My Party, Right or Wrong

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This is a long, link-heavy, almost “stream-of-consciousness” jumbled post. So be warned….


There seems to be a civil war going on. Hard to the right Conservatives who reluctantly jumped aboard the straight talk express- not because they were for McCain so much as they were against Obama (and for Palin)- are now angrily throwing McCain under the straight talk bus.

A small camp of conservatives blame the Palin pick. She rejuvenated the base but turned off independents, whether through legitimate concerns of competence, or fabricated, pro-Obama media irrationality. Nevertheless, by Sept 10th, she helped McCain come up 8 points from behind, only to lose that groundswell with the timing of the economic collapse.

Patrick Buchanan:

Why did John McCain lose?

Let’s start with those “headwinds” into which he was flying.

The president of the United States, the leader of his party, was at Nixon-Carter levels of approval, 25 percent, going into Election Day.

Sixty-two percent of the nation thought the economy was the No. 1 issue, and 93 percent thought the economy was bad. Two-thirds of the nation thought the war McCain championed was a mistake, and 80 percent to 90 percent thought the country was on the wrong course.

As a political athlete, measured by charisma and communications skills, McCain is not even in the same league with Barack Obama. He was outspent by vast sums, and his political organization was far inferior.

It is a wonder McCain was even competitive, dealt such a hand.

8 years of President Bush and the relentless media drumbeat pounding into voter consciousness the myth that it’s been nothing short of 8 years of absolute failed policies from Bush lied, people died, Hurricane Katrina, to today’s economy, the legacy of Bush as it stands today, was an albatross around the neck of the McCain campaign. McCain offered up more of the McSame, if you vote him into office.

If movement activists within the Party wish to throw CINOs under the bus, don’t just end it there with McCain. Throw President Bush under there, as well.

Bruce Walker:

President Bush, admired for his personal honor and deep faith, was respected by many conservatives, but he was hardly a conservative himself. No man who nominated Harriett Meiers to the Supreme Court could be considered a true conservative. Anyone who could embrace the vision of Ted Kennedy for our national education policy was not a true conservative. Anyone who could create a new entitlement for prescription drugs was not a true conservative.

Bush was simply a decent man who was not a Leftist Democrat. As McCain found out, being a decent man who is not a Leftist Democrat means nothing at all to the Left. Both men, like Bob Dole and like George H. Bush, are good Americans, admirable people, and men blissfully unaware that the Left is not just waging battles on issues like more socialism but are rather waging war on our entire way of life. Bush, Dole, McCain, and Bush Sr. were not wicked failures because they were not conservatives. They were more like Chamberlain at Munich: They did not grasp the true depth and nature of their adversary and, they thought, their adversary might be reasonable.

Jonah Goldberg:

For some liberals, this is clearly just a tactical pose. Bush is unpopular, so they hope to discredit conservatism by marrying it to Bush, just as Barack Obama succeeded by painting John McCain as a Bush clone. This is the moment, as Obama might say, to permanently block the right-hand fork in the road so the country can only move leftward.

The view on the right is very different, and the debate about the Bush years will largely determine the future of the Republican Party and the conservative movement.

Bush’s brand of conservatism was always a controversial innovation on the right. Recall that in 2000 he promised to be a “different kind of Republican,” and he kept his word. His partner in passing the No Child Left Behind Act was liberal Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy. Bush’s prescription drug benefit — the largest expansion of entitlements since the Great Society — was hugely controversial on the right. He signed the McCain-Feingold bill to the dismay of many Republicans who’d spent years denouncing campaign-finance “reform” as an assault on freedom of speech. The fight over his immigration plan nearly tore the conservative movement apart.

This is not to suggest that Bush was in fact a liberal president. Politics is not binary like that. There were conservative triumphs — and failures — to the Bush presidency. He appointed two solid conservatives to the Supreme Court. He tried to privatize Social Security, though that failed for sundry reasons.

His much-touted “compassionate conservatism” was rejected by many on the right as a slap to traditional conservatives and an intellectual betrayal of Reaganite principles. It was a rhetorical capitulation to Bill Clinton’s feel-your-pain political posturing and an embrace of the assumptions that have been the undergirding of liberalism since the New Deal. That is, the measure of one’s compassion is directly proportionate to one’s support for large and costly government programs.

And Bush admitted as much. In an interview with the Weekly Standard’s Fred Barnes, Bush explained that he rejected William F. Buckley’s brand of anti-government conservatism. Conservatives had to “lead” and to be “activist,” he said. In 2003, Bush proclaimed that when “somebody hurts” government has to “move.” This wasn’t a philosophy of government as much as gooey marketing posing as principle. Ronald Reagan would have spontaneously burst into flames if he’d uttered such sentiments.

Dissent from Bush was muted for years, in large part because of 9/11 and the Iraq war. Conservatives, right or wrong, rallied to support their president, particularly in the face of shrill partisan attacks from Democrats who seemed more interested in tearing down the commander in chief than winning a war. But the Bush chapter is closing, and the fight to write the next one has begun.

Conservatives have criticized Bush for straying from conservative principles of fiscal responsibility, smaller government (when will Republicans begin walking the talk? Did even Reagan?), and on the issue of immigration. But they have also rallied to his defense against the political onslaught of those on the left who have inexplicably painted him as a far right conservative.

David Brooks examines whether traditionalists or reformers hold the magic formula to winning future elections.

Traditionalists own the conservative mythology. Members of the conservative Old Guard see themselves as members of a small, heroic movement marching bravely from the Heartland into belly of the liberal elite. In this narrative, anybody who deviates toward the center, who departs from established doctrine, is a coward, and a sellout.

This narrative happens to be mostly bogus at this point. Most professional conservatives are lifelong Washingtonians who live comfortably as organization heads, lobbyists and publicists. Their supposed heroism consists of living inside the large conservative cocoon and telling each other things they already agree with. But this embattled-movement mythology provides a rationale for crushing dissent, purging deviationists and enforcing doctrinal purity. It has allowed the old leaders to define who is a true conservative and who is not. It has enabled them to maintain control of (an ever more rigid) movement.

Ann Coulter sees Brooks as part of the problem.

Hugh Hewitt is more level-headed and pragmatic about it:

It is a fine column and sure to get e-mailed around, sparking snarky comments along the way.

But it vastly understates the complexity of the situation within the conservative movement and the GOP today, and largely because most of the names it names are Manhattan-Beltway media or organizational elitists. Many of these folks are my friends and colleagues and they do great work, but they don’t and can’t drive a movement or a party. Leaders and activists do that, and they do it from outside of New York or D.C.

More analysis

Some have had it “up to here” with the Republican Party as a whole and are ready to kick the GOP to the curb, as well, going independent.

The argument goes that the reason we lost is because we, as a political party, abandoned our conservative principles and ran too far to the center; not only this, but the Party itself has diluted itself of conservatism. Some purists seem to want to purge the Party of RINOs (laughably inaccurate label…what they should really mean is “CINO”: Conservative in Name Only. But I digress…) and wishy-washy center-right conservatives (like myself).

The thing is, most purists angry about the watered-down brand of conservatism they’ve been getting for the last decade, still came out against Obama if not exactly for McCain. Purists alone inhabit too small a tent to win elections. They need the center-right moderates as well as the independent voters to win in elections where the country is evenly divided. The Democrats this year, simply had the superior-packaged candidate who campaigned against Bush-fatigued Americans (Conservatives tired of defending a good president who’s governed too much to the center but has kept us safe; Liberals on the relentless assault who blame a fascist president for endangering us, taking away civil liberties, torture, credibility and standing in the world, etc., etc.) as well as the illusion of being a centrist moderate with promises of bipartisanship and “reaching across the aisle”.

2008 was not a landslide victory, nor indictment of conservative ideology.

An ideology that has been allowed to be defined by the opposition as a movement of racists, bigots, religious zealots, close-mindedness, selfish, for the rich and against the poor.

Hispanics and blacks share some of the same values as echoed by conservatism; yet they still vote against the Republican Party which has been characterized by Democrats as racist, xenophobic, and against the middle class and poor folk.

Liberals know what ideas they believe in. Does the right?

Regarding the label RINO:

Those who make war on RINO’s, however, ought to confront an obvious question: would you really prefer that such people drop the Republican designation? How does it help if politicians or office-holders with whom you disagree leave your party and join the opposition? When alleged “RINO” Jim Jeffords of Vermont left the GOP and joined the Democrats, it gave them control of the US Senate. When another RINO, Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, lost his Senate seat in 2006, it also gave the Democrats control; if Chafee had won, we’d still have a Republican majority and GOP committee chairs. The truth is that no successful political party has ever been built on ideological purity. You can construct a majority coalition by bringing people into your party, not by driving them away. It’s childish and self-destructive to wage war based on some notion of “real conservatism” with those who want to align themselves with your side. Ronald Reagan himself used to say that “if somebody agrees with me 70% of the time, rather than 100%, that doesn’t make him my enemy.”

