Posted on 01/07/2015 4:32:38 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
The major two-party system in American politics has existed since our nation’s infancy. While President John Adams warned against the dueling party system as “the greatest political evil under our Constitution”, it is a pillar of our republic. Today, Democrats and Republicans account for the majority of modern-day political party affiliations.
The two parties don’t need to be enemies, rather complementary civic partners. Though the opposing camps differ on policy decisions, both support the individual citizens of our country with their unique visions. However, Republicans and Democrats have dealt with a hidden opponent – an unofficial group that parasitically attached to both parties over the past 100 years, yet never represented the ideals of either host.
Who is this shadowy “unofficial party” slipping between political tents?
Exposing State’s Rights
The unofficial group I’m talking about has a single goal: promoting the interests of the majority regardless of individual constitutional rights. With this mentality, popular opinion is sacred, minority rights are expendable, and the State is king.
These popular majority supporters point to the 10th Amendment as their justification to supersede others’ rights. Though the 10th Amendment guarantees the states powers that are not reserved for the Federal government, it does not invalidate individual rights.
Following the American Civil War, nearly every constitutional amendment beginning at Reconstruction is systematically ignored by Southern voters in what appears to be a desperate attempt to pretend the Confederates never lost. (Reconstruction Amendments 13, 14, and 15 respectively abolished slavery, ensured equal protections of citizens of each state in the union, and prohibited suffrage restrictions on the basis of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.) Unsurprisingly, the Southern states continued to infringe on African-American equal protections and voting rights well into the 20th century. And this illegal restriction of rights endured in the South for over 150 years behind the passionate defense of a single group: The state’s rights conservatives.
Don’t confuse limited government conservatism and state’s rights conservatives. The two are very different. Limited government conservatives focus on reducing the size and scope of government to its most efficient scale. State’s rights conservatives rely on the power of the state to push forward the will of the majority. Really, state’s rights advocates are just big-government conservatives who want to centralize unquestioned majority power at the state.
State’s rights conservatives seem to believe the 10th Amendment absolves states from their obligation to respect each citizen’s constitutional rights. Their ideas don’t belong in either party -- and they know it. It’s why these conservatives are transients, seeking a home wherever they will be accepted (deriding the establishment party along the way). State’s rights conservatives give good conservatives a bad name.
The Great Conservative Migration
Today, Republicans are regarded as the conservative party, but it wasn’t always this way. The Republican National Committee (RNC) began as a progressive anti-slavery movement prior to the American Civil War. Being Republican meant supporting civil rights, economic freedom, and social justice. Republicans favored racial equality while the Democratic Party remained conflicted between its conservative wing in the former Confederate South and the liberals residing in Northeast.
The Klu Klux Klan (KKK) and Jim Crow segregationists of the early 20th century are often associated with Southern Democrats. In fact, Southern conservative Democrats, in an effort to protect their ability to keep segregation legal and counter the liberal Democratic support of the civil rights movement, briefly split during the 1948 presidential campaign, forming the Democratic State’s Rights Party (AKA “Dixiecrat” Party). “State’s rights” was their motto, yet these were not Democratic ideals.
As the civil rights movement progressed into the 1960s, liberal Democrats pressed for anti-discrimination legislation such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which offered protections based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. State’s rights conservatives revolted. Opportunistic Republicans, a desperate minority party in 1964, sought to expand their tent. They implemented a scheme to pull Southern white conservatives to the GOP, an action dubbed the “Southern Strategy”. It was successful and the state’s rights movement had a new home in the GOP.
Rise of the Un-Republicans
50 years ago, RNC leadership turned on the Republican values of civil rights and racial equality in order to build a winning political coalition. In a way, they sold their soul to win national elections. Party leadership began to embrace more conservative state’s rights principles and the un-Republican movement began to grow within the RNC. The Southern Strategy was executed flawlessly, helping swing Presidents Nixon (1968) and Reagan (1980) into office with the newfound support of the conservative south. The change of white southern conservative support brought Republican victories, yet may have changed the RNC’s political philosophy forever.
In the most recent civil rights discussion of same-sex marriage, a strange parallel has surfaced with how state’s rights conservatives responded to the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision in 1954. The courts ruled that segregation based on race in public schools violated the 14th Amendment rights of students facing discrimination. State’s rights conservatives howled that judicial activists were supplanting their state sovereignty with federal mandates. Conservative politicians like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) now claim that the Federal courts are full of judicial activists disregarding the “will of the people” who voted to oppose marriage equality. Potential conservative presidential contender, former Gov. Jeb Bush (R-FL), called the marriage rulings “disappointing”, claiming states should be able to decide on these matters.
In a typical state’s rights maneuver, these conservatives have ignored the 14th Amendment equal protections of gay and lesbian couples in favor of their popular majority. Although conservatives typically support religious freedom, they deny it to American Presbyterians who recognize same-sex marriage. Would conservatives allow their religious freedoms to be subject to popular vote? -- No chance!
The RNC seems to agree with Sen. Cruz and Gov. Bush, and now includes the un-Republican state’s rights sentiment in their official national platform, though the courts are ruling against the state bans on marriage equality at rapid pace (37 states and counting). Apparently, many conservatives don’t care about constitutional amendments added after the Confederate South fell. Are the RNC leadership and politicians with similar positions on state’s rights (including Sen. Ted Cruz, Gov. Jeb Bush, Gov. Mike Huckabee, Gov. Rick Perry, Sen. Rick Santorum, etc...) just Dixiecrats in Republicans’ clothes?
