The Republican Wing of the Republican Party

The Vanguard ^ | 8/29/02 | Rod D. Martin

[aardvark1]

THE REPUBLICAN WING OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY by Rod D. Martin, 29 August 2002

DENVER -- The conservative activists who gathered here earlier this month for the National Federation of Republican Assemblies (http://www.nf-ra.org) board meeting look like their party. They are pro-life, pro-gun and pro-Pledge of Allegiance. They think high taxes and big government are bad and that God is good, that Washington should be weak but that America should be strong.

They are a pretty normal bunch of Republicans. And they're fighting for the soul of their party.

"Anytime the grassroots have a say, we win overwhelmingly," says Richard Engle, NFRA national director from Oklahoma. "But the liberals want to stop that any way they can."

Engle is right on both counts. Except in the northeast, the Republican Party's membership is almost entirely composed of conservatives and their libertarian kin. Assuming they turn out their people, they almost always win at conventions and caucuses, as well as in "closed" primaries (i.e., those primaries where Democrats aren't allowed to "cross over").

Moreover, despite a seemingly chronic inability to develop a consistent message or to play well with others (i.e., build coalitions), conservatives have made impressive gains over the past generation. When Goldwater lead his revolutionary charge in 1964, "RINOs" -- conservative activists's term for liberals, or "Republicans In Name Only" -- had run the party since before the New Deal. There was no Christian Right, no powerful gun lobby, no pro-life movement worthy of the name.

All of that has changed. The Christian Right alone is so pivotal that, at one point in the 1990s, Christian Coalition members by themselves represented almost 40% of the party's activists. Even the Christian Coalition's implosion hasn't affected that trend. According to a decade-long study recently released by Campaigns and Elections magazine, the Christian Right fully controls over a third of all state Republican parties, and holds a powerful state committee minority in 81% of the rest.

The Christian Right is far from the only flavor of conservatives that make up the party; and what little ground conservatives do not hold belongs mostly to the small group of non-ideological "Yellow Dog" Republicans. Yet despite all this, the left is alive and well in the Republican Party. And like its Democrat counterparts, it is better organized, better lead, and tremendously better at taking and holding power.

Dislodging these leftists from the party's power centers is the NFRA's raison d'être. Starting with the California Republican Assembly, founded in the 1930s by an earlier generation of conservative Young Turks, the Republican Assembly movement has spread across the country in recent years as conservatives have watched their numbers repeatedly stifled by a handful of liberal insiders. The CRA's successes range from the upset nominations of Ronald Reagan and (more recently) Bill Simon for governor of California to the complete domination of the California Republican Party organization for most of the 1990s. It's no wonder that activists elsewhere have embraced their "shadow party" model: create a side-by-side "Republican Assembly" for every Republican precinct, city, county and state committee in America, with the aim of taking over the corresponding party organs and the national party as well.

The potential is tremendous, particularly in overcoming one of conservatism's weakness in coalition building. "There's only so much Eagle Forum and Right to Life and Right to Work and the NRA can do without blowing their tax status," one prominent NFRA board member says privately, "but if we share membership, the RA can do the political work -- inside the party and out -- that the 501(c)(3)s can't, even though it's exactly the same people. And once you get that started, the RA is the perfect vehicle for building the coalition we need to win."

It's a good plan -- the sort of thing Democrats have done for decades -- and it comes not a moment too soon. As Engle points out, Republicans have historically been the only open, "democratic" party: no loyalty oaths, no whites-only primaries, nor any of the other impediments to grassroots control the Democrats have virtually patented.

Yet that distinction is slipping away. Republicans recently changed their rules to add "superdelegates" to their convention: 83 unelected people who will help decide the presidential nomination without accountability to any primary, caucus or convention. In 2000, a similar system in the Democratic Party required Bill Bradley to win an impossible 2/3 of the popular vote nationally just to pull even with Al Gore in convention delegates: the unelected insiders, almost unanimously for Gore, controlled 25% of the delegates before a single primary vote was cast.

