Glenn Beck sees the Republican party has become just the other Washington party, and he is right.
The only way for the GOP to redeem itself is for it to find its purpose again. That may be happening now.
Congressional Republicans need a grand gesture to signal that conservatism is once again their guiding principle.
I believe that gesture would be elevating Mike Pence to Republican Leader in the House.
There is just no way that John Boehner should still be the Leader after two consecutive historic losses at the polls.
The American people were giving the Republicans under the leadership of Biehner a vote of no confidence, but the Congressional Republicans were too stupid or too much in denial to interpret it correctly.
I believe this is the major source of discontent with the GOP. Boehner has to go.
True of the national leadership, and not necessarily true of the state GOPs, and certainly not true of the ideological party, which remains a conservative party.
“Glenn Beck sees the Republican party has become just the other Washington party, and he is right.
The only way for the GOP to redeem itself is for it to find its purpose again. That may be happening now.
Congressional Republicans need a grand gesture to signal that conservatism is once again their guiding principle.
I believe that gesture would be elevating Mike Pence to Republican Leader in the House.”
Nonetheless, here’s what I mean by a catharsis event. As a party we need to come out and admit that dating back at least to the days of Teddy Roosevelt our party - regardless of what the Democrats have done - has been complicit in shredding the Constitution and leading us down to the path to socialist tyranny at liberty’s expense. Then, after admitting the error of our ways, recite a long list of examples such as:
- Redefining the meaning of the “commerce clause” during the Progressive Era to allow the federal government to regulate economic activities involving anything other than the actual trade of goods and services across state lines
- Helping ratify the 16th Amendment and supporting a graduated income tax that violates both the principle of inalienable property rights and equal protection under law while providing the funding mechanism to future wealth redistribution schemes
- Helping rarify the 17th Amendment which destroyed the last functionally effective check on federal power by the states
- Creating and empowering the federal reserve (didn’t we learn our lessons from the first two “national” banks?)
- Passing the protectionist tariffs and other Keynesian economic “stimulus” efforts Hoover toyed with before FDR expanded the idea exponentially during the nightmarish New Deal of the 1930s
- Not repealing the socialist and other anti-liberty New Deal programs like Social Security, the Wagner Act, and the Fair Labor Standards Act when we finally won both houses of Congress and the presidency back in the early 1950s under Eisenhower
- Waging war without a formal declaration from Congress (although to be fair to the GOP most of the time the Dems actually got us into these conflicts and they were necessary fights anyway... but that still doesn’t excuse not abiding by the Constitution)
- Allowing disasters like Medicare and Medicaid to be created
- Nixon’s wage and price controls, the EPA, and ditching the gold standard
- Letting President Reagan leave office without abolishing the unconstitutional Department of Education like he said he would when we first voted for him
- “Read my lips no new taxes.”
- Not pushing seriously to privatize Social Security when we controlled both houses of Congress even though Bush campaigned on it in 2000
- Expanding Medicare instead of shrinking it when we controlled both houses of Congress and the White House,
- Allowing groups like ACORN to ever get their hands on a nickel of our tax dollars, TARP, and so forth.
Of course just listing these examples by themselves is only half of the catharsis process. Of even greater importance it to explain in clear normal human language how these errors were power-grabs by the federal government that violated the federal compact (enumerated powers in Article I, Section XIII of the Constitution), how they stripped us of our inalienable rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness endowed to us by our Creator (championed in the Declaration of Independence), and how they’ve collectively brought us ever closer to achieving for ourselves a nightmarish kind of hybrid socialist-fascist tyranny in some ways eerily similar to those which we spent a World War and a Cold War defeating.
Practically speaking, here is how I see the GOP going about making this national apology. First we have the state parties and the RNC get together an approve a document that explains everything above in clear narrative language headed by an official statement - to be permanently plastered on the RNC website, printed in every newspaper in America every day for the next ten years, and read aloud to the American people by Sarah Palin in a live ceremony emceed by Rush Limbaugh and broadcast live on Fox News (hosted by Glenn Beck as long as he doesn’t cry and stays focused on the events on the ground) on the 4th of July from the town green in Lexington, Massachusetts - that reads something like this:
“We, the national Republican Party and the state Republican parties would like to apologize to the American people for not giving you a real alternative to the progressive, socialist, Constitution-shredding, liberty-destroying agenda of the Democrats for any meaningful period during the last century. Instead, we too often stood for nothing, were willing to ‘go along to get along,’ or in fact supported or at least enabled many of these tragic errors, and for that we are sorry. For far too long, we have been content merely to swipe away at the edges of the Democrat’s agenda rather than to stop or reverse it, and for that we are sorry also. For most of the last century (even when we’ve controlled both the executive and legislative branches), rather than fighting to preserve your Constitution and your liberties, we have simply led you down the road to serfdom at a rate slightly slower than the Democrats would take us, and for that we are truly sorry. Well no more.
