Posted on 04/16/2016 10:32:34 AM PDT by Kaslin
There’s just something about the swamp gas of D.C. that seems to turn diehard conservatives wimpy, out-of-touch and punishingly dull the moment they get into the GOP leadership. Maybe it’s something the lobbyists are sticking in the hors d'oeuvres at all the fancy cocktail parties they attend. Whatever’s causing it, movement conservatives are entirely justified in being furious at the way the GOP Leadership has behaved over the last few years. The grassroots wanted conservatives who’d represent their interests and they got pod people who spend most of their time servilely catering to Obama and a business lobby that doesn’t have the best interests of the American people at heart.
Unfortunately, for far too many people on our side, this is where their critique of Republicans begins and ends. They start with the premise that the establishment is bad, which is true, but then they go haywire and attribute all bad things to the establishment.
I wish that were true. I wish all we’d need to do to fix the Republican Party, the conservative movement and the country would be to flush Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, Kevin McCarthy, John Cornyn and a few other guys along with all their orbiters and everything would be fine. But, it’s not.
That’s because the problems the conservative movement has go a lot deeper than the establishment. Until all of us in flyover country start behaving differently, we’re not going to turn this country around.
For one thing, we need to stop supporting conservative PACs that waste most of the money we give them. Is every conservative PAC doing the wrong thing? No, but you might as well flush money down your toilet as to give it to many of the organizations that are out there. During the last cycle, when we at Right Wing News researched PACs on our side, we found that the bottom 10 took in $54,318, 498 and paid out only $3,621,896. When your performance level is that poor, you’re not helping the conservative movement, you’re hurting it.
What have we done to change our state colleges, which are often hostile environments for conservatives? Are we threatening to pull our kids out of school? Are we pressuring Republican state legislators to cut funds if colleges hire communists and terrorists as professors? Are we doing anything of significance to stop the brainwashing of college kids that is being done with our tax dollars?
As the late, great Andrew Breitbart said, “Politics is downstream from culture.” So what are we doing to change that culture? Are we boycotting musicians, actors and companies that trash conservative values? Not really, which makes no sense because the Left is very effective at doing that and conservatives used to be good at it, too. Are we supporting our local churches that are fighting the good fight or are we watching as they fade into irrelevance because they have no idea how to compete for young people in a digital age? Have you ever noticed that liberals do much better when you poll “adults” instead of likely voters or registered voters? What that tells you is that the culture is even more liberal than you’d think from looking at how people vote. If we’re not willing to do anything to change it, why should we expect it to change?
It’s conventional wisdom that the Tea Party movement had a big impact in a couple of elections, brought in some new Republicans and then mostly faded away. Did we do all we could have with that big national movement? In some areas, the Tea Party made a huge difference, but in too many other places, the Tea Party broke apart into factions, each run by a little Indian who wanted to be a big chief. Although we initially drew people in with rallies, most groups were unable to up the ante the way liberals do. No big music acts, no giant puppet heads, no rebellious fun, just more and more long boring speeches about the Constitution and the Federalist Papers from people who made it on stage not because they can talk, but because they were political allies. Eventually, few people wanted to turn up for that kind of show anymore and Tea Parties faded away.
Of course, it’s easy to point the finger at “leaders,” but are the rest of us doing everything we should? Are we reacting so strongly to hypersensitive liberals, illegal aliens and idiots like Black Lives Matter that we’re saying things that are deliberately designed to offend people? It’s as if some people hate political correctness so much that they think anything that’s not politically correct is good. As annoying as the PC crowd is, the people who go out of their way to be as insensitive as humanly possible may be even worse and there are a lot of them on our side.
Also, I don’t care what the NAACP, Jesse Jackson or Black Lives Matter think about anything, but when I have conservative-leaning black Americans writing me asking, “What’s going on?” when they see images comparing the Obamas to monkeys on some conservative Facebook pages, I don’t know what to tell them other than the world is full of losers and we have our share. The Republican Party will NEVER bring in large numbers of black or Hispanic voters if even the people who agree with us have to overlook offensive comments to side with us on economics and social issues.
Many of us also have a horrible tendency to make “perfect the enemy” of the good. We primary members of Congress with ACU ratings over 90; we accuse people of being RINOs for disagreeing on anything and we are generally impossible to please. It’s fine to go after the establishment with hammer and tongs, but is there EVER a time when we’re willing to say, that’s not ideal, but that’s the best deal we can probably get right now? If we’re never going to be satisfied, isn’t the message people are going to get out of that, “There’s no point in even trying?”
If movement conservatives want to change the country, we can’t just wait for the establishment to change; we must change, too.
The problem is that when the proverbial 'conservative' candidate is swirling down there in that turd bowl with them trying to get the nomination. Bad people change - or have to, not US! Hard working, tax paying citizens whose main focus is to stay above water and listen to the lying conservative PACs and 'funds' that feather the beds of some of the worst grifters around aren't the ones who have to 'change'. ACU? Hell, stock questions and show vote rolls that any scumbag RINO politician can work. God forbid some damned conservative posing RINO has to go out and actually work for a living. Screw them.
