles were not his to fight.  Ladies and gentlemen, those issues need our attention, but more generally, we need not cede any portion of the battlefield to the hard left that is now operating without restriction in our nation. He gave a lengthy, detailed talk about the upcoming redistricting, that will be tackled in special session later this year.  What he did not wish to address are any of the cultural issues that will underpin and drive the process.  It’s all well and good to explain what’s likely to happen given the political and demographic realities of the moment, but it would also be instructive to understand how we got to this place.  He seemed reluctant to comment, because once again, this would cross into areas of culture about which he is uncomfortable discussing.  We have no time for such people.  In a time of stability and relative calm, a party can tolerate some number of practical people who are concerned primarily with dollars and cents, to the exclusion of all other matters, but we are in a deepening political crisis that will call upon us all to step up or watch our nation perish.  Yes, it’s as bad as that.  No, the State Representative in question did not seem to perceive it, or if he did, he seemed content to fight to defend his tiny slice of the overall pie.  There was nothing new here.  Here we had another status quo politician trying to slow the growth of government, but also advocating for his own pet program (Rural broadband, in this case,) but in all ways that are important, entirely missing the plot.

The Republican Party must focus on just a handful of things at present, particularly in the legislative venues at our disposal.

  • Election Integrity
  • Limiting the authority of governments/officials during so-called “pandemics”
  • Breaking up the Social Media and Broadcast media ideological oligopoly
  • Throttling the education bureaucracy that is intentionally mis/dis-educating our children
  • Preserving our rights to defend ourselves and our communities, including our sovereignty as a nation

Listening to our State Representative last evening, I realized that he had no interest in any of these issues. None. These are the issues that will decide whether it’s even possible to have a Republican State Representative in this legislative district in the near-term future.  This man, and those like him, are whistling past the political graveyard.  There can be no future for Republicans, or specifically, conservatism, if we continue to pretend that we can still wave our hands around talking about tax cuts and making government more efficient even while the left is demolishing our ability to do anything whatever about it. Worse, it is laughable to talk about controlling the growth of government while essentially advocating for more government programs and dollars. The left is actively purging Republicans from polite society at an increasing rate, and while well-meaning fools run about talking about economic and financial issues, the left is undermining the whole of the economy on which any such notions are based. It does no good to tackle taxing issues when the left is printing money at record pace, creating the cruelest tax of them all: Inflation, as a precursor to economic collapse.

The Republican Party has many smart, dedicated people in it, but I think far too many are stuck in a paradigm that’s been dead and buried for some years. Our nation is being destroyed, and while it happened slowly at first, it has now accelerated to a state requiring a day-to-day assessment of our condition.  While I’m sure the State Representative to whom I listened last night probably means well, he’s not going to be very effective. If he’s not willing to pursue the handful of issues I’ve outlined above, we’re not going to make much headway on the basis of his efforts, irrespective of his sincerity.  Instead, this is a time for activism of another sort. To date, Republicans and conservatives have satisfied themselves with a vaguely contentious discussion about the size of government, but the left is only too happy to entertain that discussion since all the while, they’re cutting out the foundation on which such discussions are based. More, they’re growing government at such a colossal rate that there will soon be no room for the private sector. They’re intentionally crowding us out, while we leave the battleground on which that is occurring unguarded and largely uncontested.

Make no mistake: This is warfare still being conducted in the political sphere, but that will not persist indefinitely. We are rapidly coming to a point at which they will simply demand our outright, explicit surrender, and attached to the demand will be an unavoidable “Or else.” Now is not the time for retrenchment, and retreat. This is the time for bold political activism, because the flaws and fallacies in their arguments are obvious.  What we need is the will to fight.

At the end of last night’s meeting, after the guest speakers had departed, new Precinct Chairs were being inducted among other routine business. The party Chairman asked each of them, in turn, why they were seeking these positions. An elderly gentleman, seated not far behind me, explained in two words why he wanted to be a Precinct Chair:

“I’m scared…”

He went on to say that he is scared for the country. He’s scared for his children and grandchildren. He’s scared.  He didn’t shriek his words. He didn’t shout them, but neither did he whimper.  It was a matter-of-fact pronouncement of what every sensible person seated in that room already feels, and knows, in the pit of their stomachs each time they turn on the news. If you’re not scared, you’re a damned fool.  That State Representative, unwilling to address the elephants in that room, listed above, is a damned fool. He’s scared too, but for a different reason: He fears having to enter a battlefield on which he knows nothing about the combatants, the contested issues, and the cause of the fear expressed later by the new Precinct Chair.  It’s a battle he doesn’t know how to fight, and since he doesn’t, his practice has been to retreat into issues where he has better understanding and firmer footing for his advocacy.  The problem is that his fear, for whatever reasons, prohibit him from engaging in the battle we now have before us.  He might be a great warrior in a battle over economic and fiscal policy, but he clearly has a lacking of either the stomach or the standing for the all-out political and cultural war we now face.  They aren’t here to make peace with us. They’re here to wipe us out.