The definition of what constitutes a “RINO” seems to have expanded in 2008 by the angry right who lionize Reagan and claim ownership of his legacy. For many of these so-called, self-fashioned “Reagan footsoldiers”, Ronald Reagan would not be Reagan enough for them today, by their own measuring rod standard of conservatism.

Hugh Hewitt’s 2004 book, If it’s not Close, They Can’t Cheat, is a primer on how to win elections. And it doesn’t advocate for rooting out RINOs or movement activists and fanatics. It does advocate for a strategy on how to win elections by building a coalition of regulars, occasionals, principled pragmatists, movement activists, and fringe fanatics.

….insistence on personal taste is disastrous for political parties. There are only two real choices in America- Republican or Democrat. To demand more is to be disappointed before you begin, and to hand a victory to the set of choices most repellent to you.

Let me emphasize that if you walk away from politics because you can’t have everything your way, you are helping the people win who are least like you and most opposed to your views.


~~~

Majorities matter. Majorities matter. Majorities matter.

Sometimes when a purist Republican calls my show and denounces thir or that RINO (Republican in name only), I despair of ever teaching anyone the importance of majorities. For some reason, conservatives and especially evangelicals are stubborn when it comes to the importance of majorities.

These conservatives will talk sanctimoniously about voting on principle, or sitting an election out to “teach the Republican Party a lesson”.

These purists cannot bring themselves to vote for Republicans who don’t share their particular views, even if the election of a Republican majority in Congress hangs in the balance.

~~~

In short, the loss of one vote- even though it was the vote of the most liberal Republican senator- caused enormous damage to the Republican agenda, the president’s agenda, and the conservative agenda. Confirmations stalled. Bills died. The platform from which the agenda could be spotlighted and sold collapsed.

That’s how government operates. In a majority rule system like ours, either the Republican Party or the Democratic Party is in charge.


~~~

Some conservatives put fingers in their ears and make noises in an attempt to avoid the message, as though shouting ever changed words printed on a page. They don’t like the system. They want it their own way.

Just as there’s no dealing with tantrum-throwing two-year-olds, there’s no dealing with some voters. No appeals to reason and no number of repeated demonstrations of basic math matter to them.

These are not real conservatives. These are not even real single-interest voters. These are self-centered and selfish voters

~~~

you should always ask yourself if the candidate you support in a primary is electable in a general election. You have to look ahead to the general election’s likely opponent and ask if your candidate has the capabilities to win the contest that matters. It is no victory to support a candidate who wins a primary, only to lose the general election.

Yet those who don’t take into consideration a candidate’s electability can smugly feel good about themselves, “at least I stood on principle.”

Another lesson:

From Hugh Hewitt’s 2004 book, If It’s Not Close, They Can’t Cheat, pg77:

Republicans need to keep a majority of Senate seats in Republican hands; thus, we need liberal GOP senators as well as very conservative GOP senators and all those in between.

Which brings me to the subject of incumbents, especially those of your own party that you don’t like much.

Throughout 2003, a small group of conservative activists attempted to rally support to the insurgent candidacy of Pennsylvania Congressman Pat Toomey, who declared against incumbent Republican Senator Arlen Specter- a liberal Republican.

The Toomey candidacy came very close to unseating Specter, but it failed by a few thousand votes because serious conservatives understood that Specter keeps the Senate in GOP hands. Even had Toomey won in the primary, he would have been left open to withering attacks in the general election- with no money and Specter “moderates” practicing paybacks- as well as leaving disaffected the GOP voters who have stood with the iconoclastic Specter for many years.

Similar efforts have been launched in the recent past, including one against John McCain by Arizona conservatives who believe McCain to be insufficiently pure.

All such efforts against incumbents of all ideological shades are ill conceived and harmful, with one exception: where an incumbent is too weak to win reelection.

This happened in 2002 in New Hampshire where Senator Bob Smith, the Senate’s oddest Republican duck and an unreliable Republican- he bolted the party once, only to return later- was trailing the likely Democratic nominee in polls. A congressman, John Sununu, took on Smith in a primary and won, and he went on to hold the seat for the GOP in the fall 2002 elections. It was the sort of challenge to an incumbent that made sense, but it is rare.

Neither Specter nor McCain is a weak incumbent in general elections. Conservative purists should not only leave both men alone; they should enthusiastically support their reelection efforts. All the money and effort that goes into campaigns to push them out would be far better spent on helping folk like John Thune in South Dakota, a more conservative candidate than either McCain or Specter, but also a Republican running against a powerful Democrat- Tom Daschle.

Please absorb this basic fact about American politics: majorities, not individuals, govern. Without an understanding of this, the GOP’s return to near permanent minority status- and the powerlessness it includes- is all but guaranteed.

John Hawkins has had enough of Mitch McConnell. Many movement conservatives have long had enough of John McCain and were absolutely livid when he won the Party nomination. Still, most of them were smart enough to come to bat for him as a vote against Obama, if not for McCain. But since he lost the election, rather than sharing collective blame, the fingers are pointed to where the buck stops.

Ann Coulter reignites her disdain for McCain:

