I’ve been saying it now for a decade and more… Get a real conservative in the lead role of a presidential election and there will be no stopping them.
Romney and Ryan
Of course, the usual suspects pooh-pooh that concept, saying a conservative has no chance up against a “moderate”… like John McCain, for example. That real conservatives are radicals, have no connection with mainstream America, and particularly with the mainstream American voter. I’ve said all along that the leftist concept of what is mainstream is suspect at the off, and Paul Ryan’s nomination as Romney’s VP and the public reaction to it, confirms this very nicely.
OK, look, Paul Ryan of himself disproves many myths of the value… or more correctly the myths of the lack of value… of a real conservative on any ticket… but while one point doesn’t prove a whole lot of itself, two, do. Who s the second? The answer is obvious; Sarah Palin.
There seems no doubt, even on the left, that Ryan, like Palin before him, is more popular than the top of the ticket… and that’s because of his being far more conservative than Romney. He draws far larger crowds, his ideas are discussed more, and agreed with by a far larger majority, and so on. The reason is because he, like Palin is unashamed to stand up for American values… something the left has been working actively against, since we “didn’t build it”.
And it seems obvious that the GOP leadership is decidedly fearful of a real conservative being the standard bearer, as I’ve pointed out in these spaces many times. As fearful, even, as the Democrats are. And that tells many people, myself included, there is a sickness in the GOP leadership… John Boener and company included, that needs repair or more likely, replacement.
The GOP Establishment over-ruled the majority of Republicans in 1996 and we got Bob Dole. In 2000, People had had enough of Bill Clinton and The GOP Establishment responded with George Bush, who is at best a centrist. The GOP Establishment over-ruled the vast majority of GOP rank and file and we got John McCain in 08. . The GOP Establishment once again over-ruled the GOP rank and file in in 2012. We Got Mitt Romney. These last two tried to appease the base instead of following their lead, and came in with popular conservatives, and got overwhelmed.
At what point do we stop going for the mythical center? At what point does the GOP leadership start actually BEING conservative? At what point do the rank and file GOP have a real say? It makes one really wonder just what the motivations of the GOP Establishment really are.
I suggest, as do rally attendance figures that Palin, Ryan and the other far more conservative candidates’ popularity far outstrips the GOP leadership’s chosen ones… and the treatment they receive at the hands of the GOP establishment outright proves that, as well. Conservative ideas and ideals will win the day every time they’re tried…. and the real issue is they’ve not been so tried in many decades because theGOP Establishment won’t allow it to happen. Of course the left knows it as well. They each know very well know someone with real conservative ideas and ideals will suck all the air out of the room.
Consider the question I asked last week; “Will Ryan get the Palin Treatment?” I said then:
Sarah Palin
As with Palin, what we have with Ryan is someone who understands what Reagan meant when he said government isn’t the solution, but the PROBLEM. As such, Ryan, clearly, has the ability to argue these points forcefully and convincingly. That can only be a plus, however, if the Romney campaign is willing to stand up and be counted as conservative.
The question seems to me open as to how seriously Romney and the remainder of the GOP leadership take that point, today.
As a measurement of that, watch with me to see if the GOP will make the same mistake with Ryan as they did with Palin; Muzzling him in an effort to appease the left, which is masquerading as “the center”. Again, speaking for myself in the suspicion that a Reagan-sized majority agrees with me, I will say my support for Romney/Ryan will be established if they do not muzzle Ryan, if they do not ignore the message the public support of Ryan shows.
So, today, we see in the AP:
Ryan, the nation’s most controversial budget architect, is often described as the intellectual leader of the House Republican caucus. But Romney’s presidential campaign headquarters in Boston seems, for now, to prefer that the 42-year-old father of three talks about camping and milking cows instead of the fiscal proposals that made him a conservative hero.
Ryan, who wrote a plan to overhaul Medicare as chairman of the House Budget Committee, did not use the word ”Medicare” with voters over the first four days as the vice presidential candidate. When he finally touched on the health care insurance program for seniors, he did so only in broad strokes after Romney himself first outlined the campaign’s talking points.
”We will not duck the tough issues,” Ryan said Friday in Virginia. ”We will lead.”
But Ryan has been directed to avoid taking questions from reporters who travel with him, and to agree only to a few carefully selected interviews.
Sounds to me, like they’ve already started to treat him the same as Palin. If they continue on this path, they deserve to lose.
So why don’t the GOP Establishment actually go with a real conservative? Why not tap that huge voter base? Why not let the logic of conservatism sweep the national debate, as it has every time it’s been tried before? Since the numbers of Palin and Ryan together, the reax to them both, and their popularity.. even among the center, doesn’t lie, the most logical answer is they don’t believe in conservative values themselves.
The lessons the Gipper taught us are being ignored by the GOP Establishment, now, as they were then.
Of course there’s a third point in history, a third lesson to be learned, and add to this trend line, and it’s one the GOP tried desperately to unlearn… Ronald Reagan.
Remember, folks, the GOP establishment didn’t much like Reagan, either. Limbaugh pointed this out some years ago:
You and I know that the establishment Republicans don’t like conservatives. They didn’t like Reagan. They were embarrassed of Reagan. They were embarrassed of us. They didn’t like the Moral Majority, they didn’t like the Christian right, they don’t like the pro-lifers. They don’t like the social conservatives at all. They’re embarrassed by us, in many ways, with their other buddies, the establishment Democrats — which combined gives us the Washington establishment, and they very much prefer to be members of that club than ours. But they know that it doesn’t help them to be called “establishment Republicans.” So they’re trying to take the term “conservative” and co-opt it and define it as they behave, write, speak, and even vote on matters of politics.
That’s exactly correct. And the way the GOP establishment ” behave, write, speak, and even vote on matters of politics” isn’t even remotely conservative as you and I understand the term. Remember; Bush was nominated as VP to appease the GOP establishment who thought him…. incorrectly… to be too far to the right. Reagan didn’t win because he’d be “moderated” by Bush, but because he was stoutly and unapologetic about being a real conservative.
They apparently didn’t learn that lesson, either. For that alone, they should have been replaced, years ago.
The American Conservative Party in a recent op-ed, suggested, and I think correctly:
Do Speaker of the House John Boehner, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and GOP Presidential Nominee Mitt Romney fit within the fabric of the “Establishment” or Washington Politboro that seeks its own sufficiency? Based on the definers, the answer is clearly, “YES!” Simply, those that preserve their interests of excessive government rule and intervention into the daily lives of Americans fit the bill of the “Establishment”. Those that resist the excesses of governance and imposition of state and federal taxation into the lives of individuals, families and private organizations are “conservatives”. Talitha McEachin, in her essay The Black Community’s Distrust of the Government, provokes her readers with this question, ?”How can some of us say we don’t trust the government, yet vote for more of it in our lives?” Blogger Dan McLaughlinwrote a seminal piece about the separation of Establishment and Conservatives entitled, What The Republican “Establishment” Really Means. In it he advised that a key matter separtes us: “it’s almost entirely about spending.” For those following along at home, the analysis is clear. There are three groups that empower politicians in general elections: Conservatives, the Establishment (Republicans and Democrats) and Liberals. Conservatives believe that Americans are better stewards of their finances than government and that spending should be reduced as austerely as possible. The Establishment believe that you could not possibly build a home, receive medical care or flush a toilet with out some form of government intervention.
In short, you can’t fit water between John Boener and Barrack Obama who advised us a short while ago, “we didn’t build that”.
It’s time for the conservative voice to be followed by the leadership… not just heard, and ignored. And I say again, if this situation does not change, Romney/Ryan deserve to lose. And will.
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