Posted on 12/14/2017 1:22:25 PM PST by Oshkalaboomboom
MOBILE, Ala. — Are Republicans or conservatives these days even capable of smiling?
President Trump and his wingman Steve Bannon are angry people, inventing enemies from thin air just to have someone against whom to fulminate, picking fights for the sake of fighting, spewing bile for the thrill of seeing it splatter.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s lips are permanently pursed. Even his allies say ice water flows in his veins. He hires political hit men whose modus operandi is the vicious attack ad, but whose judgment and feel for political terrain matches that of Gen. George A. Custer.
Leading evangelical leaders, along with prominent radio and TV hosts, push paranoid theories about an “establishment” supposedly more powerful and insidious than the Bible’s Legion, perhaps in league with Keyser Söze as well. Caucuses of conservative House members, brows always furrowed, nitpick every piece of legislation for minute ideological transgressions.
And outside groups paying huge salaries to their executives vie to see whose fund-raising solicitations can sound the shrillest warnings against liberal pinko establishment RINO swamp creatures.
Everywhere one looks on the political Right, the stocks-in-trade are bitterness, frustration, anger, and paranoia, sometimes aimed at the Left but usually aimed with greater vituperation at other right-of-center factions. The sewer of a campaign we just endured here in Alabama was a perfect example, with Republican nominee Roy Moore sending out e-fundraisers associating McConnell by name with “the forces of evil” who “hate our Christian conservative values… [and] hiss and howl at the mere mention of God, morality and obedience to the Constitution.”
Bannon, meawhile, campaigned for Moore by insisting that “globalist elites” are trying to “destroy Roy Moore” specifically because the globalists know that “if they can destroy Roy Moore, they can destroy you.” (Right: Shadowy Illuminati types meeting in, say, Berchtesgaden, want to exterminate Alabama pecan growers.)
This was par for the putrid course for a campaign in which, in the primary, a McConnell-affiliated SuperPAC portrayed conservative congressman Mo Brooks as opposing the fight against Islamic State. (No doubt Brooks helped Osama bin Laden escape from Tora Bora, too!)
This maliciousness is unethical – and politically suicidal.
Didn’t anybody learn anything from Ronald Reagan and Jack Kemp? Or even from losing in 2008 to Barack Obama’s “hope and change”?
Doesn’t anybody know hope is more attractive than fear? Honey better than vinegar? Laughter more contagious than angry yells?
Aside from a few exceptions such as Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, House Whip Steve Scalise, and Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska, it’s as if nobody on the political right even remembers how to smile, much less how to entice others likewise.
Conservatives certainly push forward nobody with Kemp’s infectious optimism, or his insistence (to quote from his 1992 Republican National Convention speech) that “the purpose of a great party is not to defeat its opponents. The purpose of a great party is to provide superior leadership and a greater cause. It's not to denounce the past. It's to inspire our nation to a better future.”
At that same gathering, in the final Republican convention speech of his career, Reagan spoke of America as “an empire of ideals. For two hundred years, we have been set apart by our faith in the ideals of democracy, of free men and free markets, and of the extraordinary possibilities that lie within seemingly ordinary men and women.”
Crucially, Reagan also said this: “We are all equal in the eyes of God. But as Americans that is not enough; we must be equal in the eyes of each other.” Against what some now refer to as “blood and soil” patriotism, Reagan insisted that “in America, our origins matter less than our destinations.”
That 1992 convention was important, and instructive. Alas, the Reagan and Kemp messages there were lost. The media instead portrayed that convention as an orgy of anger represented by the “culture war” speech of Pat Buchanan. It wasn’t pretty. Against that image of Republican fist-shakers, Bill Clinton was able to consolidate his newly found advantage in the presidential race – and then to win the White House and usher in the political and cultural pathologies for which the Clintons are infamous.
Yet, Buchanan was a model of restraint compared to the bile of Bannonism.
Since that 1992 demarcation point, Republicans have only once won a majority of the popular vote for president, and even that one time the GOP garnered just 50.7 percent.
Sure, conservatives can keep trying to divide and conquer, and perhaps eke out an occasional small victory. But we can’t build, or effectively govern, by division. It’s time to stop sharpening our differences, and start broadening our appeal.
We should do so with smiles, and a few chuckles, and a lot of winsome insistence that for seemingly ordinary Americans of all creeds and colors, “extraordinary possibilities” lie well within reach.
Quin Hillyer (@QuinHillyer) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential blog. He is a former associate editorial page editor for the Washington Examiner and is the author of Mad Jones, Heretic, a satirical literary novel published in the fall of 2017.
Or, “Everything is Awesome!”
Didn’t even get past the visceral hate of the first paragraph.
I’m very happy and think God is in charge, but I also believe that Corporatist Uniparty elites run the political system and took out Roy Moore.
They’ll get Trump next if they can.
I even put it into writing.
http://nextrushfree.blogspot.com/2017/12/fundamentalists-anonymous-for-roy-moore.html
Hindsight is 20-20. Strange would have kept the seat. Ivey should not have called for special election. Anybody in Calif. remember our conservatives nominating Bill Simon for Gov? Stupid.
I stopped reading a few sentences in after I realized this article was written by an idiot.
Were you aware that Strange would have been accused of corruption and collusion in stopping the investigation into the governor of Alabama in exchange for that Senate seat to which he was appointed... by the governor?
Strange would have been hammered as a corrupt politician involved in quid pro quos.
Rod Blagojevich's name would have come up.
Trump is always smiling.
Trump is always smiling.
I think if Jeb was elected we would be going through the same process with the rats. The only difference would be Jeb wouldn’t fight. He would do what his brother did and ignore it. And we saw where that led us.
We need to put all of this in perspective.
Soros and company outspent Moore 14-1.
The republican establishment was against Moore.
The liberal establishment was against Moore.
The MSM gave Moore a major beat down with the sexual misconduct stuff.
The evangelicals decided it was best to stay home than risk voting for Moore, even though the sexual predator stuff was debunked.
The write in vote was 2% that could have put Moore over the top.
And with all of that and the potential Democrat “cheating” that happens in the inner cities, Moore still held Jones to under 50%.
If anything, I would say Bannon did great.
I make no criticism of Bannon. I think Bannon did as well as any man could have done, it's just the enemies were willing to go dirtier and with more force than they have ever done before.
Conservatives need another Lee Atwater.
The Republican party is called the stupid party for good reason.
Who cares? Trump won by more than 70 electoral votes and states Republicans hadn't won since the 1980s. He's the one that expanded the party, not never Trump morons who believe in selling out conservative principles to expand the party.
I rest my case. 8?)
Were you aware that Strange would have been accused of corruption and collusion in stopping the investigation into the governor of Alabama in exchange for that Senate seat to which he was appointed... by the governor?
Exactly. They would have hammered him as bad or worse than Moore. The difference is the allegations would have been true for Strange. That’s why he lost i in the primary.
What if Trump knew about this and was the reason why he endorsed Strange, also knowing that Moore would be taken out?
The Rats would have probably disclosed Brooks' illness and forced him out too.
More proof that Trump has uncanny political instincts
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