By Mr. Curmudgeon
As often stated on this blog, the Republican Party and conservatism are mutually exclusive things. Now, the media (who tend to lump the two together) is starting recognize the Grand Canyon gulf between the two. The Tea Party is having the effect of showing establishment go-along-to-get-along Republicans that carrying water for the Democrats is not a politically safe policy heading into the primary season. The New York Times reported:
…pushback on national Republicans is striking because it comes at a time when many in the party believe the political environment is rapidly improving for them and after party strategists were initially keen on the early effort to single out Senate choices.
Yet in Florida, the former House speaker, Marco Rubio, has refused to abandon his quest for the Republican Senate nomination despite the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s quick blessing of the candidacy of Gov. Charlie Crist. The perception that the national party was going to meddle in the Colorado primary on behalf of Jane Norton, the former lieutenant governor, upset people there.
In Illinois, Representative Mark Steven Kirk, a man party leaders wanted in the race, is seeing his conservative credentials challenged. Republican contenders in Missouri, Ohio and California who are seen as the establishment choice have also encountered turbulence.
To some, the resistance is an extension of the grass-roots distrust of the government that was on vivid display during town-hall-style meetings this summer and at the recent conservative protest on the National Mall. Though much of the antipathy was aimed at Democrats, there is unhappiness with Republicans at the national level as well, with home-grown conservatives citing them as part of the overall problem.
And it’s about time. What good is having a Republican majority in both houses of congress if the same do-nothing Republicrats return to power? They were in control for twelve years and left very little to show for it. The up coming mid-term elections are important in one profound respect: it will show whether the Republican Party is to be taken seriously as a principled conservative opposition party to Obama’s socialism or whether the Tea Party needs to field its own candidates. The question is whether the Republican Party leadership is smart enough to stay out of the conservative’s way. What Sen. Barry Goldwater said in his acceptance speech upon winning the Republican presidential nomination in 1964 is applicable to Obama’s lust for power:
Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed. Their mistaken course stems from false notions of equality, ladies and gentlemen. Equality, rightly understood, as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences. Wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.
As to the charge that today’s Tea Party conservative activists are dangerous extremists – a charge leveled by Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi – Goldwater also provided an answer:
I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!
Political geldings like George W. Bush and Sen. John McCain have emasculated the label “conservative”. I would rather be labeled an extremist than a squishy “compassionate conservative.” It is time for these “reach-across-the-aisle Republicans to step aside so better men and women – those with spines – might reestablish that justice the timid will not defend.
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