How many times do we have to run this experiment before Republican primary voters learn that “moderate,” “independent,” “maverick” Republicans never win, and right-wing Republicans never lose?

~~~

After showing nearly superhuman restraint throughout this campaign, which was lost the night McCain won the California primary, I am now liberated to announce that all I care about is hunting down and punishing every Republican who voted for McCain in the primaries. I have a list and am prepared to produce the names of every person who told me he was voting for McCain to the proper authorities.

We’ll start with former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Florida Gov. Charlie Crist. Then we shall march through the states of New Hampshire and South Carolina — states that must never, ever be allowed to hold early Republican primaries again.

Personally, I’d rather throw Ann Coulter under the bus (but won’t, because I’d rather have her within the Party even more than she wants wishy-washy moderates out of it). She’s an uber-conservative who oozes purist ideology. Yet rather than successfully get across the conservative message, her system of delivery only succeeds in alienation. Anyone think she could win an election? For the most part, I see her as part of the problem, not a solution. It’s not that I don’t share in much of her conservativism; it’s her intolerance for those who don’t live up to her standards and interpretation of it. If she wants the perfect presidential candidate who she can agree with on 100% of the issues, she should run for office. If she only wants those in her party with whom she agrees with 100% of the time as the only true conservatives, then she will inhabit a lonely small tent of election losers, relegating the Republican Party to an irrelevant 3rd, 4th, or last party (What was McCain’s lifetime ACU ranking again? Around 82%. Apparently not good enough for the party purists).

Read:
Poking my thumb in the eye of conservatives for their own good
John McCain: Republican Apostate?

Michael Medved:

No movement in U.S. political history has ever benefited from a purification process; purges always weaken or destroy a party’s vitality and viability, as even 1930’s Communists could attest. Nothing is more obvious in the American political process than the proposition that you win elections by attracting wafflers, moderates, dissenters, and independent spirits to your side; you lose elections by driving away such uncertain souls.

Of course, far right conservatives want to attract such voters in order to win based upon conservative ideas; for some inexplicable reason, though, they don’t seem to want them within the Republican Party. Not unless they are turned on by conservative ideology to the degree that they too become conservative purists.

Purists ruin movements, though. They lose elections. There just aren’t enough voters out there who think narrowly enough to satisfy the Party purists. It’s unlikely, too, that they will ever find their dream presidential candidate because the only way to find someone who will agree with them 100% of the time, would be to run for office themselves.

The following point is going to find disagreement amongst those who are hard to the right, like Coulter and Limbaugh and who fashion themselves as “Reagan conservatives”, claiming we’ve strayed from his brand of conservatism:

The greatest conservative of them all, Ronald Reagan, always understood this principle. At the moment of his greatest triumph, when he finally captured his party’s nomination in 1980, he didn’t turn to a “pure conservative” or a “true conservative” as his running mate. Instead, he chose party unity and selected George Herbert Walker Bush, a prime example of the Ivy League, country club Republican many right-wingers instinctively despised. Reagan also used Bush’s friend and aide, the notorious moderate James Baker, as his chief of staff. Unlike his mentor Barry Goldwater (who lost in a landslide), the Gipper understood throughout his career that a party that achieved “pure conservative” status would become a “pure loser” in competition for swing voters.

Moreover, history shows conclusively that a bitter defeat never pushes a conservative party farther right, or pushes a liberal party further left. Instead, political organizations that experience harsh rejection from the electorate move instinctively, inevitably toward the center in quest of precisely those middle-of-the-road voters who abandoned them in the previous contest. After outspoken conservative Barry Goldwater led the GOP to an overwhelming defeat in 1964, the nominees that followed (Nixon twice and then Gerald Ford) clearly represented the more moderate wing of the party. When unapologetic liberal George McGovern brought the Democrats a ruinous 49-state drubbing in 1972, they followed with a long series of relatively centrist, purportedly non-ideological candidates (Carter, Mondale, Dukakis, Clinton, Gore), reliably shunning the strong leftist contingent within their coalition.

There’s been some disagreement between me and others regarding how Senator Obama ran his campaign. I agree that his big spending proposals and party platform were not “centrist” by any means; and anyone who looked at his skimpy voting record in the U.S. Senate, his record in the Illinois State Senate, and his history of associations to radical activists and gravitation toward Marxist ideology, would fear him as a radically far left liberal. Furthermore, I don’t see the Democratic Party as moving toward the center to win elections, but more and more, being overtaken by Moveon.org and becoming the party of Michael Moore and George Soros.

However, Obama’s image in how he portrayed himself to the American public- in how the media was complicit in suppressing anything that suggested differently, for the most part- was as a radically “centrist” liberal candidate. (Consider his inflexible record on abortion; you’d think Catholics would overwhelmingly vote against him; McCain’s record on supporting conservative judges and protecting the unborn is solid).

Here’s a useful checklist of Obama’s campaign promises, btw.

There is simply no historical model for the process of party defeat, purification and rejuvenation that some deluded conservatives recommend. Consider the sad state of the Republican Party during the 1930’s and ‘40’s. In 1928, Herbert Hoover represented the most moderate, or even progressive, nominee since Teddy Roosevelt in 1904. When Hoover got crushed by FDR in 1932, the Republicans didn’t turn back to solid conservatives in the Coolidge tradition. Instead they kept nominating moderates (Alf Landon, former Democrat Wendell Wilkie, New York progressive Tom Dewey twice, and then the non-ideological General Eisenhower) in the often forlorn hope that they could woo wavering independents or conservative Democrats away from the New Deal coalition. Not even five consecutive defeats on the Presidential level led the Republicans to shift to a more conservative, ideologically rigorous posture.

I believe in conservative ideology. I don’t believe the American public rejected conservatism; nor did they reject the watered-down brand of conservatism that McCain represents to so many angry conservatives (for those who argue there wasn’t a conservative- other than Palin- in the bunch). After all, Palin was on McCain’s ticket; and although she energized the base and gave us our own rock star, she failed to attract the all-valuable independent votes as her character was savagely dragged through the mud and she was portrayed as not only ignorant, but as a far right Bible-thumping conservative hillbilly nut rather than the outside-the-beltway reformer willing to take on and weed out corrupting influences from her own political party. She, more so than Obama, is a true Washington outsider, living amongst the Joe Six-Packs and Joe the Plumbers; not the Joe Six-Terms.


Michael Medved
:

Some of the nation’s most influential conservatives (on talk radio and elsewhere) have begun promoting the odd idea that John McCain lost the election because he ran as a “moderate” and a “maverick” rather than a “true conservative.” According to this argument, the GOP nominee could have won the White House had he only “taken the gloves off” and run to the right, without apology. This logic suggests that candidates fare better when they display ideological rigor and consistency, and that Republicans can never succeed by going after moderate and independent votes.

Fortunately, there’s an easy way to test this theory. McCain appeared on the 2008 ballot with some of the nation’s most outspoken, hard line conservatives, who won nomination for governor or US Senator. If the argument is true that you can win more votes by appealing to right-wingers, rather than aiming for the center, then conservative Senate and gubernatorial candidates should have out-performed McCain, particularly in solidly Republican Southern or Midwestern states.

In fact, the results from Tuesday show that McCain did better than his conservative running mates—and in some cases, much better. In New Mexico, for instance, the Presidential nominee ran three points ahead of the hard-line, anti-immigration candidate Steve Pearce, who ran for an open Senate seat. McCain also drew three points more than incumbent Senator Saxby Chambliss in Georgia, six percentage points more than Senator Elizabeth Dole in North Carolina, five points more than re-elected Senate leader Mitch McConnell in Kentucky, two points more than Senator Roger Wicker in Mississippi. The McCain-Palin ticket also drew twelve points more in Virginia than former governor Jim Gilmore, running for an open Senate seat, ran thirteen points ahead of conservative challenger John Kennedy in Louisiana, and three points more than impassioned, eloquent right-wing Congressman Bob Schaffer in Colorado (running for another open Senate seat). Joel Dykstra, a militant pro-life leader in the South Dakota legislature, challenged ailing Democratic Senator Tim Johnson, and drew only 38% of the vote, in a state McCain carried easily with 53% — a huge fifteen point difference in their strength at the ballot box.

In fact, McCain ran well ahead of Republican nominees for Senate and governorships almost everywhere – except in those cases when statewide GOP candidates had cultivated their own reputations for independence, centrism, and ideological flexibility.

For instance, Senator Susan Collins of Maine beat back a well-financed Democratic challenge and drew an amazing 61% in her state – where McCain got only 40%. Likewise, Gordon Smith in Oregon (who may still retain his seat after the long tabulation process concludes) advertised his willingness to work with Democrats (including Barack Obama) and ran four points ahead of McCain. Lindsey Graham (derided by anti-immigration activists as “Lindsey Graham-nesty”) won easy re-election with 58% — four points ahead of McCain’s own strong showing in the Palmetto State. And in Minnesota, in a complicated three-man race, independent-minded Norm Coleman seems to have earned a squeaker victory in a state that McCain lost by a full ten points.

