The Need For Conservative Unity in 2008

There are times I am so frustrated I want to scream. Such was the case this past week. I was in a gathering of around 20 well-educated and informed conservatives. The topic turned to the Presidential election. Mind you, I had written months ago that we had best find a candidate who agreed with us and then back him to the hilt. If we did so we might be able to move that candidate to the top tier. It has not happened.

Moreover, exactly what I predicted would happen has taken place. Some of our group is in every camp. The name of Rudolph Giuliani came up. This man takes no position favorable to social conservatives but maybe he would defeat Hillary Rodham Clinton. The same for Senator John S. McCain, III (R.-Ariz.). Different folks in the group knew that McCain would just as soon get rid of the religious right. However, polls suggest he might defeat Hillary. Fear of Hillary is the distinguishing feature of the average and even well educated conservative. Some suggested that Governor Mitt Romney, who has recanted some of his liberal social positions, might be worth a try. That led others to gush forth with a diatribe against Romney. He cannot be trusted, we are told. Senator Sam Brownback (R.-Kan.) was mentioned. He can’t win was the cant. Some mentioned Governor Michael Huckabee (R.-Ariz.). He is a spellbinder as an orator. Yes, but we are told by the anti-tax people that he was a terrible Governor. And so it goes. We are in every camp and thus in no camp.

I pleaded with my brethren for us to back as good a candidate as we could find. Even if he didn’t win, if he made enough of a showing the wining candidate would make concessions in our direction -- perhaps the Vice Presidency, perhaps federal judgeships. Senator J. Strom Thurmond (R.-S.C.) backed Nixon in 1968 with a promised right to veto the Vice Presidential choice slot and Supreme Court nominees. That is how Maryland Governor Spiro T. Agnew got on the national ticket. Unfortunately, Thurmond didn’t know much about proposed Supreme Court nominees. Warren E. Burger was sort of okay but Harry A. Blackman, who it was claimed was a Burger twin (the Minnesota Twins), turned out to be a disaster. Today our judicial groups have a far better handle on who is worthy of a Supreme Court appointment.

Some mentioned former Speaker Newt Gingrich. The refrain was that he had not made up his mind to run and maybe would not in 2008. All of these people are looking for another Ronald Reagan. Not to detract from Reagan but he left a bit to be desired, especially on domestic issues. Nevertheless, I’ll agree that he is without doubt the greatest President in our lifetime. So what? There is not another Governor Reagan.

We must be willing to accept that the perfect cannot be the enemy of the good. To a lesser extent conservatives had folks in every campaign in 1988. The results of that fiasco gave us George Herbert Walker Bush. Many believed that by voting for him they were, in effect, giving Ronald Reagan a third term. While I personally like Former President Bush and believe history will treat him reasonably well, clearly he was no Ronald Reagan. If we had all stuck together we might have had a much tougher conservative candidate. The same for 2000. We were all over the place. We lucked out in that President George W. Bush has been better than many anticipated he would be. Yet, would not a Steve Forbes have done better on domestic issues. Again, our people were all over the place.

This time I pleaded for us to get behind a single candidate. We have real troops that we did not have in 1988 when Pat Robertson shocked the establishment by his showings in Iowa and Michigan. We are even stronger than we were in 2000, at least if measured by social-issue groups. But here we are, this early, all over the lot. The most striking idea which came forth from conservatives in the meeting was that we had to have the perfect candidate or else it wasn’t worth going forward, or on the contrary, the defeat of Hillary was so urgent that it would be fine to accept a candidate who is so far from our views that it is shocking.

The problem is that campaigns are beginning earlier and earlier. There are many Democrats running who, no doubt, hope for Hillary to select them for Vice President or least a position in her Cabinet. That makes sense, I suppose, since there is virtually no chance of defeating her. How else can you explain the candidacies or apparent candidacies of former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack; or of Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico, who if selected would be the first Hispanic on a national ticket; Barak Obama, freshman Senator from Illinois; or Joseph R. Biden, Jr. (D.-Del.), a Senator for 34 years.

Conservatives without a favorite candidate is a situation which is new for the GOP. For forty years either a Nixon or Bush was on the national ticket. When one of them was a Vice Presidential candidate it was to prepare him to become Number One.

This time we do not have a candidate “whose time has come.” So, why can’t conservatives unite and agree on a candidate and give that candidacy all we’ve got? Is the defeat of Hillary worth throwing aside everything in which we believe?

I am morally certain that if we do cast aside our principles to support a candidate who does well in the polls, as soon as that person gets the nomination there will be a savage attack on the GOP nominee, leaving our side in shambles.

