Posted on 04/13/2009 6:56:55 AM PDT by PlainOleAmerican
Not if my neighbor tells me, "Screw you and your water! I like the water from the other side of the street better!"
Then I just say, "Fine," and I sit on my porch and watch his house burn down with a nice quart jar full of iced water to quench my thirst. He's got it covered.
bttt
I’ll ask again: What specific procedural steps do we take to dethrone the RINOs?
Patriots MUST reclaim the GOP Or Lose Their Nation – a Response
By J. Dale Weaver
JB Williams pens a thought-provoking column today in the CFP, and paints a scenario that has our nation hurdling toward an ultimate sea-change in American life and politics. He suggests three possible ways (or combinations thereof) that these changes will come, and I find myself nodding in agreement with his sobering prognostications.
Williams, however posits two or three problematic ideas which he believes will aid in bringing positive change and avoiding a national plunge over the precipice into some kind of quasi-dictatorial Socialist/Transnationalist regime in the future. Briefly, I’d like to note these problems.
First, Williams suggests that “Conservatives must take back their party.” His thesis is that Republicans are historically a “Conservative” party, and the power base of Conservatism in US political life. It is certainly true that Conservatives have been found primarily in the Republican Party for the past 30 years or so – but Republicans didn’t START there.
Radical Republicans, beginning with their first Champion, Abraham Lincoln, envisioned no less than an overturning of the Constitutional Republic our Founders gave us, by moving the center of power in the United States FROM the States, TO Washington, DC. Indeed, this is what they accomplished via “Civil” War and the travesty euphemistically dubbed “Reconstruction.”
Teddy Roosevelt [a Republican], as President, was quite strong on National Defense and “Gunboat Diplomacy,” but was a Progressive on Domestic issues, and grew the Federal Government more quickly than any previous chief executive other than Lincoln and US Grant.
Herbert Hoover looked oddly like George W. Bush (or is it the other way around?) in his responses to the onset of the Great Depression. In fact, many of the things that FDR DID in his New Deal were proposed by Hoover between 1929-1932 – but an oppositional/defiant Congress said “no.” When FDR came into office he just EXCELERATED and expanded most of what Hoover had proposed.
And who was the President in the late 60’s, early 70’s? Who gave us expanded social programs on top of what LBJ’s “Great Society” had begun? Who gave us the EPA? Who gave us Abortion on Demand?! It was that anti-Communist hawk Richard M. Nixon. He gave us our last REAL balanced budget in 1971 — and our first of many ever-growing budget deficits. Oh yeah, that was the same year he authorized and the Democrat Congress approved taking us off the GOLD standard.
Republican’s as a party were actually quite comfortable with their positions as a permanent minority party. Witness the support of Gerald Ford and NOT Ronald Reagan in the 1976 presidential election. LOST.
It was Ronald Reagan’s Conservative Coalition – that HE cobbled together – and brought into the GOP that made them “winners.” The GOP big shots didn’t want it – but hey, they jumped on the Conservative bandwagon. It was the “in” thing. And they rode that wave through the 1995 Republican retaking of Congress.
But after they finally regained Congress — they cowered in fear of Bill Clinton then, spent even MORE than Democrats prior to 1994! Even with the War on Terror, they unjustifiably expanded Medicare, funded “earmarks” and let Ted Kennedy rewrite educational funding as a Socialistic, top-down monstrosity that got us further from classroom instruction and closer to statist indoctrination!
By 2006, Conservatives had largely been purged from Republican Party leadership. Democrats and the Mainstream Media stood by cheering, or helped out via sabotage and smear campaigns whenever targets of opportunity presented themselves.
All that said, and I am still forced to agree with one major point JB made. If Conservatives are to stop the mad dash of our nation toward the precipice – and if we are to do so peacefully – we MUST retake the Republican Party. The Republican Party is the only viable alternative Conservatives have of bringing our nation back from the brink. Third parties are a great idea — but they simply don’t have the standing to act quickly enough — and broadly enough, to get the job done.
Now, let me tell you why I think this is a very discouraging prospect. Let me explain why it’s an uphill battle. Republicans DON’T like ideological Conservatives. As I said before, they DIDN’T like Ronald Reagan. And they particularly DESPISE SOCIAL CONSERVATIVES. You’re okay if they can get your help on lowering taxes (I’m there) or de-regulating industry (yup, there too). BUT, if you demand that the Party act on making abortions rare, late term abortions illegal, or appoint judges to overthrow the God-awful, unconstitutional Roe v. Wade, they start screaming like stuck hogs! Oppose embryonic stem cell research, or executing the mentally disabled (ala Terry Schiavo) and they begin to violently heave! Mention God or Judeo-Christian values and they pretend not to know you. Oppose “Gay Marriage” and they have a searing case of indigestion.
No, Republicans DON’T like Conservatives. But that’s not the most discouraging part. Conservatives managed to hang in with Republican’s for the most part from 1980 until 1996. Even after 1996, as Republicans moved steadily away from Conservative Principles, the coalition managed to hang on for another 10 years. The main challenge is something internal, something integral to the Conservative’s heart and soul. Conservative ideology is based on PRINCIPLES.
