The Republican Party cannot survive by being the lesser of two evils. Its own survival and likely the survival of the nation depend on it.
Recently there have been a number of questions raised by conservatives who have been questioning what the TEA Party organizations can actually accomplish. With a significant amount of conservative activists taking the position that we need to revitalize the Republican Party and restore it to its proper roots as Ronald Reagan advocated, the concern is whether or not this can bring about the results that the now-active center-right coalition desires. The answer is maybe.
When challenged on this subject Sean Hannity often refers to the how the Republican Party has voted recently on the health control bill, as well as its apparent unity on other issues of political importance of late. This may be a sign of one of two things; that the message has gotten through and the representatives have decided to respect their constituents, or fear that they will be fired come the next election. It is my belief that the latter has been more motivating than respect for the voter. That many of the incumbent Country Club Republicans intend to weather the storm, then return to their ways as big government advocates, only less intense than the Democrat Socialists with their "take over everything" agenda.
Some time ago this author suggested that John McCain was the weakest candidate in the field of Republicans who ran for the nomination in 2008. McCain was and is emblematic of the old guard Republican who should have got out of politics years ago. He is, in many respects, a Republican analog to Ted Kennedy; someone who sees his elective office as an entitlement, and who refuses to give it up because he can't stomach the idea of someone else holding it. Right now he appears willing to toe the party unity line, but in the past he has been all too willing to cross the aisle to the detriment of the national interest. While everyone agrees that he behaved heroically in Vietnam, his heroism appears to have been left behind when he was released from captivity. He refused to stand up to Barack Obama in the same way that he purportedly stood up to his North Vietnamese captors. His failure to move aside for new blood is further evidence of his unsuitability for the office he seeks to retain, and we must hope that the voters of Arizona will realize this.
But more to the point, one of the tenets behind the 1990's Contract With America that led Newt Gingrich to the leadership of the House of Representatives was that if they failed to do the job they should be voted out of office. It took a few years, but the voters did get around to firing a large number of Republicans who failed to stand up against George W. Bush's progressivism. Unfortunately, the result for the public was out of the frying pan and into the fire. They didn't replace the failed Republicans with new blood; they replaced them with radical Democrats, who have now placed the future of the nation in jeopardy. It was a horrible miscarriage of the political process.
Texas State Senator Dan Patrick, who represents the region northwest of Houston succinctly, stated on the evening of April 15 that the Republicans cannot run as the party of the lesser of two evils. Many critics of the Republicans have leveled this accusation at them for as long as I can remember. And they have been correct in this criticism. As so many have stated, both Parties were going in the same direction but one was going much faster than the other. It was that simple. It cannot continue.
The future of the United States of America depends today on the TEA Party activists finding, recruiting and helping to elect people who are not country club elites who forget what this nation is all about, sometimes even within the time it takes to recite their oath of office. We need candidates and office holders who represent the mainstream of America. It is all too easy for many people to forget to whom they owe a duty, and why they are in office. Meanwhile, the voters have been too forgiving and the Republicans have depended on that to remain a viable political entity.
This time around the voters are likely to go with the Republican candidates because there isn't any organized alternative. The result could put the Republican Party back in control of the House, and in a vastly strengthened position in the Senate. Dick Morris has stated that it is within the realm of possibility for them to take both houses, but that may be over-reaching. Either way, they have an opportunity. This opportunity must not be missed.
The USA is now and has always been a generally center-right country. The 2008 election was an anomaly caused by prior Republican failures combined with a possibly engineered economic recession. The only reason why the Democrats were so successful was because the public never believed that they would turn against the very people who elected them and attempt to set up a dictatorial system in the mold of Fascist Italy. Too late, they found out the truth. Now they are trying desperately to fix their error. The Republicans, if they do the right thing, and emulate the Reagan prescription for American success, could become a dominant party for decades. If not, they may take America down with them in what would be effectively an act of political murder-suicide.
Things have gone to far now for half measures. Because of the national debt situation and the excessive intrusion of regulation and invasion of privacy the people of America will have to count on the party that has as good as betrayed them in the past. We can only hope that the Republicans have learned their lesson.