It appears as if the so-called mainstream media were in love with our top-tier candidates. Let me assure you, the media would much rather have Hillary than Senator McCain or any other Republican. Just as soon as one of them got the nomination that love affair would be over. Right now some of these candidates almost live in the studios of the major networks. Give the nomination to one of them and, I assure you, they will either end up with very little coverage, or what coverage they do get will be so negative the candidate will wish he could run and hide.

It is still not too late for most of the movement to get behind a candidate. There is no Reagan. But there are good men out there who would make an excellent President. We still have enough power, with our magazines, radio and television shows and other media such as active websites, that we can raise that candidate to the top tier. Whether we can get the candidate nominated or not is another question. I believe we can. A candidacy which would come from nowhere would get the attention of the mainstream media. The national media did not expect Senator Barry M. Goldwater (R.-Ariz.) to be nominated in 1964. Likewise they did not expect Governor Reagan to come close in 1976. Surely, the national media was morally certain that Reagan would lose in 1980. I hope and pray that we will have enough brass to hang in there for a genuine conservative candidate. To do otherwise would cheat our children and grandchildren of their political entitlement. Surely if we do that we will be required to answer for it.

The 2006 election was absolutely not about "corruption and ethics" except to the extent that the dems used the issue to club republicans. You can see that in the stand up ovation the house black caucus gave to Representative Jefferson, the earlier re election of Ray Nagin of New Orleans and the reelection of Barny Frank. Its the particular genius of the democrats to figure out what makes them most despicable and attribute that to the republicans.

The greatness of Jesus is that he attribues his righteousness to everyone who believes in him. The reason for the greatness of this is that the ghastly diabolical nature of man is do just the opposite. Man tends to impute his own evil to others.(And the French have been doing this regularly since Rousseau gave them a methodology. Both the communists and the democrats have mastered the art of imputed evil as well.)

We desperately need a savior.

Nor is this is over the top. Rush Limbaugh said his impression is that conservatives are going to cave on illegal immigration. The reason this is so critical is that this is not the second chance for conservatives to get things right. This is their last chance.

The election was not about ideology. Bush governed from the center left and yet it was not the left/center left
republicans who were bumped by the elections. As the stats show it was mostly right and center right republicans who took fall for the presidents policies. Once again there was some very successful blame shifting going in -- even within the republican party.

Here are the ACU Ratings of Republican Incumbents Who Lost in the House according to the voting scorekeeper American Conservative Union:

Jim Ryun (KS) - ACU rating 98
J.D. Hayworth (AZ) - ACU rating 98
Richard Pombo (CA) - ACU rating 97
Chris Chocola (IN) - ACU rating 95
Gil Gutknecht (MN) - ACU rating 94
Charles Taylor (NC) - ACU rating 92
Mike Sodrel (IN) - ACU rating 92
Melissa Hart (PA) - ACU rating 91
John Hostettler (IN) - ACU rating 90
Don Sherwood (PA) - ACU rating 87
Anne Northup (KY) - ACU rating 86
Clay Shaw (NC) ACU rating 82
John Sweeney (NY) ACU rating 77
Jeb Bradley (NH) ACU rating 71
Charles Bass (NH) ACU rating 71
Curt Weldon (PA) ACU rating 70
Sue Kelly (NY) ACU rating 65
Mike Fitzpatrick (PA) ACU rating 60
Nancy Johnson (CT) ACU rating 47
Jim Leach (IA) ACU rating 43

Vacated Republican seats lost

DeLay (TX) ACU rating 95
Beuprez (COL) ACU rating 93
Green (WI) ACU rating 88
Nussle (IA) ACU rating 86
Ney (OH) ACU rating 86
Foley (FLA) ACU rating 78
Koly (AZ) ACU rating 74
Boelert (NY) ACU rating 40

Democrat Incumbent seats lost

None.

+++

Republican Incumbents Who Lost in the Senate:

Burns (MT) - ACU rating 91
Allen (VA) - ACU rating 92
Santorum (PA) - ACU rating 88
Talent (MO) - ACU rating 93
DeWine (OH) - ACU rating 80
Chafee (RI) - ACU rating 37

Democrat Incumbent seats lost

None.

I'm not saying that there was any collusion between republicans and democrats as to who would win and lose. What I am saying is 1.) There are some smart operators now in the democratic party including Begala and Soros. 2.)There is continuity of elite opinion across party lines that illegal immigration is ok. Elite democrats think they get cheap votes and elite republicans think they get cheap labor.

And there you can see what the 2006 elections were about. They were about doing a structural realignment of voters on the same scale as happened in the early 1960's when Johnson's great society began to shift the south out of its solid alignment with the democrats.