I would ask my fellow conservatives to attend meetings of their local Republican Party, learn the players, learn the mechanics of it all, and then seek a seat as a Precinct Chair/Committeeman (whatever they call it in your state.)  Dan Shultz of ThePrecinctProject Blog offers some insight here. Here’s a video of an interview by Steven K Bannon from his show “War Room:”

 

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Posted in Activism, Conservatism, Election 2022, Featured, GOP Establishment, News, Republican Party | Comments Closed

Four Years Later: Mitt Romney Still Despicable

Saturday, March 19th, 2016

mitt_mobile_ftIt was bad enough that this jerk managed to blow an election he should have won.  It was thoroughly embarrassing that he let Candy Crowley “punk” him in a nationally televised debate. All that should have been the end of Mitt Romney’s appearances in our national life, but I wonder if what Mitt Romney fears most about Donald Trump might be that Trump will actually fight, get down in the muddy ditch with Hillary, and knock the Hell out of her, politically speaking, of course.  Friday, he posted another anti-Trump screed on Facebook, and this time, he said that in Utah, he’s going to be voting for Ted Cruz.  He says he’s not voting for Cruz for any reason but to cause a contested convention, but how is anybody going to take this clown seriously?  If he were able to somehow rig the nomination of a candidate other than one of the two currently plausible nominees, I’m afraid many people would have radically strong reactions against the GOP.  For instance, some of us might be inclined to exercise what I’ve termed “Trump’s Nuclear Option.”  I know I would.

Nothing is more despicable than an establishment has-been leaping onto the stage as if he has some sort of credibility with the Republican rank-and-file voters. Here’s the statement this jackass made on Facebook on Friday:

This week, in the Utah nominating caucus, I will vote for Senator Ted Cruz.

Today, there is a contest between Trumpism and Republicanism. Through the calculated statements of its leader, Trumpism has become associated with racism, misogyny, bigotry, xenophobia, vulgarity and, most recently, threats and violence. I am repulsed by each and every one of these.

The only path that remains to nominate a Republican rather than Mr. Trump is to have an open convention. At this stage, the only way we can reach an open convention is for Senator Cruz to be successful in as many of the remaining nominating elections as possible.

I like Governor John Kasich. I have campaigned with him. He has a solid record as governor. I would have voted for him in Ohio. But a vote for Governor Kasich in future contests makes it extremely likely that Trumpism would prevail.

I will vote for Senator Cruz and I encourage others to do so as well, so that we can have an open convention and nominate a Republican.

How very nice of this jerk! Why didn’t he endorse Cruz?  Why did he have to say such a thing?  All this will do is to infuriate Republican voters, causing them to react in opposition to his foolish plotting.  It’s baffling that this man thinks he has even the slightest shred of credibility remaining with the Republican base.

My message in opposition to Mitt Romney’s stupid, detestable, despicable statement is here:

In the coming weeks, the GOP will continue the process of permitting the voters to express their preference as to who should be the party’s nominee for President.

Today, a past party nominee has decided to continue and further his attacks on the current putative “front-runner” for that nomination. I have compiled, therefore,  a list of questions for the 2012 Republican nominee:

Mr. President Private Citizen Romney, what makes you believe you have the moral authority to prescribe to any Republican the disposition of his or her vote?  You’ve shown no ability whatever to obtain an electoral majority in the United States.  On what basis do you now offer your advice to Republican voters, knowing you’ve been a colossal failure in your previous attempts to attain the highest office in the land?  When Candy Crowley basically let her refusal to support your assertion stand as an accusation of lying on your part, why did you not respond? (Hint: this is likely the same reason you lost to Barack Obama.)  Would you be willing to ride in a Vari-Kennel on the roof of my car? Do you think anybody actually cares if or how you answer any of the foregoing?

Mitt Romney, you are a worthless political has-been who retains no credibility among the broadest base of the Republican Party, the conservative movement, or almost anybody anywhere.  Go away now.  Shut up.  Yes, you have free speech, but what you must learn is that because you can do a thing doesn’t mean you should.

Four year later, Willard, you’ve learned nothing and you’re still despicable.

In 2012, much against my preferences, and my own political leanings, I went to the polls in November and supported Mitt Romney as the nominee of the Republican Party. I did so knowing that Mitt Romney was in no way representative of my conservative views.  I knew he had, while serving as governor of Massachusetts, implemented policies I found to be despicable in a free nation, particularly by a person elected as a Republican.  Still, I dutifully did as millions of other voters summoned the discipline to do despite many, many misgivings about Mitt. I went to the polling place and select Romney for President, and with millions of others, knew he would go down to miserable defeat.  He failed to make the arguments. He never really believed in conservatism, and still doesn’t. My last question for Mr. Romney is one I think every Republican who voted for him in 2012 despite a myriad of disagreements with his record and his campaign should have every right to ask, and have answered:

We supported a nominee in the general who we had not supported in the primary, a man who had not been our first, second, or even third choice. We supported the Party’s nominee.  Having done this on behalf of the party, and as I am again prepared to do in the election this November despite serious misgivings over all of the candidates now campaigning, I now ask you sir: Why will you not support the nominee of the Republican party despite your misgivings, just as I set aside my more sincere and severe misgivings with you in 2012? Is party loyalty only good for the base, but irrelevant for the elites?

