Rino Safari: What Would Reagan Do?

"Conservatism is not a narrow ideology, nor is it the exclusive property of conservative activists."
-- Ronald Reagan, 1977

Last night was a victory for conservatism.  Reagan shows us how to build on it. 

Scozzafava had no business being in the Republican party. She was a RINO and showed her disloyalty to the organization that funded her by endorsing the Democrat. She was beyond the pale and I'm glad the conservative activists hounded her out of the party.

I also generally disdain those Republicans who twist themselves into ideological pretzels trying to justify "moderation."

But everybody the other side of Reagan is not a RINO. With Scozzafava, it wasn't gay marriage and pro-abortion that sunk her. If she had stood strongly against card check, taxes, big government and the bailouts she probably would have survived to go on to be the next Congresswoman from NY-23.

Politics is about addition, not subtraction

Multifarious GOP factions calling names and declaring jihad on one another is the sure road to failure. Politics is about gaining power so you can influence and control the course of government. You do that by winning elections, not picking fights with teammates who don't think exactly like you do.

Ronald Reagan knew it back in 1977 when they were saying the Republican party was dead.  Savvy conservatives considering a third party should heed his words:

The biggest single grouping of conservatives is to be found in that party. It makes more sense to build on that grouping than to break it up and start over," he said to those who suggested that option.

A RINO stampede sounds like fun, but Reagan would not approve. Consider these comments from the same 1977 address to conservative activists.

"Let me say this about our friends who are now Republicans but do not identify themselves as conservatives. I want the record to show that I do not view the new revitalized Republican party as one based on a principle of exclusion."

What is a Republican?  That remains to be sorted out over the next year.  As we do, we should consider the words of proto-Republican Abraham Lincoln:

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds...

Polls, and now elections, show that voters are rejecting Obama's politics of the past.  Conservatism is on the ascendancy.  Be of good cheer!

GOP's Three Easy Pieces

Obama Care, Obama Stimulus, Obama Cap and Trade

These three interlocking issues represent too much government intrusion and too much spending. Taken together, they could spell defeat for a deluded Democratic party in thrall to nutroot fairy tales about liberal mandates.

I'm no political expert, but I think if they pass Obama Care, outraged voters will punish them in 2010. Poll after poll shows America is just not that liberal, and the moderate middle that voted for the president has quickly become disillusioned with him. Anger at out of control government is not going away.

Democrat's "Go it Alone" Strategy:

Bill Clinton and other Democrats who are political experts say the party is doomed if they don't pass health care reform. I don't know what goes into their calculus, but I assume they are sincere, and here's why.

Big Gov+Big Media=Propaganda Victory
If they pass this, they can count on the coercive power of government to manipulate the immediate economic environment to short-circuit any uprisings. They could do things like decrease payroll deductions so people have more money in their pocket, extend jobless benefits, raise social security and medicaid and medicare benefits in the short term to create a false correlation between passing the bill and "things getting better." This would engender voter goodwill towards Democrats and reduce GOP protestations to mere sour grapes carping.

The Dems can also count on their powerful propaganda arm, the national media, to trumpet this to high heavens, creating a new wave of hope and change euphoria that results in victory in 2010.

This is just my guess, and I don't think it will have the success dems think it will. Again, I think too many people have awakened from their slumber. The hopium cloud has dissipated, the buzz is gone, and cold, harsh reality has set in.

GOP Nightmare Scenario: A Mushy Middle Compromise
The nightmare scenario for the GOP is that they sign on to some kind of mushy middle compromise that is neither fish nor fowl, socialism light with a smiley face.

If something like that passes with Republican votes, the GOP is dead and buried. Their own disgusted voters will finally disown them for good. This cracking the door open will reenergize Democrats. They gain a toehold and the Long March continues.

Compromise is not the GOP's friend on this one. Why do you think Carville and the rest of the liberal talking heads keep criticizing GOP stubbornness? It's the old Clinton tactic. I can't build myself up, so I'll drag you down in the mud with me. And the democrats, with the national media as their cheering section, always win the mudfight.

