Posted on 01/17/2012 11:00:16 AM PST by US Navy Vet
..toast? And if so what(if any) organization(s) will replace it?
I get angry at what I regard as the rank stupidity of all too many voters (not you) who watch TV or read newspapers and magazines and inhale the propaganda paid for by the zillions of the pampered and privileged trust fund babies in their never-ending quest to put the polo club back in charge of the GOP as it was before Reagan. Movement conservatives embarrass them.
I am out of sync with many posters here on FR. I don't lose sleep over the immigration. For the most part, the Mexicans are my co-religionists. The hostility they have met with on the part of many conservatives will slow their assimilation into the GOP but they ARE conservative on social issues. I know many of them and I know that they profile as "the new Italians." Many of them would put their critics to shame as conservatives. They don't have as much book learning but they despise homosexuality and abortion and will not abide either in their families and communities. Like many people of modest means, they believe in a kick-ass foreign policy. They are eager to work and to move up to own businesses of their own. Many are skilled workers. Arrayed against all of their virtues is the argument: "What part of illegal don't they understand?" I practiced law for many years as a criminal defense attorney and attorney for pro-lifers. Trust me. The rule of law is vastly overrated and often more in the breach than in the acceptance. None of my immigrant ancestors (all of whom arrived more than a century ago from England, Ireland, Scotland via Canada, and Germany) appear to have come here legally. I am not going to convince many here. I accept that, confident that history will prove them wrong about the Mexicans and that the critics will be embarrassed by the errors they are making now.
Ronald Reagan, our gold standard, welcomed Mexicans to America even as California governor. As a later "Republican" governor, Pete Wilson, a despicable Planned Barrenhood type, managed to pile upon them insult after insult and was sooooo dedicated to harming their interests through an unconstitutional initiative or referendum as to undo all of Reagan's good work. This was of a piece with Wilson's enthusiasm for baby-killing. He was a former aide to Richard Nixon. The California GOP collapsed under Wilson's idiocy as the national GOP will collapse if Romney is given the White House as a "Republican." Romney is just as clueless as Wilson was. If and when the USA is as permanently leftist as California, what will that do for any of our bank accounts or any of our kids' futures?
When I became political in 1964 or so, the enemy was Nelson Rockefeller and George Romney and William Scranton and other pampered and privileged folks who felt entitled to run the GOP as fat cat liberals. My dad worked in a cardboard factory as a production worker at about $4.50 per hour and my mom worked in a ladies' garment factory for about $1.20 per hour by being paid for piecework. Every adult male in my family was a drinker and a labor union activist or leader. They were all Democrats as voters until the excesses of the late 1960s. Few failed to vote for Reagan and most are registered Republicans today. As Reagan said, they did not leave the Democrat Party. It left them. I am still and will always be economically populist. I have no sympathy, politically or economically or otherwise for the privileged class. When I hear the talk show guys whining about "class warfare," I tune them out. They don't mind class warfare so long as it is waged against folks of modest means. They do object when the folks of modest means fight back. In the 1970s there were reasons to try to lower taxes on the marginal income of the wealthy. No one should have to pay 75%. Reagan lowered that rate to 28% and it has risen to 35% or so since. We have spent about 40 years pushing to lower the taxes of the privileged. The real income of the rest of the country has shrunk and shrunk and shrunk (adjusted for inflation) during those 40 years. Their jobs have been exported to squeeze the last dime out of them. Prices have soared even after adjusting for inflation. With many (but not all) here such arguments are a non-starter. I understand I will not get everything I want out of politics or even out of the GOP. It is often an uneasy alliance. I am a grown up and I accept that. I won't stop despising the Romneys for buying and bullying their way to nominations out of their brainless bigotry against movement conservatism, among other things. We should be unbought, unbossed and and unwilling to cave to them.
