What's wrong with Conservatives (Long vanity received in email and worth the time)

I received this in email and it's so good and so concise, I had to publish it here.

I do not wish to take up your time, but I feel compelled to comment briefly on the disappointment and apathy that many conservatives are expressing with regard to the current administration and the likely Republican nominees. It must be pointed out that there has never been in a Republican Primary in our lifetimes any want for a conservative candidate that meets all of the criteria that conservatives say that they want, and the 2000, 2004, and 2008 Primaries were and are by no means any exception. In all of these Primaries, however, these true conservative candidates were eliminated early on from the competition. There are only two possible causes for this, either there are not enough true conservatives to keep them afloat, or else the true conservatives are not all voting. Regardless, it is not the fault of the Republican Party or its leadership that a true conservative is not the nominee, and true conservatives sitting out an election will not make any changes in the Party or its potential candidates the next time around. If anything, rather than "punish" the Party, it will make it more likely that there will be no true conservative candidates in the Primaries the next time. Moving to a third party will not cause a true conservative to be elected president either, but rather will only serve to remove even more true conservatives from the Republican Party, with the same aforementioned results.

My reasons for saying all of this is that true conservatives have to learn to take what they can get and work to change the minds of the electorate going forward. I never had any illusions about the extent of George W's conservatism, but in retrospect I believe that he will go down in history as one of America's greatest presidents. His actions to keep this country safe from terrorism, rescue the economy, and fix Social Security have been exactly what has needed to be done, and have only failed to the extent that those who oppose every good thing that he stands for have been successful in stopping them. The fact that so many people hate him shows all the more how much of a true statesman he is in doing what is right in a given situation regardless of who gets their feelings hurt. In a culture that oozes love and adoration for the likes of Madonna, MTV, Desperate Housewives, Fidel Castro, etc., to be the object of its hate and contempt is a badge of honor in and of itself. So even though he was not and is not a "true" conservative, he is a great man nonetheless and has done a great deal of good for the country.

This brings me to some of the biggest issues in this campaign - some of which even those who claim to be true conservatives have completely opposing views on. There is, of course, the war. Let's put that one in perspective. In 1941 we entered into a global war with not only with the nation that initially attacked us but also with every nation that was allied with it. The circumstances of that war dictated that the best strategy for overall success was not to concentrate first on the nation that actually attacked us, but rather on one of its allies (which nation, by the way, had never attacked us and had been saying previously that it had no quarrel with us). The war went on for years, and ended with us occupying all of the defeated nations, removing their governments, putting them back on their feet with new leaders, and paying a great deal of money to get them started again. Despite this, resentment and anti-American activities went on in those countries for years after the conflict was over (some would argue that it goes on even today). For better or for worse, that is how it went.

The present conflict began in 2001 when we suffered an attack that was arguably worse than the one that we suffered in 1941, and we have again gone to war not only with our attackers but also with the nations that are allied with them. Our leaders have again determined which of those nations to focus on at which point in time in order to achieve ultimate victory in the shortest possible time with the least possible cost. Yet many Americans today - many of whom are conservatives - complain that we are attacking the wrong countries, that we are occupiers, that we spending too much money on the war, that we are just causing people in those countries to hate us, that it is taking too much time, and that too many American soldiers have been killed. However, no one has ever complained that the 300,000+ American soldiers that were killed in World War II was too high a price to pay, or that Roosevelt and Truman should have been impeached. Our casualties in this war, by comparison, are very light.

