7 Reasons Conservatives Don't Trust the Republican Establishment

Townhall.com ^ | January 16, 2013 | John Hawkins

[Kaslin]

Just as moderates are completely unrepresented in a Democratic Party that's dominated by liberals, movement conservatives often don't feel represented by the Republican Party. At first glance, this seems rather odd since most Republicans in Congress are conservative. However, it's a natural reaction to the Republican establishment that has its hands welded to many of the GOP's levers of power. The Republican Party may be mostly conservative, but there are a multitude of reasons that you can't trust the establishment Republicans as far as you can throw them.

1) They have supreme confidence without supreme competence. Conservative talk show hosts, columnists, bloggers and Tea Partiers don't always get it right. We make our mistakes. But, we recognize that. The problem with the establishment Republicans is that they make just as many mistakes, if not more, without ever being humbled by the experience. Karl Rove is a truly brilliant man and he's done a great service for conservatism by raising so much money to help Republican candidates (although he's now promising to torpedo conservative candidates in GOP primaries), but his strategic decision-making also turned Bush's second term into a Hindenburg style disaster that the GOP hasn't recovered from yet. How did the "Super-Committee" the GOP establishment championed in 2011 work out? Not so well. How about Harriet Miers? The comprehensive immigration reform battle in Bush's second term? John McCain? Mitt Romney? It's fine to think you're the smartest guy in the room, but if you can't back it up, don't expect everyone to ignore the dunce cap you're wearing and pretend that you're Einstein.

2) They always prefer moderates to conservatives. It should tell you something when the GOP establishment always, always, ALWAYS prefers the least conservative candidate. It backed Arlen Specter over Pat Toomey, David Dewhurst over Ted Cruz, Bob Bennett over Mike Lee, Trey Grayson over Rand Paul and Charlie Crist over Marco Rubio. Our two top "leaders" in the Senate, Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn, both endorsed Charlie Crist over Marco Rubio, a guy who is now being touted as one of the frontrunners for the presidency in 2016. When the best and brightest of the GOP in the Senate were almost universally opposed by the GOP establishment, what message does it send to the base? It sure as hell ain't "You can trust us" or "We're on your side." The real message is, "We're so frightened by our own base that we'd rather back future Democrats like Charlie Crist and Arlen Specter than movement conservatives."

3) They stick with the same failed leaders. John Boehner and Mitch McConnell have been in charge in Congress since 2006. What do we have to show for their "leadership?" Three bad election cycles out of four. John Boehner seems to mean well, but neither he nor McConnell can message their way out of a wet paper bag. In addition, McConnell has been outmaneuvered and outsmarted by Harry Reid at every turn and is polling so poorly that he's pulling a Todd Akin by running for his seat when he should be stepping aside for a more electable candidate. Reince Priebus did an excellent job of raising money at the RNC last cycle, but did nothing else well during a lousy cycle that his failure as RNC Chairman contributed to mightily. Everyone agrees that the GOP did poorly in the Senate in 2012; yet the head of the NRSC John Cornyn failed upwards to become the new Minority Whip in the Senate. William Buckley once said, "I'd rather be governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston telephone directory than by the faculty of Harvard." Well, the GOP would be better led by randomly elected Republicans than the crew that's running the show.

4) They're incessantly looking for excuses to jettison conservative principles. When Democrats run for office, they lie about being moderates to get elected and then move to the Left. When Republicans run for office, they lie about being conservative and then move to the middle. So, when Barack Obama lies, it's a lie about pretending to oppose gay marriage. On the other hand, when Republicans like Marco Rubio lie, it's a lie about opposing amnesty for illegals. What that means is that there is never a time when conservatives can trust Republicans in Congress to just do the right thing. Every time gun control, immigration or spending comes up, we have to ramp the pressure all the way up just to get the Republicans in Congress to do the jobs they were sent to Congress to do in the first place. If you hired a waiter at your restaurant and you had to yell at him every day to get him to talk to customers or hand his orders in to the kitchen, you'd fire him in a heartbeat. We'd love to do the same thing to Republicans in Congress and the only reason we don't is that it would mean hiring Democrats who'd pocket all the tips, loot the cash register, and picket the restaurant for not having a bathroom for transsexuals.

