When we have reached the point where jilted Hillary supporters are voting for the liberal Republican candidate instead of the uberliberal, it is time for Conservatives to pick themsleves up off the road, wave goodbye to the bus they were thrown under, and form a new party.
“When we have reached the point where jilted Hillary supporters are voting for the liberal Republican candidate instead of the uberliberal, it is time for Conservatives to pick themsleves up off the road, wave goodbye to the bus they were thrown under, and form a new party.”
Joe, your point is well-taken, but what’s happening this election is more a harbinger of the changing nature of the American electorate than anything else.
We’re reaching a point where the country is becoming so “polarized” that it will soon be difficult, perhaps impossible, to elect a “solid conservative” candidate to the presidency. Not because there isn’t a sizable portion of the electorate that remains “conservative”, but because there is an ever-growing cohort of the electorate that is overly liberal, while conservatism remains stagnant or waning.
Just take a look at the “red vs. blue state” comparison charts from the 2004 election. One can see “the divide” taking form, in the same way that the divide between the North and the South took shape before the War Between the States.
And the “conservative cohort” is slowly - but inevitably - shrinking, as the “liberal cohort” is growing. Why is that?
The answer is simple, but near-unspeakable: look at the _complexion_ of the cohort that is growing, vis-a-vis the one that is shrinking. The “color of America” is literally changing, right before our eyes, and with it, America’s political complexion will be inexhorably changed, as well.
The “color of conservatism” is by-and-large a pale one, representing the core beliefs of the Europeans who founded the nation, and built the country to where it stood at the close of World War II. Up until that time, the official immigration policies of the United States were restrictive (essentially keeping nonwhites out) and designed to preserve and maintain our ethnic and political heritage. But - beginning with the 1965 immigration reform act, and coupled with the EuroAmericans’ reluctance to recognize that truth, and unwillingness to protect the borders - the Euro-core of America has begun to fade away. Within forty years, the EuroAmericans will have lost their majority status, and those who replace them demographically do not appear to embrace the conservative principles that made America what it is (at least up until today).
I’m reminded of the line from the film “Little Big Man” in which the old chief (played by Chief Dan George) comments to Jack Crabb (Dustin Hoffman) after the Battle of The Little Bighorn: “We won today; we won’t win tomorrow”. He saw the future, and [at least from his perspective as an Indian] it wasn’t a good one.
To conclude, for conservatives to create their own “new party” would not prevent their demise - it would serve to ACCELERATE that demise. It would consign us to a fringe-party status from which there would be no pathway to winning, and only guarantee that the liberals and ‘rats would then seize every election on the national scale. It makes no more sense for conservatives to do this to themselves, than it would for blacks to create “a black party”: a sure track to a dead end.
- John