In other words, uncompromising “movement” conservatives performed far worse than the GOP’s “maverick” Presidential nominee—even in some of the nation’s most conservative states (Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Louisiana, South Dakota). On the other hand, Senators (and gubernatorial candidates like Washington’s Dino Rossi) who stressed their independence, bi-partisanship and non-ideological approach to the issues (Collins, Graham, Smith, Coleman) drew more votes than McCain in their states – even when those states were as conservative as re-elected Senator Graham’s South Carolina. In any event, there’s scant evidence that McCain (who generally ran more strongly than his statewide counterparts) in any dragged down local candidates in his losing but gallant campaign. If anything, some of those local candidates seem to have dragged down McCain.

In other words, the undeniable facts about the recently concluded election offer a complete, consistent, and powerful rebuttal to the misguided notion that running to the right as a “true conservative” pays off more than going after moderate and independent voters. In every state of the union, no matter how bright red its hue, comparisons between McCain’s results and those of statewide Senate and gubernatorial candidates suggest that Republicans do better when they target the rich cache of votes at the center of the political spectrum. The exit polling for 2008 showed that only 34% of voters called themselves “conservative” (and McCain won an overwhelming 78% of those votes). Meanwhile, 45% of this year’s voters said they were “moderate.” This means that even if a candidate secures every available conservative vote he’d still lose in a landslide without a strong showing among moderates and independents. (McCain lost self-described moderates to Obama by a modest margin, and thereby lost the election).

Old Soldier makes a solid rebuttal point to Medved’s comparison of Congressional seats to campaigning for the presidency:

First of all, the comparison is drawn between McCain’s bid for the presidency, and senator’s and representative’s bids for congressional seats. This is an apples and oranges comparison in that congressional politicians have a localized base to which they must appeal; be it a state or a district. A presidential candidate must appeal to the whole nation or at least enough to garner 271 electoral votes. There is a world of difference between local and national level constituency bases.

There is a difference, but I’m not sure if there is a “world of difference”.

Medved concludes:

Appealing to the quirky, restless, independent-minded voters who see themselves traveling down the middle of the road shouldn’t require compromising core conservative principles. Appealing to the political center shouldn’t involve abandoning ideals but it may require adopting a more cooperative, pragmatic, non-ideological tone. Conservatives have already found the right substance on the issues but they still need to learn to adopt the right style in presenting it.

Of course, John Hawkins asks 15 good questions of those who think the GOP should campaign toward the center:

#1) If both the GOP and the Democrats support bigger government, how does the country survive long term given the size of the debt we already have and the deficits we’re running right now? In other words, how can running massive deficits possibly be sustainable over the long haul?

#2) If the GOP were to officially become a big government party, wouldn’t there be a real danger of having a large third party spring up that would represent the considerable number (I’d say a majority, at least in the abstract) of Americans who do want smaller government and less spending?

#3) If the GOP becomes a big government party, how do you see us differentiating ourselves from the Democratic Party? Do we spend almost as much as they do, but not quite as much? Do we spend even more? Do we favor deficit spending, but just on different things? Isn’t there a real danger that Democrats — since their base tends to generally be OK with excessive spending — could simply outbid us on anything we offered to the American people?

#4) Since the majority of the GOP’s core supporters don’t agree with “moderate” positions like big spending or amnesty, feel very strongly about it, and feel those positions harm the party politically, how can the party continue to hew to those positions over the long term without being permanently at odds with the people who should be their strongest supporters?

#5) Let’s do the math on amnesty: there are roughly 12-20 million illegal immigrants, most of whom are Hispanics. Hispanics broke 70/30 for the Democrats in 2006 and 69/31 for the Dems in 2008 according to the latest exit poll data. If the split stayed at 70/30 and 12-20 million new illegals were made citizens, that would mean the Democrats would add another 4.8 to 8 million potential new voters as a result of amnesty. The top end of that scale is a larger margin than what Barack Obama won by in 2008.

Additionally, even if the GOP improved our numbers with Hispanics — which we certainly need to do — we’ve never come close to getting 50% of the Hispanic vote. With all that in mind, isn’t amnesty political suicide for the GOP?

#6) Some people tend to assume that Hispanics vote almost entirely on the illegal immigration issue, but I would assert that there is very little objective evidence for that. George Bush and John McCain are the two biggest proponents of amnesty in the Republican Party and neither of them is particularly popular with Hispanics today. In fact, according to exit polls, against a candidate who was thought to be weak with Hispanics, John McCain only got 31% of the Hispanic vote. So, what objective evidence convinces you that Hispanics vote largely on illegal immigration and that if the GOP supports amnesty, it will get us over the 50% threshold with Hispanics?

#7) Given that the mainstream media overwhelmingly supports the Democrats, it’s extremely important for the GOP to have the support of conservative talk radio hosts, magazines, and the RightRoots. Since the new media is overwhelmingly comprised of conservatives, how does a moderate GOP gain their genuine support over the long haul?

#8) Follow-up question to #7: If the GOP can’t get the new media back enthusiastically on its side — which is likely to be the case unless there are changes on spending and illegal immigration policies — how does the GOP get the base fired up? In other words, if Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham, etc., etc., are telling everyone who’ll listen that the Republicans stink, how does the Republican Party work around that?

#9) Setting aside the conservative media, obviously the conservative movement is lacking energy and passion right now. Many people, myself included, would say that this has a lot to do with the position that the GOP has been taking on immigration and spending issues. How does the GOP get conservatives supporting the GOP again, instead of just opposing the Democrats, if the party continues to pursue big government policies and amnesty?

#10) If amnesty, big government, and deficit spending are winning issues for the Republican Party, why did we take such a huge beating in 2006 and 2008 despite pursuing those very policies?

#11) Over the last two elections, moderate Republicans haven’t quite been wiped out, but percentage wise, they’ve suffered much higher losses than conservative Republicans. If moderate Republicans can’t even win elections in moderate districts now, why would we want to adopt that losing philosophy across our whole party when conservatives are winning at a much, much higher clip across the country?

#12) As moderate columnist David Brooks has said,

There is not yet an effective Republican Leadership Council to nurture modernizing conservative ideas. There is no moderate Club for Growth, supporting centrist Republicans. The Public Interest, which used to publish an array of public policy ideas, has closed. Reformist Republican donors don’t seem to exist. Any publication or think tank that headed in an explicitly reformist direction would be pummeled by its financial backers. National candidates who begin with reformist records — Giuliani, Romney or McCain — immediately tack right to be acceptable to the power base.

So, there are no moderate think tanks, no moderate donors, the new media is overwhelmingly conservative, the Republican base and activists are overwhelmingly conservative — shouldn’t that tell people something about whether the idea of a moderate GOP is workable?

#13) Follow-up question to #12: If a moderate Republican Party is workable, how do you make it work without the new media, think tanks, money, or an excited base on your side?

#14) John McCain was the most moderate candidate the GOP has run since Richard Nixon. In fact, he’s the standard bearer of the “moderate Republican” wing of the party and yet the media trashed him, he had trouble raising money — and other moderates, including prominent moderate Republicans like Colin Powell and Christopher Buckley, voted for Obama. In the end, McCain received almost 4 million less votes than Bush did in 2006. Doesn’t that suggest that moderate Republican candidates may have trouble raising money, retaining moderates, and generating the enthusiasm from the Republican base that will be needed to win?

#15) When the Democratic Party was out of power, the party moved to the left, not to the center. They obstructed the GOP at every opportunity, put hard-core left-wingers in charge of everything, and ran an extremely liberal candidate in 2008. Granted, they also had moderate Democrats that they ran in states and districts that leaned red, but those people are almost completely locked out of power and their agenda is largely ignored. Since that strategy worked so well for the Democrats, doesn’t it make more sense for the GOP to pursue the same strategy instead of continuing the move to the center that has done so much damage to the party over the last two elections?

There were a number of reasons why conservatives lost this election (glass ceiling of the first non-white president, campaign money, biased media, 8 years of Bush); I don’t think blaming RINOs and moderates is the answer to our woes. I’m not so sure this self-bleeding is necessary, although introspection is usually beneficial. The GOP definitely could use a makeover. In terms of physical image (more Palins and Jindals and Steeles and a few less “old white men”, as superficial as it may sound), and in terms of ideological image. Basically, that WE should be the ones defining who we are; not the opposition party. Through the media, through Hollywood and pop culture, through k12 and university indoctrination, liberalism has saturated the hearts and minds of many Americans while stifling and distorting conservative ideology.

Matt Lewis offers up a few suggestions:

One thing we probably can all agree on is that to win elections again, the GOP must embrace the Internet and technology. As such, I have joined in an effort to encourage the next GOP Chairman to modernize the party and to embrace technology.

Both Barack Obama and Ron Paul took full advantage of the internet as a vehicle to spread their message and gather campaign contributions.

But tactics are not enough. To win the future, conservatives must — in my opinion — also find ways to make our timeless classical liberal principles relevant to the 21st century. This, in my estimation, is the most important intellectual discussion we can engage in for the next months (or possibly years). And since we are in the brainstorming phase of this process, let me throw it open to you: If we were creating a new contract with America, what 10 bullet points would you include?