Mr. Romney would doubtless excuse himself with some tortured, indignant statement about the various failings of Trump, but what he would not do is to answer the question.  He can’t, because he’s a despicable fraud, and it’s one of the key reasons so many of us had so many thorough doubts about him four years ago.  Go home Mitt. Go home and stay there.

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Posted in Election 2016, Featured, Mitt Romney, News, Politics, Wicked Hillary | 3 Comments »

GOP Says “FU”

Friday, March 18th, 2016

its-our-party-we-can-do-do-what-we-want_ftThe GOP establishment isn’t going quietly. In fact, they’re building their booby trap for those who would oust them from dominance in the upcoming elections, and those who have to date deprived them of viable candidates in the Republican primary season.  I have here stated that I’m not a big fan of Donald Trump, and that I have serious misgivings about all of the Republican candidates.  What you should know is that as much as I may not like Donald Trump’s behavior and antics, I vastly prefer him to the crooked DC UniParty that includes both Democrat and Republican establishments.  What we’ve learned today is that in order to interrupt the natural, normal primary process as the GOP establishment had already rigged it, they will use the continuing candidacy of a mail carrier’s son to foist on the party a nominee like Paul Ryan, or another establishment Republican, through the contested convention process, should neither Trump nor Cruz obtain the necessary 1,237 delegates.  If that doesn’t disgust you quite enough, and it isn’t clear enough to you how, as a voter for any candidate in the GOP primary, you’re being screwed, there’s this bit of news:  Orin Hatch(R-UT) is already aboard with the Obama nomination of  leftist radical Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court of the United States.   Perpetual sell-outs Jeff Flake, Kelly Ayotte, and Susan Collins have already expressed interest in meeting with Garland.  You need to understand how you’re being betrayed by the GOP establishment.

This is their parting gift.  If they can’t win in the regular primary process, they’re going to make your votes meaningless.  If that still doesn’t permit them to maintain power, and if they’re unable to stop Trump directly, they will support Hillary.  Assuming somehow that doesn’t materialize, and Trump has such a groundswell of support in the Fall that they’re unable to sufficiently damage him in order to elect Hillary, they are setting up their parting gift: If they believe they’re about to be ousted anyway, they are going to shove a leftist Supreme Court justice down our throats to wreck the country for decades, if not forever.  One way or another, they’re going to have their revenge, like the petulant children of Bill Clinton’s administration who stole all the “W” keys from keyboards throughout the executive departments of our government, the difference being that this will be substantially more damaging, and it will be done with far more malice.  Speaking of malice for Republican voters, watch the following video (H/T Sundance @ the ConservativeTreehouse), and listen closely just beyond the three minute mark:

That’s right, it’s THEIR party, and they’ll nominate who they damned well please.  For those who don’t quite understand this, let me explain it this way: Delegates select the nominee. Voters participate in a process by which delegates are selected, but this is where the voter’s legal say in the process ends. As a practical matter, it is true that the party selects the nominee through its delegates.  If no candidate obtains 1,237 delegates(one more than half) then the delegates who are required to support the candidate to whom they were originally allocated in the first vote become unbound in any successive votes, meaning they can cross over and vote for another candidate.  This is essentially a “contested convention” by party rules, and at present, unless something shifts wildly, it’s going to be very difficult for any of the candidates to get to the 1,237 delegates required.  What Curly Haugland is explaining in this video is that which we already know: It’s THEIR party.  They make the rules, and they determine the process, which means that they alone really possess the ability to select the party’s nominee.  They can make changes to the rules almost at will.

Haugland isn’t lying. Haugland is simply stating the facts. What voters must now realize is what many people have been explaining for decades, but that nobody seems willing to acknowledge: The whole primary process is a farce.  In the Democrat party, it is dominated by “Super Delegates” who basically are able to obviate the will of the voters at their whim.  Witness how Bernie Sanders can win the popular vote in a given state, but always loses in the delegate count. In the 1970s, the Democrats created the “Super Delegates” in the wake of George McGovern’s candidacy, because they never wanted such an apparent leftist to be the nominee of their party again. It’s the Democrat establishment’s version of “Screw-the-vote,” and it’s in clear evidence in 2016 in the race between Clinton and Sanders.