Steve:
Re: “…the Republicans cannot run as the party of the lesser of two evils.”
But this is what our politics have degraded to. Why? Because people don’t vote with their brains; they vote with their stomachs. Couple that with direct election of senators and you get Al Franken, a comedian who has no business being in the U.S. Senate, Barak Øbama, a person of zero accomplishment other than transforming the duplicitous through eloquent oratory, as president, among others.
This phenomenon is captured by William C. Mitchell of the University of Oregon & Randy T. Simmons of Utah State University in their book, Beyond Politics in a chapter called, “Pathological Politics”: “…Because voters are rationally ignorant (the costs of gaining particular kinds of information [about candidates] are greater than the benefits since one vote is essentially meaningless), politicians must employ a language designed to evoke emotion – enough emotion to motivate the right people to turn out and vote. Thus, politicians rarely speak with precise meanings, marginal calculations, or logical reasoning; instead they manipulate affect, raw emotions, group identifications, and even hatred, envy, and threats. Because premature commitment to an issue can cause one to end up in a minority position, successful politicians equivocate, hint, exaggerate, procrastinate, ‘straddle fences,’ adopt code words, and speak in non-sequiturs. Understanding the politician is therefore extremely frustrating for those who value precise statements. But note that this problem is not the fault of the politician; it is rooted in the rational ignorance of voters, the distribution of conflicting sentiments among voters, and the nature of collective endeavor. What all this means is clear: Political communication is rarely conducive to rational or efficient allocation of scarce resources.”
Let’s face it; the Republican Party is hopeless because the Democrats control everything: the courts, the education establishment, and most important, the Leftstream media. Even if Republicans got some quality candidates and on the public’s side of substantive issues, they will be demonized out of existence.
Perhaps it’s time to let the Democrats run the country into the ground for about 20 years; maybe then the voters will smarten up.
"Perhaps it’s time to let the Democrats run the country into the ground for about 20 years; maybe then the voters will smarten up."
And exactly what have the Democrats been doing the last 20 — er, that is 100 years? Have the voters smartened up? I don't think so. So many are thoroughly brainwashed by the progressive media and educational system that they freely vote for the tyrants intent on destroying our nation (see, e..g., 2008). If we do not recapture the country and its culture with, among other things, a Republican Party that has morphed into a truly conservative organization, then very soon there will no country to take back.
So what are the ramifications if the conservatives don't take back at least one of the branches of congress? Let's look into our crystal ball. The liberals will be drunk with power for sure. They will probably either curtail or shut down talk radio as we know it. Cap and trade? A done deal. Can you say 60% federal income tax on the wealthy so they can pay their fair share. And let's not gorget $5-6 a gallon gasoline so the green jobs can have a "fair chance". After all, Big Oil has had a 100 year head start on the greenies, they need to be handicapped. We will not only extend job benefits but congress will find a way to index it to the inflation rate. School loans? No problem. Everyone gets a free college education with A's & B's guaranteed. All they have to do is become a community organizer with an obama emblem on the shirt, provided by the government of course. The military's budget will be cut in half initially and then by 5% a year until it is gone. We of course will not need the military sine obama will convince everyone that we mean no harm to anyone and it will be nirvana. Israel? Israel who? Forget them, they want to build houses in their country. We'll back the sane ones who blow themselves up because of the way we help people throughout the world. This will all be accomplished in the first week after martial law is declared and all safe guards of our rights are completely trashed.
[...] Republican Party cannot survive by being the lesser of two evils; Its own survival and the survival of the nation depend on it Jump to Comments READ STORY [...]
Ron:
re: "And exactly what have the Democrats been doing the last 20 — er, that is 100 years? Have the voters smartened up? I don't think so."
That's because Democrats never left a bad enough memory on the public for very long because they were interrupted every so often by the Republicans. IOW, the public never connected the dots.
hvance:
That won't ruin the country enough.
sedonaman:
My last sentence said that this would be accomplished in the first week. The rest will come at the speed of light. They will indeed ruin the country, and the funny part of it is, is that they are hurting themselves and either don't seem to care or are just plain ignorant.