Furthermore, it is very difficult to find any documentation showing that Japan ever had as a goal conquest of the American continent. Had we lost or remained out of the war in the Pacific it is arguably likely that things in the United States today would be no different than they are now. However, it is without controversy that Islam is fighting for Global domination. The Islamic leaders are working to revive the empire that began with their religion in the 7th Century, which was stopped in Western Europe a few centuries later, and which was finally toppled by the Allies in the First World War. To ignore the history and the writings of these people in their Koran and other books and in their public speeches is like trying to ignore the ravings of Adolf Hitler in his Mein Kampf and in his public speeches. To try to negotiate with these people is like Chamberlain trying to negotiate with Hitler just before the start of the Second World War. The only way to deal with those who would revive the Islamic Empire is to completely subdue them with overwhelming force or else destroy them. A large percentage of Americans today, however, do not want to believe that these things are true, so they simply choose not to. These people will always vote for the person who tells them that he or she will abandon the war, order the troops to come running home, and will cause the Islamic leaders to love and embrace us just as we are, or they will not vote at all. These people are in both political parties, and in the Republican Party they may very well sit out the Primaries and the election. All Americans from all parties, however, need to unite behind this war effort and not rest until we have brought it to a permanent end, and certainly all conservatives need to get behind the Republican Party in this most necessary endeavor.

It does not stop with this issue, however. A significant percentage of the American electorate today does not want to hear the truth on many of the crucial issues that we must face. For example, many people today who have lost their jobs in the manufacturing industry do not want to be told that their jobs are gone forever and that if they want to continue to eat they must make a career change and retrain for other positions, so again they simply choose not to believe it. These people will vote for the person who says that he or she will give them their jobs back with higher wages than they had before, or else they will not vote at all. Again, these people are in both parties. This is how elections work, at least it is how they work now. Furthermore, since this kind of thinking is in full force during the Primary campaigns as well as the general election, it defines what it means to be "electable", and electability is as big a concern in the minds of Primary voters as the issues themselves. It is why, ultimately, true conservatives who tell the truth about these issues cannot make it through the Primaries, much less the general election. It is why the hearts of the electorate must be changed, not the Republican Party, and in the meantime true conservatives must work for the best that they can get. Quitting NEVER achieves a goal that is illusive even by hard work and diligence.

Another major factor in this "electability" concept is fear. Insane views that have nonetheless become popular that conservatives themselves don't hold still cause them to fear the groups that do hold them. Conservatives start trying to "get along" with the contemporary culture in order to be popular and, in the process, become less and less functionally conservative. Many people today, for example, believe that the "poor" in this country are decent, hard-working men and women who are being "oppressed" and kept in shanties by Republican politicians, CEOs and the rest of corporate America so that the same can have all of the money and power to themselves and enslave everyone else. These people believe that anyone who has worked hard, worked smart, is successful, and who has more money than someone else who has not and is not must of somehow stolen or cheated that money from the latter. People who believe these things will therefore always vote for the person who says that he or she will take the largest amount of money away from the "rich" and give it to the "poor", and though true conservatives know better than such nonsense, they still fear that they will not be popular if they do not tow this line to at least a certain extent. They therefore try their best to avoid any confrontation on the issue instead of meeting it head-on, as it should be met, with truth and reason.

Another very powerful group of people today believe that the Earth is some sort of deity to be worshipped, and that mankind is puny and insignificant, despite the fact that we have apparently brought "Earth" to her knees in the form of man-made global warming, pollution, mining, logging, etc. These people believe that laws need to be passed to protect "Earth" from "feeble" man. In the religious views of these people, causing the extinction of a species of animal is the greatest sin that can be committed, despite the fact that species have gone and continue to go extinct as a matter of nature for as long as the world has existed to the present time, with no effect whatsoever on nature or society. The "morals" of these people teach that animals and trees are more important than human beings (usually by far), and that laws should be passed to force all Americans to comply with these paradigms, regardless of their detrimental effect on individual property owners and on society as a whole. These are nothing more or less than the doctrines of a religion, and yet these same people think that laws against the killing of unborn children or for the allowing of Creation Science to be taught alongside Evolution as a competing theory in public schools are examples of a few "religious nuts" forcing their "morality" on everyone else. They are the same people who scream "Separation of Church and State!" and run crying to the ACLU when they find out public school students are having a Bible study during breaks in the school day instead of dealing drugs or engaging in various sexual activities, and yet they have an entire pagan agenda that they insist be legislated from first to last. People who believe these things therefore will vote for whoever promises that he or she will fight to protect the "environment". As ridiculous as all of this is, conservatives still fear these people and do everything that they can to "go along to get along", and that is why the Republican Party ends up with the nominees that it does.