The real RINOs
The RNC now touts their values as “conservative” rather than Republican. Candidates don’t run as Republicans, they run from the label. This was the case with Wisconsin 6th District Congressman Glenn Grothman, who in the 2014 election proudly displayed political advertisements claiming he is fighting for “conservative values”. Grothman subsequently beat his moderate challenger. Republicanism, in large part, was eschewed in favor of conservatism. Conservatives want to elect “true” conservatives into office, not Republicans. While Republicans cheer a massive blow to Democrats by claiming majorities in both houses of Congress, this wasn’t their victory; it was the conservatives’ -- the usurpers of the Republican Party.
Today, conservatives claim to be the base of the RNC. Yet how can the framework of Republican values such as individual liberty and limited government be built on a political base bent on its destruction? State’s rights conservatives favor popular majority enforced by a powerful State, while Republicans protect the minority from majority will. These positions are polar opposites.
Though state’s rights conservatives have been a part of the Republican Party for decades, their values never really belonged. Conservatives were frustrated with liberals when they were misfits in the Democratic Party. Now conservatives are frustrated with moderate Republicans who better represent the GOP’s founding mission. The irony isn’t lost when the most un-Republican conservative groups refer to moderate Republicans as RINOs (“Republicans-in-name-only”).
Crashing the Party
The Republican Party correctly seeks to be more inclusive. Unfortunately, the RNC has only been successful at including groups whose mission is to extinguish Republican ideals. At this point, RNC leadership has strayed so far from the original party line, they have forgotten what being a Republican is all about: Individual civil rights that are NEVER subject to popular vote. Have Republicans allowed themselves to be kicked out of their own tent?
If only the RNC had not implemented the Southern Strategy, Republicans might still be the party of civil rights. If state’s rights conservatives had not infected the party founded to stop them, Republicans would be fighting for minority rights, not majority comfort and supremacy.
Real Republicans recognize the party’s cancer. The growing state’s rights conservative movement has mutated the Republican message from empowering individuals to overpowering them. Until Republican voters realize their party has been unofficially taken over by the mentality the GOP was founded to thwart, Republicanism is lost.
Hmmm...didn’t know the Log Cabin Republicans were part of the GOPe.
This is an elephant that deserves to be ignored.
The cancer in the party is called Boehnerism.
This article is complete crap, from the first lying word to the last.
Here’s the big one: there is NOT A WORD in the 14th amendment that gives the Federal Government to arbitrarily redefine words with meanings commonly accepted for centuries. Moreover, NOT one signatory to a single ratification action for the 14th Amendment dreamed in his worst nightmare that decades later pompous neo-fascists would claim that by ratifying the 14th, those good people intended to give marriage rights to fudge-packers.
Absurd beyond rational belief.
We actually don’t have a two party system any longer, one is the dominatrix and the other the submissive sex slave.
Author Austin Given seems to be a one-man-party in Wisconsin...
What this idiot fails to realize is that RINO moderates have done nothing to promote individual freedom nor will they stand up to the tyranny of the left. If anything, they have given the green light to almost every policy supported by the president. He’s part of the Log Cabin Republicans, huh? His sexual preferences aside, I think he was hit in the head with a few logs because he’s devoid of logic on what’s destroying the Republican Party. We’re not the problem. We’re the solution. If the RINOS really stand for individual freedom they need to stop all of this bipartisan nonsense with the Democrats. They’re the ones who are destroying the country with their reckless policies but the RINOS want to attack us instead. The breakup of the GOP is imminent and thank goodness for that!
They are complementary now in a number of areas, which is the source of conservative complaint.
Welcome to wearing yellow markers on your lapel in this fundamentally transformed fascist Oligarchy now ruling us.
If you refused to believe that the GOP wants Conservatives exterminated from any political relevance in society - this ought to clear it up for you.
What a bunch of crap.
So am I understanding that this person is calling conservatives and TEA party people racists and tyrants? I think I’ve had quite enough of this chit.
“both support the individual citizens of our country with their unique visions.”
Please find out what this guy is smoking, ingesting, injecting or sucking into his nose and send some of it to me?
They forgot: “If only Ronald Reagan hadn’t won the presidency by such huge margins and made people love conservatism.”
This article is such a pile baloney propaganda. RINOs are the real republican party because they believed in “social justice.” Well, what happened to the democrats? They believed in the Constitution, but you don’t hear this writer crying about the fact both party’s have left that behind.
I don’t even believe the premise is correct. Did the republican’s believe in social justice or did they just believe it was wrong to treat human beings as possessions. When both parties began, no one republican or democrat believed in allowing the govt. to take money from one group and give it to another group so they can sit around on their rear ends and do nothing. Yet, Fabian socialism is very much a part of the GOPe today.
This is the second time this week I’ve seen someone writing that republicans started as libs though they know full well that the commies we have today did not exist in this country when either party was formed. This is nothing but a steaming pile of GOPe propaganda.
But then again, I’m certain they believe that when the republican party was founded it would have been for gay rights (gays in the military and gay marriage), abortion on demand, open borders, welfare for the world and RomneyObamacare. Just as the GOPe believes today.
It looks like he has spent a good deal of time theorizing and looking things up, unfortunately it looks as though he has undergone this exercise in order to deny legitimacy to people with which he disagrees. He casts “those people” as existing outside of both tents and as Dixiecrats, which is to say the democrats which used to dominate in the South. I don’t think you can really have it both ways, that just strikes me as irrational lashing out.
Now we are in real trouble but I think Honest Abe would have far more problems with the rest of that blog than he ever would have in common with it. Sorry pal.
Did I also mention that invoking the Dixiecrats at a time when unemployment among black youth has reached historic proportions is inflammatory, especially when the people being thus maligned can’t even get the time of day from Washington, and are assuredly not responsible for what is emptying out the middle class (as we are in the same boat).
Incorrect.
Amendment X The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
Limited government and states rights go hand in hand.
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