Conservatives will have to turn back this tide of growing elitist control if they are ever to nominate another Ronald Reagan, much less fundamentally change America. The left is at its best when it's rigging the rules of the game. The NFRA is gamely standing in the gap; but it needs warriors, and fast.

Copyright: Rod D. Martin, 29 August 2002.

[Bogie]

Remember McCain? Boy did the Democrats want him in that race!

[rdb3]

The potential is tremendous, particularly in overcoming one of conservatism's weakness in coalition building. "There's only so much Eagle Forum and Right to Life and Right to Work and the NRA can do without blowing their tax status," one prominent NFRA board member says privately, "but if we share membership, the RA can do the political work -- inside the party and out -- that the 501(c)(3)s can't, even though it's exactly the same people. And once you get that started, the RA is the perfect vehicle for building the coalition we need to win."

This is one of my main beefs with Republicans in general and the Right in particular. There's no way I can take this tact seriously because there are solidly conservative issues that the Right can take to the black community and win with, yet the Right won't lift a finger to do it.

Why?

Look at the issues that are taylor-made for the Right to take advantage of within the black community: school vouchers, crime, illegal immigration, taxes (including the death tax and Social Security), and the feeling of being taken for granted by the Democrats.

None, I mean, NONE of these issues has anything to do with "pandering," because that won't solve these issues.

One by one:

School vouchers: The #1 constituency of the Democrats is American black community. But the school voucher systems have been seriously attacked by the Democrats, with no respect to the fact that well over 60% of black people approve of school vouchers, while the remaining 40% are split between wanting serious school reform or leaving it as is. That's a statistical majority, people. It's a "can't lose" issue for the Right. But is the Right taking advantage of these facts? Nope.

Crime: Whether living in a housing project or in majority black suburbs, people want to be safe in their own neighborhoods. The overwhelming majority of crime committed by blacks is against other blacks. To say that decent black people are okay with this is stupid. They're not. Add to this the facts that gun control laws have their roots in Jim Crow racism and the pro-2nd Amendment right will solve the crime problem and you have a strong, truthful, winning issue. But the Democrats pay lip-service to doing anything about it so that they can use it again and again as a campaign issue, and the Right is nowhere to be found to address these concerns to black people.

Illegal immigration: Blacks and illegal immigrants are not a natural coalition. Border control is also a concern to lower-class blacks because the number of illegal immigrants depresses wages and crowds out the number of jobs that the lower-skilled can get. Working to seal our borders is in the interest of national security and sovereignty, but also individuals who live in the border states as a living issue. But is the Right taking this message to blacks in these areas? Nope.

Taxes: 75% of black people in this nation are solidly middle-class. Believe it or not, black people don't like paying taxes any more than white people do. It's no secret that the Social Security system is about break down into an irreparable state, and something must be done about it. Looking at the life-expectancy of blacks, it stands to reason that the point of wanting to leave something behind for their children to build upon would be an enlightening and strong issue for the Right to take advantage of making. It strengthens America two ways. First, building of personal wealth that can be passed on to family members is a sure way to fight poverty (without government assistance, of course). Second, it promotes the idea of personal responsibility and honest self-esteem by one's own accomplishments.

But when seeing how many blacks won't live to begin receiving Social Security benefits that they have paid tons of money into over their working lives, and couple this with the fact that the death tax obliterates the incentive to save and pass on those savings, the Right's fiscal message is the correct answer to these problems. But is the Right making these arguments to black people in whose benefit this surely is? Naaa.

So, what am I to make of these things? Is the "base" of the Right to grow, or remain static? If the "principles" of the Right are paramount to virtually all else, shouldn't those "principles" be spread in an effort to convince and convert people? I put quotes around "principle" because it doesn't mean a thing if not acted upon. Also, if "principle" is paramount, the conviction with which one holds these "principles" should embolden them to spread them far, wide, and fearlessly, right?

