I think conservatives are better at learning from past mistakes than the GOPe.
Here in Michigan our former SOS, Terri Land is running to fill the Levin seat in 2014. She’s imperfect and a former member of the establishment but she’s making amends and taking solid steps to prove herself. She’s angering the establishment, running in tea party circles, openly supporting Ted Cruz etc. Its still very early but conservatives seem to be leaning in her direction.
What we have to remember as conservatives is that the lieberals got as far as they got by centralized control of the media, the arts, the education establishment and via that the intelligencia. It is the meme machine of the intelligencia that also drives issues.
Don’t get me wrong. They’re not that good at all that, but we sat back, got marginalized and silenced. Our arguments are better, but they need to be broadly spread and into fertile ground.
It’s hard to overcome their advantage, but we need the same full-court press on liberalism that they put on what is now called conservatism, but once was simply mainstream America. Go back and look at the turn of the last century and the 25 years before then as progressivism was just getting started. They didn’t have the schools, the arts or the media. Originally, they got crushed, but they learned and we are where we are today because they learned.
We need to learn as well. The last quarter century haven’t been a complete liberal victory, actually it is the opposite. They’ve lost on abortion and on guns and technology had a lot to do with them losing. Grass roots were critical, but it was technology that linked people and groups together. The NRA’s fundraising and GOTV efforts applied technology that worked to an issue that worked.
Abortion went the same way. It was the technology of the medical world that brought the womb to life in photos. Once that happened it was just a matter of time that people shifted their beliefs from an invisible lump of flesh to a human baby.
Think of Free Republic. Remember how clunky it was back in the late nineties, but it was born of frustration with the MSM and their Clinton cover-ups. It was the tech that made ditching the MSM through DrudgeReport and FR. That tech connected millions of unconnected, unrepresented conservatives and we researched, got organized and made a difference. Today, the US House is the most conservative it has been in a half century or more in my opinion.
So we need to exploit incrementalism and, actually, people don’t like revolutions - too messy, risky and uncertain. Evolve up the conservative line. Most people are naturally conservative, just like nature. No idiot’s risks for us. How do we do that?
Take two big issues: welfare reform and immigration. On welfare reform, don’t talk cuts, but reallocation of resources. Do we really want a welfare system that is essentially fly paper trapping people in a cycle of poverty where the great grandkids are on the same track of no growth, no education and no daddy that great grandma started on in the 70s? Can you get 60-70% of people to agree to that? Yes, and then what?
Change the incentives in small ways, that compound over time. Reward bureaucrats, the low level ones who are on the ground, for getting people out of poverty. The poor make bad decisions. Why not recognize that? Is a 14 year old with no education or marriage prospects going to be a good mom? Get her a birth control implant (Nexplanon), place the child up for adoption (tax incentive to offset the cost for adoptive parents?), pay her to go to school, say $50/week x 38 weeks ($1900 and make it tax/FICA-free) and put $10,000 in a fund for the mother once she graduates HS, gets her GED or turns 21, whichever comes first. You’d end 60-70% of poverty in a generation.
How about illegal immigration? The issue is securing the border; defining citizenship in such a way that you don’t reduce citizen’s liberty, but you break the birthright cycle; focus on deporting criminal aliens; and managing the welfare system so illegals don’t become a drag on growth. Can you get 60-70% of Americans to go with that? I think so and polls indicate as much. If we end up deporting illegals and their families we’ll lose that fight, but by creating a sufficiently strict, long process, you can Americanize illegal aliens. Plus, Latinos are a low-voting group.
I’ve run off on you and I’m sorry, but you got me thinking. In the end Terri Land and the entire bunch are politicians and their solutions are always going to be compromises, but we need those to go our way and compound over time. The truth is America will only change if we keep pushing it in the right direction. It’s the people that make the difference and the end of government’s control on education will mark the end of socialism in America.