I guess anything less than Stalin would be right wing to this person.
I know how he feels.
Forced to vote for John McCain?
Power to the people?
It's hilarious that ivory tower elitists from across the political spectrum all consider themselves populists now.
Too bad for them the people aren't populists.
Conservatism has a constellation of interconnected principles that root the Republican Party. These principles were galvanized by Kirk and Buckley and taken into battle heroically by Reagan. The case can be made that conservatives lately haven’t been winning the arguments or pulling the GOP right. But what do the libs and the Dems have? They have nearly twenty small special interest groups who have allied themselves to each other‘s cause. Where possible, they adopt their allies single most important issue as sacred like their own which creates strange bedfellows like the pro choice movement backing gay rights or labor unions backing the peace movement. The Dems’ set of principles are connected by truce and compromise rather than logic or relevance.
Although the environmentalists can be counted on backing centralization and gay rights, one of these groups occasionally sticks their neck out. Remember how the unions barely fought NAFTA? Sometimes these various factions pull the party their way but often when they get out of line, they are trampled by the others. They simultaneously attack any reform on social security and it’s why the perfect liberal can nearly win the nomination. But they rarely win the big one.
For a Dem to win POTUS, it takes a pragmatic with no soul or sacred ground who has sold out to the proletariat and enough of the various wings of the party. I’m not saying that GOP candidates don’t also compromise, build alliances, consensus or coalitions within its tent. The unifiers are and should be the most successful leaders in any business which is the art of the possible. Reagan unified five particular groups who found they had a lot in common and together they defeated much of the world’s communism and created the greatest economy the world has ever known.
The conservative cause is advancing a set of principles like ordered liberty which are for the betterment of each individual American regardless of his status, race, religion or however else the left likes to pigeon hole them. The conservative ‘conserves’ the permanent things, the enduring truths of the flawed human condition. -The principles ratified by the entire human experience. How else could conservatives have had that run from 94 to 2002? They cut taxes, reformed welfare, balanced the budget, impeached a president and still elected GWB who gave a Burkean first inaugural speech. Some considered their majority permanent.
But the Left, beaten back into a corner, unified again and came out attacking on all flanks. It was coming whether or not the Iraq invasion or even 9/11 happened. Did conservatives think those twenty groups were just going to lay down and die?
But like an old axiom; with victories come the infighting for power. It’s why we see Hillary excoriating MoveOn.org in private and why her new manager comes on Meet the Press explaining that he’s only two weeks into the job but that Hillary only disagrees with MoveOn on the one issue of Afghanistan.
My point is, the libs will unify rather than break to a third party. The battle royale between Hillary and Barack may result in a bludgeoned, fractured party this time around but they‘ll eventually regroup and attack again. Conservatives’ job is to always be selling our ideas and winning our argument with the center. Not compromising with them but winning them over. Once an individual really understands and accepts the truth of timeless conservative principles, they rarely slide back to the center. The more the center moves right and the more left shrinks, the less the chances are that the left will break to a third party. But it’s fun to dare them to do so!