Posted on 09/29/2014 7:54:52 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
If history has taught conservatives anything, it is that having Republicans in power is a necessary but by no means sufficient condition to advance a conservative agenda.
During the George W. Bush era, for instance, Republicans controlled the White House and both chambers of Congress. Spending soared, the federal role in education grew, and entitlements underwent their most significant expansion since Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society.
Republicans claim to have rediscovered their commitment to limited government principles as a reaction to President Obama. But with the possibility of retaking control of the Senate within their grasp, Republicans have decided to pursue a strategy of playing it safe.
The thinking among many Republican strategists is that with Obama’s popularity in the toilet, it’s better to make the 2014 election a referendum on him rather than running on specific policies that could leave the GOP open to attack.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., finding himself in a tough re-election fight, has given mixed signals when it comes to Obama’s healthcare law. While telling New York Times that the law should be repealed “root and branch,” he also said of those who have obtained Medicaid coverage in his state as a result of the law’s expansion of the program, “I don’t know that it will be taken away from them.”
This is not an isolated example of Republicans undercutting conservative principles when it comes to entitlements.
Crossroads GPS, an arm of the Karl Rove-founded political action committee American Crossroads, has produced ads attacking Democrats for backing changes to entitlements — programs conservatives know are unsustainable and desperately in need of reform.
“Arkansas seniors depend on Social Security and Medicare,” a narrator says in Crossroads ad attacking Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor. “It’s troubling that Senator Pryor said we should overhaul Social Security and Medicare.”
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...
The EXEMPT RINOs continue to sink the Repub Party.
They don’t care about their base. Their loss.
“Republicans do conservatism a disservice by running on nothing”
That’s because they are Republicans.
The GOP should change their name to The Seinfeld Party, a party about nothing.
Too many Republicans are secretly envying Obama.
It’s everybody’s loss, really.
Republicans don’t care about conservatism or conservatives. they care about themselves.
How about the Jackson Browne Party, with its built-in theme song, "Running on Empty"?
Republicans do conservatives a disservice by not representing them in any way...
No, by going against them in every way except to talk
Blah Blah Blah.
Wait ‘till conservatives miss Harry Reid, for all the double crossing that goes on after the election; for all the wrath they heap onto Ted Cruz that they wouldn’t dream of heaping onto democrats; for the sweep in of amnesty to appease their donors.
” - - - During the George W. Bush era, for instance, Republicans controlled the White House and both chambers of Congress. Spending soared, the federal role in education grew, and entitlements underwent their most significant expansion since Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. - - - “
RINO - - - - - POWER!
RINO - - - - - POWER!
That has become the expectation for politicians. It’s a proud little clique.
“The people” will not be able to unite against such foolishness until a sufficient number have hearts united with the Lord.
And yet to compare with Barack Obama, the Bush spending was pocket change.
In the past I voted for McCain, and Romney nationally, and for Scott Brown in Massachusetts. But I guess it depends on your belief in how far gone this nation is, and what it will take to restore it, assuming that is even possible at this point.
Personally, I now believe that the only way to save America at this point (assuming such a thing is still possible) is to put conservatives in political offices and enact an agenda based on free markets, limited government and the rule of law. As long as we have a Republican party that actively opposes those ends (and we do, obviously), then I believe our only (slim) hope is drastic action.
As long as the Republican Party establishment believes that it can continue to survive by being Democrat-lite, and that it can continue to maintain power while actively fighting against the core principles of liberty, free markets and Constitutional law, it will never make the necessary change of direction.
Only when the Republican party understands that it must change or die can we hope to turn this country around. Our too-long-serving entrenched establishment politicians can still enjoy their comfy lifestyles, their wealth, power and prestige as members of a minority party. So why should they bother to change direction?
Surely a John Boehner (or an Eric Cantor -- had he not been defeated -- or a Mitch McConnell) would be just as happy to be minority leaders if the election cycle didn't go their way. Yes, they would prefer to be majority leaders, but what good would it do them if a conservative Republican Party won the majority and then threw them out of their cushy positions and all those perks, replacing them with real conservatives?
Ask yourself -- which do you think Mitch McConnell would prefer -- a majority Republican party in which he was stripped of his position by a conservative majority, or a minority Republican party in which he could remain Senate minority leader because the majority of Republican senators were RINOs?
