Posted on 02/11/2013 4:20:00 AM PST by Kaslin
The United States, from day one, was a project about principles and ideals.
The super power that emerged and grew from the handful of colonists that began settling here was not the product of where those colonists happened to land, but the ideals and principles in their head and heart – applied in how they lived their lives.
The Republican Party was founded in 1854 to address one great blot on the nation’s founding legacy – the existence of slavery in a nation founded under the ideal of freedom under God.
Runaway slave and self-educated abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass said “I am a Republican, a black, dyed in the wool Republican, and I never intend to belong to any other party than the party of freedom and progress.”
Douglass called Abraham Lincoln, America’s first Republican president, “emphatically the black man’s president.”
When some thirty years ago I told the welfare officer to not bother showing up again at my home – when I decided that my own future would be based on the values of scripture, work, and personal responsibility - there was no doubt in my mind what party would become my political home.
The party of “freedom and progress,” the party of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass.
But, as longshoreman philosopher Eric Hoffer once observed, “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.”
It‘s no mystery why the Republican Party is having a hard time today. No matter how hard you squint and try to discern the values of Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, or any values for that matter, in those now wielding the money and power at the top of the party, they’ve disappeared.
These establishment Republican leaders and operatives are not about ideals and values but business – their own business.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the latest estimate from the Congressional Budget Office is that unemployment will “remain above 7.5 percent through next year. That would make 2014 the sixth consecutive year with a jobless rate that high, the longest stretch of such elevated unemployment in 70 years.”
Yet the Republican presidential candidate in 2012 could not defeat the current occupant of the White House.
In the party that is supposed to be about freedom and personal responsibility, party operatives want to blame everyone else for their own failures.
Worse, they want to pin it on candidates who actually take seriously the traditional values of their party.
Karl Rove would like to weed out candidates like former Missouri congressman Todd Akin.
Akin, who was defeated by Democrat incumbent Claire McCaskill in the Senate race in Missouri, was a six term Republican congressman with a flawless conservative record.
For most of 2012 he was ahead of McCaskill in the polls. Then, in August, he expressed himself poorly in an interview about abortion. Despite his apologies and efforts to clarify himself, his own party abandoned him.
McCaskill ran ads, over and over, showing the Republican’s own candidate Mitt Romney questioning Akin’s qualifications. This race could have been saved. But the party elite wasted not a second to dump Akin because they were not comfortable with his conservative values to begin with.
We’re living in a deeply troubled country today. Americans are looking for answers, not a political class feathering its own nest.
There are tens of millions of conservative American patriots who seek an opposition party to represent their conviction that America will not get back on the path to strength and prosperity without restoration of freedom, limited government, free markets, and traditional values.
Today’s big question is whether the Republican Party is going to be that opposition party.
If not, it is not conservative values and convictions that will be abandoned. It will be the Republican Party.
Buy American.
Realistically, I think the real question is: “Does the Democratic Party Have a Future?”
I shouldn’t say “we”...bad habit. I agree with you. Collapse will definitely happen in our future (depending on everyone’s age). I think then maybe people will wake up. The Republican party is a disgrace lately. I still cannot believe that we put up a candidate that NOBODY particularly liked. How dumb is that? I practically had to be drunk to vote for loser Romney. It was worse than holding my nose in 2008. I shutter to think of who will be our candidate in 2016.
The tax fight was stupid, the GOP had zero chance of what they foolishly defined as winning, extending them all.
I recommended giving up on that impossible goal early on.
Many here just wanted the GOP to blow up the economy out of spite having all those taxes go up, claiming it was 'principle', a great way to get voters to despise you..
Alternatively if the GOP really rushes to grant the vote to illegals as much of their rhetoric now says (this could just be posturing) they deserve to never be in the majority again. They are just too stupid to win elections.
Agree. Secession can be peaceful or end up in a Civil War more desperate than the first one. I am good either way.
Does America have a future?
Democrat code words
1. Runaway slave = Tax payer hides money
2. Self-educated = Won’t except lies
3. Enemy = American patriots
“Of course we do, but we need to seriously stop picking crappy candidates like Romney. Romney EASILY was the biggest loser candidate in the history of the Republican Party. Anyone with any sense warned a disaster picking this liberal Republican.”
They’re going to do EXACTLY THE SAME THING in 2016.
Wait and see.
Star Parker asks:
“Does the Republican party have a future?”
Obviously, the answer is yes, but what _kind_ of a future, at this point, is unclear.
I do NOT foresee the Republicans as ever becoming the party of the Hispanics, or even the majority of Asians. The Pubbies actually did worse with Asians in 2012, than they did with Hispanics!
In the wake of the 2012 election, there seems to be a “stampede towards the left” in the party — even with solid conservatives like Rand Paul, who has now come out for some kind of “immigration reform” (and we all know what that means). In their hearts, they keep believing that “if only we pander, we can increase our base”. They’re gonna find out.
I see the Republicans as slowly shrinking in national influence, finally becoming a “white dwarf” of politics, having influence in the red states, but not much anywhere else (including the D.C. government).
Not an optimistic assessment, but that’s how I view it...
It’s dead Jim...
The GOP committed suicide with a bad case of the “me too-me too” plague of liberalism. It’s too corrupt from within to salvage as those that have destroyed it are in charge and are making the rules to prevent any real change.
Time to bury this relic and start over.
The republican party was doing OK until Bush and Cheney steered it right into the iceberg. Now it looks like the ship might be headed down to Davey Jones’ Locker, never to be salvaged again.
Well, again, many “conservative” primary voters rallied to Romney because they were told that only he could win. They truly believed that line. And I imagine they will do the same next time with Jebbie.
If the GOPe is left in power and continues to steer the party further and further left, then the GOP is finished. If amnesty is given to illegal aliens, the GOP is finished.
Which is why it is so important for us to take control of the GOP so we can get an actual conservative nominated. Many here at FR may not like to admit it, but as much as the GOP brand is tarnished, most conservatives still see it as the only effective alternative to the Democrats and will vote accordingly as the last election showed.
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