Posted on 01/03/2016 5:29:11 AM PST by Kaslin
There's a reason liberals have been so successful in advancing their agenda in the past few decades. It's not just electoral victories they've played a part, and it's easier to make things happen if you win elections. But the main factor in their victories is one thing we conservatives are losing sight of: patience.
In the time of Twitter breaking news, Tinder, microwaves, On Demand, etc., patience is as dead as detectives wearing Fedoras and calling people "Mac." But it's key in politics, and conservatives have forgotten that.
Ronald Reagan the real man, not the myth created with his name understood the importance of patience. He almost won the GOP nomination in 1976 but lost to President Gerald Ford.
Although Ford was no conservative, Reagan didn't turn on him. He supported him. When Ford lost, that opened the door to Reagan's victory four years later. Had Reagan refused to support Ford, or actively criticized Ford and hurt him in the 1976 election, there's a chance 1980 would've turned out differently.
Even as president, Reagan understood the importance of patience. His victories in dealing with Congress and the Soviet Union (not much of a difference there, in many respects) didn't come immediately. Incrementalism was a key weapon you take what you can get and keep fighting for the rest. What Reagan didn't do was throw up his hands when he didn't get all he wanted, leaving small victories on the table because total victory wasn't, at that moment, obtainable.
Far too many conservatives have forgotten that political victories take time, even if the loss they're trying to reverse is still fresh.
Libertarians are famously inpatient. It's why, outside of a few court victories, they are mostly irrelevant. I take no pleasure in saying this; the country would be much better off if we were significantly more libertarian. But when there's a political fight to be had, they sit on the sidelines criticizing both sides rather than putting their weight behind the side moving the ball in the direction they want to go.
The purity of libertarians is to be admired, at least in the sense of ideals. The practical implementation of purity as a guide for conducting politics is not. Far too many oppose actions which would move the country in the direction they want because it doesn't go far enough. They want it all, and they want it now and anything short of that is a sell-out.
Many conservatives have adopted this attitude.
Liberals have been successful because they've adopted the opposite stance. For generations, liberals have sought to seize control over health care in the United States. They haven't yet, but every move they're made on health care has pushed them closer to that goal.
Medicare covers the elderly and disabled; Medicaid covers the poor. Liberals have been fighting to lower the age of Medicare eligibility for decades, but they've, thankfully, been blocked. They've also been fighting to raise the income eligibility for Medicaid for decades, and they've been winning. This left a shrinking middle uncovered by government insurance. Obamacare is changing that.
For all the problems with Obamacare, it's serving its purpose of crowding out private coverage. It was never designed to be the endgame; it’s an increment. It moves the country closer to a government takeover of health care. That was its purpose; that is their plan. And they waited decades for it.
Conservatives, on the other hand, don't have that kind of patience. With every new electoral victory, they expect some massive shift in the country immediately, if not sooner.
Sadly, much of liberalism is engrained in our laws, our courts and our culture, so it will take time to uncouple it.
Real conservatives are a small percentage of the Republican Party and Republicans in Congress. Yet many conservatives, particularly in media, think each electoral victory immediately should bring about massive conservative change. When that doesn''t happen, they attack with a ferocity they don't reserve even for liberals.
No single election is going to turn the tide back toward constitutionally limited government; no one person elected to office will be as pure as the wind-driven snow in their conservatism. It's going to be a long slog; there are going to be losses. Losing a battle does not constitute losing a war. But quitting does.
There never will be a "silver bullet" election or candidate; that's impossible. Many times you have to stop getting worse before you start getting better.
In addition to electoral victories, the courts have to change that will take time. The culture of dependency has to change that will take time.
For all their shunning of Christianity, Democrats have the patience of Job when it comes to their agenda. Republicans, on the other hand, are Veruca Salt. They want a Golden Goose and they want it NOW!
Veruca ended up going down the garbage chute. If conservatives don't regain some strategic patience, they'll suffer the same fate. And the country won't be far behind.
The GOP establishment trap has worked so well for so many years. /s
Far too many conservatives have forgotten that political victories take time …Is that the “incremental” argument again?
the GOP has chased away the libertarians, not the other way around.
For all their shunning of Christianity, Democrats have the patience of Job when it comes to their agenda.
And with that non sequitur the TownHall author displays the same depth of biblical knowledge that they generally demonstrate for politics these days.
( yeah, I understand what he meant to say, it is just that errors like that pop out, sorry to nitpick )
Fabian Socialists got their “name” for their patience. The wet-dreams of Sugar Keynes of Harvard (the sodomite raping the little boys and bragging about it with his homosexual orgy buddies in letters) have been realized by no less than the evil SCOTUS who is promoting the religion of Satanism by their unconstitutional “laws” which reject Natural Law and God’s Laws the basis of American Jurisprudence until the Marxist takeover which now promotes a Vice System..
