Posted on 03/02/2007 4:16:56 AM PST by Jim Robinson
I understand the Greens are fed up with the big government, two party system too.
It won't happen as long as those who claim to be true conservatives continue to sit home on a day when it really counts. There's no advancement by merely staying home, sitting there, stewing in your Barc-O-Lounger by complaining everyday that one party is morphing into the other. Other than that, the author can cry me a river.
Destroying the republican party, and therefore putting democrats into permanent power, will not do one single thing but allow the MSM to marginalize conservatives more than ever. IMO this flawed strategery will be the end of the conservative movement as a force to be reckoned with.
Great article. Too many people misinterpret the 2006 election as a rejection of conservatism, when in fact it was corruption and Iraq that bogged down the GOP. Unabashed conservatism is still the most persuasive ideology; we need to remember that even most Democrats live their lives as conservatices, and show them why the GOP more closely mirrors their ideology.
My strong recommendation is to stop bitching and do something.
The man created the site that brought down Dan Rather and exerts a significant influence on national politics. What more do you want?
Well, we have, er, thought we had, our little group of conservatives here. We're building on something if we don't lose our way.
IMO the core problem is not the republican party, the core problem is the MSM successfully marginalizing the conservative movement as out of touch racist religious extremists.
Duke Cunningham got what he deserved. The others didn't.
DrDeb posted this interesting item of historical perspective on another thread, and I quote:
/// start quote ///
The more things change, the more they stay the same . . . Viguerie "hectored" Reagan as well!!
IS CONSERVATISM FINISHED?
By Wilfred M. McClay
". . . We also forget that the Reagan administration itself, far from being happily unified, was driven by internal battles between “pragmatists” and “ideologues,” conflicts that prefigured many of the policy battles of the present. And we forget that, outside the administration, REAGAN GOT PLENTY OF GRIEF FROM HIS OWN RIGHT AS WELL."
The querulous RICHARD VIGUERIE, for example, an influential but notably unhappy camper in those halcyon days, BEGAN HECTORING THE REAGAN PRESIDENCY ALMOST FROM THE BEGINNING, complaining to the Associated Press in January 1981 that with his cabinet appointments Reagan had given conservatives “the back of his hand.” A July 1981 op-ed by Viguerie in the Washington Post, entitled “For Reagan and the New Right, the Honeymoon Is Over,” was thoughtfully timed less than four months after the President had nearly been killed by an assassin’s bullet.
By December 1987, Viguerie was declaring that Reagan had actually “changed sides” and was “now allied with his former adversaries, the liberals, the Democrats, and the Soviets.” A year later, in the final months of his presidency, when it was clear to all that Reagan had fundamentally changed the terms of debate in American politics, Viguerie announced that, thanks to his tenure in office, “the conservative movement is directionless.”
You can read the entire commentary here:
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/cm/main/viewArticle.aip?id=10812&page=all
29 posted on 03/01/2007 7:17:51 PM PST by DrDeb
/// end quote ///
The conservative movement can function as an interest group, or, better, as a coalition of interest groups. Your analogy with the left and the way they operate is perfect.
But I wonder about your use of the term "Goldwater/Reagan".
Goldwater got crushed. Reagan did the crushing.
There's a reason, and the reason is that Reagan was not a Goldwaterite, or at least he wasn't ONLY a Goldwaterite.
1. The GOP has not lived up to its promises, particularly with regard to spending2. Conservatives need to create advocacy groups to reach out to others and convince them to convert to our ideology
3. Conservatives should do this within the GOP, but not allow the GOP to bully us
Sounds pretty reasonable to me, unless you have a reflexive disdain for all things conservative.
We can either wring our hands and worry about the coulda, shoulda, woulda, engaging in naval gazing, while going into yet another election cycle, or destroy liberalism and all it stands for, into the ash heap of history. Conservatism lost the skirmish. Not the entire war on liberalism.
It is reasonable. How many more election cycles are we going to continue naval gazing?
We must have a conservative caucus within the Republican Party. You are dead on.
Yeah, or we can get behind a conservative and campaign like crazy and we don't have to lose the skirmish.
I beg to differ.
L
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