You may argue that we have no time to wait for the Republicans to realize that their only choice is to change or die as a viable party. But if we don't have time for that, then what makes you think we have time to wait for the RINOs and the GOP-e to pursue a "moderately marginal" course of action designed only to maintain their personal fiefdoms at the expense of a free America operating under the rule of Constitutional law?
The GOP had majority power in the House and Senate, and occupied the White House, 10 years ago. What did all that power do to move the agenda of liberty forward? Answer: nothing.
A GOP that cannot even sell liberty, limited governments and free markets to the American people is worse than useless. It is a party of tyranny enablers, and I will have none of it.
Unbelievably, today we once again face the stark choice between liberty and death.
Once again, these are the times that try men's souls. Conservatives need to be waging aggressive war against the totalitarian leftist tyrants on all fronts -- in the branches of government at the federal and state level, in academia, in the media, through public demonstrations, and in the voting booth.
Many argue that we must continue to vote for "the most electable conservative," which means "vote for the RINO if no conservative is running." But I respectfully disagree with that choice. I am done enabling.
If we really are to lose the greatest country in the history of the world, then let's at least be fighting for it when it goes down.
And who knows, maybe -- just maybe, if we show sufficient resolve and conviction -- divine Providence will once again provide the support that gave our founders their unlikely victory in 1776, and grant us once again the "new birth of freedom" that Lincoln called for a century later.
If you reward bad behavior, you get more of it. The RINOs have managed to own the Republican party because they know that conservatives have nowhere else to go.
To continue voting for RINOs is to play right into that strategy. The RINOs have become so certain of your vote that they actually believe they can continue to stay in power by declaring outright war on the conservative base.
And when they do that, they are actually declaring war on core American principles -- war on liberty, war on free market economics, and even war on the Constitution.
The RINO Republicans cannot even make an appeal to the traditional American love of those principles, because they have lost the credibility and historical awareness to articulate them, let alone promote them.
Yes, having Harry Reid continue as majority leader is a horrific scenario. But having RINO Republicans win that office is only a marginally better short-term outcome.
And in some ways it is even worse, because as the RINOs “reach across the aisle" to promote marginally modified Democrat policies, they give the Democrats cover from the well-deserved blame for the horrific damage that they have unleashed on our country in the last five years.
America is out of time now. We cannot continue on the current path. And as things continue to deteriorate, who do you think the voters will blame if the Republicans are in power when the 2016 elections come around?
You think Mitch McConnell's senate will repeal Obamacare? You think it will take the right position on immigration? You think a Republican Senate will vote against Obama’s left wing Supreme Court nominations?
America needs clear, passionate and articulate voices to advocate and defend our founding principles, to secure our borders, to preserve our nation, and to take legislative and administrative steps to turn this country around, assuming it still can be turned around.
Majority leader Mitch McConnell will NEVER provide that voice or leadership. He is not the guy to turn things around for our formerly blessed nation.
But in 2016 a newly terrified Republican party will be forced to court instead of alienate the conservative base, and come 2017 will be in a position to put the party and our nation on the proper path. Such a duly chastised party has a real chance of nominating a Ted Cruz, instead of a Mitt Romney who, according to last night's panel on Fox News, is at this point the likely Republican presidential nominee.
So in November, for those whose only choice in the mid-terms is between a RINO and a Democrat, I urge them to stay home on election day, or vote third-party -- anything to prove the RINOs wrong in thinking that they can stay in power by literally declaring war on conservatism.
Think about it.
The Rove-Romney crowd wants us to believe that this is politics as usual. This is war, and RINOs are on the wrong side.
The arm of flesh will fail.
"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague."- Marcus Tullius Cicero (Ancient Roman Lawyer, Writer, Scholar, Orator and Statesman, 106 BC-43 BC)
Better than them running on amnesty and gay marriage.
They ARE as corrupt and antagonistic as Democrats. Their chains would have "GOP" on them.
One of my concerns when I came on board at FR just over ten years ago, and posted so at the time was the redefinition of Conservatism by the RINO Division of the Left in control of the Republican party. Today Conservatism has been successfully redefined.
You know, and I know what conservatism is, but Joe, and Alice P. Somebody know it to mean Republican. It means Karl Rove, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell, and the likes.
We have a job in just redefining ourselves back to what we are in the eyes of voters like Joe, and Alice P. Somebody.
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