A Warning from Canada for the GOP: Don’t Ignore the Grassroots

There’s been a lot of hand-wringing these past few days among Palinistas over the former V-P candidate’s apparent defense of Donald Trump’s machinations and Ron Paul’s fanatical followers. These two positions are clearly harmful to the Republican Party, which makes it clear to me: Sarah Palin sees the GOP itself as the problem, not the solution, in this election cycle. When she warns the GOP against isolating Trump and the Paulites, she’s not endorsing a Trump independent run or a Paul presidency per se. What she is doing is firing a shot across the bow on behalf of the Tea Party, saying to the establishment: don’t you dare go dismissing constituency groups within the Republican Party. If it’s Trump and Paul now, it’s the Tea Party next, and that is simply not acceptable. This gives us pause to reflect on a little Canadian political history to see what can happen when the grassroots of a what is supposed to be a conservative party are ignored, humiliated, and isolated.

I suspect that the similar demise of the Republican Party is the only way conservative and American principles could be brought back into the government. I believe the Republican Party will soon cease to exist in fact even if it continues as a rump adjunct to the Democrat Party. I also believe there will actually be no conservative resurrection in a new party because we do not have the time to do that before the whole system is converted into a permanent one-party State. The Homeland Security law is a pretty clear pointer there. A Congress that would pass indefinite detainment-without-charge or trial of citizens in the USA will ignore the Supreme Court should it rule the law Unconstitutional and will have no compunctions about making any other changes needed to preserve their personal power. Elections are not very useful any more anyway. That was our Tea Party Congress that we elected in 2010 that, with the passage of a bill converted the USA into a de facto totalitarian State. NO new Congress or president will relinquish that power, not Tea Partiers or Ron Paul or, of course, any RINO or Democrat, and sooner or later it will be used systematically in just the manner that the tin foil brigade imagine.

“Palin sees the GOP establishment (RINOS, CINOS, Rockefeller Republicans) as the problem, not the GOP as a whole.”

A prime example of that today was the GOP establishment rolling out McQueeg today giving the marching orders to get behind Mitt. Like hell I will. GO NEWT!

This is an excellent read and I haven't stopped coming back to in in my thoughts since I read it last night.

I finally understand things about Canadians and Canadian politics that had previously been quite confusing.

Good article!
A few thoughts...
PM Mulroney is always named and blamed for the huge election loss, but it was PM Kim Campbell who led the party down to two seats.
Canadian Parties can more easily regroup and reform and ally under different names. The Reform Party did so several times, under the leaderships of both Preston Manning and PM Harper. This was a big benefit to growth, imo, as it frustrated the oppositions ability to brand these political parties with crass concepts and names, like tea baggers, etc. And they are good at that branding in Canada too, but the opposition was often left scrambling in that regard, as the conservative parties expanded, allied and grew their constituencies.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.