5) The Republican establishment doesn't produce results. With Obama in power, the Democrats slammed through Obamacare and are pushing for gay marriage and gun control. On the other hand, when Republicans were in power, they implemented Medicare Part D and wanted comprehensive immigration reform. What's supposed to excite conservatives about that? Additionally, no matter who's in charge, government gets bigger and spending increases. The establishment also managed to clear the way for both John McCain and Mitt Romney because they were both moderates who ran from social issues, which made them so "electable." As it turns out, they were both so "electable" that they lost. Isn't it funny how often the GOP establishment gets its way, loses, then declares that no one could have done better and we need even more of the same next time? Show us the great victories achieved for the conservative movement by the establishment Republicans who've had their way with the party since Newt Gingrich's Republican Revolution spluttered to a stop? If the establishment Republicans don’t have anything to offer but defeat, painful compromises that never seem to bear any political fruit, and complaints about the people whose first priority is the good of the country instead of fattening their own wallets, what good are they?

6) Where's the urgency? Where's the fight? Did you ever notice that both John McCain and Mitt Romney ran far nastier and more vicious campaigns against their Republican primary opponents than they did against Barack Obama? Conservatives, the establishment Republicans will fight tooth and nail, but when they're up against Democrats, they turn into pussycats. Democrats don't have any qualms about trying to eviscerate Republicans, but the GOP establishment keeps acting like it’s going to win some kind of sportsmanship award for putting out forgettable lines of attack that pass through the mind like prunes pass through the body. Meanwhile, outside of the Beltway, guns, gold and survival seeds are flying off the shelves and many Americans are convinced for good reason that this country is headed toward an economic collapse driven by our unsustainable debt within the next decade or two. While that's happening, Barack Obama is talking about overruling Congress with executive orders and minting trillion dollar platinum coins. Yet, if you listen to the Republican establishment, you'd think all is well and it is just business as usual. We don't need screaming or rants about Hitler, but it would be nice to get the idea that the establishment Republicans aren’t content to sit on the deck of the sinking Titanic, watching the ship go down while they ask people running by if they'd like to play a game of shuffleboard while they’re waiting.

7) They don't represent the values of conservatives in key areas. Ronald Reagan is the patron saint of the conservative movement, but if you look at his time in office, you'll discover that Reagan actually compromised quite a bit with the Democrats. So, why do conservatives today revere Reagan, but not trust the establishment Republicans when they want to compromise? Simple; conservatives knew Ronald Reagan was one of us and had our best interests at heart. The same can't be said of Mitch McConnell, John Cornyn, Peggy Noonan, Kathleen Parker, John Boehner, David Frum, Mike Murphy, Steve Schmidt, Joe Scarborough, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Reince Priebus, Karl Rove, David Brooks, Megan McCain, Bob Dole, Chris Christie, Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush. They're not bad people (Well, Frum and Megan McCain may be) and we would likely agree on a lot of things, but they're not movement conservatives. Their agenda is not our agenda, their goals are not our goals, and that means that ultimately, we can never trust them the way liberals can trust politicians like Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid. At the end of the day, if you're going to ask someone to act as your agent in a hostage negotiation, you have to be confident that he wants the hostage back with all his fingers and toes intact just as much as you do.

[Diogenesis]

The lie ... and can not be trusted.

Romney invented RomneyCARE/ObamaCARE and imposed
gay marriage, and then had the audacity
to purport it was someone else.

Romney/Rove attacked Gov. Palin mercilessly to throw
the Election 2008 to Obama.

[Daveinyork]

Yeah.

[Arm_Bears]

Correction—Most Republicans in Congress are spineless RINOs.

[Yosemitest]

"The Republican establishment doesn't produce results."

WRONG!
"Establishment Republicans" DO produce results, and they're BAD RESULTS, VERY BAD RESULTS!


I read a great article by Sheriff Jim R. Schwiesow, Ret. written February 4, 2011 from "NewsWithViews.com" and here's part of it.

COMPROMISE – A DIRTY WORD
Compromise – is defined as:
“A middle way between two extremes”

If this is a literally correct definition, and I believe that it is,
what then are we to do when the two extremes at the opposite ends of the plane are
that which is moral
and that which is immoral?
Is it possible that a righteous compromise can be accomplished
when such a compromise, by the very definition of the word, must contain the elements of an extreme that is in and of itself evil or wicked ?

Compromise is as old as humanity;
compromise began as a human endeavor to attempt to escape the penalty for the transgression of God’s laws
and to mitigate or contravene the absoluteness of God’s word.
Compromise is man’s way
to lessen the seriousness of disobedience to immutable laws and dictums,
or to excuse or condone such disobedience altogether.
No good thing comes from compromise.
Man’s accommodation of transgressions by compromise is not a defense for iniquitous acts in the eyes of God.
Compromise is the devil’s invention;
God who is perfect in every way will not be conciliated by the conditions of a compromise.

