Back in June, Politico had asked Newt how to deal with “conservative purists”. Newt’s answer was “You shrug them off.”
Well I guess you could say Newt is being a man of his word. He is endorsing Dede Scozzafava, who Michelle Malkin describes as an ACORN-friendly, union-pandering, tax-and-spend radical Republican.
The GOP is clearly banking on people electing their crummy candidates just to get away from the crummier Democrats currently infesting Washington. This is where conservatives must give the GOP a very hard bitch slap and reject their awful RINO candidates in every primary.
Back during the 2008 elections, I started using the term “Shit Sandwich Republicans,” primarily in the context of the John McCain candidacy, but also more generally to describe politicians nominally Republican who actually were quite liberal, who ignored the long-time principles of the GOP, and yet expected conservatives and others to vote for them simply because they weren’t officially Democrats.
I called them all shit sandwiches, because their approach boiled down to “Eat your shit sandwich and pretend the filling is tasty jam, because otherwise the Democrats win.”
The genesis of this attitude, of course, is a D.C. elite of the GOP that is totally caught up in Washington power games, and has no cognizance of, or care for, the principles of the people who elect them. In this calculus, having a Democrat like Arlen Specter pretend to be a Republican, and even vote that way every once in a while, is better than being a party that stands up for the principles on which it was established of individual liberty, small government, fiscal conservatism, strong defense, and constitutional integrity.
I conjectured that Shit Sandwich Republicans were as bad - if not worse - for the liberty-minded conservative principles I, and millions of others, espouse, as were the Democrats themselves. I continue to make that claim today.
Here’s the nut of it: The GOP establishment sees their problem as being that they are out of power. People like me see the problem as being that they are out of power because they have turned their backs on the principles those who once voted for them believe in.
So the establishment backs anybody, no matter how faithless they are to Republican principles, if they think there is a chance for victory and a return to power. Unfortunately, those of us who see the lack of principle as the main problem don’t want to vote for such people, and so they lose, because they can’t answer the question “Power to do what?” to our satisfaction.
All of this springs from a basic misperception: the GOP establishment believes that conservative principles are not a winning platform. They ignore that America is a conservative nation, and they ignore that their own biggest winner and most effective standard bearer of the past hundred years was an avowed conservative who ran on conservative principles, and never stopped espousing them during or after his presidency.
Here are some of my earlier thoughts on the subject. I haven’t changed my mind.
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Exactly! The GOP has a completely different agenda than their conservative constituents. The reality is, the 2 monopoly parties fight each other over the control of a multi-trillion dollar budget.
You can do a lot of favors and make a lot of friends when you control that kind of money. The GOP is trying to make people believe everyone’s basically a socialist now too, because if they’re forced to reduce government, they won’t have as much money to dole out to their friends.
One of the thing nobody talks about in politics today is the money. How many hundreds of billions are spent just to elect someone to office? That kind of money doesn’t come without strings attached. Yes, even the POTUS has a boss.
Exactly. The Republican leadership is all about bringing in the money. And you need to give to receive. Take small gov’t fiscal conservatism too far and who’s going to finance your campaign? The party that offers the most to moneyed interests is the party that will, in the end, garner the most cash. The larger the gov’t, the more you have to sell. I understand the reasoning of the Republican party leadership. I”m not sure there’s a political way out of this mess.
Start with this. Nancy Pelosi detested being in the minority. So she tasked Rahm Emanuel to head the DNC. And, to go about the country, picking the candidates to run as democrats. This set off a firestorm! Nancy didn’t care. She took care of Rahm’s back. And, he purposedly chose BLUE DOGS. People he could sell to conservative republicans, and moderates. Fine and dandy. The HOUSE shifts control. And, Nancy becomes the House Majority Leader. CHANGE IN TACTICS then occurs. Because the one big office tells every other office what do do. Don’t play? No DNC money for you. As a matter of fact your staff will be cut to ribbons. And, you’ll be hiking to work from Virginia. Kapish?
The RULES are what governs DC. The PR is what works at getting voters to vote. One way. Or the other. And, the real perks belong to those inside. And, those who don’t want to commit suicide ‘for the boss,’ have to figure out how to survive.
Originally, it was thought that Obama could work miracles. People would vote for whomever he liked. And, so it was thought the democrats could have a field day. And, they were protected by Obama. (Obama also shifted the White House powers to Congress.) Unheard of! But this is what set the stuff you see now, in motion.