Following are a few of my thoughts…

– The GOP must become the Party of science and math. This might include new energy ideas, a major investment in educating our children to compete with China in science and math, space exploration, etc.

– The GOP simply cannot continue to lose the Hispanic vote to the degree we lost it in 2008. I am not suggesting we support Amnesty. Instead, I am making a factual statement based on math.

– The GOP must embrace the future. Part of this means accepting that some industries and jobs will go away as high-tech jobs and industries arise. We must develop smart ideas regarding how workers can be re-trained and given the technological information to improve their lives — not just survive the changes.

Some voters smugly brag about how they don’t vote for any party; that they vote on principle, and vote for the individual. I believe that of the two parties, the Republican Party is the one that best represents my politics. I vote on principle as well by voting Republican, top to down, on a general election ticket. That’s because I believe that my party is what’s best for my country (Hence, the title of this convoluted post.). That is, until such times as the opposition party becomes more conservative than the one I’m currently in. It takes a majority vote to influence legislation in Congress, and the Party with which I agree with most of the time, is the Republican one.

Hugh Hewitt, If It’s Not Close They Can’t Cheat, pg 74:

it is much easier to remind voters why they want to hold their noses and vote for the party despite misgivings over the individual.

When you explain the importance of majorities, use a familiar example, like a church congregation or a homeowners association. Ask your friends if, faced with a vote of a congregation to keep or dismiss a pastor or of an HOA to allow or reject a home addition or other remodeling project, they want to be on the winning side of the vote. They will answer “yes” if they are anything other than permanently irascible.

Once they say they want to have a majority on their side in any particular situation, then ask them if they care about the various motivations behind the votes of those who agree with them.

Most people might pause, but in practice the answers are almost invariably “no”. If your friend wants the pastor to get tossed out, he doesn’t care why others are voting for the pastor to get the boot. It doesn’t matter why others in the majority are voting no. What matters is the tally that conclusively ousts the minister.

If you want to add an upstairs level to your home, it doesn’t matter a bit if the three votes on the five-member homeowners association board denying your plans are cast for different reasons. The result is a unitary one: no building that second story. The majority dictated the result.

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Wordsmith, thanks for an informative and stimulating stream-of-astute-consciousness article. I come from a “timeless classical liberal” conservative background even though I have more often than not voted Democratic. No longer. My biggest beef with Republicans is that they have thought too exclusively about “producers”, forgetting that workers are as much the foundation of production as owners and capitalists, as managers and CEOs.

This is not a populist position; I believe most workers — from whatever old-stock, new-stock, or ethnic background they hail — would support “timeless classical liberal” conservative positions if they believe they were included, respected, even honored. The labor — not organized labor — that has built this nation is awesome and they, we, work so hard because we have hope for the future and for our children. (And I am not against organized labor, either, if it/they also follow TCLC values.)

Sen. John McCain respected workers as well as “producers”, did very well given the Dem-Repub millstones around his neck, but could not articulate a cohesive campaign around these issues. In addition, so-called “Conservatives”, from everything I have read, took gleeful pleasure in knee-capping him. Let the Republican Party sit up and take notice of all your suggestions about how elections are won. Let them also notice that Gov. Sarah Palin stands for that liberal-conservative tradition more than anyone else I know at present.

This was the best post-election assessment, written from the Republican point of view, that I’ve yet read. Tour de force. Bravo.

I’m going to provide — as a sort of executive summary — a previously-cited little ditty that I remember from middle school:

This is the grave of Mike O’Day
Who died maintaining his right of way.
His mind was clear.
His will was strong.
But he’s just as dead as if he’d been wrong.

I’m a moderate on social issues, liberal on the environment, classical conservative on waging land wars overseas (most of you guys are too young to recall when peace-loving Republicans used to refer to the Democratic Party as “the party of war”), and classically conservative economically (meaning that I view balanced budgets as the cornerstone of both personal and public fiscal policy). I’ve never voted for a Republican for President, but I was initially a strong supporter of Mitt Romney, e.g.

http://foros.ocvive.com/showthread.php?t=27037&highlight=weisenthal+romney

There are lots of people like me who would be happy to vote for a more centrist Republican, such as the “old” Mitt Romney (before he revealed himself to be a complete phony by trying to out Right Wing Sean Hannity).

Right now the GOP politician whom I find to be particularly interesting is Bobby Jindal. Tim Pawlenty is another promising candidate. Sarah Palin doesn’t have intellectual heft; sorry, we don’t need true intellectuals, but we do need a modicum of intellect. The vast majority of centrists saw her in precisely this way, as much as she tickled the fancy of the core GOP base.

Anyway, the choice to me seems clear. You can go the Mike O’Day route; or you can win national elections. You can’t do both. And this is true from both left and right.

– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA

Interesting analysis.

However I don’t know how it squares with the success of the Angry Left over the past 4 years. The advice to Republicans and Republican voters seems to be ‘be more welcoming’ and ‘be more nice’, when, in fact, over the course of the past 4-8 years, the Left has become more intolerant, more angry, more vitriolic and more hateful… to amazing success.

So the argument that people like Ann Coulter hurt the Party and movement, I find to be bullshiite. It has worked wonders for the Left to be intolerant and hateful and demonizing to anyone who does not agree with them. Ann Coulter does not even come close to what is the Angry Left and yet the GOP and conservatives are smeared based on her commentary and the Democrats and liberals are considered good based on their Angry Left? Utter crap.

Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, Daily Kos, Democrat Underground, Huffington Post, Hollywood and entertainment industry celebrities, John Murtha, Rev Wright, Bill Ayers, Barack Obama himself with his “typical white person”, “clinging to guns and the Bible”, “they’re going to accuse me of not being like other Presidents”, etc etc etc… all this hate and demonizing and lying and smears and vitriol and racism and … they won huge in 2006 and 2008 and never have been called to the carpet on their despicable actions.

Instead of all this hand-wringing about the GOP all over the place in the right-of-center blogosphere, it would be nice to see an analysis of how we are supposed to win any elections in the near future when the majority of this nation allows the Democrat Party and the Left and the mass media to get away with racism, corruption, illegality, lies and smears.

Barack Obama himself is guilty of massive corruption, lying during his campaign, despicably accusing anyone who criticized him of racism when none existed, Black Supremacism, ties to communists, socialists, Marxists and terrorists, voter registration fraud, campaign donation fraud, ties to ACORN which had its hand in the mortgage crisis… yet, he got off scott-free with all of that.

Basically, we are sitting here talking about our football team losing 21-14 in the Super Bowl, when the other team cheated the entire game, used every dirty trick in the book on every play, and were aided and abetted by the referees who were bought and paid for to help them win the game. And instead of looking at the huge problem of that staring us in the face, we are sitting here blaming our players for not being good enough to rise above all that and still win the game.

I’m simply baffled.

Yes, there are problems in the GOP, but there are much, much *bigger* problems with this nation, with the Democrat Party, with the mass media and with wishy-washy GOP-voters and conservatives who just want to sweep everything that took place in the last election under the rug, pretend it never happened and it won’t affect our future and just put all the blame on ourselves.

I’d like to know how we are supposed to overcome the fact that any valid criticism of Obama is deemed racism. The fact that any valid criticism of Obama is deemed a ‘distraction’ and a ‘hateful attack’ and ‘irrelevant’. The fact that the mass media is completely controlled by the Left and the Democrats, not to mention the entertainment industry, the public school system and the universities.

I am not denying that the GOP has work to do in order to get back to its core principles. However, from where I sit, we have a party of flawed politicians and a party of hateful, vitriolic criminals and liars who will do whatever it takes to gain power and keep power.

The way I see it, the GOP could turn into the perfect statesmen with the perfect ideas for the future of this country and it wouldn’t matter a lick, because we have a majority nation which finds nothing wrong with what I mentioned earlier:

*****
“Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, Daily Kos, Democrat Underground, Huffington Post, Hollywood and entertainment industry celebrities, John Murtha, Rev Wright, Bill Ayers, Barack Obama himself with his “typical white person”, “clinging to guns and the Bible”, “they’re going to accuse me of not being like other Presidents”, etc etc etc… all this hate and demonizing and lying and smears and vitriol and racism…”
*****

60+ million people in this nation obviously are attracted to this kind of vitriolic hatred. *That* is a major problem.

If we want to know how to win elections again, we are going to have to figure out why the majority of this nation is attracted to such filth.

Michael in MI,

I agree with you 100%. Especially when you said: “Basically, we are sitting here talking about our football team losing 21-14 in the Super Bowl, when the other team cheated the entire game, used every dirty trick in the book on every play, and were aided and abetted by the referees who were bought and paid for to help them win the game. And instead of looking at the huge problem of that staring us in the face, we are sitting here blaming our players for not being good enough to rise above all that and still win the game.”

I find it very sad when people try to blame the Republicans for the loss. Gee… McCain/Palin still got 48% of all the votes.