This isn't the case. The Left will continue to take advantage of the black vote for their own power, and the Right will simply forego campaigning to blacks or pursue their vote. Then, the ubiquitous statement is made by one on the Right, "Why do they vote for Democrats all the time?"

DUH!

Where was the Right in the campaign? As far as it's truly concerned, the Right may as well not even exist to black folks because it doesn't make itself known to them. This makes it so simple for the Left to demagogue the Right and paint it as a vicious monster.

America is virtually split down the middle with whites, 50-50 Pub-RAT. So, what can effectively provide that extra weight to tilt the scale in the Right's favor?

If the Right were serious about wanting to win so that its "principles" can be acted upon with power, it had better open its eyes and wake up.

Show me something. Anything is virtually better than what has been shown.

[aardvark1]

I agree that the right has simply written off the black vote over the years even though the left has done nothing to actually improve life for them. All the trillions of dollars thrown into the programs to help those in poverty in the cities have done little more than line the pockets of bureaucrats. The result is that those who are the purported targets of this money have actually gotten poorer and their numbers have swollen.

Yes, the right needs to address the black community on economic issues but also on moral issues. I believe the "agenda" of the right (especially the religious right) more closely aligns with the goals of the majority of blacks who are just as fed up with crime and drugs and thugs as anyone else.

The voices need to come from the black community as well. It has become too easy for white leftists to demagogue the white conservative out of the dialogue without a fair hearing for the ideas being presented.

[hchutch]

At the same time, I don't think the right should put all the eggs in one basket. Bush seems to be doing very well in translating his popularity with Hispanics into support for the GOP among them.

IMHO, for outreach to black to succeed, the GOP will have to first render the "leaders" like Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Julian Bond, and Kweisi Mfume irrelevant. Which means that despite them delivering 85% of the black vote to Democrats, the Democrats cannot win because the GOP, at the very least, runs a very close second in the Hispanic vote, and preferably wins the Hispanic vote.

[Sabertooth]

This is one of my main beefs with Republicans in general and the Right in particular. There's no way I can take this tact seriously because there are solidly conservative issues that the Right can take to the black community and win with, yet the Right won't lift a finger to do it.

Why?

Because so many of us Republicans are comfortable in the role of hand-wringing wussies, ashamed of who we are and what we believe.

While the Right certainly can't be absolved of responsibility, I'll lay more of it at the feet of the RINOs. If anyone's afraid to take a conservative message into public view, it's our lovely, fair-weather moderates. I've never had a conversation with a black person where a respectful presentation of conservative issues didn't evoke a respectful hearing. It's so damn simple, no bidding is required.

Unfortunately, neither party respects blacks enough to do anything but pander and try to buy their votes through Leftist transfers of wealth.

So long as that's the only message they hear, why would blacks do anything but vote Democrat? The Left will always outbid the Right, since they have less reservations against stealing money through taxes to do it.

No one respects cowardice. If Republicans want to put black votes into play, they need to put conservative issues into play.

Without black votes in the bag, the Democrats simply can't win.

A strong conservative message = victory for Republicans.

[Sabertooth]

Bush seems to be doing very well in translating his popularity with Hispanics into support for the GOP among them.

While Bush is polling fairly well among Latinos, that has yet to translate into votes or coattails.

Don't be in such a hurry to count the eggs in that one basket.

Don't be in such a hurry to yet again write off the black vote.

IMHO, for outreach to black to succeed, the GOP will have to first render the "leaders" like Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Julian Bond, and Kweisi Mfume irrelevant.

How is this done by silence in the face of the race-baters' lies?

How is this done by appeasement on so-called "black issues," that concede the terms of the argument to the Left?

How is this done by RINO electoral strategies, which have been losing ground with blacks for more than a decade?

