For at least 20 years, the Republican Party has been telling Conservatives “you cannot win without us.” With the election of Obama and many in both houses of Congress, we have experienced a very radical leftward/progressive shift. And it is endangering the survival of our country. And the Republican Party deserves a great deal of the blame for the radical, nation-threatening shift.
When the Republicans were swept into Congress with its Contract With America, they made very specific promises. And all those promises were conservative. It is the Conservative Agenda that wins nationally, and no wonder, 40 percent of the voters self-declare as conservative, 36 percent as moderate and only 20 percent as liberal.
The election of 1994 resulted in moderate and left-leaning Democrats being voted out. As a result the Democrat Party lurched hard left and various moderate Democrats switched to the Republican Party. The Democrat Party, in effect, was radicalized. The remaining Democrats in office were, overall, radical liberals, in the left 2/3 of the 20 percent.
As a result, I naively thought I was watching the death of the Democrat Party. The Republicans won majority of both Houses, including the House of Representatives for the first time in over 40 years, by promoting a specifically Conservative agenda. And the Democrats lurched hard left/progressive, which was completely opposite of the winning agenda. So, what could go wrong?
In a very brief period of time, the Republicans rescued the Democrats from death. It took less than two years for the Republicans to lurch leftward to take up the space previously held by the defeated Democrats and to abandon the position that got them (the Republicans) elected. Less than two years. And that’s how the Republicans rescued the Democrats from death.
I reached voting age in time for the 1984 elections, and immediately registered Republican. I don’t know what the Republican power-brokers were saying in the 1980s but I do know starting at least in the 1990s, the Republican power brokers were telling all Conservatives “you cannot win without us.” And then the Republicans decided the Conservatives were guaranteed. Where else could we go? It was clear the Republicans decided we were a guaranteed vote and they didn’t need to listen to us at all.
2006 and 2008 were direct results of the Republicans ignoring the Conservatives and expecting the Conservatives to keep slavishly voting Republican. 2009 is very much a result of Republicans ignoring Conservatives. Both political parties are now to the left of mainstream America. And that has caused the TEA Party. Had either party been concerned with satisfying the mainstream, the events that caused the TEA Party would never have surfaced.
It is very clear the Democrats are very much afraid of the TEA Party folks. The Democrats have engaged in all manner of lie-filled attacks against the TEA Party folks, such as the lie that the TEA Party is racist or white (TEA Party Black representation is 40 percent of overall Black voter representation while the Black voter representation is overwhelmingly liberal). Various liberals are also engaging in and planning the engagement in infiltrating the TEA Party in order to commit acts and make declarations that do not at all fit into the TEA Party atmosphere. A newspaper wrote about a recently exposed liberal plan to infiltrate and present a dishonest image. But that newspaper mocked Conservatives and TEA Party activists for being concerned instead of reporting on the activities of the liars. Imagine that.
But the Republican Party is afraid of the TEA Party activists, as well. For the first time in generations, the Republican Party is not running things on the right side of the aisle. For the first time in generations, the Republican Party finds itself needing the people instead of the other way round. The TEA Party, which is in no way, shape or form centralized, can very well be considered to have a controlling vote. Without the support of the TEA Party activists and supporters, the Republicans can win nothing.
Yet it’s telling that many in the GOP leadership still do not understand. The poll showing clear majorities of Republicans and Independents believing DC Republicans are more liberal than the base should’ve been eye-opening to the GOP power-brokers. But, apparently, it wasn’t. The poll showing a sizable majority of the voters consider the TEA Party more in tune with the public than the political class should’ve been eye-opening to the GOP power-brokers. But by the actions taken by the political class — both parties — shows an obstinance in their demands to remain out of touch with the people.
This time around is definitely different than previous elections. With the radical leftist agenda that is being passed against the will of the nation, the GOP stands to make major gains. But the RNC, NRCC, NRSC appears to be having a bit of trouble in raising campaign money. Various individual candidates are not having trouble but the Party itself is, and that’s a good thing. Until the Party drops its elitist cranial-rectal inversion, nobody should contribute to the RNC, NRCC, NRSC. Send your money directly to the candidates that understand or to PACs that understand, instead.
I have seen many articles and comments stating that Conservatives and Liberals talk past each other, so there is no communication. Liberals tend to desire communal redistribution to create equality of outcome and some mushy sense of “fairness” while Conservatives push Personal Responsibility and an achievement-based reward system. Liberals believe in a static pie and punishing the successful to benefit the unsuccessful (or lazy) while Conservatives believe in a growing pie and rewarding success while allowing people to fail.
History is replete with examples of Liberal failure and Conservative success. The Communist Chavez has sent Venezuela on a downward spiral with his government takeovers and Communist policies. Castro’s Cuba has been a failure from day one. The subjects of the Soviet Union spent decades in poverty and in lines waiting for the opportunity to buy their government-limited supply of scarce commodities such as bread and toilet paper. East Germany and the Soviet Union built a wall around West Berlin for the sole purpose of preventing East German subjects from escaping Communism/state control and joining the free market and opportunity. When the wall came down and Germany was reunified, the differences were especially stark. Free Market Germany had fully recovered from WWII and prospered while the radical left state-controlled Germany had never recovered from WWII and was an absolute economic shambles.