Therefore, taking our toys and staying home is precisely what we should do if Romney is nominated. Four years of Obozo is a horrible prospect but it does not begin to approach the horror of the destruction of the GOP as a viable opposition party (already well under way under the lead of the corrupt cowards Boehner and McConnell and so, so many of their quisling colleagues). Imagine having to resort to the likes of a Schwarzenegger as a GOP leader. Pro-abortion, pro-homosexual, personal track record of sexual abuse, committed to paying massive tribute to the gummint edjamakashun gods, and one of the most vacant airheads ever elected to office in Gollifornia or anywhere else.
The crowd at the Fox debate on Monday night (whoever they personally supported for nomination) showed what the base thinks when they gave an unprecedented standing ovation to Gingrich and his populist answer to Juan Williams in favor of developing work habits in ghetto youth, providing them with an income, replacing unproductive gummint union employees with those kids, and paving the way for better jobs and ultimate ownership of their own businesses. We want RED MEAT, each and every one of us, no matter who we vote for in primaries.
The Lame Stream Media, NY Times, Chicago Tribune, LA Times, left-wing columnists, bought off columnists, TV commentators who are in the tank for Mittwit, all preach at us a thousand times a day that Mittwit is inevitable. Rush does not. Mark Levin does not. Even Hannity does not.
I am a baseball fan, specifically of the New York Yankees. I would love to see the conservative movement be as automatically successful as were the Yankees of my youth. Peter Golenbock wrote a book about them: Dynasty: The New York Yankees from 1949 to 1964: When Rooting for the Yankees Was Like Rooting for US Steel. It would be nice if the Yankees and US Steel were that dominant again as well. The long-time Yankee manager of most of those Dynasty teams was Casey Stengel. He was fired after losing the 1960 World Series to the Pittsburgh Pirates via an incredible managerial blunder. In 1962, he took the job of managing the atrocious New York Mets and wound up asking in public: Doesn't anybody here know how to play this game? That's how I feel about the current conservative "movement" and its inept inability to successfully resist such a pathetic excuse for a candidate as Mittwit.
The truth is that there really has not been a conservative movement worthy of the name in this country in a very long time. The New Right of my youth (YAF, CRs, YRs, TARs) seem dead and gone. Their shells may linger on as corpses on a battlefield but they don't know how to play the game. David Keene, formerly National Chairman of YAF and ACU, who has been bought and sold more times than individual copies of the New York Times, is now the head of the NRA. Gun guys should leave the NRA until Keene leaves is replaced by someone principled. Charlton Heston is rolling over in his grave. At ACU, Keene not only welcomed the "Log Cabin Republicans" to the annual CPAC but betrayed Reagan for money by working for Bush the Elder against Reagan in 1980 and having a general track record of putting his own financial interests far above the interests of movement or country. ACU also got wimpy on war under what passed for Keene's "leadership."
Bill Buckley is dead. He was the unquestioned genius behind the creation of the modern conservatism. There will not be another just like him or with his capacity for movement leadership. National Review has degenerated into an establishment elitist rag since Bill died. NR will be dead soon enough. The greatest actual "neo-cons" are verrrrry old or dead: Irving Kristol, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Norman Podhoretz, Midge Decter, Alexander Bickel, Donald Kagan, Jeanne Kirkpatrick and their contemporary former socialists who defected to the GOP rather than knuckle under to communists in the McGovern era and later Demonratic Party.
Phyllis Schlafly is very old (tested machine guns for the Army during World War II as a student at Radcliffe). No one has noticed a successor on the horizon.
We lack training grounds like Young Americans for Freedom which trained us ideologically and in the nuts and bolts of politics, taught us to raise funds, to make compelling public relations campaigns, to manipulate the press and media for movement goals, connected up to the world of politics at the senior level when we were very young, encouraged us and politically nurtured us. We were that disciplined political strike force. In 1972, McGovern could not campaign even in New England without being personally confronted and harassed wherever he went. Likewise Ed Muskie in the New Hampshire primary that year until he wept in public in the snow at Manchester over the "unfairness" we displayed as his enemies. We distributed von Hayek's Road to Serfdom on campuses, and Frank Meyer's In Defense of Freedom and dozens of other titles by the hundreds. We caused the repeal of the Connecticut state income tax enacted in 1971 before a nickel was collected and there was no state income tax until 1991. We destroyed Weicker as a senator and elected Lieberman using about 2/3 of the GOP vote. Weicker's revenge was his getting elected governor on a third party ticket in 1990 and buying, bribing and bullying his way to a state income tax in 1991 before we drove him from the state to the Virgin Islands for refuge. He apparently has returned but is now about 80 years old and no longer a threat.