On the Republican side, a different methodology is used to obtain the same kind of result.  A myriad of candidates are inserted into the campaign to split and shape the results.  As they lose their utility in shaping the race, they’re withdrawn from the process.  This is why John Kasich remains in this race today, because he’s going to effectively siphon-off just enough delegates to make sure neither of the other two can obtain 1,237 delegates.  This will put the GOP establishment in the position of being able to negotiate with the candidates at the convention, probably even throughout the period between the last primary in early June, and the convention’s start in July.  By then, the delegate counts will be firmly known, and the deal-making will begin in earnest.  We will eventually discover who had been the better deal-maker, or if a deal had been reached at all, once the voting begins at the convention.  I would not be surprised to see a Trump-Kasich ticket emerge, with Kasich being the establishment’s lever in the supposed presidency of Donald Trump.

Whatever the case, you can bet that the GOP establishment will use a “contested convention” to set their hooks deeply into Donald Trump’s backside if he is to become the nominee.  The same is true if they were to instead broker a deal with Ted Cruz.  The basic idea here is that they will obtain certain policy concessions for the DC UniParty that will undermine whomever they ultimately decide to support in this process.  You can bet that this is where some form of “amnesty” will sneak in over the threshold, and you can expect to be thoroughly betrayed on this issue.  Whether it’s some sort of “touch-back amnesty” as Trump has previously suggested, or a “legalize-in-place-without-path-to-citizenship” as Cruz has previously advocated, you can bet the hooks will be set firmly.

The party establishments are firmly in control of their parties, and I detest the misleading comments of those who will tell you now that the “GOP establishment is dead.”  Nothing could be further from the truth, and they will never yield power in their party.  At best, they’re in hiding.  Should voters become so incensed at the process that they decide to form a new party, abandoning the GOP altogether, the GOP establishment will simply switch and work to co-opt the new party.  There is a vast political class of consultants, analysts, propagandists, public-relations pushers, and pollsters who cannot live without this process.  They’d be out of a job.  They are the folks most threatened by the two remaining Republican candidates, because either is likely to wipe out a good deal of this nonsense if they are able to obtain the nomination and win the presidency.

The Republican Party’s establishment is able to say “FU” to the voters and make it stick, certainly for now, and probably for as long as the Republican Party remains in existence. They control far too much of the process to ever be truly defeated on their own home turf.  Even Ronald Reagan discovered this as he found through the course of his presidency that he was being consistently opposed and undermined not just by Democrats like Ted Kennedy, but also from within his own administration through the establishment cronies tied to his Vice President.  If either Trump or Cruz manages to make a deal to get the nomination at a “contested convention,” you should know that exactly the same sort of thing will be in the offing, because the establishment isn’t giving up their power without a serious knock-down, drag-out fight.  We should be realistic about the betrayals that will attend any deal-making, and it’s why we must never forget that when they assert that it’s THEIR party, they aren’t lying.  It’s just that in most cases, they’re just as soon not point it out.  We should be prepared to exert our influence, to the degree we have any, with the candidate who they ultimately nominate, because the deal-making of the DC establishment is never in our favor. Never.

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Posted in Election 2016, Featured, GOP Establishment, News, Politics, Video | 2 Comments »

Poll Reveals GOP Desire to Justify Ditching “Social Issues”

Sunday, January 27th, 2013

Dying Cockroach Party

By now, it should be apparent to every conservative that the Republican Party wants to ditch the whole slate of social issues.  Establishment Republicans aren’t comfortable discussing them, and as we know well by now, the reason is frequently that their opinions are at odds with most conservatives.  Abortion is one of the issues they are only too willing to abandon, because they’ve adopted the belief that the issue is a loser for Republicans.  Increasingly, however, Americans are beginning to shift toward a more pro-life view.  This new poll, part of the Republican Party’s new Growth and Opportunity Project, is aimed at creating one impression, and that is to drive people away from so-called social issues, and to justify banishing the touchy subject from the party.  The GOP establishment is at war with its conservative base, and this is one way they’re trying to silence social conservatives and evangelical Christian in the party.  Consider the following questions, captured from their poll(I’ve screen-captured the entire poll, here.) Pay particular attention to the third question:

Obviously, the third question is devised so as to force you to choose which alternative to abandon. It doesn’t take a genius to see that the first two questions will probably receive the same answer.  Most people will say that the issues most important to them are those which the GOP should spend more time talking about.  The first two questions really serve as filler, however, because the question they wanted answered is the third.  This is effectively a push poll question.  It’s used to drive opinions and derive a preconceived result.  In this instance, the GOP leaves respondents no choice but to choose one issue to be abandoned. The question is aimed at leading you to an answer, easily revealed by asking it as they intend it:

  1. Shall we abandon fiscal issues like taxes, government spending, and the debt?
  2. Shall we abandon economic issues, like unemployment, housing, and high energy prices?
  3. Shall we abandon National Security issues, like terrorism, foreign policy, and national defense?
  4. Or finally, shall we abandon Social issues, like abortion and family values?

