The Future of the GOP - a symposium

The American Thinker ^ | May 01, 2009 | Symposium

[Scanian]

Arlen Specter's party switch has reignited the debate over the GOP's mission: a conservative party vs. a big tent coalition including liberal Republicans ("moderates" in media-speak). Five AT writers have addressed the topic, taking rather different positions.

Richard Baehr argues for the big tent approach:

We need a party that can win legislative elections in the Northeast, the suburbs, and other areas where the social conservative vote comes nowhere near a majority. Putting GOP moderates in the House and Senate from those sates or districts where they are the only kind who can win, does help. There has been a successful strategy depicting Republicans with as Southern, religious, racists, led by Rush Limbaugh, playing off the cultural prejudices of the metropolitan elites who get their news from mainstream outlets.

I am not suggesting Specter or Susan Collins type Republicans need to run in Mississippi. The conservative base will always dominate the legislative delegation as a whole, but for the GOP to have any legislative power at all, it must be competitive in more than the conservative heartland. The GOP can be a minority power, with some ability to block, and with an upward trajectory, or have no power at all.

It is easy to be angry or disgusted with Specter, who has always been a ridiculous egotist, and say best to be rid of him. Wrong. Unless you like card check, national health insurance and cap and trade. For that is what you may now get -- all this year, thanks to Pat Toomey's entrance into the GOP race, which forced the Specter switch.

The GOP is now self-destructing. The behavior of the Club for Growth is a big part of it.

[Ann Archy]

Embrace being the party of NO....

No more bailouts, etc....Then "YES" to all that's good in our party besides tax cuts.

I'd also like to see another strong CONTRACT with AMERICA!

[Westbrook]

Let the RINOs leave the party.

Better yet, CHASE THEM OUT!

Let the Northeast become one-party communist gulags. When the people who actually WORK for a living leave those states wallowing in their communist dystopias, they will collapse.

It will mean some instability for a while, but maybe that’s what it’s going to take.

The New Hampshire Senate passed the “Gay Marriage” bill, and the boy-governor says he will let it pass without his signature.

We are thinking of moving to Georgia or Alabama.

[broken_arrow1]

Big Circus Tent is a good name for it. A bunch of Republican clowns, tight-rope walkers and jugglers!

Constitution first, last and only <- There is a vision for your platform.

[mosaicwolf]

The thing I don't understand is what is a "Liberal" Republican? Wouldn't that be a democrat? I'm serious about this question. I don't know the answer and would appreciate anyone's opinion or help.

Create a great FR day.

[RSmithOpt]

Well the GOP is pretty much a dead horse now as 'leaders' within the party made decisions to move 'more to the middle' as to appear moderate in hopes of gaining power.

Leaders w/in the GOP abandoned the principles of what is really best for the country, the entire country, not just a few select groups.

It is unfortunate that we have allowed so many uneducated illiterates to enter into this country illegally and some legally.

I would venture to say that less than 10% of all immigrants to this country the last 25 years have any understanding of US History, US government, civics, The Constitution, The Declaration of Independence, capitalism and economics, BUT, many get to vote for socialists for office whether legally voting isn't even questioned any more.

[nathanbedford]

The point of this exercise is to determine where the Republican Party should go from here. "Here" means the political wilderness for the party so the question for the party is how to get out of the wilderness. But "here" also means the state of the nation in which the party operates.

It has fallen to us in the long reach of history to be at the inflection point of the American democracy. The Republic is in peril as it has never been in since the Civil War. Larrey Anderson of these writers best lays out the state of the union and it is not pretty and it's going to get worse. He points out the economy is heading for a depression. Obama will continue to use the economic dislocation to deconstruct our politics and impose socialism and tyranny. The mainstream media is neither inclined nor capable of playing its traditional role in opposing those forces. Obama will use other means such as the climate change fraud to further nationalize the economy. By the time all is discovered it will be too late to undo the damage done to our economy or to our democracy.

If you accept this scenario, and I do, indeed I have been saying this since before the election, then you believe that the solution offered to get the Republican Party out of the wilderness makes no sense unless it is understood that the wilderness does not just mean political impotence but destruction, destruction not just of the party but of our democracy. Anderson can offer us no hope for either the party, the democracy, or for the economy because he sees no leader emerging. He is right in that assessment but his assessment fails to consider Newt Gingrich.

If one accepts Anderson's view of the landscape, half measures will be discarded as availing nothing. That means that Richard Baehr and his argument for half measures and compromises with liberalism can be dismissed out of hand because they are not even designed to do more than rearrange the deck chairs. The only effective resistance to the Obama juggernaut is to nationalize the upcoming elections.