Yet another group of not a few people in America today believe that males of European ancestry are inherently evil, seeking only to subdue or destroy anyone who is a woman or is of non-European descent. These people believe that everyone other than WASP males are inherently good and want only to have a world of peace, love, and happiness. They believe that the day that all of the male descendants of the founders of this country are removed from any position of power, placed in re-education camps, and have all of their possessions confiscated to make reparation for every evil ever committed since this nation was founded will be the day the Utopia is realized for America and for the world. People who believe these things will vote for the person who promises that he or she will fight for the least number of restrictions on any form of immigration, legal or illegal, and for the greatest amount of money to be taken from America and distributed to the "Third World" countries. Again, conservatives don't want to appear at odds with this type of mindset for whatever reason, and so they let these people gain and hold power and to put their policies into law and other action. Conservatives let themselves loose more than they get defeated, and this is what we go through during every Primary.

Finally, though, it is not true that the Republicans are the same as the Democrats, as many conservatives today would have us believe. It was the Democrats who brought us Tammany Hall, the Civil War, segregation, both incarnations of the KKK, lynchings, the League of Nations, Social Security, the New Deal, the Great Society, the Korean and Vietnam wars. Today the Democratic Party stands firmly in support of all of the bizarre viewpoints mentioned previously, and both candidates presently fighting for the nomination of that Party have ACU conservative voting records of less than 10%. Conversely, it was the Republicans that brought us Abraham Lincoln, Emancipation, Reconstruction, Civil Rights, Ronald Regan, and victory in the Cold War. The current Republican frontrunner has an 82+% conservative voting record during his many years in the Senate, and while this is not the score of a "true" conservative, neither is it anywhere near the record of either of the Democratic candidates. There is no fight that one can undertake where you choose to forfeit 82% of your goal so that you can achieve less than 10% of your goal , and yet that is what precisely many conservatives are advising us to do. It is a mindset that make no more sense than the crazy views that we criticize in the Democratic Party, and yet it seems to be more and more popular among conservatives today. We must stop reasoning with our emotions and start reasoning with our heads, or we will find ourselves in an infinitely worse position even than we are today.

In reality, we really do need to recognize whats gotten us to this point if we are serious about NOT finding ourselves faced with this type of thing again.

OK, I'll go along with that.

What's got us to this point is the nation ignorantly elected DemoRats for years. When we did manage to elect a Republican, most of 'em acted like DemoRats without balls, not like conservatives. Even the few good conservatives made some errors (forgivable), but the Republicans didn't learn anything from those errors (unforgivable). Republicans, with hindsight, keep compounding the errors of the left and "center", but want votes and money from conservatives gratis.

That's what got us here, the withholding of those votes and money will be what starts the Republicans back to delivering on their promises.

>> We must stop reasoning with our emotions and start reasoning with our heads, or we will find ourselves in an infinitely worse position even than we are today.

It is encouraging to see many in your responses that you are not falling for this McCain spin bull crap.

Everyone !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! - get the ready for the GOP establishment spin machine to come in every deceitful way to bring aboard the “dumb” conservatives over the next 8 months. I will never vote for McCain. It is sad to watch it come down to this - but the GOP has given the Dems the White House and now want to blame the conservatives in the party.

Whether you support him or not, Huckabee is still in the race and it will probably go to the convention. The GOP chickened out of a debate between Huck and McCain because they have already chosen their McCain “puppet”. If you still want a choice, take a look at Huckabee (endorsed by Duncan Hunter)! If McCain is the only choice, I am going to write in my own candidate - don’t buy into the “better off with McCain” schmooze!

How patronizing it is to think that conservatives reject McCain because he's not a "perfect" conservative.

And how presumptuous of liberals to tell us what "conservative" means, as though people who a few months ago wouldn't recognize a conservative if it landed in their tofu are suddenly ideological touchstones who define OUR philosophy.

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