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What Does the GOP, and This Country, Need?

21 May 2008

I know I wasn’t going to be posting here but this is just too important. This is cross posted from Ft Hard Knox.

It’s an interesting question. The GOP loses in the ‘06 election were widely attributed, both by GOP leadership and the media, to unhappiness over the Iraq war. While there was certainly unhappiness over the war, it was clear to most conservatives that the war was not the reason for the loss. Rather, the abandonment of conservative principles by the Republican Congress was the issue. Under the Bush administration we saw the largest growth of the federal government since LBJ’s Great Society.

Ronald Reagan wanted to eliminate the Department of Education. George W. Bush grew it beyond all recognition and Congressional Republicans went right along. Until the Democrats gained control of Congress the President had yet to use his veto pen. All the while GOP leadership and President Bush claimed the mantle of conservatism.

When Bush first ran in 2000 I knew he was no conservative. I voted against him in the primaries. Compassionate conservatism was nothing but a smoke screen for big government. Since then GOP leadership embraced this big government "conservatism" and their governance was hardly distinguishable for the Democrats. With spending out of control and government growing at an increasing rate, the conservative rank and file said "enough." If the GOP was going to abandon us, why should we support them?

Here we are two years later with a huge RINO for a nominee and a GOP leadership still in denial. While McCain gave lip service to conservatives at CPAC, his actions in the last couple of weeks have demonstrated that he cares nothing for conservatives and apparently believe he doesn’t need us to win. Instead, McCain is pandering to the middle, to moderates and independents. Indeed, it appears that McCain would like to rid the GOP of conservatives altogether.

Mark Levin has pointed out that McCain isn’t campaigning for other Republicans. He appears to be concerned only about his own elections. Of course, it might simply be that McCain’s agenda depends on a Democrat Congress and he isn’t interested in putting that at risk. So if McCain wins in November he will have no coat tails at all. I cannot remember another Republican presidential candidate who has done so little to help his own party.

The bottom line is this; the GOP has completely lost its way. While no one can seriously argue that the Republican Party was always conservative, it was not, its bread and butter since Reagan has been conservatism. Every time a conservative runs on a conservative platform, they win. Even the Democrats run conservatives to win elections.

Now the GOP appears to believe that conservatism isn’t the path to victory. That, of course, betrays a fundamental lack of core values in the first place. Conservatism isn’t merely a path to power, although it will certainly lead to that. Conservatism is a core set of values. It sees inherent value in the individual. It seeks to empower the individual to build his own life. It denies that government is the answer to the problems of individuals. It maintains that government should be restricted to only those functions that individuals cannot do for themselves and that are authorized by the Constitution.

The Republican Party today does not believe any of those things and the internal fight to change that has been all but lost. What are called victories are little more than slowing liberalism around the edges. Every action the GOP takes ends up moving the country to the left to some degree. There is never any movement back to the right.

Ronald Reagan was an intellectual and a pioneer but he wasn’t the first. Goldwater came before Reagan and he was the conservative’s conservative. Yet he lost horribly. The country was not yet ready to embrace conservatism. It took Jimmy Carter to pave the way for Ronald Reagan. Without Carter’s dismal administration it is doubtful that conservatism would have taken hold as it did. A truly bad Democrat President with a Democrat Congress was the catalyst needed to wake the country up and help them see the value of political conservatism. Average people were already living in a conservative way but they had not yet made the transition from personal conservatism to political conservatism. The Carter administration was necessary to show the way.

I submit that we are in a similar situation now. We’ve suffered through a Republican Party that is hardly distinguishable from the Democrat Party except in rhetoric. The Democrats have become hard line liberals while the Republicans have become moderate liberals. Conservatism is nowhere to be found in the political landscape save for small pockets of disenfranchised individuals who still hold to the philosophy. We need another Carter.

McCain cannot fill that role because he is a Republican. He is the poster child for the problems we face as conservatives. If elected he will surely work tirelessly to give us open borders and amnesty for 20 million illegal aliens already here. He will decimate our economy with punitive policies based on climate change. His lack of understanding of basic economics combined with his climate policy will cause America to fall from her position as an economic powerhouse. And when he accomplishes all this, who will get the blame? Hint, it won’t be the Democrats.

The damage to the GOP will take a generation to repair if it can be repaired at all. More likely it will die and be replaced with another party of unpredictable makeup and philosophy. That’s a high price to pay for voting for the lessor of two evils. And let’s face it, we are where we are because we’ve continued to vote for the lessor of two evils time and again. When RINOs run we think we have no choice but to support them because the alternative is worse. This is what Thomas Sowell calls first stage thinking. We look at the short term but ignore the easily predictable long term consequences. Typically politicians are guilty of this but I submit that conservatives have also been guilty of it. And voting for the lessor of two evils is still voting for evil.

This slow boil is never going to work. Like the proverbial frog in a pot, the heat has risen too slowly for most people to notice. By the time they do, this country may well be so far gone that it cannot be turned around. The only way is to turn up the heat and elect another Carter. Barak Obama is that Carter. He is the solution, albeit not the solution the Democrats think. They believe he will be their savior. Instead, he will be their downfall for at least a decade, longer if the GOP can regain its soul and keep from being corrupted by Washington power.

Many conservatives are waiting to see who McCain picks as his VP before deciding whether to vote for him. I submit that who McCain picks is irrelevant. Unless McCain dies in office, his VP pick will have no power and no ability to set policy. McCain will be the leader of the Republican Party. He will set the agenda if he is President. Under any circumstances a McCain presidency will be devastating to the GOP and to this country. At the risk of sound melodramatic, if this country is to be saved, Barak Obama must be elected President of the United States. Any other outcome of the presidential election in November will do irreparable damage both the the Republican Party and the United States.