[...] Read the rest. Posted by Kevin at 3:57 PM Tagged with: Conservative Principles, Republican Party [...]
This is an interesting piece. The Republicans as the lesser of two evils. Sounds good, but I think this is an excessively modest role. First, I'll get my entertaining comic side out of the way.
Mr. Laib has mastered the art of right-wing smearing. McCain "purportedly" stood up to his enemy captors. It's not enough for McCain to have been a weak candidate. Laib hints—but does nothing to document—that McCain was a cowardly POW as well. Charming.
I'm particularly fond of Laib's association of "progressivism" with George W. Bush. He couldn't have found a better way to insult progressives. Progressives just didn't see that Dubya was one of them. What dummies.
The last time I looked, Obama—believe it or not, conservatives—was actually elected to the office he holds. The "horrible miscarriage of the political process" is a fancier way of saying that Laib doesn't like Obama or his policies. Why couldn't he just say that, instead of writing a phrase that fuels the fires of Tea Party fanaticism? Maybe liberals in black helicopters stuffed the ballot boxes too.
I honestly try to keep up with conservative conspiracy-mongering, but Laib introduced me to a new plot when he mentioned a "possibly engineered economic recession." So, Laib believes it is possible that a fiscal meltdown that brought chaos to the global financial system was hatched in ACORN's back room somewhere, and hundreds of corporate officers in banks and investment firms worked with military precision to wreck the economy so Obama would win. I think our black helicopter boys had a hand in this too, probably arranging credit default swaps while checking the mags of their M16s before their impeccably timed hits on Glenn and Rush.
Seriously, folks: Laib underestimates the opportunities facing conservatives at this time. A majority of the country now identifies as conservative, according to most major polls. This is the time for conservatives to: (1) complete their quest for control of the Republican Party. There can be no room for moderates or liberals among party officeholders or party operatives and officials. The purge needs to start and nothing should stand in its way. Michael Steele should be the first to go. (2) Conservatives—and here the Tea Party folks should be the shock troops—have the chance to transform the Republican Party into a true right-wing major party, something this country has never had before. Such a party should be exclusive, not inclusive. No big tent. No way. (3) Such a transformation requires that the party become seriously concerned with rightwing orthodoxy. It should be very clear what a Republican believes, and not just about healthcare reform. Now is the time for the right to begin its expulsion of liberals and liberalism from American public life. Republicans should stand for many things, including, but not limited to: hostility to all 'gay rights' issues, opposition to evolution, opposition to public education, full support for Biblical religion (mostly Christianity, but rightwing Jews would be welcome—I hope), complete elimination of all federal social policies and all federal regulation of anything whatsoever. So, no Social Security, no FDA, no SEC, no FDIC, no Federal Reserve, no nothing.
Readers of 'Intellectual Conservative' may think I'm trying to be sarcastic. I am most definitely proposing these things in all seriousness as something that genuine conservatives should consider pursuing. I know that many strong conservatives would really like to do these things, and much, much more. And now they have the best chance I have seen in nearly 50 years of watching American conservatives to make their dreams come true.
How about it? Can you man up and make all of this happen? You need to try, or else your endless protests will be the anxious whines many of my fellow liberals believe them to be.
Gestell: As for W being a progressive I believe that he is one to a minor degree, but not like the ones you seem to idolize. I don't want another W.
"McCain "purportedly" stood up to his enemy captors". I see you left out the part, "While everyone agrees that he behaved heroically in Vietnam, his heroism appears to have been left behind when he was released from captivity", and this is where your article starts to go off of the road. You like all lefties like to take out of context anything that will suit your agenda. It is no surprise that when it comes to a debate all of you result to name calling and smearing. No wonder that you never enter a debate.
No question obama was elected. He certainly was a paragon of honesty in his campaign wasn't he? Does it not cross your mind why he could not be elected dog catcher now? The folks who voted for him will not be duped twice. Get all you can passed by your elected officials while you can because it might be your last chance for a long time.
I'm sure your next to last paragraph had to be written in jest so it is not worthy of a serious comment.
Steve,
Fine article containing some excellent points.