The Face of 21st Century America: Can the GOP Capitalize?

The Obama Jokerizer has been fingered!

This is the face of 21st century America. He laughs at the Obama hype but wasn't much of a Bush fan, either, disagreeing with our adventurous foreign policy under the last president. He also seems socially conservative, but would vote for Dennis Kucinich.

"After Obama was elected, you had all of these people who basically saw him as the second coming of Christ," Alkhateeb said. "From my perspective, there wasn't much substance to him."

Alkhateeb's assessment of Obama: "In terms of domestic policy, I don't think he's really doing much good for the country right now," he said. "We don't have to 'hero worship' the guy."

The GOP should be seeking this young man's vote
True conservatism is chary of foreign entanglements as well as bloated government schemes at home. True conservatives also view cults of personality, even conservative ones, with skepticism.

This young man represents a generation that isn't hung up on 20th century terms. Socialism is not fraught with cold war baggage for them. After all, social networking is all the rage.

This is a generation with a keen sense of right and wrong. A generation with morals that largely (with exceptions) concord with our traditional Judeo-Christian heritage, although their morality may not be derived from Christianity.

How can the GOP attract young voters?
Stand for freedom. Let The Constitution be your guide. Stop preaching religion, but stand up for the rights of the religious and irreligious alike to peacefully practice their beliefs in the public square.

The GOP should stand for freedom to demand our politicians write bills that ordinary people can understand, not catalogs of legalese that benefit only state-favored corporate entities.

Freedom to be a freak, a garishly painted transvestite, a global warming denier with a gigantic carbon footprint, a global warming hypocrite with a gigantic carbon footprint, an atheist, a tree worshiper... People gotta be free, and as long as your freedom does not impede anyone else's, we're all good.

Could such a freedom message alienate religious folk? Consider this typically clueless twaddle from the El Lay Times:

A series of sex-related scandals over the last few years has undercut the party's assertions of moral authority and, worse, may serve to reinforce the doubts that many evangelical voters have traditionally harbored about the unholiness of the political realm

The unholiness of the political realm? I am not an evangelical, but I doubt many are looking to a political party for holiness and "moral authority." That would be like looking to Hollywood for patriotism. There is a natural affinity between the GOP and Christians--preaching freedom instead of morality won't imperil that.

Conservative Reconquista
Our morbidly obese feral government is on the verge of massive myocardial infarction. It has stuck its snout into every corner of society, and people are fed up. Including tuned in young people who see oldsters siphoning off their future. If this isn't a golden opportunity for conservative revanchists, I don't know what is.

Freedom Message Can Win It For Republicans
A Republican party that stands for liberty, as envisioned by our founders, could regain its mojo. A Republican party that vows to roll back government regulation could actually find itself in power again.

Jim DeMint, as quoted in a Cato article, has a pitch perfect campaign message based on freedom and states rights:

... the organizing principle and the crucial alternative to the Democrats — must be freedom. The federal government is too big, takes too much of our money, and makes too many of our decisions….

We can argue about how to rein in the federal Leviathan; but we should agree that centralized government infringes on individual liberty and that problems are best solved by the people or the government closest to them.

Moderate and liberal Republicans who think a South Carolina conservative like me has too much influence are right! I don’t want to make decisions for them. That’s why I’m working to reduce Washington’s grip on our lives and devolve power to the states, communities and individuals...

It’s the Democrats who want to impose a rigid, uniform agenda on all Americans. Freedom Republicanism is about choice — in education, health care, energy and more. It’s OK if those choices look different in South Carolina, Maine and California.

CATO rightly asks how DeMint can square this federalist philosophy with his support for an anti-gay marriage amendment to the US Constitution. Can states decide for themselves or not?

Issues like these are not easily resolved, but they provide much more productive debate than arguing over how to out-Democrat the Democrats. And intelligently addressing these issues may just attract a few voters who haven't yet sprouted gray hair.