Principles are core beliefs, values – NON-NEGOTIABLES. By nature, a political party is more pragmatic than principled. “Compromise” is what makes their world go round. NOT SO for Conservatives. So, Republicans, in dealing with Conservatives, bid them to “trade off” the stem cell thing to gain, say, tax cuts. Republican Party aparachiks say, you Conservatives quiet down about abortion, so we can gain a few billion more dollars for National Defense, the F-22 fighter, etc. Or, they’ll promise a Federal Judgeship if Conservatives passively overlook a few Billion dollars in Republican Earmarks...
Conservatives, until now, have too often been willing to go along with such political pandering. We’ve sold our principles for promises that were never kept — that REPUBLICANS never kept.
Here’s the problem: Conservatives can take back the Republican Party — but it might cost them their principles. OR, they can take back the party, keep their principles, and watch the exodus of the McCain wing to the Democrats — and thus win the battle and lose the war anyway.
But here’s the thing most important to understand: If CONSERVATIVES are to reassert themselves in the Republican Party and in national governance, the ONLY way we CHANGE our nations direction – and so avoid collapse and destruction – is by KEEPING and IMPLEMENTING policies based on OUR PRINCIPLES. Period.
I conclude by saying this — if we Conservatives really plan to “take back” the Republican Party, then we need to plan on a hostile takeover. We need to bear in mind the disgusting treatment of Gov. Sarah Palin in the aftermath of the McCain defeat. We need to seek and destroy those who would do such things in the name of the “Republican” party.
If we have to “compromise” with people such as the operatives that tried to destroy Sarah, that say, “the era of Reagan is dead,” and that think “Moderates” hold the future of the Republican Party and the direction of the nation, then we can’t win anyway, much less save the nation. That kind of empty “victory” isn’t worth the effort.
I hope I’ve painted a grim picture for you. It’s a grim task, and I think the chances of Conservatives pulling it off are slim, or none. Everything I have seen for the past several years points to collapse and internal conflict. But I hold out one last hope – beyond the control of men. If HE be for us, then perhaps...
Where were you when another RINO, Michael Steele, was placed at the helm of the RNC, which runs the GOP?
To work within any party, you have to show up and work.
Conservatives pretending to build a replacement party have not shown up to run their primary party in years. They assumed that someone else would do it, and to their liking. They won’t show up to run any new party any better. They don’t think they should have to.
I don’t have a step by step, paint by number answer for you. I don’t know anybody who does.
Figure out that we lost our party when we left the heavy lifting to others, and reverse that process to achieve a reverse effect.
Before you storm the White House, storm your party. Insist on change within your own organization, before thinking you can effect change anywhere else.
Stealing control of an existing party is obviously much easier than building a replacement party. Both primary parties have been stolen. No new party has ever succeeded in replacing an old one, not since the Whig party became the GOP. Steal one back... Even the communists running the DNC, figured that out.
Your question suggests that communists are smarter than we are. Are they?
Well done... I’d take issue with some of your statements of historical facts, but I generally agree with your sentiments here.
This is the most important line in your entire response, so far as I am concerned....
“Principles are core beliefs, values – NON-NEGOTIABLES. By nature, a political party is more pragmatic than principled. “Compromise” is what makes their world go round. NOT SO for Conservatives.”
EVERY word of this is ENTIRELY true!
This is why conservatives are NOT very good at politics in general. When a “principled” stand is NOT popular with voters, a politician dare not take any “principled” stand. They are interested in winning, not losing on their principles.
Yet you are right, conservatives are nothing if not principled people, although they don’t necessarily share the same set of principles today.
And because they are committed to their individual principles, they find themselves a divided (but principled), powerless movement.
You laid this out pretty well I think!
Is the evangelical conservative the only social conservative left in America today? Nobody seems more hated than the evangelical social conservative???
One other comment I forgot to make...
“Here’s the problem: Conservatives can take back the Republican Party — but it might cost them their principles.”
I don’t really agree with this, other than your use of the word “might.”
I don’t think conservatives have to compromise their core principles. I think they had better define them before they try to stand upon them, but that once done, I think we should stand upon them like a cornerstone for everything we do. But trust me, “conservatives” do NOT share a common set of principles today, and this is our base problem.
Since I don’t know you, I clearly was not talking about you. I asked a general question, which you obviously took personal offense to.
Lecturing? This is an open forum. Posting my opinions, strong as they may be, hardly qualifies as lecturing others. I take my fair share of shots, let me assure you. I’m just not as thin skinned, apparently.
If you have all the experience you say, then you should be able to tell me how this can be accomplished, or if it can’t be accomplished at all.
Most who are “fed up with Republicans” have not taken and active personal roll in shaping the Republican Party over the years. Only now, that they find themselves unrepresented, are they angry with what has become of the party they used to take for granted.
If pointing this out offends some of those folks, maybe they need to be offended?
Regardless, this is an open forum. My opinions are just opinions. I have been called all sorts of names and accused of all sorts of things on FR, 99% of which are wholly untrue. I don’t care... You shouldn’t care either.
“Be Who you are and say what you feel, because those that matter do not mind, and those that mind, do not matter.............”
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