"…but the voters did get around to firing a large number of Republicans who failed to stand up against George W. Bush's progressivism. They didn't replace the failed Republicans with new blood; they replaced them with radical Democrats, who have now placed the future of the nation in jeopardy."
This was, indeed, the fault of the voters. Conservatives must always remember that the clarion call of the progressive is; "How can we trick them today?" They've only recently removed their disguises and openly shown both their distain for the republic and their love for centralized government.
Conservatives being less than enamored with the Bush Administration's failure to espouse conservative policies; they were also, to a certain extent tripped up by the progressives themselves.
Progressives ran 'stealth' candidates in districts containing razor thin margins in both 2004 and 2008. This allowed them to attract winning percentages by touting democrats that claimed to be fiscal conservatives who supported George's foreign wars. That they were lying never occurred to a vast portion of the electorate.
This only highlights what I've said for a long time. Our job does not end at the voting booth, the scope of the job becomes different. I not only want to know where a candidate stands; I want to know where he goes to church, where he lives, and how he's cast votes in the past regarding conservative policy. If a track record doesn’t' exist, I want to hear him speak. I want to do the best I can to reason out where he comes down on issues important to me.
Once I've cast a ballot. I have no trouble rattling his cage if he lets me down. I will go to his church to confront him. I will go to his house. I will call his office repeatedly, both locally and in Washington. This is what all voters need to do.
Gather as much information about the candidates. Don’t' ever walk into a voting booth intending to vote 'against' someone, or trying to pick the lesser of two evils. These strategies never work. They always result in less than adequate representation.
Gestell says; "So, Laib believes it is possible that a fiscal meltdown that brought chaos to the global financial system was hatched in ACORN's back room somewhere, and hundreds of corporate officers in banks and investment firms worked with military precision to wreck the economy so Obama would win." While I certainly don't believe that ACORN had any hand in such nonsense, nor do I believe that such a meltdown was timed for a particular election. I do believe that progressives were involved in the financial meltdown up to their grubby little necks.
It began with the Community Redevelopment Act. The CRA was 'supposedly' created to assist low and middle income families to secure home loans. Progressive groups such as ACORN did indeed use this act to first accuse banks of 'redlining'. (A process by which minorities were supposedly blocked out of the home mortgage market.) ACORN threatened banks that if strict quotas weren't met, that adverse reports would be filed with government officials ultimately denying the banks reported on from being allowed to expand.
Banks had to deliberately lower their lending standards in order to comply with this, for lack of a better term, extortion. As more and more unqualified buyers entered the market, housing units became scarce. Scarcity always causes inflated prices. This was the beginning of the vicious cycle. As NGO's (like ACORN) and government progressives such as Chris Dodd and Barney Frank continued to push from their end; more and more unqualified buyers were pushed into the market by banks being forced to establish lower and lower qualifying standards. If a buyer had been less than adequate to purchase a $150,000 home, how much farther out of market was he once that house became worth $250,000? Freddie and Fannie, both quasi-government organizations that had implicit US Government backing began buying up and astoundingly large percentage of home loans. However; there still existed a threshold monetarily that they could not cover.
As housing prices continues to skyrocket, Good loan risks were becoming marginal risks merely because of the price inflation of housing. As more and more of these people had to turn to riskier mortgages, banks who were being probed from all manner of hedge funds and managed retirement accounts for financial instruments these funds could invest in, began bundling mortgage loans together into instruments called CDO's
These CDO's were supposedly secure because they contained enough good credit borrowers to offset the not-so-good borrowers. These Collateralized Debt Obligations spread throughout the financial system.
Finally this upwardly spiraling merry-go-round of housing prices reached the point, where even people with excellent job histories and credit ratings had to deliberately over-extend themselves to purchase housing. The entire housing boom was artificially manufactured by progressives, both in and out of government, insisting that lenders had to lend money despite a borrower's poor job record, poor repayment record, and crappy credit history.
Banks knew they were being forced to .loan ever larger amounts of money to an ever expanding group of bad risks. They offloaded what they could on Fannie and Freddie with the blessings of progressive politicians, and dumped the rest on the financial markets (the big institutionalized banks). This house of cards was pre-destined to collapse; it just so happened that it did in late 2007 early 2008.