Cato - DeMint
El Lay Times - Evangelicals
El Lay Times - Joker Unmasked
WSJ - Demint

RINO Stampede is Not Reaganesque

Politics is about addition, not subtraction, and it has nothing to do with ideological purity.

Multifarious GOP factions calling names and declaring jihad on one another is the sure road to failure. Politics is about gaining power so you can influence and control the course of government. You do that by winning elections, not picking fights with teammates who don't think exactly like you do. Ronald Reagan knew it, and savvy conservatives should read his words and emulate them.

Jim DeMint, Republican Senator from South Carolina, wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal giving us his vision of the GOP's big tent. He wants to build the party on principles, not issues. The #1 principle? Freedom

To paraphrase C.S. Lewis, if you aim for principled reform, you win elections in the bargain; if you just aim for elections, you get neither.

Freedom will mean different things to different Republicans, but it can tether a diverse coalition to inalienable principles. Republicans can welcome a vigorous debate about legalized abortion or same-sex marriage; but we should be able to agree that social policies should be set through a democratic process, not by unelected judges.

A Political Party is not an ideological movement

Noemie Emory at the Weekly Standard points out the difference between an ideological movement (Conservatives, free-market capitalists, 2nd Amendment gun owners, gay log cabin republicans) and a political party (Democrat, Republican).

...a party and movement are not the same thing. A movement exists to express and promote a coherent set of principles in the world of ideas and of values. A party--especially in a two-party system--is something quite different: a gathering of diverse political forces around a large and loosely held set of interests and values, that exists to give all of its factions access to power in the practical world of events.

Yes! The GOP is the bus conservatives must ride to power. The catch is, you have to share it with some who don't think exactly like you. Fine. The temptation is to beat them into submission, but life doesn't work that way. Share the ride and maybe you can debate and convince them along the way to electoral victory.

"Conservatism is not a narrow ideology, nor is it the exclusive property of conservative activists."
-- Ronald Reagan, 1977

Many want to simply throw the ideological nonconformists off the bus, but Noemi reminds us that Reagan would not approve. Consider these comments from Ronald Reagan's 1977 address to conservative activists.

"The biggest single grouping of conservatives is to be found in that party. It makes more sense to build on that grouping than to break it up and start over," he said to those who suggested that option.

"Let me say this about our friends who are now Republicans but do not identify themselves as conservatives. I want the record to show that I do not view the new revitalized Republican party as one based on a principle of exclusion. After all, you do not get to be a majority party by searching for groups you won't associate or work with. If we truly believe in our principles, we should sit down and talk.

Those itching to purge the party of all impurity need to stop blabbering on about Reagan and actually pause to read what he has said.

WSJ - Jim DeMint
Weekly Standard - Noemie Emory

American Revolution 2009

When in the Course of Human Events...

Economic Nullification is an intriguing concept explained by Locke Smith (gotta be a nom de plume). Washington's recent Bridge Loan to Nowhere is what pushed him over the edge:

The bailout of General Motors and Chrysler – appalling in its own right – is a sure sign that whatever feeble constitutional and political constraints that had kept the government in check are gradually disappearing. We know our rights as citizens are being trampled when the government can take resources from the productive sector of our economy and provide them to unproductive, money losing companies, organizations and individuals.

This got me thinking... There's gotta be some way short of armed rebellion or tax resistance to stop this out of control monster our experiment in democracy has turned into. Both parties have hijacked government and turned it into a trillion dollar Pez dispenser.

Then I read an article in Reason Magazine written by Brian Doherty containing depressing boilerplate about the decline and fall of the GOP. Near the end he noted the recent death of conservative intellectual Father Richard John Neuhaus:

My favorite Neuhaus moment involved a now mostly forgotten intra-right wing controversy that is worth remembering: In 1996 he ran a symposium in his magazine First Things which seriously raised the question (in the context, mostly, of judicial decisions about abortion) of whether the U.S. government had so exceeded both its legitimate mandate and any meaningful democratic controls that conscientious citizens should no longer owe it their allegiance.

