Whose Side are you On? If you don’t care whether Republicans win, care that Democrats lose.

National Review ^ | 3/29/2014 | Kevin Williamson

[shuck and yall]

March 29, 2014 4:00 AM Which Side Are You On? If you don’t care whether Republicans win, care that Democrats lose.

By Kevin D. Williamson

For conservatives, the story of the Obama years has been the depressing spectacle of Republicans fighting a rearguard action covering their retreat from a Democratic agenda backed by superior numbers. Republicans began the Obama administration with effectively no leverage: Barack Obama in the White House, Nancy Pelosi in the speaker’s chair, and Harry Reid running the Senate. The outcome of that was the enactment of the Affordable Care Act, the worst domestic defeat for the cause of limited government in a generation. The 2010 congressional elections gave Republicans some relief... .

[BlackElk]

In a dynamic movement like conservatism, we don’t have to take this crap from the GOP-E $$$$ Elite any more. And with each election, more and more of us won’t. Rule or ruin.

[BlackElk]

I recognize absolutely NO DUTY to vote for any such sleazebag as Romney OR Obozo. Your proposal simply guarantees that the Demonrats keep marching relentlessly toward a thoroughly Marxist USSA while the "Republicans" are ruled by $$$$$$ which has no interest in anything but their trust funds, spits on the base constantly, lies in each and every election claiming that this time it's gonna be different and relentlessly seels us out on each and every issue that most of us actually care about: guns, babies, marriage, military, foreign policy, etc.

It should be increasingly obvious that VOTE FOR THE REPUBLICAN ANTICHRIST: HE ISN'T THE DEMONRAT ANTICHRIST just is not working any more.

If the usual RINO elitist $$$$$ obsessed trash is nominated instead of a candidate I may find acceptable, then, oh well...... Don't expect my vote or take it for granted. Nominate someone WORTH voting for and conservatives will vote for him/her. If not, NOT! Rule or ruin. If you care about our country, warn Reince Priebus and the rest. Just any old Republican POS will NOT do.

[COBOL2Java]

The only "conservative values" the GOPe have are: "can we get them to open their wallets?" and "can we trick them into voting for us?"

Outside of that, the likes of Boehner, McConnell, and Reince Preibus don't give a rat's ass about us.

[BlackElk]

If we give McConnell a Senate majority, then the excuse will be that we don't have the White House BUT, if we just persuade Mitt Romney to run with New Jersey Fats, this time WE will win and we can finally eliminate corporate taxes, estate taxes, capital gains taxes and replace all of them with a flat tax on folks of modest means for having jobs, say, $30K a year, while abolishing Medicare and Social Security altogether. Sound good???? OK, and amend the Constitution to let Larry marry Harry, make babykilling mandatory among the lesser classes, confiscate all guns and so forth. Sound good?????

Show me how WE can take care of the Republicans AFTER we get the Senate by purging Boehner, Cantor, McCarthy. We already "control the House." Show and tell!!!

[Blackirish]

I live in Illinois so my choice comes down to a moderate republican or a really bad,hack democrat. Sooner rather then later I’m moving. Thanks for your posts.

[RKBA Democrat]

Naah. Tried that several times. It didn’t work then, it isn’t working now, and it won’t work in the future. Try as we might and wish as hard as we can, we still can’t turn a sow into a racehorse. A liberal is a liberal is a liberal regardless of whether it has an R or D or Q after its name.

As for perfection I don’t see anyone suggesting that a perfect candidate is necessary. What I see instead is a demand for something resembling a conservative in both word and deed. You can take that as a demand for perfection if you want, but its actually a demand that so called conservative political candidates refrain from pissing on our backs and telling us its raining.

[COBOL2Java]

To a Pollyanna Republican, a “purist” conservative is anyone who dares to examine the candidate beyond having an “R” after their name. If you check out the “R” candidate and come to learn that he/she is nothing more than a GOPe Boehner/McConnell proselyte, then you are branded a “purist”.

[RKBA Democrat]

“You will have something else to do with your time, it will consist of figuring out what else you can live without as you pretend you had nothing to do with another election victory year for the Demagogic Party.”

You really don’t get it, do you? There isn’t a scintilla of difference between the two factions in the uniparty. Either that, or you’re simply another seminar poster for the gop.