Once viewed in this way, the object of the poll becomes clear, and it is precisely this sort of manipulative garbage that should make conservatives’ skin crawl with disgust over the sleazy nature of the GOP establishment and the National Republican Committee.  If they had actually wanted to know something useful, rather than attempting to drive opinion and creating the theoretical justification for abandoning “social issues and family values,” they would have asked the question differently, perhaps asking you to number the choices, but also making the range of choices more specific with a longer list.  Instead, you can’t even skip the third question on this page, but must make at least one selection for every question.

Unlike those in the Republican establishment, I realize that social issues are actually significant drivers of fiscal and economic issues, ultimately endangering our national security through fiscal effects, if by no other means.  I also realize that our government spending and taxes, as well as the debt all wind up being drivers of the economic issues, particularly including those listed. The Republican Party thinks we are all stupid, and that we’ll fall for their idiotic poll.  I answered the poll, and in part because I know the economic problems owe largely to the fiscal ones, on the third question, I selected “Economic issues” with the primary motive of frustrating the GOP’s attempt to ditch the social issues.

The Republican party hopes we’re all too stupid to understand the manipulative tactic being employed, but this is the sort of thing we need to expose.  This poll was designed to derive an answer that will justify ditching the so-called “social issues,” but in some respects, consequences of social issues are the biggest and most intractable problems our nation faces. More than that, however, those who think the Republican party can be rescued must acknowledge that this makes plain the GOP’s desire to remake the “big tent” in their own image, and it’s something conservatives ought to abhor.  After all, even if you hold National Security as the most important single issue, does that mean you are unconcerned by the others?

Can we really be limited to just four choices on which topics to exclude from discussion?  What if we added another choice, like “Environmental issues, like Global Climate change and CAFE standards”  How many would choose to exclude that, ahead of so-called “social issues?”  It’s despicable that the Republican party views us as cattle to be herded, and it’s the reason why I am now contemplating seriously the increasingly popular alternative of replacing that dying, corrupt  party.  While the GOP downplays the importance of social issues like family values, here’s a little primer by Steven Crowder at Fox News in that vein that demonstrates why social issues can have a vast fiscal and economic impact.

This poll had one goal: The justification of ejecting social issues from the Party’s platform.  The DC establishment Republicans simply don’t wish to touch these issues, because to do so requires clear-headed thinking and a strategy for countering bankrupt Democrat arguments favored in media, but by now, we should all understand that the Republican party will sell out conservatives at every turn.  It may be time for conservatives to make plain their displeasure with the GOP leadership, leaving that broken party behind forevermore, relegating it to the status of contemporary Whigs.

 

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Posted in Activism, Conservatism, Featured, GOP Establishment, News, Politics | 4 Comments »

A Party of Sell-outs Symbolized by Their Leader Must Be Replaced

Thursday, January 3rd, 2013

It’s his party…

Watching the vote for Speaker of the House on C-SPAN, it became apparent that the suck-up weasels in the GOP simply do not have the stomach for the fight.  Boehner was re-elected with Ms. “Titanium Spine” herself, Michele Bachmann(R-MN) arriving at the last moment to vote for John Boehner.  This is the sort of thing we must have expected, since these are the same people who have sold us down the river to the statists.  One might wonder why, but the answer is simple: They’re statists too.  It’s really no more complicated than that.  These people aren’t interested in restraining the growth of government, or abiding by the constitution.  This is a parade of useless feeders, gobbling up your resources while pretending to represent you.  I don’t want to hear, ever again, how this one or that one is courageous.  Certainly, there are a few.  At least two votes were cast for Allen West.  A handful abstained or voted for some others, including Eric Cantor.  This crowd of losers picked the best possible representative of their useless class.  This is the crybaby Congress, and they have an apt leader, but cowardice will not save the country.

This is why the GOP must die.  This is why we must build a new party.  It’s time to reconsider all of this. It’s time to realize that we can restore our nation only by leaving the Republican Party to wither on the vine, building a new party, and stepping up to be citizens in full, without reference to this dead polity that wants only to grow the government and serve the purposes of global statism arrayed against us.  The time fore weaseling-out is over.  This vote for speaker was emblematic of a dead party, and a dead polity.  We can no longer afford for the Republican party to dominate the opposition to the statists, since they are now clear allied with the statists.  It’s not too late for a New Year’s resolution, and the first thing you can resolve is to be independent Americans who will work to build a country that actually functions as designed.  The Republican Party functions without reference to your will, your contributions, and your efforts on its behalf.

