Pontifications

OK, so everyone has finally come out of their post-election hangover. We're looking around at this country and wondering just how the hell we came so far down. When you suffer a defeat, the first thing you need to do is figure out exactly why you lost.

And I'm looking square at the Republican Party.

This isn't a joke. This can't be brushed off. This country has just voted a Marxist into office, given him a Marxist Congress to back him up. Why?

Because the Republican Party did not offer ANYTHING different. Ann Coulter, love her or hate her, offered up one of the best summations of why we lost:

How could Republicans go after B. Hussein Obama (as he is now known) on planning to bankrupt the coal companies when McCain supports the exact same cap and trade policies and earnestly believes in global warming?

How could we go after Obama for his illegal alien aunt and for supporting driver's licenses for illegal aliens when McCain fanatically pushed amnesty along with his good friend Teddy Kennedy?

How could we go after Obama for Jeremiah Wright when McCain denounced any Republicans who did so?

How could we go after Obama for planning to hike taxes on the "rich," when McCain was the only Republican to vote against both of Bush's tax cuts on the grounds that they were tax cuts for the rich?

And why should Republican activists slave away working for McCain when he has personally, viciously attacked: John O'Neill and the Swift Boat Veterans, National Right to Life director Doug Johnson, evangelical pastors Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and John Hagee, various conservative talk radio hosts, the Tennessee Republican Party and on and on and on?

The Republicans nominated a person who has spent the past eight years crapping all over the Republican base. Great idea there, GOP. Way to garner support.

This is a pattern that's continued even after the election. The Republican Elite is now stabbing Sarah Palin in the back, the only real conservative in the election, the only reason that John McCain did as well as he did. Without Palin, McCain might have gotten one or two states. Period. That's it. She was the ONE bright point in this election for the GOP, and now they're turning on her like a pack of hyenas.

If that doesn't tell you just how out of touch the GOP is with conservatives, I don't know what will.

And what message was the GOP sending with this election? What were they trying to tell voters? "Let's keep the status quo." That doesn't work. For the past eight years, Conservatives have watched the Republican Party transform itself from a small-government, anti-corruption group of politicians to a nanny-statist, government expanding, earmark pushing group of corrupt asshats and criminals.

Remember Dennis Hastert standing on Capitol Hill talking about how William "Dollars in my freezer" Jefferson's office was sacrosanct? Yep. Rather than exposing corruption and weeding it out, the GOP WAS PROTECTING IT!

The GOP leadership has failed, in just about every way they possibly COULD fail. And yet they keep pushing the same tired message. Actually, I mis-spoke; they're not pushing ANY real message. And they haven't pushed it for a long time.

It's been conservatives online defending Bush from the deranged attacks of the Left. It's been conservatives pushing the smaller government message, and getting ignored. It's been the GOP base demanding accountability, and getting brushed off by the GOP leaders.

The GOP leadership has failed. Utterly, completely, and horribly failed. John Henke, in the other article I linked to yesterday, put it this way:

The problem is not Republican politicians, although many Republicans politicians are a problem. The problem is not with the basic ideals of limited government and personal freedom, either. The problem is a movement that plays small-ball and cedes responsibility for infrastructure to business interests, leadership that rewards those who make friends rather than waves, an entrenched Party and Movement support system that mostly supports itself, an echo chamber that has rotted our intellect, a grassroots that is ill-equipped to shape the Republican Party, and a Republican Party that has replaced strategy with tactics, substance with marketing.

These problems can be fixed, but the fix is not cosmetic. The rot is deep. We do not need reformation of the Republican Party; we need transformation of the Republican Party. That is going to require fresh blood, new ideas, new infrastructure...and perhaps more than a little time in the wilderness.

Whenever a true conservative runs on a conservative platform, they win. When the GOP puts forth yet another squishy moderate, they lose. When faced with a choice of two big-government nanny-statist assholes, people are going to choose the one who's actually honest about what he'll do. The GOP hasn't been honest about it for a while now.

So, what to do? First, we need to clean house. All you Republicans out there? Start holding your party accountable. Get the leadership removed. You do not keep absolute failures in a leadership position. And if they don't listen to you?

You leave. If the GOP refuses to hold to the principals that made it successful in the first place, then they will continue to sink. If the GOP keeps offering up RINOs on the national level, they will continue to lose elections. If the GOP keeps refusing to fight the corruption, the graft, the earmarks, the voter fraud, then they will continue to hemorrhage members until they're nothing but a weak, former shell of themselves.

Second - start at the local level. Find out where your Republican Party meets, and GO! Do networking. Get to know people face to face. Take your arguments to them. The GOP has been ignoring the massive network that was already in place that they could have used. While the Democrat American Communist Party was working it's internet links for all it was worth, the GOP was wandering around going "Internet? Is that the new typewriter thingy?" There has been absolutely no effort to reach out to the grassroots support the GOP used to have. Now it's time for the Grassroots to take the party over and transform it from INSIDE.

You don't get rid of rot by tossing some shellac over it and calling it good. You cut it out. Carve it out, throw it away, and start rebuilding from the good base.

Third - find some fighters. This ties in with point number one - the GOP has been too much in love with it's political power to risk losing it by standing up and making waves. If the GOP won't do it at the national level, then work locally to find those fighters and promote them. Get them up locally, and then push them up higher. Use your local groups to demand accountability from the national level.

Fourth - tap in to the other conservative movements. Most of those movements are made up of former Republicans, whom the party has cast off in it's lurch leftward. How do I know? Because it's me, and others like me. As I said - I put my RNC membership card through the shredder, and mailed it back to the RNC in their donation begging envelope...... back in 2003, when I was still living in Seattle. The GOP had lost it's way back then, and they've only gotten worse since then. Get those conservatives working together. They might all belong to different parties, but they can work to make the GOP change. I'll be speaking to the local Republicans some time in the future.

As I said yesterday - Yes, the election sucked. Yes, our country is in trouble. Yes, it's going to get worse.

But the only true failure right now is in giving up. And I refuse to do that.