The Czech Republic, which formed out of the Eastern Bloc nation of Czechoslovakia (which had previously failed in its attempt to gain freedom as the Soviets rolled tanks down the streets to quell the democracy movement), has a health system that is far below US standards. My sister-in-law, who is a Czech national, has heard it from her family: now that she’s working as an RN in the US, she’s obviously rich. Of course, she’s by no means rich, but she’s far better off than those stuck in the Czech Republic.
The radical leftist, state-owned North Korea is among the poorest of nations, while a much freer-market South Korea is among the more wealthy on the Pacific Rim. And the North Korean guards on the fence in the DMZ are not aimed at the south but at the north, to prevent North Koreans from escaping to South Korea.
While Hong Kong was in British hands, fully engaged in the free market, it was massively prosperous. Taiwan is highly prosperous. China has only begun to experience expansive prosperity, and it has done so by implementing a version of free market economics. China learned state-controlled economics was an abject failure.
Spain, France, Iceland, Greece with their leftist agendae have been abject failures. Germany is leading Europe in rescuing Greece from total collapse. From what I understand, Iceland has already gone through a collapse. And France has decided to move more Conservative, more in line with previous US policies while Obama and the other radical liberals are pushing an agenda that makes the Greek agenda and the previous French agenda look moderate.
In debates over ObamaCare, I mentioned the Czech Republic. My sister-in-law was an RN in a Prague hospital. My brother was a patient in life-threatening condition in that Prague hospital. My mother visited that Prague hospital. That Prague hospital’s modernity and standards of care was far below that of ANY US HOSPITAL. But a certain socialist commenter who is known on many sites for trollery refused to allow me to cite Prague. I was only allowed to look at “western nations” and not nations that had many decades of state-run health care. Imagine that. Let’s not look at longitudinal proof of leftist/statist failure when we’re talking about a leftist/statist take-over. We don’t want to be bothered with histo-factual evidence.
It is very clear the Conservative free-market, Personal Responsibility, economic self-interest policy where there is opportunity to fail raises people out of poverty while the Liberal state-controlled communal redistributionist policy where nobody is allowed to fail results in shared poverty and misery. This cannot be denied without rejecting the histo-factual evidence.
While the Democrats are very clearly pushing a failed agenda in opposition to the will of the people, the Republicans have not exactly fared better. Oh, they’re suddenly coalesced against the radical left agenda, but they’re also clearly further left than the public at large. The Republicans, by and large, are not in line with Conservative values, those values proven to be highly successful. And, again, the Republicans ignore the people at their own peril.
As I was writing this (a 3-day project), news came out of a long-term Republican incumbent losing in a Republican Primary run-off with a TEA Party candidate. Understand, the TEA Party candidate was not running third-party but in the Republican Primary. This is the proper approach, and reason to contribute to specific campaigns and not the RNC, NRCC, NRSC. DRJ reported the news out of Texas.
Lubbock made history tonight. Not only was Jones the oldest member of the Texas Legislature but Perry is now the Texas Legislature’s (and perhaps the nation’s) first Tea Party winner since there is no Democrat or Libertarian candidate on the ballot.
Perry ran on a platform of fiscal responsibility but he wasn’t given much chance to make the run-off, let alone win. Political analysts were especially doubtful of his chances after he pledged to work to rescind in-state tuition for illegal immigrants.
Again, Republicans ignore Conservatives at their own peril. Delwin Jones was a 30-year incumbent in the Texas legislature and he fell to a Conservative. I suspect as the Primary season continues, more incumbent Republicans will fall by the wayside. Because they are elitists who are out of touch with the people and are busily rejecting Conservative values while they expect the Conservatives to mindlessly vote for them.
But while all this is going on with the anti-people radical left doing their thang and the tone-deaf Republicans acting like it’s business as usual and Conservatives doing damage to incumbent Republicans, there is still a message many people are not getting. I have no doubt that the fiscally conservative, socially liberal types have been agreeing with me to this point. But they’re doing the same thing the Republicans are doing: ignoring us at their own peril.
Republicans cannot win without the Conservative vote, and they’re losing in the Primary season because the Conservative vote is not with them. And I don’t believe the Republicans are learning anything. Fiscal Conservatives cannot win without the Social Conservatives. And that’s a point the FisCon/SocLib set cannot see. Again, it’s two groups talking past each other. And, again, it’s to the FC/SL’s detriment.
Social Conservatives are heavily represented by Christian Conservatives. And Christian Conservatives have a higher law, a higher standard, than any government. The vast majority of us have principles we will not violate in the voting booth. I asked my daughter if both major candidates were pro-abortion, would she vote for the more conservative pro-abortionist, a third candidate, or choose not to vote. She said she’d choose not to vote on that line. I would vote third party.
There are principles I will not, under any circumstances, violate for some false pragmatism, and the abortion issue is only one of those principled issues. And there are very large numbers like my daughter and me. The FC/SL falsity of the big-tent while rejecting the Social Conservatives is a different tone-deafness than the Republicans, but with the same effect. FC/SL cannot count on our mindlessly voting with them but cannot win without our vote. But FC/SL are indeed expecting us to just go along to get along, ignoring us at their own peril.