Not so much in memory of Neuhaus, but in respect for its own soul, the GOP needs to ask itself whether a government that so exceeds its constitutional mandates is one the American people have any reason to respect—and to realize the extent to which it is complicit in the out-of-control, improvident, destructive beast the U.S. government is.

Those are strong words, but appropriate I think. So my question is, what can we do about it? Taking up arms is unwarranted and ineffective. Tax revolt will just land people in jail. So what's left short of these options?

Progressives instinctively understand: Destroy the system from within. You don't bring it all down with bombs, cannons and conflagration; you do it by millions of persistent little nibbles and snarks from furtive, scurrying pseudo-intellectual rats and amoral cockroaches. It's a shameful, inglorious revolution, with all that darting, crouching, and sneaking, but it is effective. Just look at Europe or American academia.

No. Slithering subversion won't do for Conservatives. We want a grand but legal revolution. Ronald Reagan represented the first wave, it is unclear who will lead the next, but I have a few inchoate ideas about how light the fuse. I hope this inspires others to come up with their own:

Idea #1. Ransack the Republican National Committee headquarters and publicly hang the country club leadership or behead them and mount their brainless heads on pike poles at the building entrance. If that's too harsh, we could simply chase them out with torches and pitchforks. But seriously, a major ideological insurrection needs to happen, a revolution of ideas, resulting in a takeover by youngsters under 30, constitutionalists without bow ties and libertarians who don't talk like robots from outer space.

Idea #2. Recruit a phalanx of small-government constitutional lawyers to launch a blunderbuss of lawsuits and injunctions against the federal government, tying it in knots trying to defend the unconstitutionality of its wildly out of control actions.

This would ultimately fail, but the modern day Boston Massacre could spark a debate in this country and actually get people reading the constitution and writings of the founding fathers. Reporters may actually wake up and start asking real questions and talking about substantive issues...

The GOP (indeed, all Americans) needs to ask itself whether a government that so exceeds its constitutional mandates is one the American people have any reason to respect—and to realize the extent to which it is complicit in the out-of-control, improvident, destructive beast the U.S. government is.

http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/01/power_to_the_people_economic_n.html

http://reason.com/news/show/130999.html

GOP Trinity for Success: Unity, Diversity, Charity

Mark Sanford is a successful GOP governor I admire. He once turned a pig loose in the South Carolina Statehouse to chastise the state's pork barrel spending legislators. He has the following advice for the GOP:

I believe Republicans and conservatives must agree on our core principles. St. Augustine called for ‘unity in the essentials, diversity in the nonessentials, and charity in all things,’ and while I believe there should always be a big GOP tent, there must also be a shared agreement on the essentials.

Sorting the essential from the nonessentials is the hard part. Charity (the classical definition meaning love, or a positive attitude towards others) is mostly a matter of tone.

Unity in the Essentials
What are the essentials? The Constitution is a good starting point. Minimal government interference in markets and people's lives. Private sector solutions over government ones. Fiscal responsibility.

This is the line in the sand: Cross it, Mr. Politician, and you are no longer a Republican. If this list is too long, the GOP will be ideologically pure but unable to attract a majority. Make the list too short, and the party will stand for nothing, still unable to attract a majority... Kind of like it is now.

Diversity in the Nonessentials
Politics is about addition, not subtraction. Torch bearing, pitchfork wielding pogroms that run every last RINO out of town may be emotionally gratifying, but it's not how you build a party.

Let me start by saying I think popular culture and a vocal minority of society is hostile and intolerant to religious conservatives, especially Christians. My question is, can conservative Christians be charitable and tolerant of those who do not share their religious or social values?

Before you answer, recall that religious tolerance is a founding principle enshrined in the constitution. The founders thought belief in The Almighty to be essential to a free people but nonetheless consciously chose to not mandate it.

Can you welcome into the GOP tent gay financial wizards, lesbian intellectual Ayn Rand devotees, atheists, agnostics, lapsed Catholics? Hindus, profane money worshipers, deists, and even... *Gasp!*... Muslims? Surgeons who golf on Sunday morning instead of going to church, pro-choice free-market entrepreneurs...