It’s time to wash it all away.  It’s time to stop pretending that these people will protect us from Obama.  They won’t.  Many of them are openly on his side, and more work toward the same ends in private.  It’s not going to suffice for patriots to wait for somebody else to do their fighting.  It’s going to take you.  If you’re not resolved to save the country, and the constitution that had provided its foundation in liberty, just wave your white flags, submit to Obama and Boehner and Reid, but stop wasting the time of patriots who will.  This isn’t going to be easy, and it’s not going to be nice, so that if you’re obsessed with good manners to the extent that you won’t call a liar a “liar,” or a tyrant a “tyrant,” you might just as well go lie down and wait to be consumed by the legion of looters.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am going to fight for my country and my constitution, and I will do it with or without help, and I will stop only when they drag my carcass through the streets, but I will no longer rely in any measure on the Republican party.  It’s dead.  Don’t wait for it to save you.  It’s helping to sink you, and if you wait for it to come to your rescue, you’re already dead.  This Republican Party isn’t the party of Lincoln, or Reagan, but the party of Nixon and Hoover.  It’s the party of perennial losers committed on principle to selling us out.  I am taking the pledge:  No more Republicans.  It’s a party of, by and for simpering cowards.

Do as you will, but I will have none of it.

 

 

 

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Posted in Activism, Cry-Baby Boehner, Featured, News, Politics | 5 Comments »

Putting Humpty-Dumpty Together Again

Monday, November 12th, 2012

Too Fractured?

The Republican establishment has done all it could to fragment and divide the Republican Party.  Divide and conquer is part of their strategy. In each election, they are willing to let Republicans lose who do not fit the mold of their moderate visions.  Conservatives are told to go along, and to shut up besides.  Worst of all, different factions within conservatism are beginning to follow the cues of the GOP establishment.  Conservatives of various descriptions should understand that we mustn’t permit the establishment to blame conservatism, whether they point their finger at economic conservatives,  Tea Party constitutionalists, social conservatives, evangelicals, or any other element within the broader description of conservatism.  This is part of their strategy to divide us.  Please don’t fall for it.  Instead, I’d like you to look at the GOP establishment, where the blame really rests, and consider what it has meant to all of conservatism to be led by a pack of moderates who behave as a fifth column for the left.  We may never put Humpty-Dumpty together again, but I ‘m not certain we should try.  Instead, I want all of the subsets of the greater universe that is conservatism to examine how the Republican establishment has betrayed all of us, and we can’t win with their divisive approach.

Let’s examine this thesis a little more closely.  I’d like to see if I can demonstrate my point to the broader audience that is conservatism.  Let’s identify some sub-groups, and how their most important issues are being thrown overboard by the GOP establishment:

  • Fiscal conservatives are being told that “we can raise taxes a little on the upper brackets.”
  • Conservatives in general are being told that “we must be open to comprehensive immigration reform.”
  • Social conservatives are  being told that “we must be more open to the gay rights agenda.”
  • Evangelicals are being told that “abortion, contraception, and related life issues are killing us.”
  • Liberty-minded conservatives are being told that “we may have to make some compromises on gun control.”
  • All conservatives are now being told that “Obama-care is the law of the land [and we’re going along.]”
  • All conservatives are being told that “we need to become more inclusive”[while they ditch and fail to support Love and West.]

Which division or subset of the conservative base of the party has not been betrayed by the GOP establishment?

During the primary season, we were told that Mitt Romney was inclusive, Mitt Romney could appeal to independents, he would do well among Hispanics and the LGBT community, and that incredibly, he would do well among minorities in general.  We were assured repeatedly that this sort of moderate candidate could reach all of these independents, but the results of the election tell a completely different story.  We did not make even a slight dent in the so-called “gender gap,” the minority gap, the gay rights gap, or any other discernible subset of so-called “moderates” or “independents.”  Why did that fail?  Why was Romney’s alleged draw insufficient?  The answer is rather simple, and I’ve said it before, but it’s worth repeating: You cannot win by trying to out-liberal the liberals.  They will beat you because this is their game, and they are professionals at winning it, but more importantly, they will rush to point out how you’re effectively endorsing their positions anyway.  Biden did this during the debate with Ryan, and sadly, Ryan had no effective answer.

What you might conclude from this is that the Republican party is hopelessly lost, and I would agree inasmuch as under the current direction and “leadership” offered by the establishment, there is no way to repair the fault-lines splitting the party apart.  Let’s be honest about it:  Conservative positions on a per-issue basis are winners across a broad spectrum of the electorate.  I think we need to engage the various subsets of conservatism and ask the simple question: What one issue is the absolute deal-breaker for you?  Are there more than one?  I suspect there may be, but let’s be honest with ourselves and one another about what that list of issues looks like.

I don’t like the fact that evangelicals have decided (broadly)to take a powder.  I don’t like the fact that social conservatives are splintering away.  I detest the fact that the Tea Party wing of conservatism has felt rejected and put-upon.  In fact, as I go through the list, the thing all of the subsets of conservatism have in common is this: The GOP establishment is out to mute them.  Some may put a priority on one issue over another, but in a broad and general sense, most of these subgroups within conservatism agree.  The problem may be that we’ve been too willing to cast a subgroup of which we are not constituents overboard.  “Throw the evangelicals overboard.”  “Ditch the Tea Party.”  “Get rid of the social conservatives.”  No, if we fall for this ploy, we’re trapped like suckers in a game we cannot win.

