The Making of A Comeback

If conservative Republicans are to ever make a comeback and overcome their descent into the deeper pits of socialism, they must stop behaving like the Democrats in vote buying. The payback cost can be way too high to be hidden, as we are seeing with the current “Stimulus” Spending Bill. Everybody knows that it is 80% political payback for votes delivered by the Unions, those groups who control the “victims” and preach the message of victimology—in other words, ACORN. Those eco-nuts push for unworkable alternative energy sources that they themselves oppose for various reasons. The payback also includes the far left appeasement groups who would give away the sovereignty of this country to the UN, all in the name of global peace, diversity, pluralism and inclusion.

Unfortunately, the Republicans have joined in the same games as the Democrats and tried to “out-Democrat” the Democrats. That is exactly what brought about this current debacle that we are in with the housing situation, the banking situation, and the gross amount of spending on social welfare programs. The Republicans lost sight of small government, low taxes, and a strong defense. Admittedly, there was an attempt to keep taxes low and to build a strong defense, but despite the six years of majority in the Congress and a Republican President in the White House, they failed. Money normally used for defense went to social programs, and taxes were were not cut in the corporate sector where they needed to be cut. The U.S. now has the highest corporate taxes, even higher than the socialist European countries. After the Democrats took control of the Congress in ’06, it was too late to even try to return to the principles that the Party was founded upon.

In 1996, Republicans allowed the religious far right to hijack the Party without even so much as a fight. The Conservatives of the real Republican Party did not bow and cater to the religious right. That is not to say they lacked the Christian morals upon which this country was founded, but they didn’t attempt to legislate such or cram them down the throats of the rest of the country. Dick Armey stated that the GOP went from “the big ideas and vision of 1994 to the cheap political and point scoring on meaningless wedge issues of today.” Armey was right and further stated that selling out to the religious far right would come back and bite the Republicans in the butt. In ’06 his words came true. Evidently, the Republicans failed to learn from Armey’s warning, for they allowed the Democrats to keep the wedge issues in the forefront, which they knew would further divide the Republican Party, and they were able to win in ’06. They did the very same thing, without even mentioning the issues to any degree, and won in this past election. The religious far right refused to vote for Romney, claiming he was not conservative enough according to their conservative litmus test, and fought against the one candidate who had the credentials in business to refute the Dems and Obama’s arguments. Because of their religious differences, they handed the election to the left and now must bear the consequences.

The important issues of health care, Social Security, the economy, insuring a strong military and intelligence service, and energy, just to name a few of the major issues, were forgotten in favor of so-called “core” issues. Marriage, sex lives of individuals, and other such wedge issues are issues for states to decide, not the federal government. Isn’t that what the old Republican Party believed, less government interference in our lives? Just as the Democrats parleyed welfare for votes, the Republicans have parleyed wedge issues for votes. Dick Armey was totally correct on this issue, and how unfortunate that he was. Even more unfortunate is that the “Grand Old Party” no longer stands for what it once did.

The true Republican Conservatives allowed the one time for choosing to be hijacked by one small segment of the Party and chose wrong. The results will be devastating unless they take a stand once again, and realize that this is again a time for choosing. Choices must be made if there is to be a comeback. The choice cannot be the ones made in the past that Dick Armey spoke of. Conservative Republicans must make the choices that Ronald Reagan addressed.

In "A Time for Choosing," Reagan issued a clarion call: "It's time we asked ourselves if we still know the freedoms intended for us by the Founding Fathers. James Madison said, 'We base all our experiments on the capacity of mankind for self government.' This idea—that government was beholden to the people, that it had no other source of power—is still the newest, most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves."

He continued, "You and I are told increasingly that we have to choose between a Left or Right, but I would like to suggest that there is no such thing as a Left or Right. There is only an up or down—up to a man's age-old dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order—or down to the ant heap totalitarianism, and regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would trade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course."

Indeed, Conservative Republicans are now at another time for choosing if they expect any type of comeback in 2010 and 2012. What say you?