Compromise was introduced into the lives of men in the Garden of Eden by that serpent of old, Satan,
and will remain with men until the Lord Jesus Christ brings this world to an end - which He will inevitable do - and establishes His Kingdom.

THE FRUITS OF COMPROMISE
Most people have come to believe
that compromise is a useful tool
and that the negotiations thereof have brought about good things and useful policies.
If one examines that belief closely it soon becomes apparent that
there are no useful results that accrue to negotiated compromise on any level.
In fact most often
compromise actually breeds dissention and strife,
which in turn leads to more compromise.
In short compromise feeds upon itself and eats up that which is just and right in the process.

To live in a world of compromise is to live in a world without absolutes,
and yet we know that the entire universe as well as the lives of men are managed, controlled, and kept within irrevocable bounds by the absolutes established by Almighty God.
We violate those bounds, via compromise of any kind, at our peril.

Political negotiations (compromise) in regard
to the step down from the safeguarding of the sanctity of life
and from the immutable right granted by God to be defended against being murdered -
as set forth in the sixth commandment
- has enabled an American medical assassination machine
that has claimed nearly double the number of lives of the combined number of military and civilian deaths attributable to World War II.

The killing of innocent babies has reached record heights.
The lives of twenty-four percent of all unborn babies are delivered into the hands of the serial killers of the medical community.
A baby is murdered every twelve seconds,
and it is estimated that in this country alone there have been ninety-two million living beating hearts stilled by the bloody hands of the legal abortionists.
This conspiracy to commit murder,
this aiding and abetting of murder,
this disconnect between the forbidden pre-meditated murder of living adults and the sanctioned pre-meditated murder of living babies
has been wrought by a politically mediated compromise between
those who claim the right to murder babies
and those who know God’s absolute prohibition of murder.
And there is more.

Now continuing…compromise on morality resulted in the condoning of, and an exponential increase in, the filthy - God condemned - practice of sodomy and promiscuous sex.
For every compromise of God’s word a penalty is exacted.
Aids rapidly achieved endemic proportions, first in the United States and then in the rest world.
We were told that Aids was a disease of monkeys that had migrated to men.
The inventiveness of the scientific community and the political apologizers who defend such appalling and execrable behavior
often find fertile ground in the credulous minds of a spiritually deprived people.
I’m not done.

POLITICAL COMPROMISE CONTINUES TO DESTROY THE REPUBLIC
Today as never before in our history the dishonorable who control our social destiny via their political intrigues
subject the nation to a slow death by way of political compromise.

Compromise through ill-conceived trade agreements has destroyed domestic industry and extinguished millions of jobs.
Compromise on sound financial practices has destroyed the housing market, seriously damaged the economy and crippled small businesses.
Compromise on immigration has demolished the social structure, bankrupted state and local governments, critically imperiled national security and jeopardized the safety and well-being of the people.
And compromise on moral integrity has corrupted the youth, encouraged extreme vice and given license to social prurience.

THE BEGINNING OF THE END
In a recent article I wrote
that from this time forward
the people of this nation will not know a day of peace,
there will be no good news, each bad day will fade into another equally bad day,
and the black and ghostly apparitions of the former will blend with the grim and ghastly tidings of the new.
The Lord has departed from a people that have departed from Him and prostituted themselves before heathen gods,
a people who will in the coming days loathe themselves for the evils that they have committed in all of their abominations.
They will surely know that He is the Sovereign God who will carry out His word
to do evil unto them that defy His word and deny His Lordship over all of creation.

As I write this piece
the nation is seized by a 2,000 mile long arctic blast of an unprecedented magnitude;
each season delivers devastation of Biblical proportions.
Tornadoes ravage, floods inundate, conflagrations gobble up thousands of acres of trees and foliage and lumbering mudslides follow in the wake of these,
hurricanes terrify the coasts, and hail, ice, and snow bring cities and towns to a standstill.
Truly the day of the Lord is at hand.

One who reads these words and does NOT understand or relate to that which has been written
can be thought to possess one or more of the following character deficiencies:
deep perversion, callous indifference, abysmal illiteracy, or appalling ignorance.

Believers in God’s word know
that ignorance of a secular kind is directly attributable to a lack of spiritual discernment.

