Conservatives Won't Win Elections by Refusing To Compromise

Townhall.com ^ | May 28, 2014 | Dr Ben Carson

[hal ogen]

Fight till your last breath. Fight LIBs/DIMs until they no longer have any power or authority. LIBs/DIMs are only good for ridicule.

[MortMan]

The problem I have with the narrative on “compromise” is that the people who call for compromise always want to compromise on the core principles that make conservatives conservative.

It is tiresome to be lectured ad nauseum that the tenets I build my life around are to be thrown to the winds if someone else thinks they are inconvenient.

[Sans-Culotte]

There’s no way I’d agree with most RINOs ‘90% of the time’. And his analogy about red and blue armies is incredibly lame, particularly for a ‘brilliant’ guy. Scratch another guy off the list.

[Retired Chemist]

I think this is the reason we ended up with 4 more years of Obama.

[nathanbedford]

More than five years ago I wrote the following post which points a different way from the path recommended by Doctor Carson, it is Ronald Reagan's path, it is the way of clarity and character. It is not the way of compromise or trimming. It is a whole different approach to building electoral majority which rejects the idea that conservatism is somehow not a salable commodity. To the contrary it asserts that conservatism is an eminently attractive and wholesome philosophy.

Here is the post:

Here is a portion of a post which I published in response to a Politico article calling for Republicans and conservatives to move left to fill the big tent:

As we conservatives drag the remnants of our movement into the wilderness with no idea how we will emerge or whether we will ever emerge as an electoral force in America which is recognizable by my generation, we must inevitably engage ourselves in the most soul- searing inquiry of what went wrong. This will be an agony but equally it will be effective only to the degree that it hurts. It will not succeed without bloodshed. There must be finger-pointing and bloodletting. We must carve to the bone. The process must be Darwinian. Those whose ideas are false must be bayoneted on the trail.

The object is to find our soul - nothing less. In a come to Jesus sense we must get absolutely clear what it means to be a conservative. Only at this point do we look to the tent flaps and open them. Those who cannot subscribe to the hard-won consensus, to a confession of faith as to what is a conservative, should walk out through that flap. Those who are attracted from the outside to the core message of conservatism should be encouraged to walk through the flap and enlarge the tent. What the left wants us to do is to expand the census in the tent prematurely and thus turn a movement into a menagerie. The Soul-searching must be conducted by conservatives without the earnest ministrations from liberals like those of Politico. This article, of course, has nothing whatever to do with explaining why Republicans lost 2008 election across the board, it has everything to do with first efforts by the left to sabotage the rebuilding process on the right which must be done exclusively by the right.

We have not lost the 2008 election because we were excessively partisan while Obama was enlightened and transcendental. We actually lost the election because George Bush and Karl Rove betrayed the soul of conservatism. A party without its soul is like an army which does not believe in itself, it cannot win the next contest. A party which had abandoned its principles and so lost the last two elections and frittered away both its power as the ruling coalition and its status as the majority philosophy of the nation, cannot expect to swell its ranks by recruiting to a lost cause. The party must first know what the cause is and only then can it recruit. To again borrow the military analogy, a party like an army disintegrates without a mission. Armies are assigned missions but a political party finds its mission only through soul-searching.

As this process occurs we will be told by the left that only a big tent party can win and that to become a big tent one must move to co-opt the center. That is not how it works. That is the reverse of the way it works. The center is not peopled by voters with fixed notions about the exercise of power who wait for one of the great political parties to surrender their values and embrace the tempered and resolute opinions of the middle. That happens with splinter parties but not with the mushy middle. When an unaffiliated voter bestirs himself to enter the polling booth he is confronted with one of two options: right or left. He does not consider who has moved the farthest geographically from right to the left or left to right any more than he commits because of his own long held political beliefs. He votes for the fella who best tickles his fancy at the moment. Put more charitably, he votes for the candidate who persuades that he is the best, and has the best to offer.

If we as conservatives do not believe that we have the best to offer we should get out of the business. A candidate, like a party, who is centered on his philosophy has integrity and is persuasive. And that philosophy must first have a vertical spiritual component which finds expression and out working in a horizontal governing philosophy.

Because of his race, Obama was asked only to demonstrate that he could walk and talk like a president. Obama has won the middle, not because he pandered to them, which he did, but because he had the wind at his back.

As John McCain reverts from titular head of the Republican Party to United States Senator, it falls to the rest of us to contrive a governing philosophy which he, unfortunately, did not own and therefore could not bequeath to us. We had such a legacy from Ronald Reagan but we squandered it. We must construct our own. We must do it in the wilderness. We must do it unaided by intermeddling liberals. Their's is the serpent's way, the easy way, a pander to the superficially popular, the accommodation to the middle. The bed of birth has always been a bed of pain. The pain must be embraced if we are to receive a new life.

[dontreadthis]

there are 2 issues here, and Dr. Carson does not identify them individually:
1. Compromising with the left
2. compromising with the GOP-e
his case would be better made by elucidating these differences, and may lead him to a different analysis and conclusion

[SunkenCiv]

Of course, there's a right way and a wrong way...