From the grassroots to the Congress of the United States the GOP will no longer be that party. From this point forward our only mission as a party is to restore fidelity to the US Constitution in line with the principle of Creator-endowed individual liberty and toward this end the RNC and the Fifty state Republican parties pledge ourselves to this simple compact with the American people. With your support as voters, combined with our dedicated fealty as your elected representatives to the principles of this compact, we will together lay the foundation to ensure that forevermore the the federal government will operate within the bounds of the shackles placed upon it by the founding fathers in the Constitution, will protect rather than usurp the Creator-endowed inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, make sure that never again will politicians have the ability use the coercive powers of government to engage in their collectivist utopian-building schemes through social engineering and central planning, and that never again will any one American be able to use the coercive power of government as a medium to steal the life, liberty, or property from any other American.”
The Compact for Restoring American Freedom:
- Until such time that all unconstitutional federal agencies, programs, actions, and statutes are completely abolished Republicans will not vote to create any new federal programs or functionaries of any kinds or for any reasons whatsoever.
- Until such time that all unconstitutional federal agencies, programs, actions, and statues are completely abolished Republicans will not vote to appropriate any additional revenues (beyond what it takes to maintain them at their current levels) on any existing federal programs or functionaries of any kinds or for any reasons whatsoever.
- Under no circumstances will a Republican ever vote to redistribute the wealth of any American to any other American (or non-American) ever again for any reason whatsoever.
- In the name of inalienable property rights we will work to repeal the 16th Amendment and with it the graduated income tax - to be replaced by an alternative funding system for the federal government inline with both the Constitution and the principle of equal protection under law.
- To redress the imbalance of power between the states and the federal government we will work for the repeal of the 17th Amendment mandating the direct election of United States Senators.
- To further redress the imbalance of power between the states and the federal government we support the use of the doctrines of “nullification and interposition” by the states in regard to unconstitutional federal legislation or other mandates. No longer shall the federal government be the sole arbiter - through judicial review or any other scheme - of when the federal government has violated the 10th Amendment and encroached upon the rights of the states and/or the citizens of the states.
- We will work toward repealing the Federal Reserve and restoring the US to the gold standard in order to preserve the integrity of the dollar and prevent “taxation without representation” in the form of unnecessary government-induced inflation.
- No more Czars.
- No more rule by executive orders.
- As most of the what the federal government does not under the auspices of the Department of Defense is unconstitutional anyway based upon the explicitly enumerated powers found in Article I, Section XIII of the US Constitution, we call for the immediate abolition of the most unnecessary functionaries of the federal government and all regulations and statutes associated with those same functionaries. This process shall begin with the Departments of Education, Housing and Urban Development, Health and Human Services, and Labor.
- As most of the what the federal government does not under the auspices of the Department of Defense is unconstitutional anyway based upon the explicitly enumerated powers found in Article I, Section XIII of the US Constitution, we call for a responsible plan to gradually abolish and/or consolidate the Departments of the Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, Transportation, and Energy and bring their remaining few responsibilities back inline with the shackles placed upon the federal government by the founding fathers in the Constitution.
- The Department of Homeland Security shall be significantly curtailed to focus on spying on actual enemies of the United States of America who mainly live and operate in foreign countries where the Constitution does not apply anyway. The responsibility of terminating these enemies with extreme prejudice shall be turned over to the Department of Defense if they are to be found on foreign soil and to Ted Nugent if they are to be found inside the borders of the United States. If Ted Nugent deems these targets to not be enemies of the United States then these targets are not actually enemies of the United States after all and will instead be left alone or perhaps given a talk radio show. From now on, the main focus of the Department of Homeland Security will be to physically prevent the unlawful entry of foreigners into the United States.
- As entitlement programs violate the principle of inalienable property rights, unjustly enslave the working people of America to the non-producers, contribute to the rise of individual irresponsibility and the breakdown of the family, comprise a huge chunk of the “non-discretionary” spending which is driving the USA to financial ruin, serve as a gateway to the establishment of tyrannical collectivism, provide corrupt politicians the goodies with which to bribe the dependent classes into keeping them (the politicians) in office for life, and are unconstitutional (not amongst the enumerated powers granted to the federal government in the Constitution) anyway, we shall begin immediately the process of scaling back the welfare state working toward the eventual abolition or privatization of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and all other and associated entitlement programs. Regardless of what specific measures are employed to gradually wean the remaining elements of the dependency class from their federal entitlements, we work toward a goal of having all federal entitlements - except for those awarded to veterans in return for honorable military service administered under the Department of Veterans Affairs - to be abolished within two generations of the GOP winning majorities in both houses of Congress.