Posted on 05/01/2009 5:39:45 AM PDT by shortstop
The Republican Party has moved too far to the right.
That’s what Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter said.
That’s what Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. said.
That’s what the evening news said.
The problem is, they are all wrong. Not as a matter of opinion, but as a matter of demonstrable fact.
The Republican Party is more liberal today than it has been at any time since Gerald Ford and Nelson Rockefeller were president and vice president.
The notion that the Republican Party has been taken over by conservative zealots and has estranged itself from the mainstream of America is a falsehood lifted directly from the talking points of the Democratic Party. It is not a statement of fact, it is a smear.
A smear that is repeated continually by idiots in the press and connivers in office. Arlen Specter knew he couldn’t win the nomination of the Republicans, so he switched over to the Democrats. Jon Huntsman Jr. wants to be president and to further that effort he is defaming the Republicans.
And they’re both lying.
Instead of drifting right, the Republican Party is farther left than it has been in a generation. Its current collapse is not the result of being too conservative, it is the result of being too liberal.
Let’s look at some history.
In 1980, Arlen Specter came to Washington on Ronald Reagan’s coattails. The Republican Party in that campaign was markedly more conservative than it is now.
In his inaugural address, Ronald Reagan said that government wasn’t the solution, government was the problem.
That is a position far more conservative than the policies of the George W. Bush administration or the current platform of the Republican Party.
In 1985, when Jon Huntsman Jr.’s father’s money was getting him an administration job, Ronald Reagan gave his Second Inaugural, in which he movingly attacked the size and expense of the federal government. He laid out a small-government, low-taxes vision that is significantly more conservative than anything advocated by the Republican Party in the last 10 years.
Both Specter and Huntsman know that the Republican Party is not dominated by conservatives today because they both were involved in it – and benefited by it – when it was far more conservative.
In 1994, the Contract With America put forward a simple, conservative, national agenda. It was offered to the people as a manifesto of conservative Republicanism. The American people embraced it.
The Contract With America went through, point by point, a conservative prescription for the country. It was night and day from the positions and priorities of the Republican Party and its leaders today.
A simple comparison of platforms over the years, an honest reading of the speeches, a review of the legislation Republicans have written, all show a definite and undeviating swing to the left on the part of the Republican Party.
Those who claim otherwise are ignorant or dishonest.
Many critics point specifically at conservative Christians, saying that they control the party and make it shrill and intolerant.
It is a false assertion that is, again, nothing more than a defamatory Democratic talking point. Conservative Christians have less influence in the Republican Party and national politics today than they have at any time in the last almost 30 years.
Conservative Christians exerted great influence in the Republican Party in the period that stretched roughly from 1979 to 1997.
In 1979 the Moral Majority was formed, and it had significant influence until the middle of the George Bush administration. In 1989 the Christian Coalition was formed. It was powerful until 1997 or so.
Since then, there has not been a focused voice for evangelicals and Pentecostals in the Republican Party. In this past presidential campaign, a Southern Baptist preacher ran and lost without ever dominating the race. It seems that if his coreligionists were the power of the Republican Party, he would have fared better in the race.
Evangelicals do not control the Republican Party. Conservatives do not control the Republican Party.
And that’s too bad.
Because when political and moral conservatives were in control, the Republican Party was successful.
It won the White House under Ronald Reagan. It won the Congress under the Contract With America. When the Republican Party stood for something – when it stood for conservative, constitutional principles – it was embraced by the American people and entrusted with power in Washington.
Today, as the party of equivocation and self-doubt, it has been rejected by the American people and entrusted with nothing.
Arlen Specter and Jon Huntsman Jr. haven’t identified the problem, they are the problem. Their Democrat-lite cohorts have castrated the Republican Party and earned it scorn.
As George W. Bush and the Republican Party drifted ever more left, as new entitlements and bigger government and deeper deficits piled up, the salt lost its flavor, and was good for nothing.
That’s what’s wrong with the Republican Party.
And its only hope is to do what it did when it succeeded – stand for something. The only hope for the Republican Party is to be what it once was – the voice for rock-solid conservative American values.
Until then, it will be peopled by vacuous drifters, biting the hand that feeds them.
WOW!
And, therein lies the problem
Finally someone speaks the truth.
Seems to me, that, that MAY be their PROBLEM!!!
Well DUH - blinding flash of the totally obvious.
Excellent article!
Exactly, and why not?
What are you lurkers and posters doing to change that?
All I have to say to the RINOs and their minions is “Enjoy the ride because if we’re going down, you’re coming with us”.
The flabby “consensus”, this “American people” rhetoric the Left has been perfecting for decades now , with the EXPLICIT help of the MSM, has just caught a lot of people in its net, Arlen Specter just one pathetic minnow among them. He switches parties not out of principle, but out of LACK of principle. ‘Nuff said about that weasel, Arlen “single-bullet” Specter, Arlen “No judge, my client, Ira Einhorn is not a flight risk, so his bail should be low”. The Left has accomplished something that will be very hard to chip away at, but we’re ready to do it.
The more effectively the Left is able to paint itself as “reasonable”, no matter what their shamefully wasteful programs and ideas are, the easier it is to contrast everyone else as “radical, out of the mainstream right-wingers”.
The flabby “consensus”, this “American people” rhetoric the Left has been perfecting for decades now , with the EXPLICIT help of the MSM, has just caught a lot of people in its net, Arlen Specter just one pathetic minnow among them. He switches parties not out of principle, but out of LACK of principle. ‘Nuff said about that weasel, Arlen “single-bullet” Specter, Arlen “No judge, my client, Ira Einhorn is not a flight risk, so his bail should be low”. The Left has accomplished something that will be very hard to chip away at, but we’re ready to do it.
The more effectively the Left is able to paint itself as “reasonable”, no matter what their shamefully wasteful programs and ideas are, the easier it is to contrast everyone else as “radical, out of the mainstream right-wingers”.
Simple truths! God bless Bob Lonsberry.
Maybe it will be interesting to see how well the GOP does without conservative campaign contributions
“Hold your nose and vote”, as with McCain, is doubtful for me ever again
It doesn't mean conservatives have are disappearing from the face of the earth, it's just that we really don't have a home in either party.
Bush was far from perfect, but the Pubs in Congress were even worse. At least Bush attemted to tackle the biggest long term issue, reforming Social Security. The Pubs in Congress gave him zero support, despite controlling both houses. Now we have 70 trillion in entitlements starting to come due, and the RATS running things.
While true leaders get their talents from within (bestowed by God), there are environmental influences that set the stage for them. Look at Churchill, who wasn’t really considered a leader based on his job performance until he took on Chamberlain. And part of Reagan’s success was that he articulated conservative thought that embraced the best in Americans with the backdrop of Carter, making Reagan seem even greater. Obama is creating the perfect backdrop for a conservative Republican to step forward. And RINOs need not apply.
‘Compassionate Conservative.’ Snort. He kept us safe. He’s basically a good man. He raised one hell of a lot of money and took over the GOP. Now the GOP is paying for it.
(The party of Socialism Lite)
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