Hello Jeff! I so agree!!!
Though I do have a follow-on question: Exactly how is it feasible to integrate this insight into contemporary politics and still win elections?
Just to note: If you can't get elected, i.e., if you're not in office, you can't get much of anything done that remedies the problems you see.
I gather your insightful essay/post was addressed to the issue of the current division in the GOP between the party Establishment and the Tea Party folks, in the run-up to the 2014 Midterm elections.
I consider myself a card-carrying member of the latter. Given the seemingly endless impotence and fecklessness emanating from the Republican Establishment, I left the party in 2011.
I left because it seemed to me the Republican Party — the party of Abraham Lincoln — had abandoned the principles of liberty, equal opportunity, and equal justice, principles which took the bloodiest war in American history to uphold and defend — the essential principles embodied in our founding documents, the Declaration of Independence, and the U.S. Constitution that We the People instantiated in the Preamble, in order to "secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity."
But enuf of such ruminations. Dear friend, you so justly point out precisely what is needed: A way to reach voters in terms of a national policy that "will improve people's life and that of their loved ones...their kids and grandkids. That's how you win this battle."
Obama and his acolytes and enablers on the Progressive Left (such as Harry Reid in the Senate; and Nancy Pelosi, the fabulous Chucky Schumer and a legion of other like-minded (and seemingly terminal brain-dead) ne'er-do-wells in the House; not to mention the Lame-Brain Media and huge sectors of Academe) have signally failed to produce anything they promised us, after five years of effective (and seemingly unchallengeable) majority — tiresome presidential rhetoric to the contrary notwithstanding.
Obama "says" he is the great defender of the American Middle Class. But it looks to me like he's systematically looting the middle class, under cover of "law," for the benefit of his politically-connected "friends," be they industrial tycoons, Hollywood moguls, or the ignorant masses, the latter of whom are more interested in getting a free Obama-phone (or refrigerator) at taxpayer expense, than they are in upholding the time-tested standards of a basic, civilized constitutional order — which to them is an "abstraction" that their minds cannot conceive. The former class pays him big campaign dollars. The last are just a manipulable mob in his playbook. Both have their purposes: but their purposes either serve Obama, or there will be "repercussions."
Some people, at least, see this. Which is why I suspect that the next crucial elections — 2014 and 2016 — cannot, and will not, be decided on the basis of "political ideology," Left or Right.
The People are so hurting so much by now, thanks to an ersatz president who has taken it upon himself to independently exercise sovereignty WRT national policy without having to consult Congress — let alone the Constitution, to which he swore a presidential oath to uphold and defend — that they are mainly looking for relief from their present sufferings, imposed upon them by the Powers that Be in Washington.
What conservatives most need right now, IMHO (FWIW) is a concept of political Realism. For, if ideology, "idealism," has landed us where we are right now, in such a way that people actually feel the devastating effects, it should be obvious that the "cure for what ails us" is not more "idealistic ideology," Left or Right.
People want solutions — not talk. If the Republican party can speak to the people in terms of their own immediate concerns — which largely devolve around the problems of paying the recurring household expenses, raising and educating their kids, providing for retirement, perhaps caring for elderly relatives — at a time when the public perception is of relentlessly escalating costs in order to achieve the American Dream, while their government is relentlessly, systematically, shrinking their means of doing so; i.e., of providing for themselves and their families.
Anyhoot, I'll end my present rumination there, adding only that I hope and pray that we do not have a reprise of 2012 in the November elections. People who are hurting don't care much about "ideological positions." They just want real answers to their real problems (which Obama seems bent on making as acute as possible): They'll vote for the guy — in the midterms and in the following general — they believe will help them fix their keenly felt problems.
Thank you so much, dear Jeff, for pinging me to your excellent essay/post!
Many voters are hurting that bad, they need relief. They'll listen to a message focused on that and a solution they can support.
I left the republican party about the same time you did, and for exactly the same reasons.
Your comment, 'What is needed: A way to reach voters in terms of a national policy that will improve people's life and that of their loved ones...their kids and grandkids. That's how you win this battle,' is spot on. The trouble is, Americans over the past several decades have 'evolved' to a point at which 'life improvements' have been re-defined so as to pretty much exclude, or at least ignore, the concept of individual liberty.
In addition, so much of what we speculate regarding upcoming elections rests on envisioning the electorate based on past precedent. But nowadays precedent cannot always be invoked simply because the citizenry today bears no resemblance to what it used to be, and, with each passing day, that difference becomes even more pronounced.
We have been witnessing for decades fascist techniques commonly used to prepare a country for the implementation of a dictatorship.
Our children today know virtually nothing about the proud history, and liberty-centered foundations, of their own country.
Our mainstream media regularly rewrite, interpret, or righteously ignore, both that history and the everyday events unfolding around us.
Either directly or indirectly, millions of people who have no business being in this country are being afforded a say as to who our leadership is, and are benefitting enormously from government handouts.
The ‘pioneer spirit’ that made America the most moral and prosperous civilization in the history of mankind has been replaced, systematically, by a victim/entitlement mentality that urges voters to cast their ballots on the basis of ‘What’s in it for me?’ rather than ‘What is best for my country?’ or ‘Who has the character to lead my country down the right road?’ or ‘Who will be earnest in continuing to guarantee the freedoms that our Founders fought so hard to ensure us?’ The last three considerations have been declared passé and nationalistic (which is now a four-letter word).
Voting on the basis of 'What's in it for me?' tends now to focus on material gains as provided by 'government', and tends to ignore the freedoms that must be relinquished in order to obtain such temporary 'gains'.
I believe that, more than any other threat we currently face, we must put an end to the independent and grossly illegal actions of the executive branch, because it is through those actions that our individual liberties are being most blatantly crushed. It is up to congress and the court to get this usurpation of power back under control ... and it is up to us to demand they do so. How, exactly, can that occur when ninety percent of the electorate value their smart phones significantly more than they do their God-given freedoms as ensured by the Bill of Rights?
~ joanie