What the Libertarians fail to understand is Western Civilization. That without Virtue, there can be no Freedom. Without Virtue, you have a system of vice which will collapse any “civil” society.
In the 13th Century it was thoroughly realized by St. Thomas Aquinas that Faith and Reason are essential in ALL human beings-—it exists and without one or the other—you are not God’s Design of the human being. All humans have Faith and it is ONLY the Christian “Fatih” which gave us Modern Science and The Age of Reason with the UNDERSTANDING that some “Faith” is much more REASONED than the irrational, contradictory Eastern/atheist/sexist muslim or pagan “faiths” where contradictions were enormous and the “blind” faith—like in Marxism/Atheism is totally irrational and based on the Big Lie.
There is ONLY one religion which is in line with Individualism and Natural Rights from God—Our Constitution—the Supreme Law of the Land-—and without Right Reason (like with sodomy and baby-killing promotion) you get irrational, unjust (evil) “Law” which is “null and void” according to our Founders and St. Thomas Aquinas and the Nuremberg Trial judges.
Without “Justice” (the Queen of Virtue), there is no possibility of Freedom or a civil society. PERIOD. Libertarians “think” “faith” is anathema to Law when it is ALL Reasoned Faith (if based on the Christian Worldview ONLY). When you throw out “..the Laws of Nature and nature’s God” you throw out Individual Natural Rights from God (true Freedom from arbitrary man-made up tyranny “laws”).
Exactly right.
This article sounds as if the author wants us to have the patience for Jeb!, not the patience of Job.
Not voting for any more Cheap Labor Express candidates.
The Republicans haven’t moved the ball right because they are Democtrats in R jerseys, not conservatives. They only use conservative language at election time. See McAmnesty
What a steaming pantload. It is the GOPe that attacks conservatives in primaries with far more ferocity they attack Dems in the general. Conservatives are just tired of the GOPe being handed electoral victories by the Tea Party and then refusing to attempt to even try brandishing the power they have been dealt.
True of social conservatives and other ideologues as well as libertarians. Pro-lifers are the extreme example of what the libertarians are (accurately) accused of.
Example: In State A there is a Senator and a Congressman hated by both libertarians, Social Conservatives, neo-cons and all parts of the big tent. So a libertarian runs for one of the seats we don’t hold and a social conservative runs for the other seat we don’t hold.
We need to build a coalition that works for both of those candidates. But that doesn’t happen.
We ideologues fail to realize that the nature of a political party is different from that of a religion. If a fellow church member denies the deity of Jesus Christ, he should not be a member of my church. But political parties are not religions. Political parties are coalitions of convenience. They are tactical vehicles to win.
quote “There never will be a “silver bullet” election or candidate; that’s impossible. “
BS !!!
Make me president and let me wield the kind of unchecked power Obama has been allowed to and I could fix the country and get it back on the right track in less than 6 months!
This writer didn’t proofread his work very well. Perhaps he is inpatient.
Sorry to disappoint you, but a libertarian, or any other third party candidate will ever get elected.
Good point
Name one libertarian that has ever been elected to office. You can’t
“This writer didn’t proofread his work very well. Perhaps he is inpatient.”
Or maybe he needs outpatient treatment for impatience? Just kidding, I know you wrote iNpatient on purpose...or was it IN purpose.
What makes you think so? There is no mention or any hint that he is for John Ellis Bush in the article as there is none in the articles by the author. So please stop speculating.
Nope, what you and Derek Hunter fail to understand is that you don’t win by losing. Let us assume that a particular policy (like abortion) is at point A on a continuum. When the liberals offer up legislation to move the policy way left to point B, a victory is NOT moving the policy to point C, halfway between A and B.
The fact is that the modern Republican party has no interest in conservative victories. They are not even interested in moving toward conservative principles. They are simply interested in getting elected. So every time the nation slides a little more to the left, they do too.
Name for me a single policy in the U.S. where the government and laws are more conservative than they were when Obama took office? The GOPe haven’t been slowly winning anything. They’ve been slowly losing, so that their voters won’t blame them for a sudden defeat. But who amongst them is fighting for women to not be on the front lines? Who is fighting for the total repeal of Obamacare? Who is fighting for the rejection of gay marriage? Not the GOPe (or Derek Hunter’s favorites). Not Paul Ryan. They say the choice has been made, can’t be changed, and just needs to be fixed a little...
So don’t talk to me about patience. Not until you start winning and moving the political system slowly to the right. I’ve got no patience with folks who are happy to slowly lose...
“Name one libertarian that has ever been elected to office. You can’t”
A partial list of libertarians elected to public office.
https://www.lp.org/candidates/elected-officials
Yep, they chased me away a year ago; so I joined the Libertarian Party. They turned out to be useless potheads who, as Neil Boortz has pointed out, don't think liberty is worth defending. So now I've joined the ranks of the politically homeless as an Unaffiliated.
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