Exit Stage Left
13 February 2008The news just gets worse and worse. On the Democrat side it appears that ultra liberal Barack Obama is headed to that party’s nomination. On the Republican side it is close to mathematically impossible to stop John McCain. It seems the country is headed left fast. For the Democrats that is no surprise. George Soros and MoveOn.org have been pulling the strings of that party for some time now. For the GOP I suppose it was predictable.
It is the nature of government to grow and to move left. Like physical laws, there seem to be political laws that dictate the direction government goes, left to its own devices. That’s precisely why it is so important to have a reliable conservative party and conservative elected officials to counter that tendency.
Unfortunately for this country, the Republican Party is no longer the conservative party. Also unfortunate is the fact that the American electorate appears to moving left as well. There are various reasons for this, not the least of which is the fact that our government has worked tirelessly to encourage the American people to depend on it to meet their every need. Dependency upon government has grown to hitherto unknown heights and there appears to be no end in sight.
Dick Morris has been saying for several years that Hillary Clinton would be the next president. He saw that as inevitable. Conservatives never agreed with him and, in truth, relished the thought of a head to head fight with Clinton. We were all convinced that Hillary was beatable with the right candidate.
Now, Morris has changed his view and believes that Obama will get the Democrat nomination. Conservatives are disappointed for a couple of reasons. First, we wanted that head to head fight and it appears we won’t get it. Indeed, it appears that Obama would be more difficult to defeat in the general election. But that’s not the worst of it. The fact is, of the three viable candidates now in the race, Hillary Clinton appears to be the most conservative.
Conservatives face a difficult choice. On the one hand we cannot imagine Hillary Clinton as President of the United States. We find the mere thought to be so offensive as be almost unthinkable. Reference people like Sean Hannity who regularly says he would never vote for her under any circumstances.
On the other hand conservatives have little use for John McCain. While he claims to be a conservative and loves to tout various ratings from certain groups, the fact is, on critical issues McCain consistently votes against conservative interests. Indeed, in case after case McCain not only votes against us, he actively works to defeat us. From McCain-Feingold to McCain-Kennedy the Senator has consistently undermined conservative values. Many, like me, cannot imagine voting for McCain under any circumstances.
Now McCain is engaged in something of an outreach program to conservatives but his arrogance continues to shine through. He tells us to calm down, to work for the good of the party when he’s never been willing to help the party in the least. He recognizes that he cannot win the general election without us so he makes promises like his vow to appoint justices in the mold of Alito and Roberts. One wonders if he will truly appoint justices likely to overturn his own treasured campaign finance reform.
Morris believes McCain should stop worrying about conservatives and play to his strength, the middle. He fears McCain will lose his support from the middle if he panders to the conservative base. All of which reinforces that fact that McCain is not conservative no matter what he claims. The fact is, both parties are on the verge of nominating the most liberal candidates on both sides. We’ve actually reached the point in this country where there is a race to be more liberal. On the surface it looks like MoveOn.org has won!
Conservatives are tired of rewarding RINOs and other Republicans for their liberal performance simply because there seems to be no other choice. It is just such rewards that have brought us to this point. We repeatedly vote for bad leaders because we think it is the lesser of two evils and that has given us a Republican leadership in Congress that outspent Democrats and it’s given us John McCain as the presumptive nominee of our party. It appears that the lesser of two evils isn’t really less. It seems that short term gain in such cases leads to long term loses much greater.
Today’s Patriot Post says that to now vote against John McCain would cutting off our nose to spite our face. As my son said to me, it’s more like cutting off a cancerous mole to save our face. Liberalism in the Republican Party is a cancer. Every time we look the other way, every time we hold our noses because the alternative seems worse, what we actually do is nourish that cancer and encourage its growth. The reality is, the alternative may be bad, but it is not worse in the long run. The Republican Party must be dragged back, kicking and screaming if necessary, to its conservative principles or it will die. It is little good to win one more election and possibly get a couple more conservatives on the court if the price is a Republican Party virtually indistinguishable from the Democrat Party.
I remain convinced that refusing to vote for McCain is the right thing to do, both for the Republican Party and for the country. There may be some pain involved but we can’t hope to salvage the Republican Party if we keep rewarding bad behavior. It hasn’t worked to this point and it won’t work going forward. But there is something positive we can do. That will be the topic of my next post.
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February 17th, 2008 at 11:27 am
I have traditionally just accepted as a given that the majority of the American electorate is conservative, but that we just don’t have enormous cities composed almost entirely of our people. And also, that the only reason there is any real competition is because liberals control the mainstream media outlets. But, to my dismay, I guess I don’t really believe that is true any longer. I think conservatives must have become a minority. I would think this is in large part due to the secular positivism of (misnamed) education. But since I was a child, homeschooling, and private schooling seems to have grown exponentially. There is no where one can go without having a local homeschooling organization at their disposal. So I wonder if we will not see a resurgence of conservative thought, and critical thinking skills in the next 20-30 years, as these kids grow up with real educations where they learn facts, how to think, and how to communicate. What say you?
February 17th, 2008 at 10:03 pm
I hadn’t given a lot of thought to the long term political impact of homeschooling and private schools but as I think of it now I think you may be right. I’ve been saying for a long time now that there is a serious deficit in critical thinking skills among most Americans. Many who consider themselves to be conservative don’t end up voting conservative because they don’t understand the implications of various policies. They vote from emotion rather than any sort of logical analysis of the issues and candidates. If the next generation has a greater ability to analyze issues it seems unavoidable that they will become more conservative in their voting practices.