Ed Lasky tells us to get smarter and to campaign with an eye on demographics. Again, if one sees the world as does Anderson, these nostrums are too little and too late although they should of course be employed where possible.

Thomas Lifson clearly gets it. He sees the problem in the same dimension as Anderson but he is more sanguine about recovery because he sees that Obama's overreach inevitably carries the seeds of a backlash. I do not share this view for a number of reasons which I have expressed in many posts. Essentially, I share Anderson's view which is that Obama knows he is in a foot race to so jigger the American political system and electoral process to make his position unassailable before the mass of America can recover. This is admittedly a very cynical view of Obama and it frankly implies that Obama will welcome the financial and economic chaos to come as a means of aggrandizing his own power. It is nothing less than Michelle Obama implied before the election that he would do.

Beyond the economic chaos and the inflation which is bound to come, we are dealing with the systematic destruction of our democracy by a committed Marxist. Any approach to leading the Republican Party out of the wilderness which does not take this into account is bootless. Our only chance is to acquaint, no confront, the American people with the starkness of the fate which awaits them. In this context Anderson has it right, we need a leader- but he fails to consider Gingrich. I believe that the country is in the state of Great Britain in 1940 coincident with the fall of France when the nation turned to Winston Churchill, not because he was loved, he was actually detested by many parts of the country especially the Tories, but because he could, in the words of John F. Kennedy, (or more likely his speechwriter) "mobilize the English language and hurl it into battle." They detested him but they knew he was a genius. Moreover, his warnings as he wrote in his history of the times, had been so terribly vindicated that no one now could gainsay him.

I offer a leader not for his virtue but for his political genius and for his forensic skills which no other man can match. He must be a bomb thrower. He must know how to organize a movement. He must know how to nationalize an election. He must be able to grab the mainstream media by the throat and force them to give him a hearing. He must compel the Obama apologists to play defense. Before anyone tells me how many times Newt Gingrich has been divorced, or on whose couch he was photographed sitting, let him come up with a man better fit for this season.

We are not seeking a leader or a philosophy for normal times. Fastidiousness is appropriate to normal times, we are in death throes.

[OH4life]

Ah yes, the economic power-houses of Georgia and Alabama - currently ranked 24th and 46th amongst states in per capita income, vs. that socialist hell-hole of new hampshire, ranked 6th.

Head for Alaska, they’re at least ranked #4!

[central_va]

After taxes you are better off in the South.

[OH4life]

I always thought alaska’s taxes were fairly low?

[Westbrook]

> Ah yes, the economic power-houses of Georgia and Alabama -> currently ranked 24th and 46th amongst states in per
> capita income, vs. that socialist hell-hole of new
> hampshire, ranked 6th.

I’m sure the costs of living in Georgia and Alabama are WAY lower than they are in NH. I know people who live in Alaska and their cost of living is considerably higher than ours in NH.

While the cost of living in Georgia and Alabama may not be proportionately lower wrt income, there are some things in life that are more important than money.

[skipper18]

Yeah, lets all pretend that a loaf of bread is $10 and the tax rate is 80 % in the Northeast.

The south has the highest divorce rates in the country, highest teen pregnancy rates, highest crime rates, highest poverty rates, highest infant mortality ... across the board, the worst stats all belong to the south, and in the reverse, the best stats belong to the Northeast.

But nevermind all that garbage about how people actually live, folks in the south say they’re conservatives and that’s what counts!

[Texas resident]

Your description of the South describes Atlanta or New Orleans, both liberal cities. There are other places down here that do not have those problems.

[Westbrook]

It ain’t just the tax rates, FRiend.

It’s the cost of housing (about double in NH for equivalent property in Alabama), the cost of heating (about $2000/yr for me), astronomical property tax, gas taxes, etc, etc.

And the costs in NH are going to skyrocket, once the homos start coming here and the homeschoolers (like us) leave for states that won’t try to force us into the government schools under threat of imprisonment.

Yes, medical care is best in the big Northeastern cities, but that’s about to change with imminent government takeover.

Crime rates? Yeah, they’re just great in the Northeast.
:rolleyes:

Teen pregnancies? At least they’re having their babies instead of murdering them. Here in NH, the school nurse can take a school girl to an abortion mill without telling her parents. Voila’! Low teen pregnancy rates.

Divorce rates? What about shacking up rates? Almost everybody around here is shacking up. No need for divorce when that mess splits up.

Now, I don’t pretend to have stats, just observations.

But you mentioned stats without providing any stats or sources for your stats.

I’d be interested in seeing them.