It was the original implementation of the progressive ideal that everyone has a 'right'; to own a home that started it all. That along with their absolute refusal to believe that some people are destined to be nothing but renters, and that the overwhelming majority of those financially hindered people (whether due to inadequate salary/job history requirements or rotten credit habits) are overwhelmingly minority.
This is exactly my wife and I ate a lot of beans & bread, tripled up on out payments, and paid off the homestead in 2005. Housing prices have fluctuated so wildly in the last 36 months that we cannot say how much out place is worth, but at least we know that we have 100% equity!
The looters demanded that money be loaned to the moochers and then everyone is shocked when the system comes tumbling down! All you can say id; "Who is John Gualt?"
Back to the point at hand: I do believe that conservatives need to recapture the Republican Party from the Country Club crowd. However; I'm all in favor of running stealth conservatives a la the progressives in order to re-take institutional power. We can complete the purge one election cycle at a time.
Reply to hvance:
I said nothing about which, if any, progressives that I 'idolize.' For what it's worth, I think Obama has been a very poor and ineffective president. I never expected him to be the Messiah (and, FYI, many liberals never did regard him as such)and think his chances of reelection in 2012 are very dicey.
As for the comments on McCain: The use of "purportedly" establishes doubt about McCain's courage, while the sentence you cite seems to take this back. Such tactics are old stuff in political polemics. After all, the sentence that is alleged to save McCain's courage includes "everyone agrees," which allows for the future possibility that evidence might appear casting doubt on McCain's conduct, in which case "everyone" changes their minds and what remains is the hint of falsehood in McCain's claim. Nice work.
As for my penultimate paragraph: I am not kidding. I read the conservative media daily, including lots of Townhall columnists and bloggers, as well as other rightwing organs. If you don't know, then you need to be informed that there are many conservatives out there who would do precisely what I mention in my paragraph. So, no, it's not a joke. As for my advice to conservatives, I truly believe that the Right is positioned better than it has ever been before in American politics to get serious about completely dismantling the liberal welfare state and all its works. I doubt if many conservatives in real world politics will see this. I expect genuinely intellectual conservatives to figure this out. Or, put differently, if the list of things I mention in that paragraph is NOT what you seek to do, then you suffer from a lack of political imagination.
Comment on Wavering:
You write:
"Our job does not end at the voting booth, the scope of the job becomes different. I not only want to know where a candidate stands; I want to know where he goes to church, where he lives, and how he's cast votes in the past regarding conservative policy. If a track record doesn’t' exist, I want to hear him speak. I want to do the best I can to reason out where he comes down on issues important to me.
Once I've cast a ballot. I have no trouble rattling his cage if he lets me down. I will go to his church to confront him. I will go to his house. I will call his office repeatedly, both locally and in Washington. This is what all voters need to do."
I couldn't have put this better myself. These are precisely the sorts of actions and precisely the sort of outlook that an energized hard-Right Republican Party can engender. A truly conservative Republican Party could develop training programs to teach its activists how to do all these things effectively. It could instruct activists on how to spread doubt and disbelief about the bona fides of liberals in office. It could train higher level operatives in the subtle arts of generating scandals and campaigns to discredit liberals in all areas of American society.
Now I know that there are lots of conservatives already doing these things, but there is as yet no central command making sure these efforts are effectively coordinated. If conservatives can complete their conquest of the Republican Party and agree that now is the time for serious work, they can solve this problem.
Gestell:
I said you "seemed" to idolize some progressives. Minor point. As for McCain, I am absolutely NOT a McCain fan for any office. I AM a fan of his on how he conducted himself in Nam. There is a world of difference in the two situations as there is no parallel of the two. And one more thing, on the people that you are quoting as the right's spokes people, do you really think that they are in the mainstream thinking of conservatives? If you do then you are wrong. Some of those ideas are nearly as loony as what the far lefties come up with. You are correct that this is the time that conservatives must take advantage of if it is indeed the movement that the country wants.We'll just have to wait and see. I apologize for my lack of political imagination, after all, I believe in the simpler, more traditional things and don't try to theorize how man can make things better with another law that often has unintended consequences.