David

Karki

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May 9, 2008

Conservatives: Time to Abandon the Republican Ship

Sen. John McCain as the Republican presidential candidate doing everything he can to show how liberal he is, to the point where it's very difficult to find any significant difference between him and the two Democratic candidates.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi running roughshod over House appropriation rules, trade agreements signed in good faith, and doing everything else in her power to run out the clock on this year until, presumably, a newly inaugurated President Obama or Hillary can sign everything President Bush would veto.

And last, but certainly most, a Republican Party that has gone completely supine and offers no opposition whatsoever. More often than not, they're joining in just to get a small slice of the spending pie.

Add it all up, and you get a veritable horror movie for conservatives. Perhaps, over the past 20 years or so, there never was as much support in the GOP as we thought for conservative ideas. But certainly in this election cycle it has reached its nadir. It doesn't seem like there is a single candidate, incumbent or challenger, who can run away from conservatism fast enough – Sen. McCain being the epitome of this trend. (That means that there is at least one thing for which he is a legitimate standard-bearer.)

This is surprising, if not amusing, since it’s not like anything truly conservative has actually been done since Reagan left office. And very little has even been tried. I think we conservatives would be thrilled to have actually accomplished even half as much as liberals mythologize we have.

And yet liberals have managed to get conservatism blamed for the consequences of their own wrong ideas. Between a feckless GOP, a President Bush who can't articulate his way out of a paper bag, and liberal dominance in education and the mainstream media, most people (and most voters) are ignorant in ways and to a degree that would horrify generations past, were they alive to witness it.

So the big question becomes: What are we conservatives going to do about it? It's easy to look back and surmise how we got here and bemoan current circumstance. And while we should certainly remember history so as not to repeat it, the fact is that the only thing we can control is what comes next.

And what should come next is the abandonment of the Republican Party by conservatives.

I would be all for voting against Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton by casting a ballot for McCain were he really different enough to matter. The same goes for Republicans in Congress, were they not throwing in with Democrats at every opportunity. But the idea that voting for McCain or liberal Republicans at least staves off even-worse Democrats necessarily vanishes when they are all but indistinguishable. There is simply no conservatism left to conserve.

Worse yet, with a President McCain signing off on everything a potential Democrat super-majority in Congress sends him, the Democrats can continue to be successful at disingenuously blaming him and Republicans for the inevitable terrible fallout of their own misguided policies.

(For example, enormous tax increases with the expiration of the Bush cuts, plus what liberals would add onto it; energy disaster by refusing to obtain and use any of our own domestic resources no matter how expensive oil gets while pushing enviro-wacko ideas like global warming carbon credits and ethanol subsides that act as a food tax; the sum total of which would crush the economy like Wile E. Coyote going off a cliff, splatting on the ground, and having the anvil squash him for good measure. But this time, it won't be the least bit funny.)

The least we can do, if we have no choice but to suffer through the second coming of the Carter Administration and the needless misery it inflicted upon us all, is to ensure that Democrats are finally held totally and solely responsible for what they will have done. And then, perhaps, two years from now, something like 1994 can happen again.

I'm not optimistic that even this will work, though, because I don't think the GOP is capable right now of taking any lesson away from defeat other than the wrong one – that they must be more liberal, because liberals won. Governor Schwarzenegger in Cullyfornyah has taken that tack, and made the entire recall that got him elected an exercise in utter futility as a result. By the same token, there was no conservative candidate running for president, because none existed within the GOP ranks.

I also am beginning to think that we're reaching a tipping point in America, where the number of people who have a personal stake in continuing big government or who are simply ignorant enough to follow the leftist zeitgeist are too big to be overcome. I can only hope that a newfound conservative voice, ringing out like a cry in the wilderness, might be able to convert enough of them to stem the tide.

I know this isn't exactly “Win One for the Gipper” in the inspiration department, but it's the harsh reality. If the battleship is appearing to sink, then an intact rowboat is an improvement, even though it doesn't look like it. And the bottom line is that there is simply nothing left to lose – at least we stay afloat and live.

To bail or not to bail? All conservatives, abandon ship!

© 2008 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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