Solomon gives a litany of dangers that await the man who lacks Spiritual discernment:

“To deliver thee from the way of the evil man, from the man that speaketh froward things;
Who leave the paths of uprightness,
to walk in the ways of darkness;
Who rejoice to do evil, and delight in the frowardness of the wicked;
Whose ways are crooked, and they froward in their paths:
To deliver thee from the strange woman, even from the stranger which flattereth with her words;
Which forsaketh the guide of her youth, and forgetteth the covenant of her God.
For her house inclineth unto death, and her paths unto the dead.
None that go unto her return again,
neither take they hold of the paths of life.
That thou mayest walk in the way of good men, and keep the paths of the righteous.
For the upright shall dwell in the land, and the perfect shall remain in it.
But the wicked shall be cut off from the earth, and the transgressors shall be rooted out of it.”
[Proverbs 2:12-22]

A modern translation:

"Wicked and perverse men are scattered like land mines across the paths of our lives.
Without discernment we will soon be following them into the dark of destruction.
The adulteress, every man’s worse nightmare, will seduce those who cannot see past her beauty and promises.
Behind her attraction lies the steps that descend to hell.
No one who goes to her returns,
but how can anyone know this apart from God Himself telling us."
[Proverbs 2:12-22]

Read Compromise Is a Dirty Word for Club for Growth.

Take a good long look at where "Establishment Republicans" ALWAYS take us.

[factoryrat]

There is no difference between the democrats and republicans now, they both get lumped into the category of the “government”. The party elite on both sides now put their best interests above those of Americans, and they have proven that they will do anything to maintain that.

[Carry_Okie]

Carry_Okie's seven reasons RINOs can't be trusted:

Nixon, Ford, Bush I, Bush II, Dole, McCain, Romney.

Lessee, that's seven. Too bad there isn't room for Warren, Knight, Wilson, and Schwarzenegger.

[Candor7]

#8 They do not observe their oaths of office to preserve and defend the Constitution against enemies foreign and domestic. They abandon it. They agree on the selective enforcement of our laws based on poitical correctness.

[Candor7]

#8 They do not observe their oaths of office to preserve and defend the Constitution against enemies foreign and domestic. They abandon it. They agree on the selective enforcement of our laws based on political correctness.

[Mr. K]

They lost the election to the WORST.PRESIDENT.EVER and yet “Reince” Prebus is still in charge.

[hosepipe]

Who IS the conservative establishment?....

[Romulus]

The Republican Party may be mostly conservative,

This is where I stop reading. The Republican party does not represent conservatives, and hasn't for at least a generation. The Republican party represents moneyed political operatives seeking to serve the interests of its mostly corporate financial backers by wooing conservative voters. That's a very different thing.

[thirst4truth]

Yet, if you listen to the Republican establishment, you'd think all is well and it is just business as usual. We don't need screaming or rants about Hitler, but it would be nice to get the idea that the establishment Republicans aren’t content to sit on the deck of the sinking Titanic, watching the ship go down while they ask people running by if they'd like to play a game of shuffleboard while they’re waiting.

Worth repeating.

[LibLieSlayer]

The PROBLEM with republicans is that they do not believe in REPUBLICANISM!

LLS

[SeminoleCounty]

Article loses by using the word “conservative” anywhere Amnesty Liberal Marco Rubio. The GOPe loves him now

The GOP is not conservative....and conservatives realize this

[FreedomPoster]

This is a nicely put article, and that is an excellent supplementary list.

[Forward the Light Brigade]

Just seven reasons? I should think its more like 107. what they did to Sarah Palin alone is enough to start a 3rd Party. We expect such things from the Democrats and Liberals—but from the GOP? What they have done to the Tea Party (after using it in 2010) is a disgrace. Time to clean house in the Grand Old Party—or Junk it for a new Reform Party (Sans Ross Perot ego)—

[COBOL2Java]

The PROBLEM with republicans is that they do not believe in REPUBLICANISM!

LLS, there's only one group today's Republican party in Washington obey, and it ain't us, believe me. It's the boys and girls about a mile down the road:

---

Washington is unsalvageable. About the only hope our country has comes from the states and the 10th Amendment.

[Major Matt Mason]

The GOPe doesn't care if conservatives move on because they are perfectly happy cutting deals with their Democrat pals. They could care less if they destroy this country, as long as they can hang on to some power.

[LibLieSlayer]

Or a complete collapse. I agree with you 100%!

LLS