(Cross-posted from the TownHall version of NRE)
I’ve promised this for, what, 2 1/2 weeks? Every time I had something started, I’ve run into something that caused me to drop it. Not this time; not even a glitch that rejected my attempt to publish over there yesterday morning. Heck, I’m glad that I was delayed because some things happened that caused me to rethink my answer (at least my national answer; things just got even worse in Wisconsin). Now, on with the post….
If one were to simply look at what the Republican Party has put out there lately, from the anmesty bill to the three purported front-runners for the 2008 Presidential nomination, from the focus of tax cuts as not cutting the flow of money to and thus the size of government to the massive expansion of the federal government in areas that it has no business being, one could say that conservatism was not only out of gas, but dead and in the casket waiting to be buried. Indeed, in its push for the amnesty bill, the White House attempted to bury conservatives who opposed amnesty by using tired liberal name-calling. Those few announced candidates who can accurately be described as conservative aren’t getting any traction, at least according to the opinion polls.
However, we’re not quite dead yet. Sites like TownHall, Free Republic, Hot Air, Boots and Sabers, and even my little hole in the wall are thriving. Conservative talk radio is still so successful, the Democrats are scheming ways to shut it down. We’ve just defeated amnesty despite the wors…er, best efforts of the leadership of both parties. Even if they’re flaming liberals, Republicans still at least attempt to speak our language at election time. Heck, even the Democrats are so insecure in their liberalism that they’re once again trying to run to the right (from The Wall Street Journal).
On the Presidential nomination front, the two most-liberal of those three front-runners are skipping the historically-important Iowa straw poll in August, likely because their internal polls are showing something that the public opinion polls aren’t. We have the 6’5″ gorilla of a (more-or-less) conservative forming an exploratory committee in the wake of the third less-than-inspiring debate.
So, we’re not necessarily out of gas. Rather, we’re at a crossroads trying to decide which way to go while a tornado of bad liberal ideas is almost on top of us, indeed, so close that some of those bad ideas are raining down like so much debris. We need to find conservatives to run against the bipartisan members of the liberal Party-In-Government. We need to hold everybody’s feet to the fire. Now, I am not an expert, so I can’t tell you who to run against who; you’ll have to do your homework and figure that one yourselves. However, I do know that we have to get that done now or we will get swept up and spit out.
Very well written. I actually think the further left Dims go in pursuit of the nomination, the harder it will be to recover for the general election though. Thinking Edwards especially. The others to a somewhat lesser extent.
Conservatives however, would have to go pretty far-right, not to be able to recover. That is just my opinion. It’s just that the far-far left appears to have much bigger mouths, so it seems like there’s more of them.
Thanks. Personally, I think a lot of the other takes (links here for Week 1 plus Tom McMahon’s 4-Block World version and here for Weeks 2-4 plus Lance Burri) were better than mine. What my little missive, plus my very-dark Wisconsin-specific one, is meant as is a wake-up call.
I tend to agree with you. This country has historically been center-right, so given an equal distance from the mythical “center” between a conservative and a liberal and everything else being equal, the conservative will have a natural advantage.