The Republican Party needs to stop looking at politics as a game and stop being reactionary as opposed to forward looking and goal attaining. Secondly the Republican Party needs to get over the battered wife syndrome and stop crawling in bed with our abuser. We are in a WAR! It’s not a game. We're fighting to preserve a way of life that has proven itself as the greatest on the face of the earth against an ideology that has proven to be despotic and incompetent and a dismal failure for the last 60 years.
The difference between Democrats and Republicans in this regard is that the Democrats understand this is a war. They know without question that this is a fight to the death and they fight to win. There is no compromise with them, they will take what they can get if you defeat them but they are always preparing the field of battle for the next skirmish and they are always planning the next offensive against those who would fight to preserve our culture and society, who huddle down in their foxholes waiting for the next attack.
The problem we have as a Party is that each leg of the stool wants to advance their issues while just holding the line for the other legs. We would all do well to remember the following:
SoCons don't want to just "Hold the line!"
DefCons don't want to just "Hold the line!"
FisCons don't want to just "hold the line!"
Holding the line is not enough for any leg of the stool nor should it be!
Holding the line is a defensive strategy and the team perpetually on defense always loses the war. History has proven this. The way you win wars is being on offense and by first killing your enemy, second by destroying his ability to wage war on you, and last by smashing his will to fight.
We've tried to "Hold the line for the last 80 to 100 years against those that would subvert our Liberty and we've lost perpetually for all that time!
My biggest beef is with believing that each leg of the stool is or ever can be exclusive and independent. Here is why:
I will add Libertarians as a subcategory because many Libertarians put Liberty above all other considerations especially above SoCons because they see SoCons as a threat to their individual liberty and do not consider their role necessary to ensure the liberty of society as a whole. Libertarians and SoCons aren't and can never be independent from one another. Libertarians want to have liberty to live their lives without government interference. Libertarians need SoCons and a moral society for liberty to exist. The founders were adamant that liberty can not exist in a moral vacuum because as man’s passions take over absent a common moral restraint, the government must step in and deal with the chaos that ensues.
Libertarians can’t exist without FisCons either because the government can’t subvert liberty without the funds to do so!
Libertarians can’t exist without DefCons for the obvious reason that Liberty can’t exist internally if society is threatened from external enemies who would destroy our way of life.
Likewise, FisCons need the other two legs to accomplish their goals.
FisCons need SoCons for the same reason Libertarians do. If business does not have a moral compass then Government will expand to deal with the greed and corruption that occurs in a financial system free of ethics. Likewise, the growth of government to deal with an unstable society from a lack of individual morality inevitably leads to the regulation of financial markets not necessarily because it is needed but because the increased size of the government means it is powerful enough to regulate financial markets!
I would add that SoCons are also necessary in Government to deal with and root out the greed and corruption that comes with the absolute power of government.
FisCons need DefCons to ensure that Society is safe from external enemies just like the other two do. If you can not ensure the security of society as a whole against enemies from outside the country, financial markets can not stand up under the uncertainty of an unstable society that can not guarantee that an attack might occur at any moment. Likewise, the government will ultimately turn it’s security focus inward since external attacks disrupt societal order giving the government not only the ability to regulate markets, but the power to do so!
Libertarians fit into this in that they need the security and sustenance provided in financial markets in order to prosper and better themselves. Again Liberty can not exist in the absence of economic security because unstable markets feed the desire of individuals to use the Government to alleviate suffering and uncertainty.
Both legs need the expertise and the understanding of FisCons. Conservatives too often forget the role of fiscal issues in denying the government funds necessary to expand into infinity!
Defcons need FisCons to fund and supply their goals and operations. They need Socons for a couple reasons, first is a cause to defend, and second it needs culturally and civically minded people to volunteer to defend a culture and society because of a belief so ingrained as to make them willing to die to preserve it!
This is a generalization and it could be expanded into infinity to cover every belief system in the political spectrum. In general I think I’m rare in that I am almost equally aligned with all the groups I’ve mentioned. I lean slightly more SoCon in that I think a system of moral beliefs is above all other considerations a necessary ingredient in which to order society. We are a multiethnic society…not multi cultural as some try to foist upon us. There is a fundamentally American culture that is worth fighting for and preserving, and as a multiethnic society, if we don’t have a single cultural identity to rally around, we have nothing.
That being said, I understand the distrust Libertarians have towards SoCons, sometimes with good cause. I’m with Libertarians and FisCons concerning the “Compassionate Conservative” crap started by Arianna Huffington and adopted by GWB. I hate the idea of using government power to advance socially conservative causes. It’s foolish and destructive and it has unfairly tarred those SoCons such as myself who are more Federalist in our philosophy with big government liberalism! My issues with Bush and the last eight years isn’t that they haven’t done anything for SoCons but that he did the wrong things for us. I don’t like his faith based initiative because once faith based institutions allow the government to give them money, the next step is the government taking control of those faith based organizations by regulating what they can do or say with that money.
SoCons are also concerned that we haven’t held the line. California has proven this with it’s Supreme Court ruling on Gay marriage in defiance of an overwhelming referendum of the people against it.
We sit in our pews each week listening to watered down sermons because the IRS is aggressively threatening Pastors to regulate their speech or face the tax man.
We have to fight our public schools and our courthouses, not to have our views enforced on anyone else, but to have our faith and values given an equal place in the public square.
SoCons are constantly being forced to battle school districts and defend our children against leftist, free sex propaganda being shoved on kids as early as third grade and the gay rights agenda starting in Kindergarten.
I could go on and on because we’re not holding the line…we’re still being pushed backward! This is why SoCons are discontent despite supposedly getting everything from Bush over the last eight years.
Finally, continuing the stool analogy, It is possible to balance a stool with less than three legs as anyone who has ever seen an old timer milk a cow with a one legged stool but it requires effort to balance and stay on the stool. The person milking must use his legs to replace the other two legs. In addition it is required to stiffen the muscles in the upper body in order to stiffen the body’s core and stay upright. While he won’t tire immediately eventually the body will tire and he will fall off the stool.
I’ve gone through all this to say, “We all need each other to succeed in defending American Exceptionallism and ‘this the greatest hope of mankind on earth’.” I can’t do anything without the rest of you…and you can’t do anything without me. The problems we face as a party is that each leg is trying to push the other two legs away starting with our nominee. The Bible has a good take on this in talking about the Church. To paraphrase it, if the Church is the “Body of Christ”, how can the hands pluck out the eyes without causing damage to themselves and the rest of the body. The body needs eyes to see, and ears to hear, and feet to walk with, and hands with which to work. All in all each part of the body is necessary and function best when used in concert with the other parts. Likewise the “Body of Conservatism.”
The current state of the Republican Party is due to the fact that all our parts are working against each other starting with our leadership. The Congress is in trouble because it obviously holds FisCons in contempt and refuses to acknowledge the problems of its profligate spending and we’re faced with a Presidential Candidate foisted on us because it was “His turn” who apparently holds us all in contempt!
They’ve all sown the wind…and I fear they will reap the whirlwind in November!