I agree about the schools. Red state legislatures have the power of the checkbook. There should be no Islamic indoctrination or special snowflake isms in red states.
Another admonition from those riding the system to leave things to the experts.
If you are satisfied with how things have gone the last 15 years, by all means follow this advice. Keep reelecting long-time incumbents.
Not sure what his point is, but career politicians, “establishment” if you will, are a big problem because they are per se corrupt and are presumed, like the established, centrally organized political parties themselves, to be more interested in their own political future than America’s future.
The issue in America has always been, is now, and will always be freedom. All of this hokum is political shuck and jive if the heart of it is not to bring about a rebirth of political freedom in the country by putting the federal government back under the Constitution which is our only legal bulwark of political freedom against federal tyranny.
That’s “log” not “speck”.
The author makes a lot of good points.
While we need to take the log out of our own eyes, we still need to to do all we can to rid our party of “Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, Kevin McCarthy, John Cornyn and a few other guys.” As long as we have traitors in our ranks we will never be victorious.
As long as our leaders are as loyal to the cause as Benedict Arnold, we will lose every battle we engage in.
The only way to get term limits is through Constitutional Convention...The only way to get that convention is to have Congress vote to open one...Does anyone actually think that the Congress critters would vote to take away their continued cushy livelihood??? LOL
Yes, it is our fault that the GOP is totally corrupt and everytime we give them power, they betray us.
Problem with this essay; there is far more than a speck in the establishment eye. It is a great big log — from a giant sequoia tree!
Whatever it takes. An there’s a big push for an Article V Convention of States where Congress is essentially not involved.
A overlooked key to stopping the tyranny of the feds is state sovereignty - states have the constitutional right to nullify unconstitutional acts of the feds which by definition are acts of tyranny.
Of course Obama has elevated tyranny to an art form, and nobody calls his bluff or stops him. Surreal.
He needs to do more research than just check out if they're registered Republican - anyone can do that in five minutes.
This has been an on going effort by Democrats to turn the party against their base.
If you want to do ‘turn abouts fair play' write a hate filled letter to a Democrat (saying you're a proud democrat and have been for years) - then tell them you wish death on conservatives. To find out how liberals write go to Democrat Underground. Those folks do their research here...
Or better yet, Paul Ryan and assorted gullible Republicans ask someone who worked in a Democrat War room setting...
I keep waiting for the day when conservatives wake up from war addiction. It’s self-defeating in every way:
- it’s expensive as all hell
- it increases the power and centralization of government
- it provides political cover for all sorts of other betrayals
- it has caused conservatives to eschew honest men with the courage to confront the issue, in favor of quislings, betrayers and scoundrels (how many times have you heard “I like Ron Paul except on foreign policy”? Well, you got Romney instead, for that reason and that reason alone.)
- it dramatically undermines right to life arguments
- it degrades morals, to the point where many even accept torture as proper
- it makes enemies, but no friends
- it distracts us from the real enemies this country has - the ones stripping us of all our wealth
- it empowers a tyrannical security state at the expense of constitutional rights
- it never results in the promised outcomes
and I could go on and on... the war addiction is killing us, it’s time for people to wake up.
He needs to do more research than just check out if they're registered Republican - anyone can do that in five minutes.
This has been an on going effort by Democrats to turn the party against their base.
If you want to do ‘turn abouts fair play' write a hate filled letter to a Democrat (saying you're a proud democrat and have been for years) - then tell them you wish death on conservatives. To find out how liberals write go to Democrat Underground. Those folks do their research here...
Or better yet, Paul Ryan and assorted gullible Republicans ask someone who worked in a Democrat War room setting... Stop being so gullible Paul Ryan...
They’re not grass roots any more. They’re Conservative RINOS.
I don’t want to take a speck out of their eyes.
I want to tie them all to stakes and light a fire.
His point is, Conservatives need to walk the walk. If you are concerned about the academy, send your kid to Hillsdale, not Princeton, like Bill Bennett did. If you disagree with a leftwing actor, don't go to see his movie on the grounds that "yeah his politics suck but he's a good actor." Don't spend your money on crap like Bruce Stringsteen concerts. Get it? Then, when you act like you mean it, you can gripe about Mitch McConnell with some authority.
WORTH REPEATING — Walk the talk, put your money where your mouth is—and vice versa...
“Conservatives need to walk the walk. If you are concerned about the academy, send your kid to Hillsdale, not Princeton, like Bill Bennett did. If you disagree with a leftwing actor, don’t go to see his movie on the grounds that “yeah his politics suck but he’s a good actor.” Don’t spend your money on crap like Bruce Stringsteen concerts. Get it? Then, when you act like you mean it, you can gripe about Mitch McConnell with some authority.”
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