The democrats want to make the structural realignment de jure.

How? By bringing millions of illegals onto the voting rolls to vote democratic. Once that happens the conservatives will no longer have the ability to affect the national agenda at the polls. Consequently, abortions stay legal. Sodomites unite. The internal collapse of the west continues unabated.

I think the abolishion of birthright citizenship is a good start--as a way to make the USA less attractive to illegals. But I also think that the "compromise" does not involve making illegals legal but rather to make Mexico more attractive. That would involve extending loan guarantees to the federales exclusively to fund more pemex oil drilling. (currently they're are lootinge pemex to fund government spending so pemex only gets half the investment they need to fuel oil production. So consequently oil production is falling--and falling fast. Therefor the federales are pushing more illegals north to get their revenue.(Bush would think the loan guarantee a good idea since he is collapsing Iranian oil production.)

The second thing is to announce that the US policy is to collapse the cost of water desalination and transport thereby making it economically possible to turn the deserts of Mexico green and triple the effective size of that country. The Mexicans will need their people back. They'll come back with skills.

The third thing is to put the US solidly behind the work of Hernando de Soto's ILD. Only about 65% of the Mexican GNP is part of the formal economy. The rest is informal. They don't have very good formal property recognition in Mexico. De Soto's organization works to formalize third world economies so as to release their productive capacity and increase their value. The first chapter of de Soto's book The Mystery of Capitaldoes a good job of illuminating de soto's ideas.

The current elite solution to "harmonizing" Mexican and American economies is to dumb the USA down. The better solution is to brighten Mexico up and send them now well trained workers to do the job.

>>>>>The sentiment of this piece is right.
>>>>But the problem is, it is way too late.

I disagree. Paul M. Weyrich has been around, and his creditbility among conservatives is pretty good. There is still time to get behind someone who represents what Free Republic is all about. Political conservatism based on the Constitution remains the best form of governance available to a free people.

Its not to late.

Ronald Reagan challenged Pres Ford for the GOP nomination in 1976. Ford won 15 primaries and Reagan won 12 primaries, in what was the closet primary election in US history. Reagan lost the nomination to Pres Ford at the GOP convention by a small margin of delegates. Reagan fell short by only 60 votes. The winner needed 1130, Ford got 1187 to 1070 for Reagan. Ford barely won.

Right now, the four major GOP candidates all have significant flaws. One is even an outright liberal. Three of the four do not measure up to conservative standards. Some might even say, they don't measure up to Republican standards either.

2008 is going to be a critical election for the future of the Republican Party. This is no time for conservatives to accept second rate candidates... liberals and RINO`s need not apply.

I agree with everything, except for the fact that it is still too late.

Reagan didn't have a lock on the GOP in 76, but he did have a lock on committed conservatives. Plus he had a decent financial infrastructure in place (check out Craig Shirley's book about that campaign. It's excellent). And money is a whole lot more important then than now.

Above all else, Reagan was Reagan. An extraordinary men who united conservatives of all stripes. He almost won in 76, and then in 80 he united all conservatives and all Republicans and the rest is history.

In theory, you could be right. That special "someone" could still emerge on the scene. But he better have a personal bank account of several hundred million in order to be competitive. (But even then he won't be strong, b/c a lot of conservatives have already signed up with one of the big 3...Reagan had the field to himself in 76 among conservatives, that is...it was either him or Ford).

I hate to bring the bad news, but it is too late. Next go round.

Of course a lot of us have been saying this since 2000, but usually we get a lot of flack from the geniuses here at FR who say things like "it's too early." In fact, you will probably seem some of that on this thread. Too early? Hardly. It's too late.

I warned FReepers throughout 2006 that if Bush, along with the entire GOP Congressional leadership, continued to ignore its conservative base, many conservatives would stay home on election day. Sadly, that is exactly what happened. Bush and the rest of the Republican BeltWay power brokers, kept right on spending like liberals, expanding the bureaucracy, enlarging the welfare state and advancing liberal immigration reform. Come election day 2006, the American people voted them out of office, and rightfully so.

You act as though it was the fault of conservatives that Bush was handed the worse loss by a Republican POTUS since Herbert Hoover in 1932. Bush, Frist, Hastert and the rest, only have themsleves to blame. If they hadn't moved so far leftward on domestic policy issues, many GOP candidates could have better weathered the gathering storm over Iraq, and just may have held onto their positions of power.

The old Reagan coalition of social and fiscal conservatives can still win elections. Without staying united conservatives can't help the GOP back to power. What happened in 2006, will happen again in 2008.

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