[AppyPappy]

The black vote is for sale. I voted in a largely black district and the polls were empty. But when the results came out, they had a 97% voting rate. That is why people in FL complained because they weren't allowed to vote because they were shown to have already voted or had prepunched cards. It's all rigged by the Democratic Party. That is why Gore ran out of money for advertising before the election. The money had already been distributed to the local bosses to pay for the poll workers. The Dems openly pay people to vote. They use the pulpit to push candidates.

[hchutch]

And how, pray tell, do we get a conservative messgae past the first "church burning" or "James Byrd" ad that the NAALCP will run against a conservative candidate? The problem is, conservative outreach is constantly drowned out by the demagouges and hucksters. Constantly. It happened in 2000.

I think it might happen in 2002, despite the fact is was CONSERVATIVES who stood up to the NEA and NAALCP in fighting for the vouchers decision at the Supreme Court (which we won by the barest of margins). I've got $50 to Free Republic that says that the Dems still get at least 85% of the black vote this time around.

[hchutch]

I'll trust in the Hispanic vote until proven otherwise. The black vote has, in my mind, been proven to be at LEAST 85% for the Dems solid. The survey results are looking good to date, and I'll give that a shot.

[Sabertooth]

And how, pray tell, do we get a conservative messgae past the first "church burning" or "James Byrd" ad that the NAALCP will run against a conservative candidate? The problem is, conservative outreach is constantly drowned out by the demagouges and hucksters. Constantly. It happened in 2000.

What "conservative outreach?" It's non-existent, quashed by RINOs, cowering at "the first 'church burning' or 'James Byrd' ad." There is nothing to drown out.

The Democrats demagogue in a "me-too," moderate echo chamber.

I've got $50 to Free Republic that says that the Dems still get at least 85% of the black vote this time around.

I've got $50 that says that the Democrats will get 90% of the black vote if the GOP follows their same, do-nothing, electoral strategy once again.

[Sabertooth]

I'll trust in the Hispanic vote until proven otherwise.

You have no "Hispanic vote" to trust, only some polls about President Bush's personal popularity with Hispanics.

How deep is it? Are there GOP coattails? Is Bush's popularity based on him personally, conservative issues appealing to Hispanics, ethinic pandering, or some combination of the three?

None of us has any idea.

You suggested to rdb3 that we not put our eggs in one basket, yet that is exactly what you advocate.

Why give up on blacks without a fight? If the Dems can't get more than 80% of the black vote, they're toast.

That and a cup of coffee will smell like victory the morning after Election Day.

[hchutch]

No bet. It's 85 to 90% no matter what. Why beat ourselves up over this? Until they see that the leadership pushing this "hand out" mentality (Jackson, Sharpton, Mfume, Bond) will get them nowhere, they will stay on the planation.

I've not no problem pushing school choice or anti-crime intiatives, but quite frankly, I'd rather go full-tilt for Hispanics and Asians (particularly the small business owners and others who are working hard to make it here), and render the 85-90% margin they'll rack up as worthless.

This might sound a little harsh, but until I see a willingness from more blacks (in addition to the ones currently doing the fighting like rdb3, Trueblackman, and mhking) to throw off the LEADERSHIP, the best thing we can do for them in the long run is to make the 85-90% that the likes of Mfume, Sharpton, and Jackson worthless to the Dems by racking up better margins elsewhere in the electorate.

Maybe, just maybe, more will take on the likes of Rangel, Conyers, Owens, and Bernice Johnson, and we can get some progress at that point. But until there is a regime change at the likes of the NAALCP, that will not happen, and the only way to get that regime change is to make the 85-90% of the black vote they deliver to the Dems no more a guarantee of winning an election than a plugged nickel.

[hchutch]

Well, the Hispanic vote is much less of a long shot than the black vote.

[skeeter]

You suggested to rdb3 that we not put our eggs in one basket, yet that is exactly what you advocate.

If what hchutch means is the Right should direct its strictly conservative message to the hispanic-American community as well as the black community I would agree.

However, if he is suggesting that this is what Bush has been doing to date I vehemently disagree.