I absolutely refuse to shoulder even one speck of guilt for refusing to vote in a beauty contest for the lesser of two statists. Give me an actual conservative and I’ll show up early and vote for him/her. Continue to put up anti-gun, anti-life, liberty-hating political hacks for office and I guarantee that I’ll stay away.

[SunkenCiv]

You don’t get it, do you? There is a very large difference between the two parties, and the term uniparty is just plain BS.

[RedStateRocker]

Not ‘differing’, you are astutely pointing out another dynamic, one that sometimes works for, and sometimes works against either side:
the purists who select the nominee are the ones who will man the phone banks, contribute early and do the hard work, so candidates run to the far left and right in the primaries. And then they run to the center for the general election, or at least change their message points to appeal to the ‘center’.

[1010RD]

About 35-40% of the nation identifies as “conservative” and about the same as moderate. The balance are liberals. You do understand that we have a republic and representatives. The current House is as conservative as it has ever been in the last two generations. Compromise is the only way forward. America isn’t a dictatorship. You have to build coalitions.

We have several opportunities to chop up the Democrat vote machine. Jobs, economic growth and business regulation are one track. The other is social conservatism. People, even the mushy middle, get that the former are a problem and that Democrat policies are to blame.

They don’t quite get the social conservatism as a solution part. How do you get a sustainable majority to agree with us? They’ve got the education and media establishments. People get that, but they don’t want and never have liked a revolutionary change. Fix the economy and they come more to our side on everything else.

You have to win over and over again for at least a generation to see real change. The immature now or nothing approach will fail. You’re up against the annual recipients of a what, is it $3 trillion now, federal budget. That’s hard to beat and you don’t have the country behind you.

Like it or not you’ll have to figure out how to deal with McConnell, Boehner and their ilk. They’re here to stay.

[BuckeyeTexan]

Amen!

[Smokin' Joe]

every democrat is a threat to your freedom and ability to survive.

and so are a significant number of Republicans. How many election cycles have Conservatives gone to the polls and voted for the Republican in hopes (pleese, pleeeese, pleeeeeese, God, don't let us get crapped on again) only to be soundly shat upon before the absentee ballots are counted.

There are indeed those who believe that government exists to secure the Rights of the People, and beyond that should get out of the way and let Liberty work its wondrous work on our economy, our culture, and America, and then there are those who think that the all pervading hand of the State is essential to success--the "you didn't build that" crowd.

Well, damnit, we DID build it, often in spite of pissant regulations, corrupt officials, and an overweening multitude of regulatory PhDs who don't understand 'righty-tighty, lefty-loosey'.

America grew by leaps and bounds before there were squadrons of regulators amongst us, and could do so again in their absence.

Whose side am I on? America's!

Come here, be here, learn the language, join up or spend your tourist dollars and go home.

Shut down the host of agencies which have no Constitutional Mandate, and by that I mean original intent. Which of the Founders would have stopped you from filling a low spot on your land? From burning wood to heat your home? Or coal? Instead, they understood the blessings of natural resources, given by the Creator who laid the very foundations of the Earth, and in thankful prudence, used those resources.

Not all were perfect in that prudence, but those who were close prospered, those who were not, often did not.

Yes the Democrats are evil, or at least their philosophies are, but many Republicans have placed their personal profit and gain ahead of solid Statesmanship as well.

I claim neither party. My vote will be earned, and I remain a steadfast proponent of the idea that every election should include "none of the above" as a last choice, and should that choice prevail, a new ticket would have to be presented for a ballot.

[itsahoot]

I guess we should all change our registration to democrat, then we could be winners for a change. Yep winning is everything.

[Gaffer]

Their votes are better...

You confuse their plurality floor 'show votes' with actual action. Time and time again, Republicans under the aegis of McConnell have given up the good fight in formulation, discussion and amending of a bill BEFORE bringing it to the floor for a vote. They have (had) multiple opportunities to kill freedom-taking, economy-killing bills then but schemed that away with duplicitous Cloture Votes to bring the bill to the floor WHERE THEY KNEW IT WOULD MEET DEFEAT.

McConnell, who usually sits those out and gets underlings to do it recently had to do it himself on the Senate's vote on Paul Ryan's budget busting debt bill because of Ted Cruz.

