Posted on 12/13/2014 9:00:21 AM PST by upchuck
While it would certainly be cathartic to flog the GOP for the lousy omnibus bill House Republicans just passed, it seems more productive to tackle a bigger issue. After a historic, yet unearned (Obama was the real GOP MVP) election victory, isn’t it time for the Republican leadership to try to heal the rift with the base that’s tearing the party apart?
Do Republican leaders REALLY want to spend the next two years of a presidential election cycle getting trashed the way they are right now by activists, Tea Party leaders and radio talk show hosts? Anyone who thinks the base is going to sit down and shut up or that the GOP can thrive over the long-term with this kind of intra-party feuding going on is kidding himself.
So realistically, here’s what the Republican Party leaders need to do to help get everyone back on the same page.
1) They should never, ever, under any circumstances trash their base again. That means if the words "Tea Party, "Senate Conservatives Fund," "Mark Levin," “Rush Limbaugh,” “Club for Growth,” “Heritage Action,” etc., etc., come out of their mouths, then they better be saying something nice at best or neutral at worst. Additionally, staffers who mouth off about the base should be unceremoniously fired. At first, Republican politicians shouldn’t expect to have that favor to be returned, but if you’re a politician who wants unconditional love, go buy a dog.
2) The GOP has to keep its promises -- and quite frankly, more than a few Republicans seem to have a pre-YouTube era mentality about that. They think they can say anything they want on the campaign trail and then do something completely different in the office without people being any the wiser. For example, after the NRSC backed Charlie Crist over Marco Rubio, I fought it tooth-and-nail over that decision. After he won, Marco Rubio was one of my favorite politicians, but the moment he lied to us by breaking his campaign pledge to fight amnesty, he was dead to me. I will NEVER forgive Rubio for his dishonorable behavior, no matter what he does. Don’t lie through your teeth to people who took you at your word and then expect us to be stupid enough to trust you again.
3) It's fine for the Republican Party to recruit candidates, but it should ALMOST NEVER be involved in primaries. If you want to know what an exception looks like, Ronald Reagan and George Bush, Sr. were right to endorse the guy running against David Duke back in 1989. Everybody has a role to play and an organization that is supposed to represent all Republicans absolutely should not be involved in a race between two Republicans. It creates an ocean of bad blood so big that there aren’t enough towels in Texas to clean it up.
4) The GOP leaders need to open up some lines of communication and if they have good motives, explain what they're trying to do and the strategy they're using with talk radio hosts, big websites, activist groups, etc. Locking influential conservative groups out of discussions of what the GOP should be doing BEGS for them to make trouble because it’s the only way they can get their opinion heard.
4A) A few years back, Republicans in leadership did reach out a bit and while it may have helped a little, it ultimately wasn’t very effective because they looked at it as a way to try to sell what they were doing instead of having a conversation about shared goals. A lot of people, myself included, suspect the reason this isn't done is because we don't have the same aims on a lot of major legislation any more. I don't think the GOP leaders have any intention of seriously trying to stop Obama’s executive amnesty. I don't believe they're committed to the repeal of Obamacare. I was even forced to agree with NANCY PELOSI and ELIZABETH WARREN (vomit) about the GOP’s omnibus bill decision to make it easier for big banks to gamble with derivatives and the sleazy campaign finance reform that was designed to undercut activist groups. Would the GOP leadership really want to explain something like that beforehand? Ultimately, it wouldn’t be that hard to get grassroots leaders to line up behind smart strategies to achieve conservative policy goals, but it’s an open question whether the GOP’s leadership believes in the Republican Party’s own platform enough to fight for it anymore.
5) Speaking of fights, the GOP leaders need to prove they're willing to fight and WIN on something that really matters to conservatives. At this point, the expectation of the Democrats, the mainstream media and even the GOP base is that the Republican Party is going to cave in every time. At some point, Republicans have to prove they can go head-to-head with the Democrats and win on something that matters. Of course, congressional aides could probably name 10 things that people don't care about that much where they’d claim to have "fought and won," but that’s like a football team that’s behind 70-0 complaining it isn’t being given enough credit for all the 1st downs it’s gotten in the game.
