Posted on 01/05/2015 5:39:04 AM PST by LeoMcNeil
When Jeb Bush announced he was running for President conservatives accused him of being RINO. (Republican in name only) Conservatives have said the same thing about Mitt Romney, Chris Christie and a laundry list of moderate to liberal Republicans. The fact though is that the progressives in the GOP aren’t the RINO’s. The Republican Party was founded as the party of big government in 1854. They were the remains of the Whig Party, which at the time was the party of Hamiltonian big government. It was the Democrats who favored Jeffersonian small government. The RINO’s aren’t big government progressives, the Republican Party has always been their party. The RINO’s are conservatives who have been trying to find a landing place since FDR began pushing us out of the Democrat Party.
If we look at the last 60 years of Republican Presidential nominees we can only count three times when a conservative was nominated. In 1964 Barry Goldwater was nominated, he was arguably conservative despite the fact that later in life he favored abortion on demand. He was basically a Kennedy Republican who favored tax cuts and opposed LBJ’s expansive welfare state. In 1980 and 1984 Ronald Reagan won the GOP nomination. Reagan was largely a conservative but let’s not kid ourselves about how conservative he actually was. As Governor of California he signed into law bills allowing abortion and no-fault divorce. He later said he regreted those decisions but not enough to stop him from nominating progressives like Sandra Day O’Connor and Anthony Kennedy to the Supreme Court. He also raised taxes and the Federal debt while in the White House.
Other than Goldwater and Reagan, the Republican Party has nominated one moderate progressive after another. Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Bush 41 and 43, Dole, McCain and Romney were all party progressives. If we want to pretend these nominees are RINO’s then we have to pretend like most of the Republican Party is a fraud. In reality all of these nominees are in keeping with the historic Republican Party. The GOP gave America its first progressive President in Theodore Roosevelt. It gave us a laundry list of progressive Senators and Congressmen, including the progressive La Follette dynasty in Wisconsin the elder of which ran on the Progressive Party ticket in 1924 and won 17% of the vote. There hasn’t been a Republican President who has reduced the Federal budget since Calvin Coolidge in the 20’s. Coolidge is perhaps the most conservative President of the 20th century. His replacement was Herbert Hoover, a typical progressive Republican.
No doubt that party philosophy can change over time. For most of the 19th century the Democrats were the party of small government. They looked to Thomas Jefferson rather than Alexander Hamilton for guidance in governing. By the 20th century the Democrats had shifted to the progressive outlook, having been swept away with the progressive movement which started gaining steam after the Civil War. President Woodrow Wilson represents the Democrats formal break with their historic conservative past, which in the last election or two has been finalized with the elimination of the last blue dog conservative Democrats. By the time FDR was elected, the Democrats had moved well to the left of the Republicans. That doesn’t mean the Republicans had moved to the right, only that the Democrats shifted left. The Republicans have stayed remarkably consistent, the difference between Hoover and Romney is negligible.
Conservatives have no party to flock to. The Democrats largely pushed conservatives out decades ago. The Republicans have only taken us on because it helps them retain their power. While the Republican Party is more conservative today than the Democrats, its core philosophy isn’t small government but rather a slow shift to bigger government. This is in contrast with the Democrats who want a shift to bigger government immediately. Make no mistake though, conservatives are the RINO’s. We’re the outsiders in the Republican Party, we always have been. The GOP wasn’t created as a party of small government, it was created as a Hamiltonian party of expanding Federal power and expenditures. The GOP has remained true to its core philosophy, the Bush’s, Romney’s and Christie’s of the party have made sure of that.
The Democrat Party has moved so far left that there is a vacuum in the middle of the political spectrum, which the Republicans are rushing to fill. A party of centrists has no place for conservatives. If the present paradigm holds we will need a third party to represent the right and move toward a three party system.
This only true under the present paradigm. What must happen is Conservatives must be able to attract voters from the Democrat side of the aisle like Reagan did. This is where the Libertarian Party has some degree of attraction, as it combines the small government philosophy of the conservatives with the liberal social policy of the Democrats. Rand Paul is not treated very well around here, but he may be onto something with the formula that could be successful in building a coalition party.