My two Senators are expert 'show-voters'. Lying backstabbing traitors. And you tell me their votes are 'better' than a Democrat's.....not even hardly. You say we can wait it out because 'that generation is going away'. But the RNC and Rove PAC money is focused on finding more clones - exactly like these people. The only way to get rid of them is to beat them. Not vote for them, don't give them money, and to support conservative candidates everywhere who will stop their treachery.

[Gaffer]

Agree on your points.

I find their (Republican GOPe stalwarts here) bleats about ‘better than Democrats’ and ‘Republican is the only hope.. [Obi Wan]’ the most advanced case of planned capitulation and surrender ever witnessed on the political scene.

No wonder Boehner, McConnell et al are so oblivious to conservative wishes. When you have a sizeable cadre of so-called conservatives here so willing to give up even before the fight and vote for them because they're ‘better than a Democrat’, Boehner’s and McConnell's trolls here can report back to them ‘no problem’.

Believe it or not, what we say and do here IS filtered up to both sides. Unfortunately, the GOPe uses the mood here and other places to gauge just how much they can capitulate, how much they can give up.

But sometimes, activism here works. Take the recent case of Boehner planning to attend a Florida campaign dinner for anti-tea party types. He's now backed out of that; I believe because of us, conservative media (slim as it is), and other conservative groups.

If all they heard HERE was “GOPe, they're not as evil as Democrats, let's hold our nose and vote for them - again,” we'll still be in the same boat, regardless of conservative votes or not.

IOW, acceptance of GOPe in this day and age is tantamount to being no more than a French Soldier who dropped his unfired Rifle at the Maginot Line or the Ardenne Forrest.

[nathanbedford]

Believe it or not, what we say and do here IS filtered up to both sides. Unfortunately, the GOPe uses the mood here and other places to gauge just how much they can capitulate, how much they can give up. I think you are absolutely right in that judgment.

Let us put ourselves in the shoes of these establishment elitists in the Republican Party and consider how they view the landscape. For example, we have the upcoming matter of amnesty which, if one reads these threads or listens to most of talk radio, the unfiltered voice of the grassroots is unmistakable, no amnesty.

If it were only a matter of counting up the potential votes gained from pandering to the likes of La Raza and counting up the potential dimunition of the vote from the base, most professional politicians would conclude that they better not piss off the base, although they would certainly make noises in an attempt to mollify the Spanish vote. The key to understanding this approach is to proceed from the belief that politicians are professionals who make their living in the business of politics.

But the businessman parading as politician understands that there is more to the landscape than just counting noses, he also must get money. And that raises a whole series of considerations to the politician who must ask himself, to whom must I pander, to whom must I sell out? Well, obviously the fat cats, the big donors. But not every Representative from the boonies has access to the fat cats they must get their money through bundlers and gatekeepers. This is where Boehner comes in because he controls much of the money flow. So, even a well-intentioned and earnest newly elected congressman from deep in the heartland who goes to Washington with the purest of hearts finds himself drawn into the vortex and forced to decide whether he will opt for principle and the folks back home or for Boehner and the loot to keep him in Washington.

Boehner himself knows that he has to get the fat cats on board or he will have no money to distribute and that means that those contributors who are essentially nonideological especially about cultural matters condition their funding on those issues, like wide open immigration which will keep wages down, of economic importance to them.

The business of politics means that money forces well-intentioned man and women to depart from their principles. In other words, these people are not stupid they are calculating and their calculations tell them when to ignore what they read on these threads.

Money plays another part in politics. The more Washington vacuums money from the heartland and redistributes a portion thereof to vote sensitive sections of the electorate, the more the politicians prosper. The more Washington prints money or rather creates it digitally out of the ether and distributes it to clamoring voter blocs, the more the businessman parading as politician prospers.

The examples are endless and there is no hope really of Washington reforming itself out of this vortex. That is why I become increasingly committed to the ARTICLE V movement.

[RKBA Democrat]

Good points. The Vichy gop and their toadies are of course active on the conservative websites. If their policies of collaboration, obfuscation, and betrayal are getting traction on the conservative websites then they can consider themselves fairly safe. All the more reason to oppose them.

[skeeter]

The problem being running to the 'center does not seem to work as well for the republicans when the democrat 'center' is promising handouts.

Today there is only one message that will win enough votes for the GOP in the genera, one the GOP hasn't used for 30 years.

[EricT.]

Amem, brother. I’m not playing the “lesser of two statists” game ever again.