Conservative Self-destruction (Why conservatives are partly to blame for the re-election of Obama)

Before I get into the 10 primary reasons for conservative self-destruction in 2012 I first want to say that the conservative movement is NOT monolithic or one-dimensional, that each reason I offer that points to its political self-destruction may NOT apply to each conservative. But in terms of the movement itself as represented by tens of millions of American patriots, these reasons do encapsulate why conservatives almost invariably end up as the bridesmaid and never the bride, are left out shivering in the cold or end up shooting themselves in the foot during presidential election cycles where the GOP President himself is not up for re-election.

Now specifically to the 2012 election cycle, it has always been my contention since the fantastic GOP midterm victory in 2010, that the only way that conservatives could bring about the re-election of President Obama is to fail to learn from this recent political triumph, to continue to make the same dumb mistakes or missteps as they have in the past election cycles, and through various adverse decisions in this primary cycle to facilitate the eventual nomination of Mitt Romney, who I feel is destined to lose to Obama in the fall.

I have already in previous postings, offered my opinions to why I believe that Romney will fall short to Obama so that is NOT the purpose of this post. But what is the purpose is to explain why and how the conservative movement in 2012 has missed the boat and done its part to ensure Romney is finally nominated and the consequences that will entail:

1)The conservative movement failed to rally around Sarah Palin after the midterm election and embrace her as its white knight after her mighty contribution to the midterm results. In fact in 2011 many in the movement rejected her potential candidacy outright because they deemed her unelectable or believed the media narrative that she was. I'm NOT saying this was the only reason Palin did NOT run--the GOP establishment, the media and the Left all did their part to torpedo her presidential ambitions--but objectively can anyone honestly say that Sarah Palin would NOT have been a better conservative candidate against Mitt Romney than Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain or Rick Perry?

Take fundraising: Is there any doubt or argument that Palin had the potential to raise a lot more money than any of the above five candidates given she has attracted over 3m Facebook members and has over 500,000 Twitter followers?

Think about it: What is the #1 reason Romney is beating up so badly on both Santorum and Gingrich? Money.

In contrast the GOP establishment always has gravitated towards the presidential candidate in each election cycle who has the requisite cachet and has the potential to raise the most amount of money.

2)After Sarah Palin bowed out of the presidential sweepstakes on October 5, 2011, I called for conservatives to hold a national convention for the purpose of choosing one conservative candidate to rally around to take on Mitt Romney one-on-one. Critics of my suggestion said it was impractical or too late. The critics won: Ultimately my suggestion was not taken up by the movement.

3)As in the past conservatives have simply not exercised their power of numbers to tip the scales towards a conservative candidate being chosen by the GOP. The facts are generally in each state primary/caucus from 3/5 to 2/3 of all voters (including independents and Democrats) tell exit pollsters they are conservative, the rest being liberal or moderates. Rarely or seldom do you hear any conservative cite this advantage in the vote. Are conservatives ashamed of their advantage? Why does the movement apparently ignore it? Inferiority complex. Makes you wonder.

4)To follow up on (2), conservatives insist on being independent and willful and that is manifested in conservatives continually splitting their votes among two, three or more conservative candidates.

I'm NOT saying conservatives are mathematically challenged but I will say their unilateral and unrealistic insistence on being or remaining politically dogmatic rather than becoming practical or pragmatic in their primary voting decision is one of the main reasons why Romney is in the ascendancy and why Obama will be re-elected to another term.

Even at this late date, conservatives refuse to coalesce around one conservative candidate. And Mitt Romney is laughing all the way to the bank.

5)Since the Arizona and Michigan primaries at the end of February, many national and state polls have shown many "very conservative" voters, evangelicals and Tea party supporters moving in Romney's direction for the first time thereby narrowing the lead that Rick Santorum has over Romney in all three demographics.

For example two weeks ago, Rasmussen showed Santorum and Romney neck and neck among TP supporters and last week showed Santorum only up by 5 over Romney.

If not for this "ideological crossover" most likely, Romney would NOT have won either Michigan or Ohio.

Think about it: Wouldn't the race look a lot different now if Santorum had eked out wins in both of these states?

6)And when these new conservative supporters of Romney are asked to why they are now supporting him, they cite his electability against President Obama. Either they are clueless dimwits and totally ignorant or have fallen for the media narrative that Romney is a "superman" on par with the Messiah, because there is no way objectively anyone should come to the conclusion that Romney has a monopoly on electability, based on several polls over the past month that also show Rick Santorum very competitive against Obama.