Get used to the idea. All conservatives are not dedicated Christians. Some are not Christians at all. We can't turn these people away; we need to increase our numbers, and the GOP is a political movement, not a church.

Tolerating does not mean condoning. Our constitution tolerates believers and non-believers alike. We should do the same. Discriminating against someone for not believing or believing differently is just as wrong as preventing someone's outward expression of religious belief.

Charity in All Things
Many conservatives come off as mean and they need to stop it if they want to attract more people to their cause. Democrats have used fuzzy bunny, happy sappy tactics for years to great affect. What else can explain voters calling government tax and spend "caring and generous" while declaring letting you keep your own money "greedy?" The Democrats understand the propaganda war.

Would you accept advice from a mean-spirited, loathsome creature, even if it was really good advice and you could clearly see the benefit of it? (think Bill Maher, or Rosie O'Donnell) Probably not, they're so repulsive you'd refuse to listen. Well, it works the same it reverse: To much of the muddled middle, that's how many conservatives look.

It's all in the delivery. Just ask two-term popular ex-presidents Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan. Both men were perpetual optimists with sunny attitudes, and each was the the most effective spokesman for his political movement. Deranged political opponents just couldn't steal their sunshine.

Finally, can we turn the Republican National Committee upside down and empty out all the country club republicans and woolly mammoths and replace them with 20-somethings and Hip Hop Conservatives? If we can't turn on the newest generation of voters to conservatism, this country is doomed.

GOP The Magic Dumbo

The GOP has once again shown why it is the stupid party. Chip Salsman wants to run the GOP, so he plied potential voters with a Paul Shanklin CD that included the song "Barack the Magic Negro." It is a political parody based upon an LA Times opinion piece of the same name. The leadership was caught flat-footed and red-handed, and is now scrambling, crab-like, to defend itself.

Here's part of the hollow, vacuous statement from flaccid, ineffectual party chairman Mike Duncan:

"I am shocked and appalled that anyone would think this is appropriate as it clearly does not move us in the right direction."

Yeah, right. Shocked and appalled. Millions of Republicans have laughed their heads off at the song, featured on the Rush Limbaugh Show. So spare us the crocodile tears, Mike. You and your party establishmentarians are intellectually and ideologically bankrupt. Bowing down before the PC gods won't save your sorry hide.

Mike Duncan and the rest of the country club Republicans should apologize not for the song, but for for being so politically inept and clueless that they would let something like this get within 10 miles of GOP Headquarters. Half the country already believes the GOP is just a front organization for the Ku Klux Klan. You'd think the GOP apparatchiks would be a little more image conscious.

The song is based on a 2007 David Ehrenstein opinion piece of the same name in the LA Times. He explores how Guilty White Liberal Syndrome could bolster Mr. Obama's candidacy:

But it's clear that Obama also is running for an equally important unelected office, in the province of the popular imagination — the "Magic Negro."

The Magic Negro is a figure of postmodern folk culture, coined by snarky 20th century sociologists, to explain a cultural figure who emerged in the wake of Brown vs. Board of Education. "He has no past, he simply appears one day to help the white protagonist," reads the description on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical_Negro .

He's there to assuage white "guilt" (i.e., the minimal discomfort they feel) over the role of slavery and racial segregation in American history, while replacing stereotypes of a dangerous, highly sexualized black man with a benign figure for whom interracial sexual congress holds no interest.

As might be expected, this figure is chiefly cinematic — embodied by such noted performers as Sidney Poitier, Morgan Freeman, Scatman Crothers, Michael Clarke Duncan, Will Smith and, most recently, Don Cheadle. And that's not to mention a certain basketball player whose very nickname is "Magic."

So here's a liberal columnist citing the work of liberal sociologists using the now famous phrase. A white conservative satirist picks it up and makes a funny song based on it, and Democrats mau mau the Republicans into apologizing. Once again, the inept Republicans bring a butter knife to a gun fight.

