>>This does not mean compromising or changing our principles. It means explaining them instead of ignoring these groups. It means doing what Paul Ryan wanted to do: going into these communities and telling people there why conservatism is good for them.
Actually, it does mean compromising or changing our principles. You can’t explain anything like the value of hard work to people who greet you with “show me da money”. You can’t fight the media in nation where the unemployed can afford cable TV.
How can you win over people who vote for skin color and free stuff? How can you make conservatism work under a system where labor is taxed to pay entitlements to the non-working? How can you be pro-life while encouraging abortion? Why do we have to struggle to promote blacks and hispanics as candidates just to prove how “big tent” we are?
Freedom to live as you see fit should be our Big Tent. But most Americans do not want to live free. They just want free stuff and they want someone else to work for it. That’s the hard fact of life in the 21st century USA.
The Dems won, so all we’re left with is “Burn Baby, Burn!”
That's true. We are never going to get the votes of the lazy and selfish. But there are a lot of members of minority groups who are not lazy and selfish. Some of them are middle-income or even upper-middle income and they work hard.
I was just listening this morning to a black woman who calls in to a local conservative talk show. She is a regular caller, a mother of five, former military, very religious. She described her recent effort to educate another friend, a black man. She was driving in a car listening to talk radio, which he'd never heard before, and she talked to him about some of the things that we conservatives know. He said, "How do you know all this stuff? Where did you hear it?" He had never heard Fox, or Rush, or Mark, or Chris Plante, because he had been told the standard line that they're all evil racists. When she informed him of the truth, he was stunned and admitted that he would never have voted for Obama if he'd known those things.
Of course there are many, many blacks who would vote for a black man like Obama no matter what sort of atrocity he committed. But there are others who are just uninformed, and if you can show them how it's not in their interests to have a man like Obama in office and tell them what his positions are, they do change their minds. I've seen it.
Why do we have to struggle to promote blacks and hispanics as candidates just to prove how “big tent” we are?
But it's not a struggle to promote blacks and Hispanics. If they are worthy and they embrace our beliefs, like Mia Love, they're welcome to run for higher office. Why should they be excluded? Is the GOP just a white guys' party? We are big tent. Conservative principles do work for everyone of every ethnic or racial or social backgrounds. we really are going to become extinct if we don't have everyone on board. The issue is just to stick to our principles and make sure that minorities understand that those principles are good for everyone.
I agree with you that there is no way to inspire the takers, except by the fear of hunger. Hunger is the motivation for most people to get off their backsides and work, after all. It's certainly my motivation. You may not ever get the ghetto to vote GOP.