Conservatives Causing Problems: Clashing With GOP Establishment

16 Oct, 2009 by Melissa Clouthier

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The Grand Old Party rests on a false premise: Conservative ideas won’t sell anywhere but in conservative places. This premise is wrong, as Pat Toomey is proving in Pennsylvania. The national Republicans spurned Pat Toomey in favor of Arlen Specter. Look what happened there. And now, wonder of wonders, Toomey would beat Specter head-to-head. What changed?

Nothing.

The Republican party simply does not have faith in certain core ideals anymore because they believe that the American people don’t believe them anymore. They are wrong. I’ll get to that in a minute.

First, the Wall Street Journal’s Naftali Bendavid has a provocative piece about how Tea Party activists are tangling with GOP leadership:

But these newly energized conservatives present GOP leaders with a potential problem: The party’s strategy for attracting moderate voters risks alienating activists who are demanding ideological purity, who may then gravitate to other candidates or stay at home. It’s a classic dilemma faced by parties in the minority — tension between those who want a return to the party’s ideological roots and those who want candidates most likely to win in their districts.

Here is another false premise: Activists are demanding ideological purity. No, they are demanding
that the Republican party stand for something, anything.

How can a socialist call oneself a Republican? And what good does a Republican socialist do once in office? If the ideas of a candidate would have him or her voting Democrat 90% of the time, what good is it to have him? The Democrats are demonstrating this problem right now. Blue Dogs don’t want the health care plan and rightly so. They will be trounced back home should they vote to expand the government. But therein lies the dilemma: Democrats are for expanding government. They believe, fundamentally, that the government is the solution. Why be a Democrat if you don’t believe that? Progressive Democrats are rightly furious. It has been their goal for ages to socialize medicine. Now, with huge majorities, they’re still being thwarted–by their own.

Winning at all costs usually means not winning at all. Arlen Specter is self-serving loathsome creature. He swung back and forth making decisions that suited him. He had no ideological center. He has no core beliefs. Well, he has one: What is good for me?

The Republican party needs to stand for something. Isn’t a small-government bent, the least people should expect from the party? It seems that the Republicans still don’t know why they were voted out of office. It was not because they were “too conservative”. That argument would apply had they attempted to stick to any conservative policy. No, they lost because they strayed from their core beliefs.

So, until the Republican party gets clear, the Tea Party folks will be pushing back. And if that means losing some local elections until the Republican party gets religion, so be it. The American people do not want some softer version of Democrats. Obama won because he sounded like Ronald Reagan–all personal responsibility and low taxes.

The Republican party is putting up candidates who believe in big government because they believe that’s what the people want. They are wrong. The American people want an alternative to the soft socialism coming from the Left. The American people want jobs–that comes from smaller, not bigger government. The American people want spending cuts–that comes from fiscal responsibility on the part of Congressional members. These are all (or used to be) Republican ideals.

In the midterm elections, Republicans are going to sweep. People are sick to death of the Democrats already. Republicans should be scouring the landscape for solid conservatives who will deliver responsible legislation once elected. Right now, they’re treating the electoral ills wrong because they’ve misdiagnosed the cause.

Tea Partiers have it right. The Republicans need to pay attention or risk staying a minority party for a very long time.

P.S. And to those folks believing that there is going to be some magical Third Party to save the day, I say that the cure is to remake the Republican party, not go outside it.