Those are illustrations of what an aroused conservative movement can accomplish but our failure was to adequately train a new generation. When we elected Reagan in 1980, we generally retired from the field to marry, have kids, build businesses and live a normal life. Like William Wallace who wanted to consolidate his gains (near the end of Braveheart) by meeting with his enemies for similar reasons, we made the grave mistake of believing that our enemies were permanently vanquished by Reagan's election and that we could now enjoy the dividend of our success by just living. Fortunately, we did not pay the price Wallace did by being hanged, drawn and quartered (and beheaded) for our naivete.
It is good that you are pissed off (given the current circumstances). Now take that anger and put it to good use, determining that you will rebuild our old movement, doing whatever you can, never settling for a quisling like Romney, a Demonrat in disguise, and always remembering Karl Hess's magnificent closing words in the nomination acceptance speech of the utterly unworthy Goldwater: "I will fight, and I know you will too, until our cause has inspired the world and led to a tomorrow worthy of all our yesterdays." See if you can also find a copy of a song by a group of our ideological enemies: Sweet Survivor" by Peter, Paul and Mary. Note that they never mention that they are gently rousing leftist nostalgia for the 60's and that the song serves just as well to rouse the nostalgia of the aging New Rightists. Listen to the words and forget who and what the singers were. Then listen with the same ear to "If I had a Hammer" written by a communist for them but which again makes no specific ideological references. Now, imagine yourself, your family, your friends, singing it enthusiastically on the night Reagan was elected POTUS and ten radical senators were politically slain.
If, as is likely, you are one of a vast majority here who are younger than I, promise yourself and your family and your friends that you will not rest (in spite of all the obstacles) until some day in some way you may join them in celebrating a victory as sweeping as Reagan's of 1980. After you have achieved it, then train those younger than you to repeat as often as necessary.
God bless you and yours!
May Chief Illiniwek live in your heart forever!
Oop,s link in case you don’t have it handy:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/2834244/posts?page=57
I sorta’ doubt it. All the money, influence, journalists, and movers and shakers in the GOP are - unfortunately - firmly in the RINO camp. It now looks like it will take longer than expected to drive them out of power.
Sadly, it appears that outside of FR, there are very few real conservatives left in America.
BlackElk,
I doubt I’ll be doing much for Newt from here out due to time constraints. He’s a few good staff people away from giving MITT a real race. For someone who engineered the ‘94 revolution, his new people are surprisingly oblivious to grassroots details. Cannot see him doing well in the caucus states CO MN WA ID WY AK .. how many can he write off? Especially since MITT is very aggressive for delegates in those places.
I don’t agree with those who’ve conceded to ROMNEY. I’m still willing to make the wild prediction that Romney won’t be the nominee.
Most interesting thing in CT is the vacant U.S. House seat #5 with pro-abort Roraback (of Griswold vs. CT fame) in a 5-way GOP race. Donovan of Meriden likely on the DEM side.
I don't doubt for a moment that he needs to be defeated for the nomination from what I have read about him but Griswold was decided in 1964 or so when he was about 4 years old.
He is apparently a cousin of the late Marxist (but regrettably capable) lawyer Katie Roraback. She was the niece of the Connecticut GOP's ultimate political boss and State GOP Chairman (1912 until his suicide in 1937) and CEO of Connecticut Light & Power. He and Katie, ummm, would have differed on an issue or two since he was firmly opposed to granting women's suffrage.
Recognizing that Andrew Roraback is verrrry bad news on social issues, who are his opponents? What are their qualifications and disqualifications? Is Tommy involved on behalf of any of them?
Meanwhile, in other news, the Mittwit must still be crushed and driven from public life--- preferably in the primaries but in the general election if necessary.
God bless you and yours!
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