6) People feel so burned by Boehner and McConnell that it would take AN INCREDIBLE amount of work for them to ever be trusted again. If someone like Jeb Hensarling took over in the House or John Thune took over in the Senate, he’d immediately get a much longer leash from the base because he’d be given the benefit of the doubt while people evaluated his performance. On the other hand, when it comes to Boehner and McConnell, symbolic gestures aren't going to cut it because we’re at a Cold War level of trust. It doesn’t matter how much Castro tells you he loves democracy and freedom; you’ll believe it AFTER Cuba has a free election.
Last but not least, there's toxic residue in this area that goes all the way back to the end of Bush’s first term that has never been addressed by the GOP leadership in an effective manner. There are a lot of conservatives who feel like they've been SCREAMING at the GOP for a decade and haven't been respected or heard. As long as the GOP leadership insists on maintaining a system where the only way conservative activists can make an impact is by raining hell down on the GOP leaders, they better keep a lot of ice water handy because that’s exactly what they’re going to continue to get.
Great article, valid points, but the GOP party has sailed down too far and taken the wrong fork in the road too long ago. Instead of turning back, they continued on into the Dem-light stream.
The party is dead to me since 2006; I only look at candidates. And while I’ll NEVER vote for a Rat, the GOP is assured I’ll NEVER support it, ever again.
Right now, I would settle for a second party.
I will only get behind a candidate I like. I have also given up on the GOP because the have sabotaged the good Presidential candidates through many cycles now.
No, third parties will not do anything.
All emphasis should be made to remove the turds in the GOP IMO.
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Actions matter. Chronic Empty Rhetoric that turns into lies doesn’t cut it. Republicans are showing their liberal hand and it ain’t pretty.
The only Third Party Candidate whose name anyone recognizes is Ross Perot. He gave us Bill Clinton, which begat RINO Bush, which begat Marxist Obama.
Third Party Vote = Democrat Wins, every time it’s tried.
I wish it wasn’t so, but I’m one of those people who wasn’t paying attention back in 1992 and Voted Perot. That is something I will never forgive myself for.
The only hope is changing the Republican Party from the inside, or getting used to hearing President “Lieawatha” Warren until January 2025 or until our last day on Earth, whichever comes first...
Loonie Left Joins Far Right Ping?
Pray that these strange bed-fellows (Choke-Puke) can kill this thing.
Strange days indeed.
in calif., goes back at least to when country club repubs coopted the gray davis recall with swartzenegger (~1994). almost certainly goes back much farther than that, though...
Tens of millions of Democrat voters will never ever vote for a Republican, but they would vote for a populist, constitutionalist conservative. UKIP in Britain in a recent election pulled around 40% from the Conservatives and about the same from the Labour voters. Labour voters said they’d never vote Tory. Never.
That would be one way to do it, but those guys would also need some big money behind them. Some Texas oil guys or something.
I have been advocating for many years something that David Horowitz wrote in favor of yesterday, and that is creation of a conservative caucus in the Congress. Something that would give credibility to its members, enforce discipline on issues, and be able to make demands on the leadership. Something like that could take over the GOP if enough members joined, or break from it if it could not get a decent break. It could serve as a party within the party, so that there could be an annual convention, a platform, position papers, and a leadership separate from the GOP. If we used it to pick the conservative candidate for President before the primaries, it would be very powerful. Let Cruz, Walker and whoever wants to try seek the conservative mantle. Whoever gets it can then go against the RINO weenies and absolutely crush them, with the help of a large organization behind them.
I think the best organization to get this moving is the Heritage Foundation.
:: With all due respect a third party is an astonishing dumb idea :
1825: “The Whigs have been in political power in the past and they have broad support in both the North AND South. We shouldn’t swap horses in midstream (to use an 1825 colloquialism).”
So I disagree with your strategy. You can only take over the GOP by gaining control from the top, through a coup of sorts that results from a tsunami they can't control in the primaries. They do all they can to prevent that from happening, including bringing in Democrats to vote, loading the order of primaries, giving the moderator role at debates to MSM types instead of to conservatives, etc.
