By Tim Dunkin
As anyone who has been paying attention to the mood among the grassroots conservative base of the Republican Party (and to those who used to be Republicans) knows, there is a lot of anger out there. Conservatives are not happy with the Party establishment, and it’s really showing. According to a recent poll by Rasmussen, 74% of Republicans think their own Party’s representatives in Congress are out of touch with their constituents and their base. There is widespread discontent out there. Some folks are already boiling up the tar and plucking the chickens in anticipation of the chance to “throw ‘em all out.”
Now, in such a situation, what would be the reasonable response on the part of the Republican leadership at the national level? Perhaps it would seem reasonable to give an ear to the concerns of the people who still make up the vast majority of your Party? Maybe you should consider stepping back and giving these folks what they want, since it’s their Party anywise? They’re the ones who come out and vote on election day, who do the grunt work of putting up signs, making phone calls, chairing precincts, and so on, so shouldn’t they have a say in the direction the Party takes? In the very least, the GOP could find its spine, and stop rolling over to the Democrats like a hound dog desperately seeking a belly rub. If the GOP leadership had any sense, they’d see the signs and start getting with the program.
But, nobody ever accused the establishment bigwigs in the Republican Party of having any sense.
To state the blindly obvious, the Republican Party establishment - by which I mean the network of advisers, elected office-holders, Party organs, and higher-level Party officials who primarily determine the direction in which Party policy and Party money goes – is politically tone deaf. All across this country, you have Tea Parties and town halls bursting with the frustration of the common man who is seeing himself becoming the victim of a political class that has absolutely no concern about his wants and desires. Poll after poll after poll, on every issue imaginable, show that the American people are opposed to, well, pretty much everything that Obama and the Democrats in Congress are trying to do. There is clearly an opportunity being handed to the Republican Party on a golden platter to utterly destroy the Democrats on health care, cap-and-steal, the Porkulus spending, the deficits, the war in Afghanistan, and any number of other pressing issues. For the first time that I can remember, voters have told Rasmussen that they trust Republicans more than Democrats on all ten of the “trust issues” that Rasmussen tracks – including Democrat-friendly issues like health care, education, and social security. That’s without the Republicans even really doing anything – that’s a sign of how badly people don’t like the way the Democrats are handling this government.
So what has the GOP leadership done with this extremely favorable political landscape? They’ve let it grow weeds through their inaction, and have sprayed Roundup on what little green grass remains left. Many of the Republican elected officials in Congress seem to trip over themselves in their zeal to “reach across the aisle” to accommodate Democrats, thereby giving the Evil Party bipartisan cover with which to defuse voter anger when election day comes. Instead of distancing themselves from this Obamacare monstrosity and attacking it at every turn, they’re silent (at best) or quietly finding ways to add enough stuff that they want so as to justify voting for it – witness the evil twins from Maine, one of whom (Olympia Snowe) recently voted to move one of the more egregious versions out of committee so that it is one step closer to becoming a reality.
Establishment Republicans have also taken pains to loudly and arrogantly distance themselves from those leading figures – like Sarah Palin – who speak for the conservative base and aren’t ashamed of it. For example, we see Steve Schmidt and other former McCain staffers doing their level best to pin every ill of the poorly-ran McCain campaign on Palin, accusing her of being a “drag” on the ticket. That’s a tin ear, folks. If it weren’t for Palin, McCain would not have merely lost badly, he’d have been blown out roundly. She was the only thing that even came near to salvaging that catastrophe. No, the blame for McCain’s poor showing rests with McCain himself – with his reaching across the aisle, with his telling the voters not to be afraid of an Obama presidency (???), with his out-of-step position on illegal immigration and so forth.
Yet, this leadership caste in the Republican Party looks down its nose at conservatives, viewing us with disdain. We’re not “respectable.” We don’t fit into the good ol’ boy network of backslapping, backroom deals, compromise, PAC-funded vacations, $1000-a-plate fundraisers, and nice words from the media elite. Conservatives are “scary” because they hold to moral values which would go against the way the Republican elites live, and our views on fiscal issues would hinder the elite from successfully playing the “go-along-to-get-along” game of buying votes and favor out of the public largesse.
Serving as a microcosm of everything that is wrong with the Republican Party establishment is the way in which the Party has handled the special election for Congress in New York’s 23rd congressional district. This election will decide the replacement for former Congressman John McHugh, a center-right Republican who crossed over to the dark side earlier this year and joined Obama’s cabinet as his Secretary of the Army. This district is a reasonably conservative one that winds its way across a large section of northern upstate New York. Some parts of this district (as it is presently drawn) have been represented in Congress by Republicans all the way back to the 19th century. Republicans enjoy a roughly 45,000 voter advantage in registration. The southern and more populous counties in the district generally went for McCain last year, or else were very close. In short, this is a district where Republicans ought to be able to win, and do so with a solid conservative, especially in the present political climate that so highly disfavors left-wing Democrats.