Lobbyists tried to buy positions. Nobody expected Obama to lose his luster. Sure. He first stumbled over Officer Crowley’s arrest “stupidly” of his friend, the crippled professor gates. Remember? Well, Obama didn’t learn much from that experience. He was just happy he figured out the ‘beer summit’ would take care of the incoming flak.
While a lot of politicians are getting nervous. How nervous? About as nervous as troops getting fired at, when they come to realize their general is a drunken idiot. (Believe it or not, in a war zone, it’s not unusual for such a general to get shot in the back of his head.)
But we don’t shoot politicians. And, we don’t train them. Nor do we expect them to follow some sort of ‘other rules.’ This being so, if the republicans win back a majority; look who benefits? You want to see Lindsay Graham and Jay Rockefeller in anyone’s driver’s seat? Well, you’ve still got to deal with the rules.
Obama? He wants to paint he right as so unappetizing, no one would want to join them. So far? No hits. Lots of errors. And, even the NFL can, ahead, learn some sort of lesson.
Well, when Bill and his commenters are right, they’re really, really right. I’ve been watching this slow-motion train wreck ruination of the principles of the Republican Party in Illinois since at least 1980.
More and more the ‘leaders’ of the party shove aside any potential candidates who aren’t mostly concerned with grabbing control of at least part of the government and then joining in handing out (and receiving) the boodle.
This has more and more alienated conservative voters until Illinois changed from a right-center, toss-up state to a solid Blue State. After all, if the crooks are going to run things, why not let the Democrats, who are pros at being crooks, handle it.
It’s worse than pathetic. The only way for ordinary citizens at this point to take back one of the parties is to punish the Republicans at the polls and vote for the more conservative candidate in every primary and election, and not to give the official Republicans one damn dime. We can’t take the Dem party back because it’s “owned, lock, stock and barrel” by George Soros and his Progressive friends and we don’t have enough money to buck them.
Scozzafava is not the only shit sandwich the GOP Establishment is serving up. Chris Christie in New Jersey, Mike Castle in Delaware, Mark Kirk in Illinois, Kay Bailey Hutchison in Texas, Charlie Crist in Florida, Meg Whitmire in California, John McCain in Arizona - just a small sample of what’s on the menu for 2009-10.
In 2010 no Republican - or Democrat - will get my vote. The best way to get bad behavior is to continue to reward it, and the Republican Party is at an intellectual dead end. And even if the GOP continues down its present course and disappears completely (”Vote For Us - It’s Possible We’re Not As Insane As The Other Party” seems to be the GOP Establishment’s campaign slogan), another party hopefully will replace it.
The GOP is a damned shame. Corrupt as all hell and giving us crap candidates like McCain, Newt - Yeah NEWT - where did HE get us? That’s why I bailed on them and went to the Conservatives.
I like Palin. Sarah Palin isn’t perfect, just as most humans, but to her credit, she’s never driven a tank, never driven an Oldsmobile off a bridge, never killed a fetus, never denied her blue collar lifestyle, and never been arrested,
She has been the senior Alaska state executive, she is an accomplished mother, she savaged the oil companies with diplomacy, and she has been a royal pain in the ass to liberals. She can go a long ways with the right help from both professionals and we members of the proletariat. And I add that Palin supports:
God
Guns
American Oil
Strong Defense
Less Government
Less Taxes
Less Abortion
And another thing, Maybe it’s time our so-called Republican and Conservative reps get off their asses and start fighting instead of leaving it to Right Wing blogs, talk radio, Sarah Palin and tea parties. When is the last time a single representative from the right got the ball rolling against the Liberals?
Tea Party marches? Nope, that was grassroots.
NEA? Nope, that was Beck and the Right Wing blogs.
Van Jones? Nope, that was Beck.
Healthcare battle? Nope, that was Palin posting at MySpace that got that started.
Acorn? Nope, that was two kids with a video camera.
Notice a pattern here?
I think a lot of people realize that you cannot lead if you don’t have followers. Too bad the RNC doesn’t see things that way.
The sad thing is that there are cracks showing in Obama’s coalition, but I think the RNC is too busy shunning conservatives to exploit that.
Silly rabbits, it’s all about power, perqs, and patronage. There aren’t nearly enough of those to be found in small–i.e., constitutional–government. Principals are merely something they talk about to get the rubes to vote for them.