The writer says that the libs aren’t the RINOs, the conservatives are because libs keep getting nominated. But if you look at the party’s platform, it has been conservative. I love your bus analogy. To take your analogy a bit further, the republican party is like a bus line with conservative destination ABC.
The lib RINOs that keep getting nominated are bus drivers don’t want to take the bus to its proper destination. Instead of ABC, they want the destination to be socialist XYZ. They pretend they are good bus drivers who can get the bus to ABC, but as soon as they get behind the wheel they take the bus where they want it to go.
We need to do a better job screening these bus drivers and we need to kick some them off of the bus. Our destination should never be the same as the democrats/socialists.
Unlike what Mitch McConnell (RINO) and his twisted mind thinks, the people voted republican to oppose Obama and the democrats, not to go along with them. If they wanted get along to go along, they would have voted for the democrats.
The Republican Party was founded as the anti-slavery party.
The Democrats were against big government because they were afraid government power would be used to free their slaves.
They were perfectly fine with the government forcing free states to hunt down escaped slaves and return them.
“Conservatives are the real RINOs”. I’ve been saying this for quite some time now.
I rank Calvin ahead of Reagan on my list of top Presidents. Anyone that fails to recognise Calvin in these types of articles is really missing a great opportunity...
Agreed
Well, I am praying for one.
“but as soon as they get behind the wheel they take the bus where they want it to go.”
Exactly. And, the ones that helped vote them in are sent to the “back of the bus”.
Time to pull the overhead “stop” cord.
If you aren’t going to read the article what’s the point in posting a comment?
We’re supposed to read the articles? Since when?
Progressive Republicans aren’t Democrats posing as Republicans. In reality, they’re holding true to the founding principles of the GOP.
Voting third party guarantees a Democrat will winThat threat has become a nice example of intellectual laziness. I can't say as I blame you, it is "low hanging fruit" and the political right is sloppy-drunk with intellectual laziness.
But it presumes those exploring the possibility of a third or replacement party expect a third-party to win it all instantly. I don't know anyone who expects that.
Why can't we have candidates, registered as republicans, who vote as a bloc of conservatives and caucus tightly together? Sort of like other congressional voting blocs (latino, black, women, whatever). Conservatives are (supposedly) minorities too!
Why can't that conservative voting bloc grow over the election seasons until it reached critical mass and public familiarity *AND THEN* declare a new party? Could that new party and the GOP caucus together for the vast majority of things against the Dems? Why does the gradual replacement of the GOP (a thoroughly tainted brand) seem to be so difficult to most folks? It does not have to be as sudden as flipping a light switch.
I'm just an average idiot and I can think of possibilities like that. There are a bunch of folks far smarter than I that could most assuredly develop even better, sound, reasonable, practicable strategies.
The point being, more and more folks don't see much difference between a RINO winning and a Dem winning. If that is their perception, then saying "voting third party guarantees a dem win" is no longer a threat or at worst, a very minimal threat. If conservatives are serious, they should start striking while the iron is hot. They have a lot of MSM sniping to overcome and start building brand recognition.
Plus, repeating that threat is just following the masses and not truly thinking about realistic, plausible possibilities. And here lately on the GOP side of reality, it is a fair bet that if you follow the masses, the "m" becomes silent (see also: Boehner, McConnell, Graham, et al).
Define conservative, because I'll be damned if I can not on Free Republic that's for sure. This forum can't even agree on a candidate.
Washington’s office vacancy will go up about 900% if there was a flat tax of 7.5%. Government will be lots smaller...
The problem is that there aren’t enough conservative voters to create a sustainable conservative party.
The facts of life are conservative. The majority of voters are conservative. Twice as many self identify as conservative as liberal. Don't believe the commercial/populist hype.
Kennedy is not liberal. He sides with the conservatives a lot of the time.
The facts of life may be conservative, voters might self identify as conservative but that doesn’t mean conservatives are a majority. If conservatives were a majority of voters, Obama wouldn’t have been elected twice and progressives like John McCain and Mitt Romney wouldn’t have won the GOP nomination.
Kennedy is inconsistent. Admittedly, he appears to vote conservative more today than he did during his first 15 years or so on the Supreme Court.
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