• Rand Paul slams Cliven Bundy's racist rant
• Rand Paul: Bundy's racist remarks are 'offensive'
• Rand Paul: I think Republicans may have over-emphasized voter fraud
• Rand Paul: I'm Open to Voting for Immigration Bill
• Paul: Still hope for immigration reform this year
• (Rand) Paul: GOP Needs to 'Look Like the Rest of America' to Win Again (again)
• Rand Paul Wants Bigger GOP: 'You Go to a Republican Event and It's All White People'
• Rand Paul: Republicans Need to Soften on Social Issues
• Rand Paul on abortion: "We're not changing any of the laws until the country is persuaded otherwise"
• Sen. Paul: 'We're Not Changing Any' Abortion 'Laws Until the Country is Persuaded Otherwise'
• Paul: We probably can't get rid of 'Obamacare'
• Paul: We probably can't get rid of 'Obamacare' - [Sep. 21, 2013 9:56 PM EDT ]
• Paul: 'Difficult to turn the clock back' on O-Care
• Rand Paul: GOP 'probably can't defeat' Obamacare

Rand Paul: Time for GOP to soften war stance

...by softening its edge on some volatile social issues and altering its image as the party always seemingly "eager to go to war... We do need to expand the party and grow the party and that does mean that we don't always all agree on every issue" ... the party needs to become more welcoming to individuals who disagree with basic Republican doctrine on emotional social issues such as gay marriage... "We're going to have to be a little hands off on some of these issues ... and get people into the party," Paul said.

[Posted on 01/31/2013 5:08:50 PM PST by xzins]

Rand Paul's immigration speech

...The Republican Party must embrace more legal immigration.

Unfortunately, like many of the major debates in Washington, immigration has become a stalemate-where both sides are imprisoned by their own rhetoric or attachment to sacred cows that prevent the possibility of a balanced solution.

Immigration Reform will not occur until Conservative Republicans, like myself, become part of the solution. I am here today to begin that conversation.

Let's start that conversation by acknowledging we aren't going to deport 12 million illegal immigrants.

If you wish to work, if you wish to live and work in America, then we will find a place for you...

This is where prudence, compassion and thrift all point us toward the same goal: bringing these workers out of the shadows and into being taxpaying members of society.

Imagine 12 million people who are already here coming out of the shadows to become new taxpayers.12 million more people assimilating into society. 12 million more people being productive contributors.

[Posted on 03/19/2013 7:04:07 AM PDT by Perdogg]

---

Rand Paul calls on conservatives to embrace immigration reform

Latinos, should be a natural constituency for the party, Paul argued, but "Republicans have pushed them away with harsh rhetoric over immigration." ...he would create a bipartisan panel to determine how many visas should be granted for workers already in the United States and those who might follow... [and the buried lead] "Imagine 12 million people who are already here coming out of the shadows to become new taxpayers...

[Posted on 04/21/2013 1:52:42 PM PDT by SoConPubbie]

---

[but he's not in favor of amnesty, snicker, definition of is is]

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Kaslin.

Voting for someone who agrees with you 90 percent of the time is far superior to voting for someone who disagrees with you 100 percent of the time.

[Jagdgewehr]

...they will needlessly subject future generations to untold misery.

Conservatives have been voting, speaking and fighting on for decades now. So, trotting out that old, stupid line about how we conservatives have to compromise (as we have done many times before) or we will solely be the blame for the increasing wretchedness.

No sale.

[Dead Corpse]

You don't win by jettisoning your base.

Period.

Let the other guy compromise.

[Moonman62]

Voting for someone who agrees with you 90 percent of the time is far superior to voting for someone who disagrees with you 100 percent of the time.

The problem is the Ruling Class Republicans can't reach 50% much less 90%.

[Moonman62]

Conservatives won’t win elections by refusing to fight for what’s right.

True enough. Politics is about persuasion, not compromise.

[Klemper]

We’re doomed. Doctor Ben Carson has been paying attention to America. He may not be a fine tuned politician.... but we don’t need another lying political arsehole running the country. We don’t want another “politician” running this country. We don’t need another “politician” running this country. We need an American running this country. NO LAWYERS! NO MUSLIMS! NO KENYANS! NO RINOs’!!!!!!! Choose wisely, and at your own (and OUR) peril.

[bigbob]

Dr. Carson is correct.

[roamer_1]

There is plenty of room for compromise, once the first things, the principles upon which we stand, are met.

Principles, by their very nature, cannot be compromised.

[Tamzee]

Every single time I vote, I compromise my principles and that is the way it should be. Unless Jesus Christ returns and runs for office, every person I vote for will be flawed and “a lesser of two evils”. It just makes sense to vote for the most viable candidate on the conservative end of the spectrum and hope enough people join in to start pushing this country back to the right.

The only point I disagreed with Dr. Carson on is whether or not it is too late for our country... I am afraid we might be passing a point of no return :-(

[eyedigress]

Dr. Carson

Conservatives will not compromise the Constitution of the United States.

Conservatives will not render that not in the Constitution to that of the federal government.

Conservatives will not step and fetch to the likes of Hairy Reed.

[JRandomFreeper]

No one is asking for perfection. A republican presidential candidate that actually lived up to the party platform would probably be enough. You know... pro-life, pro-gun, against amnesty, against socialized medicine, for a smaller government....

Unfortunately, the GOP hasn't been able to find a candidate like that recently.

/johnny

[Timber Rattler]

This is exactly what will happen if people refuse to exercise their civic duty and boycott elections because they feel betrayed

Whatever, Ben.

[Kenny]

I still have your post from a previous thread stating that you “detest all Republicans” so I don’t think this article pertains to you.