I could also title this: The War Before the Battle, and sound a note of finality to it.
By January, I may. We’ll see.
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Forget about the candidates right now. Don’t worry, they won’t forget, and that may be the problem, for each one of the conservatives (I count five) see ALL the other candidates as equal impediments. They each may be conservative but their campaign staffs likely aren’t. They want to win. Period.
But stepping back away from personalities and your favorites, it’s easy to see that there are two historic-based camps engaged in this struggle (which could elevate it later a war), plus Ron Paul, who as always, goes his own way.
Only one can win. And we have to.
By the numbers: Two moderates, Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman can at best garner 30% of the total GOP primary vote, and closer to 26%. I really don’t see that number changing very soon.
The five conservatives are always over 50% combined, closer to 55%.
10%-12% remain undecided, and will until a nominee is selected, so don’t expect much movement there, and of course with app 7% there is Ron Paul.
That’s the basic lay of the land, so remind me, why do we seem to allow moderates to steam roll our election process? In the past, it has been money, the power of the GOP Establishment, the RNC-Congressional Leadership-state party apparatus, and the media.
How the Moderate- Establishment wing see the 2012 election.
Moderates have not done well in winning elections on their own merits. George H W Bush won in 1988 on Ronald Reagan’s coattails, then lost on his own. You’d have to go back to Richard Nixon in 1968 to find a moderate Republican winner, and his election was on a “Get out of Vietnam” platform. While LBJ put into place the entitlement state, Nixon did the bureaucratic state, e.g., EPA.
Modern moderates…you can call them RINO’s if you wish, but I won’t put Rudy Guiliani in the same boat with Mike Castle…see this as their best chance ever, as, even with all the money Obama can bring to bear, they think it can’t help him. And they’re right.
But the fallacy of their argument is that if Obama’s money won’t help him, why do they think their money will help them…against us?
What we know, and current GOP polling shows it, aside from managerial competence, which Romney can claim, no moderate has yet to set down a firm position on anything from which they will not be moved. They have no fixed stars in the heaven. No banner in the ground. Nothing that isn’t subject to negotiation.
They don’t see anything in danger in America that cannot be fixed with just a better guiding hand. The Republic is not on the brink. Basic freedoms are not at risk.
The Constitution is never mentioned, and apparently is just as up for grabs as it has been the past several years. It is just a thing, like many other things, the Republican Establishment has always been willing to use as a bargaining chip. They find no problem at all with the current shape or rules of the playing field in which politics is played in America. No matter how much the Left changes the rules of the game, they’re in there playing.
From Obama’s inauguration to his many dictatorial coups of constitutional and congressional power, they only stare blankly (Mitch McConnell’s blind stare the best, because we see it so often). No outrage can bring them to wrath or high dudgeon. No matter what, they still think it is 1989, or 1972, or 1929. Business as usual.
Therefore, it’s not hard to see what GOP moderates, the Establishment, want to achieve, and preserve for themselves…some semblance of the status quo ante, only with them in charge. The rest of the nation comes in second place.
We can get no firm, fist pounding insistence that Obamacare be repealed or that out-of-control bureaucrats be reigned in, with many fired, entire departments done away with. Will the government get out of Green Energy, or just do it better…with more or less the same amount of money? Romney actually has a position on this, only no one is paying attention.
Moderates’ main problem with beating Obama is how to keep conservatives on board with their candidate, especially the Christians, down-on-the-farmers, and blue-collars, without letting them extort any promises their moderate president will later have to crawdad on, as Bush I did.
For conservatives, moderates biggest problem is that they are likely to have a candidate (Romney) in the White House who has, with the exception of climate change, had a For and Against opinion on virtually every issue before the nation today.
So who, in an election where truth matters, can believe anything Mitt Romney says?
This is no small thing to a conservative. Who can best be relied on to keep his word? …which is a thing no moderate ever considers except when accepting a marker for poker losses at the country club.
How the Conservative wing sees this.
Quoting the great plagiarist Barack Obama (from The Goonies), “It’s our time.”
And if it isn’t this time, will there ever be a time again for a generation?
