Paul Ryan: Conservatism Is Doomed Unless We Embrace Corporate Left-Libertarianism…Cheney: My Re-election Will be a Referendum on the Viability of the Republican Party

by Ace

My my my my my. The corporate liberals are really insistent that the party cannot exist without them.
 
Liz Cheney basically says that if people vote her out of office, that’s the death of the GOP.

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), the embattled former Republican conference chair, during an interview Wednesday with the Wall Street Journal’s “Women, Power and Equity” event, said she sees her “re-election bid as a referendum on the future of the Republican Party.”
 
The Wyoming Republican said voters are “potentially facing a choice between what she sees as traditional conservative values and loyalty to former President Donald Trump.” She said she already sees the upcoming 2022 midterm election as being a difficult one for her.
 
…She continued to say, “I really do think it’s one that will be a moment where the people of Wyoming can demonstrate to the country our commitment to the Constitution.” Cheney believes the race will be “very important in terms of the future of the party and the future of our republic.”

I know this is going to shock you, but corporatist left-libertarian Paul Ryan plans to give a speech, parts of which have leaked, insisting that the GOP must give up on its social and cultural political agenda, in favor, no doubt, of reducing corporate tax rates.

“If the conservative cause depends on the populist appeal of one personality, or on second-rate imitations, then we�re not going anywhere,” Ryan plans to say according to speech excerpts released to Punchbowl News.To win back the majority in Congress, Ryan will predict, Republicans need to focus on “conservative principles” and be agreeable.
 
“We win majorities by directing our loyalty and respect to voters, and by staying faithful to the conservative principles that unite us,” he plans to say. “This was true even when the person leading our movement was as impressive, polished, and agreeable as they come.”

He means Romney.
 
Romney lost.

…Ryan will also ask conservatives to resist fighting every cultural battle picked by the left, suggesting that ordinary Americans are growing tired of the culture clash.
 
“We conservatives have to be careful not to get caught up in every little cultural battle,” Ryan will say. “Sometimes these skirmishes are just creations of outrage peddlers, detached from reality and not worth anybody’s time.”
 
Ryan will argue that Republicans are getting too distracted by minor grievances.
 
“Culture matters, yes, but our party must be defined by more than a tussle over the latest grievance or perceived slight,” he plans to say.

Social libertarians like Paul Ryan — and 90% of the Conservative, Inc. media — fight for the left’s social and cultural agenda, but not honestly, not straightforwardly by proclaiming their belief in the left’s socio-cultural agenda.
 
No, the do so crookedly, sneakly. They advance the left’s goals not by explicitly supporting the leftwing cultural agenda — that would be too honest — but instead by attacking conservatives for fighting back in the culture war.
 
They never have a damn thing to say about the left’s constant cultural aggressions — and do not propose to do anything about the left’s nigh-unbroken string of culture war victories — but they always have something critical to say about conservatives merely resisting the cultural left, or trying to push back on fronts where the left has recently seized ground.
 
There was a saying of Orwell’s popular during the War on Terrorism: Pacifism — in an age of Nazi conquest — is objectively pro-fascist. That is, if you’re not fighting the Nazis — and, indeed, if you’re undermining the efforts of others to fight the Nazis — you are objectively on the Nazi side, even if you refuse to be honest and fly the Nazi flag yourself.
 
This is precisely what these cultural liberals are doing. They refuse to honestly admit that they are on the left’s side — that they support the Court’s imposition of gay marriage, and that they do in fact support the imposition that bakers must bake cakes for gay weddings.
 



 
They don’t like it when deplorables fight these things, and would like their political cousins to stop embarrassing them at parties.
 
They don’t like it when conservatives oppose chopping off parts of children’s bodies because a kid has decided that today he’s a female and maybe a unicorn too.
 
And they don’t like it when conservatives are so declasse as to refuse the “polite request” (a polite request backed up with the threat of getting you banned or fired) that we use people’s preferred pronouns.
 
Again, they find it embarrassing when conservatives kick up a fuss about that.
 
Can’t conservatives just be cool about the left’s total victory in the culture war, like the left-libertarians are?
 
And of course, they think conservatives are despicable — racist, in fact — for demanding secure borders and a democratic say in who it is who is allowed to immigrate here and become a citizen.
 
They speak of this in terms expressly taken from the left — enforcing the border is “enforcing a white nationalist ethno-state.”
 
(They also talk a lot about foreigners being better citizens than mere Americans.)
 
Now, in all these cases, I say again, they are too cowardly and dishonest to proclaim, honestly, that they are on the left side of these issues, and indeed, always have been on the left side.

Read more