“I think the RNC is too busy shunning conservatives to exploit that.”
Damn right. I live in NYC, still I sent $20 to Hoffman today. From now on I’m supporting individual candidates, not the RNC. In fact I emailed them the other day, telling them they’ll get no money from me until they stand for conservatism.
And this IS a change they’ll feel: I sent plenty to the McCain campaign in ‘08. Dumbest thing I ever did. “Stand up and fight with me” — yeah, right. Palin was up for a fight, but they told her to shut up, and they threw her to the leftist wolves.
I think real conservative candidates can win huge. If the GOP leadership disagrees, fine, let ‘em run their “moderates” — but not with my money.
Cynical nihilism is all well and good, but if that’s the way you feel, why even bother commenting?
Iron Maiden, I agree — I like Palin too.
What’s more, I think she can win. Without the so-called “Maverick of the Senate” to weigh her down, I think she’ll trounce Obama — Reagan-style.
JR, I think she’s a major threat for two reasons:
She believes in a solid platform like I mentioned above.
The Media are terrified of her. They see something in her that that stupid jackass McCain camp couldn’t.
Iron Maiden,
“Terrified” is the word.
Know what blows my mind? How they continually refer to Sarah Palin as “divisive”?
Well — if she even is divisive, and I say she rubs away that lie a little more every time she opens her mouth — who made her that way? How did she *become* divisive in the public eye?
Also, is Obama divisive? I mean, he’s Maoists, Marxists, black nationalists, and all sorts of other lunatics crawling throughout his administration — is he divisive?
And you’re right about the platform. The media wouldn’t know what to do with a real conservative, she’d make too much sense to the electorate.
She might even, say, scale back the size of the federal government.
Maybe get rid of a few departments… say, the Dept. of Ed. and HUD, for starters…
I always voted Republican, but I refused to vote for a RINO like McCain so I did not vote. I’m coming to the said conclusion that the Republican party left me. Now I guess I’m an independent - but that does not mean I might vote for a Democrat. I’m waiting for somebody to stand up as a real small government fiscal conservative. I’m afraid I’m facing a long time in the wilderness.
The Republican Party is dead. It may as well be a subsidiary of the Democrat Party. Check out the Libertarian Party - the party of principles - the party of freedom.
Bill Quick:
It’s not “cynical nihilism” if it’s correct: “they” do indeed seem to invoke principles only hypocritically. But that doesn’t mean we can’t find a better ‘they’, and recognising that the current crop of politicians is fatally flawed is a necessary first step.
The CW on the Republicans fall has been that it was all about Iraq. They pushed that notion that Bush’s “unpopular war” was the driving force because it suited their agenda for after they regained power.
BUT, for any Conservative Republican (notice which word comes first), the Republicans killed themselves with a thousand cuts:
-Runaway spending (How about all those vetos) after campaigning on among other things, “fiscal responsibilty”.
-K Street Strategy corruption; again after campaigning on a ‘clean this place up’ promise
-Outright Corruption- How many Republican CongressCreatures knew about Representative Cunningham and did nothing about it?
-Chasing little boys around; How many Republican CongressCreatures knew about Representative Foley and did nothing about it?
-Violating their term limit pledge- Did they think we weren’t paying attention?
-Defending the indefensible- Democratic Congressman William Jefferson is caught re-handed with the ice cold cash in his hands; and Republican Speaker Denny Hastert
refuses to allow evidence to be collected from Rep. Jefferson’s Capitol Hill office. Haster said he had to “defend the institution”. How about “protecting and defending the Constitution of the United States” Mr. Speaker?
I could go on…
I did go on, Tom. It was fairly influential at the time.
Don’t know exactly where I fall on the spectrum, but I call myself a Jeffersonian. I’m a balanced budgets - term limits kind of guy; don’t care much for the conservative social agenda as I think it’s big-government nannyism by another name, but YMMV of course. I left the Republican party in 2005 over the uncontrolled spending, the growth of government (e.g. Medicare D and Patriot Act), and the total lack of respect for jurisdictional limitations imposed by the Constitution (e.g. states’ rights vis-a-vis medical marijuana, and the Terri Shively business in FL). I’ve been voting 3rd party ever since.
That said, I’d vote for a conservative over a Democrat, social agenda or no, since I’d rather vote for someone I agree with 70% of the time than someone I agree with 30% of the time.
These current Republicans don’t interest me at all.