Obama is indeed weak. in fact, the entire leftist front is, and there is some worry there, for the weak and wounded can wreak all sorts of unplanned-for havoc.
The first conservative president since Calvin Coolidge, Ronald Reagan in 1980-1988 completely turned America around, without the benefit of a supportive Congress.
But within five years it was squandered and lost, and America retreated, for the most part, to where it was under Carter, only without the economic malaise. Our Constitution was trashed. Criminality ran free inside government. American institutions were marginalized, with social and moral customs closing in on those of the town of Gomorrah just before Lot’s wife died. (That’s for those of you who read.)
Finally, the entire apparatus that brought the US government down in the last two years of George W Bush’s term was seeded over an eight year span because his father, a moderate, couldn’t keep his word with the people when faced with a confrontation with his soul-brothers on the other side of the aisle.
And later, because of it, one killer was allowed to escape to bring the United States into a worldwide, ten year war, with no end in sight.
So, yes, America stands at the precipice.
I can’t convey to you the historic significance of this, especially since it has been left up to a bunch of pumpkin seeds like us, with little money, and only a clear vision of the right, but in order to smite Evil in battle, we must first go out and defeat Appeasers in our own war.
All we have to do is seize it. It’s our time.
Or never.
Why we Should Win, Why They Should Lose
First, money shouldn’t matter.
In other writings I’ve pointed out that we cannot rely on the big pockets of conservatism to help our cause. But if we stay committed to the roots of recovery, which is not our favorite candidate, but rather conservatism, the principles and institutions we insist be re-instituted in American public life, we won’t need their money.
As Americans proved in 2010 by by-passing the RNC toll-takers and contributing directly to candidates, we began killing two birds with one stone. While Cold Warrior and his troops are slowly taking over the GOP from the grass roots, we are making the sweetheart deals the RNC makes with beltway media consultants more and more problematic. Even before Herman Cain, some candidates in 2010 proved that the “new” political consultants may be people who can best get the pulse of the people, and ensure the candidates speaks to that, rather than well-connected inside-the-Beltway media marketing firms sponsored by the RNC, a club within a club.
And lately Herman Cain is proving you don’t have to have deep pockets if your message is clear, consistent, and believable. We may have uncovered a third way!
Money doesn’t have to matter, and we’ll let the Romney folks who most want this to come down to a Romney-Cain race by January have their way, just as the Brown people in California did with that Reagan fellow. But Perry, Bachmann, Santorum, Gingrich will work just as well, as long as it is Conservatism, VOTE CONSERVATISM vs timid moderation, that is the main course. Reagan proved this by sweeping New York (yep, New York) in 1984.
Whatcho say?
Secondly, the deep pockets we do have, now, not later, should begin a massive national VOTE CONSERVATIVE campaign.
Steve Forbes, Ned Ryun, those kinds of people should push conservatism as the sole hope for a true reversal of Obamacare and the true restoration of responsible government. And they should meet with and enjoin the five conservatives to always to keep their eyes on the real prize here, which is the advent, and permanent installation in Congress and the White House of the only body of political and philosophical doctrines that can save America.
All the candidates need to know that is a matter of timing when they can no longer sustain a campaign at the expense of the conservative cause.
In the final tally, conservatism’s 50% margin will grow, as it was conservatism, not moderation and reconciliation, that brought independents over to the GOP side in 2010. Even half or more of Ron Paul’s 7% will vote the conservative ticket.
And except for the Delaware Republicans (and a few congressional outliers in other state primaries) who worked hard against Christine O’Donnell after she got the tea party nomination, even most of the more practical moderates will vote for the conservative we choose.
It should be a landslide.
Should a moderate get the nod, even though we will all silently go vote, it will be a tough slog, as the millions they spend will not replace the lost enthusiasm of millions.
We can’t let this happen.
Reagan’s Eleventh Commandment is now modified, Speak no ill of any conservative…unless it’s the truth. And by no means, allow Barack Obama or any Democrat win.
VOTE CONSERVATIVE FIRST
IF POSSIBLE VOTE CONSERVATIVE AND REPUBLICAN
