Posted by
Forgive My Patriotism on Wednesday, February 13, 2008 9:36:33 AM
The presidential prospective is bleak. People are
scrambling to get what they want. But do they really believe they will get what they want?
Where is everyone in the Republican Party? More appropriately, where is
everyone who is conservative? As so often sounded on my little cazoo
here, Big Tent politics, the political calculation that got us where we are
today, has conservatives doing the strangest things.
Six or seven candidates step up on the stage, and how do we look at them? Do we put their words up against their records and say yes or no? Nope!
And we have very little litmus drawn from
the Republican Party platform, even with how watered down it's become.
Have you seen how it is now a bunch of pliable explanations covering
conservative positions and the caveats necessary to suspend them?
We've got so-called conservatives who just aren't. We literally
splintered up to this point, holding our noses for candidates who are only
conservative on one or two issues.
Huckabee - Pro-life
Recently
strong on the Fair-Tax
Fiscal
wash out
Recently
strong on defense
Romney - Fiscally
Conservative
Recently
strong on defense
Clearly
caters to voters on social issues
McCain - In bed
with Democrats on all but defense
Called pro-life by those who don't care that he isn't
Guilliani - Opportunist
who covers all sides of an issue
Strong
on defense
Thompson - Great speaker
Some serious mistakes in Senate
Ron Paul - Libertarian anarchist in libertarian anarchist clothing with an R
Hunter - Conservative to the bone. Sparkling record.
Tancredo - Conservative to the bone but not pretty enough
Keyes - Conservative to the bone but a little excitable
Who gets the early boot and who gets the thumbs up to pass go and collect $200? With this situation, there were those who failed
to be conservative at all. They believed they should use their brains instead of convictions to calculate the
next best move. But move to do what?
They, by virtue of their superior brains, look at us all and say, "We must win at all costs". But I’d like to remind you that it is that type
of calculation that got us into this mess in the first place with Big Tent politics. We sold our soul for brainy political calculations. So now were smart, but we’re screwed.
Now here is what we should have done. We should have converted people to our side
with intelligent conversation and strong convictions.
But you see, the brainy people would have questioned, “What
if it doesn't work, and we are then unable to keep the Democrats out of the white house.”
Well I guess then we could have opened up to Big Tent
politics. Look how far that’s gotten us.