Is the song funny? I think so. Is it offensive? Not in my opinion, but I'm not black. Does it belong in the public arena? Yes. It's called free speech, and as satire, it's pretty tame when stacked up against South Park or Dave Chappelle. Regardless of the merits of the song, it is inappropriate for the GOP establishment to be trafficking in this stuff.

They only compounded their sin by gutlessly collapsing before the liberal onslaught instead of owning it and intellectually defending it. Ken Blackwell, an African-American contender to run the party, showed true leadership with his response:

"Unfortunately, there is hypersensitivity in the press regarding matters of race. This is in large measure due to President-Elect Obama being the first African-American elected president," said Blackwell, who would be the first black RNC chairman, in a statement forwarded to Politico by an aide.

This is the leadership the GOP needs. No politically correct bowing and scraping to manufactured outrage, of which we have an overabundance in this country. Just an acknowledgment of the hoo-ha and restoring it to a rational context.

In fact, an edgy, 20-something GOP leadership could have flipped this back on the so-last-century media and actually attracted the attention of the Colbert and John Stewart generation. But in the hands of the ancient, white GOP upper-crust, this just looks creepy and racist. If this doesn't convince conservatives that the place needs wholesale firings and fumigation, I don't know what will.

The very existence of the Republican party does damage to the conservative cause. Time to burn it down and start over with younger, more intellectually vibrant leadership.

GOP Mojo

How does the GOP get its mojo back? By staking out core conservative principles, not watering them down, and attracting people to the cause rather than repelling them.

Two things stood out from two articles I read a few Saturdays ago. Peggy Noonan (I know, she's a Sarah-hating snob, but bear with me) said the following about President-elect Obama saving Senator Lieberman's chairmanship:

Politics is a game of addition, take the long view, don't throw anyone out...

Mark Sanford is a successful GOP governor I admire. He once turned a pig loose in the South Carolina Statehouse to chastise the state's pork barrel spending legislators. He has the following advice for the GOP:

I believe Republicans and conservatives must agree on our core principles. St. Augustine called for ‘unity in the essentials, diversity in the nonessentials, and charity in all things,’ and while I believe there should always be a big GOP tent, there must also be a shared agreement on the essentials.

Peggy Noonan's comment highlights a mathematical fact: The GOP cannot win another national election without expanding the 2008 voter base. You win elections by attracting people to your cause. Torch-carrying pogroms expelling the infidels from the party may be the path to emotional self-satisfaction, but it spells ruin for a political movement.

So the key lies in agreeing on core principles (the essentials) and expelling politicians who violate them, while tolerating a diversity of thought on the non-essentials, all the while being civil, optimistic and charitable towards those we disagree with.

Ron Paul For the Long Haul

He's still in it, folks! Ron Paul has not dropped out. Here's an excerpt from the Washington Post:

"If it was just for the presidency, it would have ended a long time ago," says supporter Tom Martin, 50, a database administrator from State College, Pa. "The idea was to reinvigorate the Republican Party back to its principles and, more than that, to reinvigorate the American people back to its principles."

I'm asking those conservatives who don't like Dr. Paul to please hold their fire. You may not agree with everything he says (I don't), but he does have many good points when it comes to the constitution and how our politicians abuse it at every turn.

What I respect about him at this juncture is his decision to stay aboard that stinking, sinking ship known as the Republican Party. Ideological luminaries such as Pat Buchanan, Alan Keyes, and Bob Barr have already manned the lifeboats. I wish they would have stayed.

After failing to win friends and influence voters as a power-mad big spender, the GOP has become a craven, intellectually inbred beast. The GOP needs intellectual ferment, but it's driving some of the best (and occasionally odd) mind away, producing a bland pablum that conservatives and moderates everywhere are spitting out with disgust. They've reverted to your dad's Republican party before Ronald Reagan: Permanent patsy to the Democrats, bereft of ideas, politicians going along to get along, doing anything to cling to their seats. Ron Paul didn't drive the voters away, the cowards who abandoned their conservative principles did.

It's time for an ideological insurrection. Pitchfork Pat couldn't get 'er done, maybe Dr. Paul has the prescription.