So, this all being the case, what does the GOP leadership at the district level do? They hand-pick Dede Scozzafava to run for the seat – a radically left-wing “Republican” who is pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage, pro-Porkulus, pro-cap-and-steal, pro-card check, anti-gun, and who has a history in the New York Assembly of supporting higher taxes, despite her recent pledge not to do so. In short, she is everything the Republican Party membership is not. She has flirted with the Democrats about a party switch on several occasions – one of these being just a few months ago, for the purpose of running for this very office as a Democrat. She has been endorsed by ACORN, and left-wing blogs like Daily Kos prefer her over the Democrat in the race. She is clearly out of step with both Republicans nationally, and even those in this northeastern district.
Why was Scozzafava chosen to run for this office? According to those in the know, she was handpicked by another leftist Republican officeholder who chose not to run for office but who wanted to play “kingmaker”, and who had the willing acquiescence of the district GOP chairman. Conservatives had no input, and were left entirely out of the loop, which is why a real conservative – Doug Hoffman, running on the Conservative Party ticket – has had to step forward and be the voice and candidate for conservatives in this election.
Hence, you have a candidate who is radically out of step with the base of the Party, even in her own district. Sounds like a problem with the district leadership, right? Yes, but it goes beyond that. Supposedly conservative Republicans representing the RCCC (Republican Congressional Campaign Committee) are supporting her, financially as well as rhetorically. Hundreds of thousands of dollars of money donated by Republicans across the country to support the RCCC and to help elect Republicans to Congress (which most of us thought would be conservative…) has been spent supporting someone who really can’t even be called a RINO – she’s further left than even that term suggests. The RNC, instead of doing the right thing and supporting Hoffman and calling for Scozzafava to step down so a real Republican can run in her place, has chosen tawdry partisanship over principles and conservatism. Newt Gingrich, even, has called this woman “the future of the Party.”
Well, not MY party, Newt.
People across this country are mad. Republicans are mad at their own Party. Independents are mad at the Republicans for being squishes. Everybody’s mad, but nothing is getting done because the Republican Party leadership would rather play patty-cake with the Democrats than fight them.
This has to stop. Now.
The leadership in the Republican Party had better wake up and smell the brewing rebellion. While I personally don’t support the movement (yet), there are a lot of conservatives out there who think the GOP is broken beyond repair, and who want a Third Party to replace it. Why? Because the GOP keeps drifting leftward with folks like John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Mike Steele at the helm. This needs to stop, or the GOP leadership will find themselves admirals without a navy.
First of all, the leadership caste, starting with big-name “advisors” like Steve Schmidt, need to get one thing straight – social conservatism is not the cause of the GOP’s recent electoral woes. Indeed, if we look at what won and what didn’t on election night last November, the only conservatism that won was social conservatism. While Republican candidates were dropping like ninepins, socially conservative ballot initiatives were winning handily all across the country, even in Blue states that Obama won by wide margins. Especially instructive for examining the present disconnect is the fact that anti-gay marriage referenda won in California and Florida – yet people like Schmidt and David Frum constantly tell us that the GOP has to “embrace” gay marriage. Sure. Let’s embrace an issue that will burn one of the last remaining bridges we might have with conservative Democrats and socially conservative minority voters. Brilliant idea.
Second, get back to the core Republican principles of fiscal responsibility and smaller government. The Reagan formula still works. The GOP leadership needs to be reminded of the connection between fiscal conservatism and liberty. Freedom entails less government in your life and less money stolen from your wallet. The conservative tripod of fiscal responsibility, traditional values, and a strong national defense are the three legs that the Republican Party needs to stand on. Eliminate any one of them from our policy initiatives, and the whole thing will tip. Again, if they can’t grasp this, then they need to be replaced by someone who will. If conservatives need to engage in a hostile takeover of the Party apparatus from the county level on up, so be it. If the leadership won’t wake up, then roll them out of the bed and replace them.
In short, and if you will pardon the term, the Republican Party needs to be democratized with respect to its own membership, lest it continue its present Democratization. The GOP needs to become more responsive to the desires of the large majority of conservatives, of their various stripes, who make up the Party membership and who are basically shut out from its decision-making. Does that sound unreasonable to you? Not to me. I don’t think that there is anything nervy or unreasonable with asking that you give a little something back to the people who make it possible for your Party to win elections in the first place – the base.
Likewise, the primary system that is currently used to choose our candidate for the Presidency needs to be aired out. Primaries ought to be closed to everyone but Republicans, but need to be more accessible for Republicans. Likewise, we cannot let a few states decide our nominee by giving early winners the momentum. Let Republican candidates fight for the votes of Republicans in every state by having the Republican primaries take place on a single day, nationwide.
If the leadership of the GOP doesn’t find its moral center again, it will continue to bleed disaffected members and descend further into minority status. I would call upon the Party leadership to step back from the perks and the backslapping long enough to realize that if you don’t start giving conservatives more respect, you won’t have a Party left to play with. Looked at from that perspective, not only the survival of the Republican Party is at stake, but also the bigwigs’ own future prospects. Let’s hope they at least have enough sense to understand the principle of self-preservation.