He must have known a lot of conservatives in his day. For how else do you explain that the same "snake oil" is sold every election cycle, that the nomination of a conservative by the GOP would be catastrophic for the Republican Party, bringing back memories of the Goldwater debacle, and that only by nominating a moderate can the GOP build a broad enough coalition to win a presidential election. And conservatives like sheep vote for the establishment candidate even though there are clear examples where this strategy did NOT work: Dole (1996) and McCain (2008).

Are conservatives really that stupid or do they have a death wish? Or are they simply insane?

The definition of insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

8)Conservatives are simply NOT sophisticated or knowledgeable enough to deal with the media propaganda machine of the Left and/or the GOP establishment/political class propaganda that although generated from different sources and out of different motives act in unison to construct a false narrative (in this case the inevitability of Mitt Romney)and premise (Romney is the only one who can beat Obama)and thereby convince conservatives they would be foolish or ill-advised to vote for someone other than Mitt Romney.

Propagandists know the best way to influence someone to change his or her behavior is to shame them into making the change for fear of political embarrassment (Goldwater) or make them fear voting for someone the media has NOT anointed, the fear being it will lead to the re-election of Obama.

Unfortunately for the conservative movement, too many of its members are too wrapped up in the spiritual realm, spend 2/3 of the day devoted to keeping their business alive or thriving or devote most of their spare time to raising their kids or pursuing their avocations. And our enemies know this all too well. To them most conservatives are like babes in the woods politically ready to be taken for a ride. And our enemies know exactly which buttons to push at a given time to elicit the results that they want.

9)And then there are the conservatives in the movement who are ready and willing to sell out their values and political principles and convictions in 2012 while forgetting the lessons of 2010 where the conservative enthusiasm gap was sky-high due to the conservative movement advocating conservative ideas and ideals.

Of course during the midterms, the conservative movement was led by the charasmatic Sarah Palin.

In the game rock, paper, and scissors, rock beats scissors, paper wins over rock and scissors claims victory over paper. Rock is the Democrats (the Left), paper is our side (conservatives who adhere to and affirm conservative values and principles) and scissors is the GOP establishment/RINO's.

In a nutshell why Romney will in all likelihood win the nomination is that enough conservatives have abandoned their bedrock of MORAL CLARITY to hop onto the bandwagon of and into bed with CRAVEN EXPEDIENCY. Perhaps betrayal is too strong a word. But could some in the conservative movement be accused of voluntarily abandoning the high moral ground? I think the accusation is justified. The proof is in the pudding. How many so-called social conservatives are now convinced that our side has to abandon its pursuit of social values for the expediency of the moment, fiscal and economic concerns? Why can't you have both? Because the media has convinced them that they can't by creating a false dichotomy.

10)And the last reason I believe the conservative movement has self-destructed lies in the steadfast belief of the movement that it does NOT need one leader or at least a leadership council to represent all conservative, evangelicals and TP supporters in the nation. Think about it: What other large group that boasts tens of millions of members is not represented by leadership that speaks for all the members.

As a result each autonomous unit within the conservative movement sets its own priorities and often offers varying opinions and when there are hundreds of units, there is bound to disagreement, disunity and sometimes even internecine warfare. Simply, the conservative movement never speaks with one clear voice.

And our enemies know that; with that in mind they plan and strategize to muddy the waters to what the conservative movement really believes (eg the birther movement), pick each unit off one by one or to play one group off against the other, the goal always to keep the conservative movement disjointed and at odds with each other. In other words, while conservatives are expending time and energy fighting each other, Romney, the GOP establishment, the GOP political class and the Left can stay on course and eventually prevail on behalf of the ruling class of elites.

And once the 2012 election is over, our enemies will put their presidential election playbook on the shelf for another 3 years or so, only to be dusted off again for 2016. And the tragedy of this resurrection is, our enemies won't have to change their playbook one iota, for the conservative movement in all likelihood will be as naive, clued out and gutless then as they are now.

RE:“The problem with “Conservatives” is that many of them are just closeted big government types “
.....
You can’t even differentiate between a conservative and a RINO ?”

I think I understand his point.
He is talking about a certain flavor of those that identify themselves as conservatives that want to use the the Federal government as a Republican version of the nanny state.

A couple years back I did a few comments on the flavors of those that identify themselves as conservatives: Liberty, social and defense as being the most obvious. Most are some mixture of those flavors.

He is talking about those social Conservatives who want a powerful big government, those who make believe that a Democrat will never win POTUS to use that same powers that they demanded to do everything that they see as their worst nightmare.
Looking at national polls on DADT and similar social issues the past few years it would seem to me suicidal to want an all powerful federal government to tell all states what they MUST do. Maybe it would be best to win a few hearts before deciding that the mob decide what power should rule us.

Remember how the neocons freaked at the idea of Obama taking control of the Patriot Act powers? They seemed to have thought that could never happen,

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