– With the cheating 700 millions $ of Obama vs the 83 millions of McCain, it is almost a miracle that they got 48% of the vote.
– With all the false information of the MSM… it is almost a miracle that they got 48% of the vote.
– With all the hate for Bush… it is almost a miracle that they got 48% of the vote.
– With the entire Acorn’s fraud… it is almost a miracle that they got 48% of the vote.
– With Obama who is such a crooked liar, an unexperienced politician with no accomplishments… it is almost a miracle that they got 52% of the vote.

Republicans are not to blame. Leftist liberal’s corruption is to blame. The leftist brainwashing of the population is to blame. This country needs Sarah Palin to get rid of this corruption. She represents the best of the conservative values.

The only thing that Republicans should do is to be MORE conservative and educated the people on conservative values. Moving to the center is the worst thing they could do. They will become invisible if they move to the center… what will distinguish them from Democrats? Nothing. Stop blaming the Republicans and be realistic. If the corruption of the left is not stopped, Republicans will never win another election. Your country is infected with the leftist MSM, the colleges, the entertainment industries and the religious freaks of environment. Fix that first, nothing is wrong with the Republican Party it is all the rest that needs to be corrected. Put your efforts where it is needed.

P.S.: And I love Ann Coulter’s quotation: “If Democrats had any brains, they would be Republicans”… lol

As John Hawkins’ list of 15 questions points out, there are some glaring inconsistencies, and gaping holes in the whole “let’s be moderates!” point of view. My own take on it is that a large number of these “moderates” actually govern much further to the left than they campaign. They tout themselves as right of center, and then get behind whatever legislation seems to offer them publicity. Right now we seem to have mostly leadership that declaims, “I am a conservative!”, meanwhile keeping a well moistened finger held aloft to see which way the wind is blowing.

I occasionally have semi harsh words for moderates. Mostly this is aimed at those presenting themselves as further to the right than they truly are. I have no beef with those who honestly feel that way and will stick to their guns. My reasoning in feeling we need to refocus on a truer conservatism is this: If the “real world” results of our government are going to be closer to the center than any stringent ideal, then I do not want to start sliding to the left when we are already driving on the median. I feel we need a more conservative mindset in our leadership, but that doesn’t mean that those leaders refuse to work with more moderate elements we mostly agree with. But whenever possible, I want our leaders pulling moderates to the right, not paying lip service to conservatives while starting the legislative tug of war standing with one foot in the mud puddle.

If you think about what independent/moderates said about why they did not vote for Republicans, most of it that sounded intelligent instead of brainwashed could be boiled down to, “They did not govern by the ideals they espouse.” Deficit spending and the like. This is a problem McCain had, and most moderates have. They believe in a mish mash of ideals, and such a confusing assortment of stances makes for a confusing message that is easy to perceive or misperceive as either incoherent, or as a hodgepodge cobbled together for political expedience and easily flip-flopped on.

I do not have a problem with my party working with, giving respect to, welcoming into the tent, moderates. But if “moderation” remains the party focus, then we are going to continue losing.

“But if “moderation” remains the party focus, then we are going to continue losing.” (Lightbringer)

Right on the dot! It is so obvious that most people don’t get it. You have two parties: Right and Left. If both parties move to the Center, than you only have one party, one choice: Center. It makes no sense at all.

P.S.: What generated enthousiasm in the Republican Party? Sarah Palin. Why? Because she is a real conservative… not a moderate.

Warmongering isn’t selling well anymore with the voters. For all the faults of the Republicans, this is the killer. I get sick of voting for the lesser of two evils, but the warmongering is leading me to give up altogether on politics. That and I believe that the Democrats and the media have successfully parlayed race-bating and class envy into an unshakeable bigotry among minorities that will lead to civil war. Politics is not the answer. Voting is BS. My vote was stolen multiple times by Mexican invaders . Our government and our political system are illegitimate. I refuse to be played for a sucker by these scam elections. We need a European-American Homeland on the North American Continent, where the Constitution can be restored. That’s worth fighting for. America is no longer worth it. It has become a corrupt 3rd world oligarchy with elites like the Bushes at the top.

That was a pretty heavy stream of consciousness, but well reasoned over all. I still think you’re not seeing Palin very objectively. Sarah has one of the same advantages Obama has, being a blank slate for people to project their beliefs onto. She is strong as a social conservative, but her fiscal record would be unacceptable to many if she had a “D” by her name instead of a “R”. As far as being “painted” as ignorant, no politician during my lifetime has ever had an inteview like that Katie Couric trainwreck.

I want moderates and everyone else in my party, just not in control of it. What did GB, Sr., Robert Dole, and John McCain have in common….war heroes, white old guys, intelligent and capbable…..RINOs….they all lost.

I don’t think it was the war hero thing that sunk them.

RINOs is fair because this is a conservative party.

Gaining a majority is nice, but if you have to sacrifice everything to get it, then what’s the point? Electing someone with an R after their name is pointless if they might as well be a D. And once you sacrifice everything, no one respects you and no one works for you, and you lose anyways.

If we go to far to the middle, to gain the moderates (a hugely varied group with different ideas from each other), we lose. Of necessity, we have to stay the Conservative course because too much moderation kills. You’re going to get bit one way or the other, but having a few moderates leave is less of a bite than having an unenthused base. And an enthused base can usually pull other moderates over to its side.

Also, John McCain, King of the Moderates….couldn’t hold Peggy Noonan and Chris Buckley.

Also, a lot of the Democratic headwind came from previous years where Republicans did not govern as conservatives. The RINOs, the Country Clubbers, the Inside the Beltway Boys, the Pork is Good for me and thee folks destroyed the Republican Brand.

Again, I’m okay with Jeffords coming back to the Republican Party, but he’s going to have miniscule influence because to give him more is to destroy the Party.

If we take your logic to an extreme, we could say we shouldn’t have kicked David Duke out of the Party. Obviously not true. At some point, accepting doctrinal deviation becomes 1)Wrong. 2)Unsuccessful. I think we just had a vivid demonstration of Unsuccessful and probably of Wrong as well with the McCain campaign.

Anybody REALLY think we’d have lost if the media hadn’t been so in the bag for Obama?
I strongly doubt it.
You’ve all seen the video by now that’s been sent around for the last 3 days….exit polls of otherwise seemingly intelligent Americans saying “The Republicans have been in charge of congress the last 2 years” and “Sarah Palin is the one whose daughter is pregnant out of wedlock” and attributing negative things about obama ON the Republicans, too.

Katie Couric, Charlie Gibson, NYTimes, Oprah, Newsweek, TIME, CNN, some of FOX(don’t kid yourselves…), 90% of all other big city papers, the late night shows, the morning shows….I could go on and on and on; They wanted Obama. The public didn’t hear the negativities, they barely knew who Ayers is, they never made the connection with Wright…. Rezko got his sentence on another big news day that drowned that out……….

Obama was TEFLON MAN. EVERYTHING the media could make stick did stick…. to McCain and Palin.

A fairly good example of obtuse non-thinking happened a few nights ago: There’s Alan Colmes on H&C complaining “How can you blame the stock downturn on obama when he hasn’t even been in OFFICE?” NO CONSIDERATION to the FACT that many analysts say it’s the mere idea of his BEING in office and what he might do that’s a large part behind this market the last couple of weeks. NOT A CLUE on Colmes’ part. “Our guy can DO NO WRONG..HE IS THE ONE” People HEAR Alan Colmes, he has a popular radio show. They BELIEVE Alan Colmes. This is the kind of thing that happened the last 8 months or so.

All these pundits you excellently and appropriately quote here are all right………to a point. But, it was the MEDIA. And THIS is what we have to fight in the future, folks..or FORGET IT.

We’ve got to STOP the new equation created by the Left and their sycophantic media arm:

Democrats = Correct
Republicans = EVIL (not incorrect..EVIL) BIG difference. Without changing this, we’re toast, no matter WHAT Medved and Hewitt and Coulter and Goldberg say.

great post, wordsmith…..just wanted to add a little to it.

z

I looked at it some more.

I think you’re planting assumptions. Of course, if only the purists vote for the R brand, then we’re toast. No one, and I repeat, no one in the base wants that. However, Moderates are frequently low-information voters, and they are swayable.

Now who sways them better?
A. I’m a moderate just like you.
==No you’re not. Your moderate ideas are weird. I’m a real moderate.
B. Um, we’re kinda like the Dems, but just not so insane.
==You sound, uh, not enthused. I think I’ll take the Dems, at least they have conviction.
C. Join the Conservative Movement, have fun, make the world a better place!
==Cool. Sign me up.

People are not going to follow an uncertain trumpet.

I’m not exactly narrowly focused. We need full-bore Standard Conservatism (good on values, national defense, and fiscal responsibility.) We need Happy Warriors and Learned Sages and Brave/Funny Artists to promote it. We need to attack on all fronts.

The preceding poster is right about the media. We need a new media structure to replace the hopelessly corrupted MSM. But, I’m not searching for a single silver bullet. I want a broad-based attack with a bright new vision for the future. So media, yes, border fence, yes, anti-bailout, yes, stop vacuuming out kids’ brains, &^%*&^& yes….

Jerry Pournelle pointed out one problem with the Country Clubbers or as I would say RINOs. The R’s had a poor ground game. He said it was because the CC’s used professionals instead of creating a precinct org like Obama did. And thus you have strategy flowing from beliefs….the elitist distrusts the amateur who operates from belief, and so hires pros with his money, and ends up with a loss because he was not willing to concede that his beliefs should not run the party.

I think you can probably repeat Pournelle’s example all over the Party. A Happy Warrior Conservative would have a more consistent message, and would have probably had the boldness to say ‘forget this noise, if my opponents going to cheat on money, at the least, I can be more aggressive in getting money.’ and one wonders whether a Conservative would agree to public financing in the first place. And it was completely obvious that we needed to attack the MSM full on.