Offering special consideration to lawbreaking hispanics in order to pander to their legal bretheren is immoral, plain and simple. Especially when it comes at the expensive of the poorest Americans among us, and many in the black community.

[rdb3]

And how, pray tell, do we get a conservative messgae past the first "church burning" or "James Byrd" ad that the NAALCP will run against a conservative candidate? The problem is, conservative outreach is constantly drowned out by the demagouges and hucksters. Constantly. It happened in 2000.

By not speaking from the outside with a 0.5 db microphone but with a Dolby Sound loud speaker IN THE PEOPLE'S FACES.

The Right is no where to be found in black areas in a campaign. Take the fight to the people themselves. Lay out the message. Give them a true choice by explaining the conservative message AND how it would benefit those voters.

The Right has failed in this, and failed miserably.

[F16Fighter]

Good post...

[F16Fighter]

"A strong conservative message = victory for Republicans.

The lack of a consolidated effort on a part the GOP is spelled 'R-I-N-O'.

[rdb3]

No bet. It's 85 to 90% no matter what. Why beat ourselves up over this? Until they see that the leadership pushing this "hand out" mentality (Jackson, Sharpton, Mfume, Bond) will get them nowhere, they will stay on the planation.

With friends like you, who needs enemies? You are still giving legitimacy to the so-called "black leadership." That's a media creation, aided by Leftist whites. There were no votes cast for these clowns. They are illegitimate.

I've not no problem pushing school choice or anti-crime intiatives, but quite frankly, I'd rather go full-tilt for Hispanics and Asians (particularly the small business owners and others who are working hard to make it here), and render the 85-90% margin they'll rack up as worthless.

Well you go right ahead.

This might sound a little harsh, but until I see a willingness from more blacks (in addition to the ones currently doing the fighting like rdb3, Trueblackman, and mhking) to throw off the LEADERSHIP, the best thing we can do for them in the long run is to make the 85-90% that the likes of Mfume, Sharpton, and Jackson worthless to the Dems by racking up better margins elsewhere in the electorate.</i.

No dice. There you go again lending legitimacy to those who are not legitimate.

Maybe, just maybe, more will take on the likes of Rangel, Conyers, Owens, and Bernice Johnson, and we can get some progress at that point. But until there is a regime change at the likes of the NAALCP, that will not happen, and the only way to get that regime change is to make the 85-90% of the black vote they deliver to the Dems no more a guarantee of winning an election than a plugged nickel.

That proves it. You've fallen for the exact same propaganda tactics and infantilization of the Left. We do not need any damned leaders! You talk as though we are ruled over by a ghetto Saddam that we need the President to send in the 82nd and 101st to oust him. That's not the truth. The NAACP is a paper tiger, aided only by the media and rich white Leftists. You're buying into what they're selling, but it's not worth a cent.

[hchutch]

Personally, I view it somewhat differently.

I am far more comfortable with someone who is working hard and has not taken welfare than I am with a demagouge who is calling for reparations for slavery. Quite frankly, those who are here, not taking ANY welfare, not committing crimes, ought to be allowed to remain. They're far less damaging than the reparations crowd, if you ask me.

Far too many of the "poorest Americans" seem content with welfare, including blacks. I don't see them offering to go out into fields and do the work there. "Illegals" ARE. I don't see many of those poor Americans offering to go into the military. A lot of Hispanics are. I don't see kids in poor families working hard to get scholarships while helping with a familiy business the way Asian kids often are.

If the "poorest Americans" want to get out of being poor, the path is pretty obivous. Get off their duffs and compete for cryin' out loud. Until I see them choosing that over welfare and non-achievement, then I'm not going to try to rig the job market against people who ARE willing to bust their butts and achieve.

Sorry, but I'm not a fan of welfare, nor am I understanding of those who feel content to use it as a hammock, who then try to blame their position on someone who was willing to do a job that might not be fun.