In order to obtain electoral victory, we will need to define ourselves rather than letting the media or the establishment define us.  We’re going to need to find away to create a working coalition that is large enough to capture the White House. We will either do this or die as an electoral force.  We can’t deny that the one thing the Democrats and their cohort groups never do is permit themselves to be split.  The GOP establishment’s tendency to compartmentalize conservatism so as to better control us means we’re going to need to defeat and discharge them from leadership, or abandon the Republican Party altogether. We have four years to have our act together, but truly a good deal less, and it’s time to acknowledge that the leadership of the Republican party on the national level is ineffective, disingenuous, and in all too many instances, the largest part of the problem.  The work begins now.  Let’s get going!

 

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This Primary Race Isn’t Over

Monday, April 2nd, 2012

Time to Stand

I wish to address this to discouraged conservatives, because I am among your number, and because I don’t think we’re done quite yet, and I don’t think we must settle for Mitt Romney.  Some of you will have rationalized this already on the basis that his alleged “inevitability” seems to be on the brink of becoming true, but let’s not set aside our beliefs in favor of going along to get along.  If Mitt Romney is nominated and loses in the fall, I don’t want it to be for lack of effort to get a better candidate to stand for the general election.  The GOP establishment and nearly the entirety of the media is telling us this is a fait accompli, but I must tell you that I don’t believe there’s yet any reason to accept that this race is over.

Part of the approach of the establishment has been to convince we conservatives that it’s all done, and that but for the formalities involved in the last three months of voting, we have nothing to gain and no chance to win for any candidate but Mitt Romney.  Let me state it bluntly:  This is a lie and its purveyors know it, but they’re hoping you’ll go along with the script.  Nearly seventy percent of self-described Republicans do not believe Mitt Romney can win, and further would like to see some other candidate.

It is for this reason that I believe the real fight against Barack Obama must be now, in the primary season when we choose our candidate.  Look at the turn-out.  Do you know why it’s down?  I can tell you, and it’s simple:  The conservative base of the party has bought the sorry notion that Romney will be our nominee because the fix is in and there’s nothing we can do about it.  The fix certainly seems to be in, but in the end, for it to succeed still requires your silence.  If you’ve supported any of the other three remaining candidates, get off your duff on your state’s primary or caucus day, and go support your candidate.

The establishment always wants you to believe your vote doesn’t matter in this process.  That’s how they manage to dominate the process in election seasons one after the next.  We conservatives seem to find our voices in off-year Congressional elections, if at all, because while the establishment has their favorites too, they campaign is much more diffuse, making it harder for them in many respects to dominate the process. What we conservatives need now to do is to remain standing firm on our principles, and show up and motivate others to show up in the name of the values we hold dear.

Nobody ever promised it would be easy to overcome the Republican establishment, and nobody should suspect they will ever  move aside.  Some have talked about third-party candidacies as a way to get around the “inevitable candidate,” but I would suggest to you that the only way for conservatives to prevail is either to reclaim the Republican party, or make it moot.  The latter holds no short-run promise, but neither does the former.  The fact is that it’s been more than 150 years since we’ve seen one party abandoned entirely to make room for another.  That was the birth of the Republican party, and it displaced the Whigs.  The Whigs had become the establishment party of its day, the functional equivalent of today’s GOP, and like today’s GOP, they didn’t go quietly or easily until the base of the party walked away.

That’s not a process that can occur in six months, and maybe not four years, but it is something we must soon consider, or find ourselves back in this same position again, four years hence, with untold damage having been done to our country if Obama remains and with four years of uncorrected damage if the establishment’s candidate somehow manages to win this November.  Our best path still remains to take the GOP over and to do that, we’ll need to stop Romney, either by defeating him outright, or by denying him a pre-convention victory. In a numerical sense, the brokered convention is still a very real possibility and offers us our best chance.

We won’t attain either if we permit the establishment’s talking points to go unchallenged, both in the media, and at the polls.  We need to stand up now more than ever and be counted or admit we entered a game unprepared for the severity of the battle.  I would hate to think that this had been true, given all the efforts of so many fine conservatives, who have given it their all despite the odds against them.  The truth is they’ve been outnumbered because we’ve not rallied our base, having let the establishment poison the well from which we must draw forth more conservatives to stand on the line beside us.

This should be the primary season in which we conservatives make a stand against the GOP establishment.  They still believe they own the party, but the truth is that when we’re motivated, we outnumber them by a wide margin.  Their tactic of discouraging conservatives will succeed only if we happen to permit it.  I’m asking you to take that stand now, because the situation finally demands it.  We won’t know what the Supreme Court has decided about Obama-care for another three months, but we must behave as though they will uphold it in order to remember why we must fight this issue on the floor of Congress, but also in our nominating convention in August.  Let’s no surrender just yet.  Too many states have yet to voice their preference, and there is nothing that says we can’t force the issue.  It’s time for conservatives to stand, because this race isn’t over unless we surrender.