A Confident Conservative who has a coherent belief structure which is clear and logical, one that he is unashamed of, can do such, and succeed.

Gotta run.

Here’s a quote regarding Governor Palin and how she was portrayed: “far right Bible-thumping conservative hillbilly nut”.

The assault on Christians is the real problem.

The portrayal of faith in the Bible, worship of God, and traditional values as being objects worthy of hate is the real problem.

Even your terminology somehow states that we, as Christians, have something to be ashamed of. Please allow me to set the record straight: We’re not ashamed. Our Christian faith makes us fine and upstanding people of character and our Christianity is POSITIVE and an ATTRIBUTE and we seek to be more and more Christian because it’s so positive a transformation. The hate being poured out at us, the contempt, is uncalled for and the worst sort of hate.

What we need is a strong Christian who will stand up and face this religious hate instead of taking it. Palin was muzzled. She’s trying to just be nice, now, and continue to show that these characterizations are unfair. It’s going to take more than that. It’s going to take someone squarely addressing the hate and not taking it and being direct about it rather than avoidant. And if things don’t become respectful but rather “heat up” after being directly addressed by a Conservative Christian candidate – we’ve got Hitler’s Germany on our hands in the USA.

That’s not the fault of the Christian Conservatives. That’s the fault of the MSM and the Democrats – that National Socialist Party – those Nazis.

Grace.

Tennwriter,

I agree 100% with you. Republicans should stand by their principles wich is to govern at Right. If they want to govern at Center, too bad for them, they will lose all the Republican votes. Governing in the Center is not governing at all. We do not want Republican to govern at extreme right… we just want them to govern at Right… not at the Center.

This is why Sarah Palin will get all the Republican’s votes, because she is a true Republican. What is your choice on a ballot? Right (Republicans) or Left (Democrats)… there is no Center on a ballot. Center do not exist in politic.

Thank you, Craig.

I’ve long said, RINOs lose, Conservatives with a smile win. You have to be bold, and attack. Offer a vision of a better future, and without malice rebuke your opponent (unless they way cross the line, and then let them have it with both barrels).

There have been a lot of problems in the R party, but most are traceable to RINOism. They are symptoms of a greater malady.

So, we need ot move past this point. Its clear that Conservatism is not the problem. Now, how do we fix the Republican Party? The fundamental solution is to elevate Standard Conservatives to positions of power, and to run the Party. How do we do that? Good question. You have any ideas?

==================

” How do we do that? Good question. You have any ideas?” (Tennwriter)

FIRST:
We have to ban the word CENTER in politic that means nothing. Do not be afraid of the word RIGHT and LEFT. Nobody here is talking about extreme right or extreme left. We are talking about RIGHT and LEFT.

SECOND:
Be sure that people will understand that you will be governing at RIGHT and not at the CENTER. They want you to govern at RIGHT, with the values of Republicans; this is why they vote for you. If you make a campaign saying you will govern at the Center, then why should they vote for you? No reason. That was McCain’s error. Sarah would have succeeded because it was clear that she wanted to govern at right. Same for the Democrats, they expect them to govern at left, not at the center. If they say they will govern at the center, they will not vote for them. Why do you think Obama won? Because he promised them to govern at left. But he will break his promises and people will feel like they have been taken for suckers and will not like it and probably wont vote for them next time around.

There are many more things that could be done, like educating people, thru MSM and colleges… but that would be hard because of all the corruption. I think if you just start by explaining RIGHT and LEFT, that would be a good start… and of course to ban the stupid word CENTER from your vocabulary who confuses everyone. By doing so, people would start to understand the differences between the Republicans and the Democrats. Now, they do not see it. For them, both Parties are alike… they just vote for the guy that has the most charisma, which of course is the most stupid thing someone can do.

Here’s a candidate for Georgia Governor who I want to win in 2010. He’s got a masters in history. Very intelligent, articulate, clearly defined beliefs, charismatic, and will be a great Governor. He’ll have excellent future potential for national office, imo. I think he’s got what it takes to clearly state a political revolution back to our foundations in conservativism.

I loved Governor Palin, but somehow, I think this guy is a “McBerry Revolution”.

http://draftraymcberrygeorgiagovernor2010.blogspot.com/

Tennwriter,

I have answered you but my comments keeps getting stuck either in spam or moderation… so look at comment # 16 for my answer if it ever gets out of moderation.

We’re getting a lot of moderates cooperating in slamming Palin. Personally, I see a fair chunk of it as prejudgiced classism with some bigotry tossed on for spice. There is also a strong element of ‘hate Christian’ going on.

I think we don’t need to be offended and reactive. We need to pursue the Happy Warrior course, and say “Of course, I’m a Christian. Its the logical choice.” and say it with enthusiasm.

========

A lot of those problems were the result of RINOism and Inside the Beltwayism. The financial crisis was, as I understand, the result of giving people loans they shouldn’t have. We could have more loudly fought against that. We could have eschewed the culture of corruption more enthusiastically.

We chose to put ourselves in a bad situation, and then we found ourselves behind the eight ball.

Yeah, the media was absolutely in the tank for Obama. But we know that whoever is put up by the R’s will be savaged. We know this like we know the Law of Gravity. So we didn’t foresee that the MSM would utterly forsake honor, still we knew it would be at least very bad. So what did we do to prepare for this? What could we have done, and why didn’t we?

Mike Huckabee could probably out debate Obama on sheer style and wit. Rudy Guiliani could have just taken Obama’s head off and used it for a football. Mitt Romney could have just conducted an executive level seminar for the not particularly bright student facing him. Instead, we chose the most RINO and least capable of all candidates. Why? Well, one reason was that we let Dems vote in R primaries. Another reason was that the RINOs desperately wanted their candidate, and with what I understand, front-loaded with Liberal states voting first, and Dems crossover and the support of the MSM, and ferocious RINO pushing, we got McCain.

RINOs have a tendency to pick bad candidates. I’m not sure why, but I do know it seems to happen. Its like they’re embarrassed to be conservatives or something.

===========

A 100% conservative would be great! But, once you get there or somewhere close, you have to have the Happy Warrior. You have to have someone who can reach out, and explain to the Moderates and the Independents, and a few Democrats that what ails them has a Conservative cure.

===========

The long list of bad things going against McCain emphasizes one point. This is a Conservative nation. Only after the Republican Party deliberately eschewed principle, and really made a mess of things in many, many ways, and with tons of bad news, did Obama have a chance to win. In other words, with a Happy Warrior Conservative, we could be looking at something closer to a 60% victory next time.

===============

Step One: Fix the blame on those who caused the problem.
Step Two: Punish the wicked, and elevate the righteous.
Step Three….

No. In ways, you’re right. We should start with the Happy Warrior stuff as soon as we can. Now as you can see with my reply to Craig, I’m already moving in that direction. But the Happy Warrior should be able to fight against his in-party rivals as well, and quite effectively.

Tennwrtiter, did you read my post #16 that is now out of moderation?

Aside from a very poorly ran campaign, McCain shoehorned himself by trying to be a “nice guy” while his the opponent flooded the public with attack commercials. Aided by a “news” media rabidly digging up some real but mostly fictional mud to throw at the Republicans while ignoring their responsibility to hold a microscope up the Obama. It is totally ludicrous to attempt to shift the blame of a failed campaign on to VP candidate who had little control if any over the main campaign decisions. Palin had mere weeks to prepare for the Presidential campaign while the other three were campaigning for nearly two years. (As for the Palin wardrobe non-issue; public image “groomers” are an essential part of most political campaigns, and the attention this received was pure hypocrisy. Has any of the press wondered at how much has been spent to cloth the Obamas?)

However, there are numerous reasons why the Republicans lost. #1 The voters did not vote for them. Yes, I know it’s simplistic, but it goes to the crux of the subject. The Republican party leadership needs to stop asking each other (or listening to the biased talking-heads on why the vote didn’t turn out for them. They need to find out WHY they are losing their appeal to the everyday people. What was it of the Republican platforms that the people liked and what did they not like.

IMO the reasons why are very simple, and go beyond labels of Conservative, Moderate or Liberal. McCain was right when he said that Washington has changed the Republicans. He neglected to realize that it has changed him as well. Just as with the Democratic Party the Republican leadership has grown into one that mostly represents the policies of their own party elite and the Limousine class. Republicans have aligned themselves with a select group of globalist social planners that is totally out of touch with the party’s base voters. If the leadership really wants to recover and reverse the trend, they had better get their heads out of the butts and start thinking about what their voter’s are concerned about.

1) Corporate Bail-outs. The people are royally pissed at this and for good reason. While some may get some token aid or support when they get in financial straights, The rest of us are usually on our own. When wealthy executives are holding their hands out, it just strikes the average person as unfairness. Especially when considering how executive pay compensation has far out-paced the wages of nearly every other worker (who’s wages have not kept pace with inflation. comparative with 40 to 50 years ago.)

2) Illegal immigration. The American public are overwhelmingly against illegal immigration and amnesty, while the Washington crowd is overwhelmingly for it. Here we all have to put up with all kinds of crap entering airports and flying state to state, while the Feds put all of us at risk by not securing the boarders.