If it becomes impossible for a conservative to gain the top slot and clean house, as it may be, then that leaves only one choice for conservatives, to break with the GOP. I do not fear that as much as those such as yourself, because I think the GOP would go the way of the Dinosaur pretty quickly. I worry about the damage during the cycles where it shakes out, which is why I advocate it only if we can't gain the nomination, but if we can't, it has to be done. Unless you like progressive government and voting next to spanish speaking welfare moms.
But, a third party can only divide further .. and I’m not for that.
Besides, let’s give the new people a chance to show their muscle and resolve to change things.
My first change .. get rid of Boehner and McConnell as leaders of the group. There are several good candidates in both house and all they have to do is stop voting for anything Boehner or McConnell put forward. That should get the message out LOUD AND CLEAR ..!!!!
You don’t have to follow a leader .. if the LEADER IS NOT LEADING .. and Boehner and McConnell certainly are not leading anything. They are just voting with the dems all the time.
Boehner’s love affair with Obama .. I’m at PUKE ALREADY.
Personally, I think that ticket would win in a landslide.
I sometimes think FReepers don't live in reality...
A Cruz/ Palin ticket would lose a general election by a landslide...
Personally, I think both of them are outstanding patriots...
There is this vast mushy headed voter population that pretty much don't pay attention to who is running for POTUS until about 2-3 weeks out...
By that time the MSM and the democrat party would have imprinted on the vast mushy headed voters by used their records to made them out to be the second coming of Machiavelli and Cruella de Vil...
We have several conservative Governors well qualified to be POTUS that have outstanding records to campaign on and both executive and legislative experience to tout...
Besides that Cruz needs to stay in the Senate to keep the heat on the RINO spineless jellyfish that inhabit that chamber (pot)
Just wait Charlie Brown. Next year The Great Pumpkin will be here. You'll see Charlie Brown. OR No Charlie Brown I won't jerk the football away again. Go ahead Charlie Brown I promise. Good Old Charlie Brown. Keep falling year after year for the same old lies and giving Linus and Lucy chance after chance. We'll Charlie Brown might do it for you but the Conservative Base has had quite enough of it.
News Flash: The GOP was established in 1854 after the collapse of the party it soon replaced. It was up, running and had a sitting POTUS within two cycles 1860. All we have to do is pull all support for the GOP and watch it fall flat on it's corrupt face. The ones who fear doing this seem to be Party Loyalist who are likely county party officers etc who don't wish to loose their own influence.
Conservatives were given the middle finger Thursday night by a good portion of the GOP congress including SOH. My Turn To Return Same to my Rep who voted yes and to the party including that bald self appointed egotistical turd that shows up on TV as the voice of the GOP!!!!
Reagan democrats number about 5 million today. They would vote for Ted Cruz in a flash.
Maybe after a two more years of supporting Obama by congress and Cruz not getting the nomination, you’ll be ready to help make the GOP the 3rd party.
:: Cruz/Palin? ::
I’m leaning toward considering that this ticket to simply generate “urban ignorance” and give the D-party its usual “scare-tactic” for the EBT crowd. That is not to say that the individuals on that ticket cannot overcomne that stigma.
The Dhimmicrats have so well developed their “conservatives hate minorities” storyline that there is a long row-to-hoe for all conservatives.
The proverbial up-side is that there may well be a majority of patriots that could be mobilized to support a “constitutional reset” ticket. Ferguson and other pseudo-related looting/rioting/protesting in NY/SF and other places might just be a “teachable moment” for the silent majority to stop being so silent. As fond of the late 60s as I am...it is simply ^history from which we must learn^.
It will take the right [pun intended] kind of candidate but we could see “rolling red-outs” in 2016 if the Dhimmicrat storyline is successfully rebutted and regular, normal patriots are convinced that a candidate is COMMITTED to “viva Estados Unidos!”.
I’m of the belief that regular-joe Americans don’t want a Euro-Centric type of government - real people died (patriot lives)and were given to God to make things right in the face of (Euro-weenie) George III.
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