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Jeb Bush Pushes the Narrative of a “Party of Fear”

Friday, February 24th, 2012

Jeb Denounces Campaign of Fear

Jeb Bush is worried about the Republican Party, and The Hill is reporting on some of his thoughts on the primary campaign for the GOP Presidential nomination.  Among everything else Bush said, there were a few nuggets that should be subjected to scrutiny, as it is increasingly clear that the former Florida governor has parted company with the conservative base of the party. This is a troubling development in my book, because it raises questions about the continued narrative that Bush would be the favored outcome of a brokered convention.  He seems to think that the current crop of GOP contenders are appealing unnecessarily to fear, but I suppose if you live in the Jeb Bush bubble, there’s nothing for anybody to fear.  We’re steaming toward catastrophe, and he will have a lifeboat, but the rest of we passengers on the Titanic know that Captain Obama is steering directly for the iceberg.

“I used to be a conservative, and I watch these debates and I’m wondering — I don’t think I’ve changed, but it’s a little troubling sometimes when people are appealing to people’s fears and emotion rather than trying to get them to look over the horizon for a broader perspective, and that’s kind of where we are,” said Bush, according to Fox News. “I think it changes when we get to the general election. I hope.”

I honestly don’t know what Bush is talking about.  He is being intentionally vague, but I noticed this much: Mr. Bush isn’t a conservative, and he seems to be hinting that the party is moving to the right.  It’s not.  The party has moved slightly leftward, but the problem is that Mr. Bush has been on the leading edge of that slide, and in fact, it’s probably accurate to say he’s been helping to pull it in that direction.  I’m not one of those who bought into the myth that George W. Bush was more conservative than his father, George H.W. Bush, or that Jeb is more conservative than either of these.  You get an indication of this when you look at his remarks on education, that he made to the National Center for Policy Analysis luncheon in Dallas on Thursday, suggesting he doesn’t like the talk of eliminating the Federal Department of Education:

Mr. Bush said, “I’d like to hear more about how important it is that we create a high growth economy where there’s more prosperity and job creation, that we transform our education system.  And what generally the questions are, what do you think the federal role is?  They answer that, that’s fine.  The policy is how do you transform the education system.”

He also cautioned against moving too far to the right:

“I think it’s important for the candidates to recognize though they have to appeal to primary voters, and not turn off independent voters that will be part of a winning coalition.”

I don’t care what Mr. Bush has to say.  Let me say this one last time:  No more Bushes.  I am finished with the Bush clan, and the reason is simple:  They pose as conservatives, but they have shown they are moderates at best, and I’m simply not interested in any more of their governance.  Everything his brother George W. Bush did on the domestic front led to the awful outcome of losing the House in 2006.  You’re free to disagree, but I can state with certainty that there’s absolutely no chance I will ever vote for another member of the Bush family. I don’t believe in political dynasties in America, as a matter of principle, just as I don’t believe in monarchies.

All of this highlights a serious problem in the Republican party, that most readers here will have noticed long ago:  The moderate wing of the party continues to drag us leftward, to the extent that in some ways, many of the presumed establishment leaders of our party frequently have more in common with the Democrats.  Of course, in the end, Governor Bush went on to explain how he believes there will be no brokered convention, and that the nominee will come from those already in the race, stipulating that there’s no way he’d be the nominee by such a process. (Video courtesy CBS 11 DFW)

[youtube=http://youtu.be/5JSRRexdQVY]

I don’t see anything wrong with suggesting that the Federal Department of Education should be eliminated.  I can’t find the word “education” anywhere in our Federal constitution, so I don’t know where that authority arises, or why the Federal government has become involved.  Conservatism would not have created a Federal Department of Education, but apparently Jeb Bush would have done so, and the evidence may be his own brother’s conduct in creating the No Child Left Behind program.  This serves to demonstrate that Jeb Bush is not so conservative as he thought, but the important nugget for us is to understand that fact even if Mr. Bush doesn’t.

Bush contends that the candidates may be moving “too far to the right,” but for my tastes, they could move a good deal more.  Still, I’m less interested in temporary positions that will be dropped when the candidate is chosen.  That’s what the party rightly fears from the likes of Mitt Romney, or from any more of the Bushes, because we’ve been there before.   The truth is that the party has been sliding left for a long time, and that which Jeb Bush considers “conservative” is to the left of Franklin Roosevelt in most important ways.  I realize the party will not be reformed overnight, and I know with people like Mitt Romney leading the drive, it’s likely to get a good deal worse before it gets any better, but I’m not interested in any more talk about moderation.  We’ve moderated ourselves directly off the left edge of the map.  Mr.  Bush may not be fearful, but conservatives know better, because what we fear isn’t a particular event, but the loss of our prosperity and the character of the country upon which it had been based.

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