3) “Globalization” of manufacturing. To the average American, what this really means is that factories are closed and moved overseas and their towns and family members lose the jobs. (Hell, with some companies, the only employees left in America are sales-staff and the executives. I would bet they looked, they could save more money by hiring executives overseas who will manage the companies for less pay and perks. :-D)

4) To use a phrase by Bill O’Reilly; “The Culture War.” Destruction and demeaning the importance of families, the tramping on of traditions, and the creation of an economy that requires both parents to work. As a result, or children are raised by strangers because Mom & Dad don’t have time to raise them. Meanwhile their own family values and traditions are discounted by educators who it seems are too busy indoctrinating our kids, rather than teaching them what they need to know. (It was disgusting to me to hear Biased Media-whores denigrate Palin and consider her unelectable for being a “Christian.” They couldn’t get away with that bigotry if she was of the Jewish faith.) Republicans in all levels of government have not stood their ground well enough to staunch Democratic erosion.

5) All Government is too damn big, too expensive, too powerful, and too ineffective. It is also more concerned with regulating and controlling the people than business or itself. The people need the government to get off their backs and to quit incrementally restricting and eroding our rights. American government today is marching headlong to a big-brother society to rival the communist Chinese and old USSR in it’s telling us what we can and can do. They are supposed to be our servants not the other way around.

What are needed in the Republican party are reformers like Palin. We need STATESMEN not Politicians.

Craig,

Yes, I’ve read it. We certainly could use less talk about the Center. There’s been too much already. The use of the term ‘Middle’ might be better as it might denote more of the shifting back and forth nature of the undecided voters. I’m not sure we can totally do away with such a term, but de-emphasizing it is a good idea.

As to your second point–Absolutely. Be not ashamed.

I think that Sarah could have won, but I think it would have been the most insane media frothing at the mouth circus you can imagine. If you can imagine a new anchor spitting on her in an interview on live TV that is. I think the media would have totally lost touch with decency, and at least one of them might try to punch her in public. That is the firestorm she would have had to walk through. Take what she sufferred, and multiply it by at least two, and probably four. My prediction boggles my own mind, but it seems logical. Maybe there is some tipping point where they back off for some reason I’m not seeing. But yeah, I’m suggesting behavior that would get some peple committed to mental institutions as deranged.

Which would have destroyed the media.

As to the Dems winning, hmm, its more complicated there. Bill Clinton, in many ways, was fairly centrist, I think (Partially, he was forced to be so by Gingrich). The problem for the Dems is that this is a center-right country, and they are a center-left to far left party. However, there is probably going to be a lot of really dissapointed Dems no matter what Obama does because he’s made too many promises—or so I hear.

I think that trying to educate people through the MSM and colleges may be a bad idea. With confidence, you can scare the MSM into pretending to try to be fair. But ultimately, I think we have to create a set of parrallel institutions to replace the corrupted ones. Certain institutions like the R party are not that badly corrupted yet. Others, well, they need a competitor to steal their sunlight. MSM, many colleges, and Hollywood are my candidates for the brush fire after we plant another orchard.

One way to help replace the MSM is with bloggers. Glenn Reynolds has noted repeatedly that ‘hard news’ is the killer app for the MSM, but they don’t want to do that unglamorous and difficult job. A few years back, he also supported an initiative for creating more local area blogs that you could see as a way to replace newspapers. Of course, Craigslist is supposed to be sucking up a lot of newspapers add revenue from job listings, I think, or something like that.

I’m a SF/F writer, so I’d like to see some Conservative support for writers, but not only writers, bloggers, and other people. The laborer is worthy of his hire. Nurture some guys with fire and a bit of talent, and the right views….offer prizes and fellowships, and small online magazines, and build the next generation of talent. Now a lot of this is already happening in the Blogs. A lot of good writers are learning to be better writers.

Let me add, although I am no kind of poet, except a very bad one, that I see poetry as a probably moribund field that is waiting for some angels to bless it, and recreate a brand new poetry for Conservatives. Liberals create literary movements as a tool for their goals. We could turn the next generation into a bunch of poetry quoters, and the whole mindset of the field could be informed by Conservative ideals. Liberals would naturally fight back, but they would be out of their element because we had created the foundation, the ‘paradigm’.

Ditto, if and when someone writes a piece about Hillary Clinton spending too much on a dress, I hope that I willl be today, mature enough to laugh at the silliness. People in high places spend a lot on clothes. Its the way the world is.

In your next paragraph, you deal with much that I might call “Inside the Beltwayism”.

With Corporate Bailouts and Globalization….If I see a problem with what Business is doing, I’m tempted to look for the prior government hand that set-up the bad situation in the first place.
There are several rules of thumb to keep in mind:
1. An active government favors the rich (who can afford lawyers to lobby for special breaks).
2. A lot of CEO’s are not free marketeers. They tell the workers…your wages are not going up, its the free market….meanwhile they support illegal immigration. They tell someone….free market…you lost, get over it…..but if they lose…its time for a gov’t handout.

I have doubts that several hundred million dollar salaries are justified by the free market. I suspect there is some tomfoolery and deck-rigging cheating going on. Its an excellent point that we might as well outsource corporate CEO’s as well.

A lot of businessmen believe in the Divine Right of Business to Always Make a Profit (even when they are complete idiots.)

The Conservative position is to be for Free Markets, to accept Profit and Loss, businees formation and great growth and bankruptcy for the unlucky, the weak, the silly, the piggish, the thuggish….etc., etc.. The Conservative is neither pro-worker, nor pro-business.

Calvin Coolidge is supposed to have explained that nine out of ten people who came to him wanted something they should not have, and if you kept your mouth shut, they eventually went away. That’s Mr. Business is great Republican President.

So, I’m for Free Trade even though it hurts in the short run. However, I find it curious that its always ‘us’ that has to sacrifice, while ‘them’ don’t….

Wordsmith,

I think you’re probably right about us not being too far apart. I think once we get a Standard Conservative Party going, you’ll realize it was not nearly as scary as you had thought (Kind of like rappelling off a cliff…the first two steps are ULP! but after that its just pure pleasure.)

There are no doubt ways in which we can address your concerns in the framework of a Conservative mindset. And you can help keep us honest.

At times, there may be two roads, and both are fine to the Conservatives, but one is strongly preffered by one of the many groups of Moderates, and we the larger group, should naturally defer to the other group in such a case (I often do this with my wife.)

And there may be bargains to be struck. I’d be willing to talk to Libertarians about Drugs, forex.
1. I doubt any Conservative is that enthused by SWAT team raids on marijuana dealers based on druggie informants (specially considering the number of innocent joes who got their doors kicked in because the SWAT team hit next door or the informant was lying.)
2. We could talk about Medical Marijuana.

But we do this in the context of Libertarians throwing strong support for Pro-life. The Libertarians make the arguement for Pro-life, and others merely suggest that Federalism is the solution. The Conservatives push for an amendment, and for federalism.

Now, on #1, I’m against that, but we do have to prioritize our issues. If the Tarians come on board, then we have good reason to raise this issue from say #30 to oh, #12 in importance. If some form of serious improvement like Federalism or an Amendment passes for Pro-life, then the Conservatives promise to come back and support Medical M.

Deals on sticky issues like that can be worked out. But yeah, much of the divisiveness is unneccessary. Go with Standard Conservatism, and most parties are going to be reasonably happy.

(And that’s me trying to be a Happy Warrior. I’m not sure I succeeded.)

I don’t think your that your well written, and informative post was convoluted, and or rambling at all Sir. I think overall that it was an extremely good analyisis of the current state of affairs not only in our political system and leaders, but of our society in general. Where I part ways with you is can the conservatives ever get a “real conservative” elected. I don’t see how they can, and ever will. Our conservatives leaders sold out conservative values and principals just to get elected, and or stay too in office. As a society we have gone to far down the leftist/socialist road to do an abrupt U turn. My anger and frustration lies with conservative politicians, (CINO) (excellent term too!)who use conservatives to get elected and immediately sell out to the enemy. But then what can they do in reality against the tide of liberalism in reality as you pointed out so well. But the other side of that coin is that the CINO will eventually become one party as you mentioned , just so they can keep their jobs. Its one of the best examples of “catch 22” I have ever seen. We lose either way! Thats why I would rather vote for a indie than another CINO, and lose. Palin on TV the other nite even mentioned this very topic, and alluded to the fact that maybe it is time for the Republican party to to be replaced, and go the way of the Whigs. Palin/Cain have been able to tap into all that anger and frustration that many people like myself have been feeling for at least 20 years now as we watched our Republican presidents and politicians “compromise us”right out of the house and into the street. And I still don’t believe that many Americans still don’t see how bad our political system has gotten, and all the negative consequences that their ignorance will bring them later on. Their denial only makes matters worse. Not implying you at all. Its way past the time though that our party learn how to fight like the enemy, becuase if they don’t we will lose. And I would rather go down fighting than as the Huckabee tells us”We must compromise!.” The time for compromise has long since past, its time to really fight right now. The conservative position is only going to grow weaker, not stronger unless we get someone who can really lead.