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Posted on 09/02/2003 10:16:02 PM PDT by sruleoflaw
I believe it is OK to post Fresno Bee articles. If there is a problem, could a McClintock supporter, please clean this up for me. I won't ask anything from a Schwarzenegger backer.
This is dedicated to the McClintock supporters, who believe that unborn children have value, that marriage is between a man and a woman, that limited government is the best government, that people should assume responsibility for actions, that business should be encouraged, that illegal immigration should be actively opposed (rather than conveniently ignored) and taxes should not be raised (and McClintock signed the no tax hike pledge).
Conservatives shouldn't shy away from core values
By Jim Patterson (Published Wednesday, August 27, 2003, 8:58 AM)
California conservatives are being advised to muzzle our core beliefs in order to elect a Republican to statewide office again. Campaign operatives say our ideas don't sell any more, and we must throw them over in order for a Republican to win again in the Golden State. Pundits say we are in the political wilderness and that the only way out is to compromise our ideals. History teaches a very different lesson. Abraham Lincoln, the founding father of our party, was fond of a pesky, obscure little document called the Declaration of Independence, especially the phrase about Americans being endowed by their Creator with rights that government could not take away - rights like life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Today, many in our party would insist ol' Abe hush up about God, the right to life and the political pre-eminence of the individual. Mr. Lincoln lost more elections than he won and spent a considerable time in his own political wilderness until the times demanded his ideas and values. Those ideas and values freed a people, saved the union and changed history.
In the 1930s, another conservative spent some time in the wilderness. Winston Churchill was ridiculed, vilified and politically sidelined because he was so hard on Hitler and the Nazis. The times, he was told, required tolerance and compromise. His own party advised him, in the modern vernacular, to chill out and lighten up. But Churchchill was a true believer in life and liberty and in the responsibility of government to secure those rights for everyone, forever. Sound familiar? Mr. Churchill's conservative ideology, and his willingness to hold it firmly, saved Britain and the European continent from a return to the Dark Ages.
In our own times, we have the example of Ronald Reagan. In the warm afterglow of today it is easy to forget that even Mr. Reagan spent time in the political wilderness and was vilified for his conservative principles. He lost to Gerald Ford in the presidential primary of 1976, in part, because many in our party feared he could not be elected.
Instead, America got Jimmy Carter, a national malaise, and a misery index that drove inflation, unemployment and interest rates to all-time highs. In four short years, Americans were finished with Mr. Carter and his malaise and turned overwhelmingly to Mr. Reagan's conservative optimism of limited government, lower taxes, life, liberty and all the blessings those values bring us, and America came back stronger than ever.
On the international stage, Mr. Reagan and his ideas stole the show and he became the star attraction. He broke with a long line of national and international left-wing appeasers of communism who were satisfied with merely containment or détente. He had the conservative audacity to believe American-style freedom, strength and positivism could actually defeat communism and roll it back. Apparently Mr. Gorbechev got the message and tore down that wall. Like Lincoln and Churchill before him, Mr. Reagan's buoyant conservatism brought freedom and prosperity to millions, you and me included.
Sadly, too many California Republicans -- and the left-leaning pundits they listen to -- have forgotten these powerful lessons of the past and have governed not much differently than liberals. Think about this: It was Republicans in the California Legislature who passed the now infamous state budget of 2003. It was -- I am embarrassed to admit -- Republicans who gave the OK to a budget that tripled the car tax, borrowed $10 billion to pay for historic runaway spending and still left California $8 billion in the red.
This is what happens when Republicans are more concerned with holding office than with leading by example and principle. We might be successful at winning an election, but we might lose the opportunity to change things for the better.
Ideas matter. They are the powerful engines of freedom and opportunity. Conservative ideas have stood the test of time and circumstances. They formed the foundation for the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Millions in America and across the globe are now more free and prosperous because leaders who held conservative ideas were not afraid to say so or to use them to govern. Holding office is meaningless if the pathway to that office sheds the very ideas we need to secure the blessings of liberty.
California Republicans shouldn't shun our conservative foundations. We should champion those ideals as the solution to California's problems.
Without the "core values" what would the definition of a conservative be?
Perhap's giving up those conservative values for a seat in the winners auditorium? Would that not be a noble gesture, and one to be proud of?
Only the leaders with true conviction will win a place in history's archives, not the one's that gain leadership through popularity without conviction.
I'm reminded of those tests from school where you had to pick which item least belonged in a group.
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