Political QRM

How often do we use the old saw, “A person who doesn’t study history is doomed to repeat it.” ?

Well, here’s your history. And it bears repeating.

If you’re anything less than hard-core about your history lessons, you’re probably just like me when it comes to “those dang DATES”. I can get you to the right century, yes, and even to the right decade most times, but the year is not always as spot-on as I would like.

This applies, today, to some ideas for our future that I proffered on PQRM40.

The Democratic-Republican Party was formed by Jefferson and Madison in the 1790′s in opposition to the Federalists. The big difference being one that we see today; Strong states and a strict adherence to the Constitution vs. a strong centralized “Federal” government. The party split after the 1824 election of John Quincy Adams into the Democratic Party and the National Republican Party, (which devolved into just “Republican” as a matter of vernacular), absorbing the trailing edges of such parties as the Whigs.

This was your great-great grandfather’s America. Life in “the era of good feelings”. When people who produced were valued, be they farmer, carpenter or architect. These were the days when people understood that they had RIGHTS. Immutable, irrevocable RIGHTS. Rights that they recognized as being threatened with deletion.

The G.O.P. Is dead. That elephant has been scavenged by the vultures of special interests, big-government, big taxes, big spending, big lies and big babies. The elephant should have been their mascot for it’s virtue of “never forget”, but it failed. They have left the course in favor of “bi-partisanship” and “pork-barrels”. They brought about their own demise by way of turning their collective backs on the principles that made up their platform. Throw what’s left of the corpse onto the rotted wood of that platform and light it into a pyre. Good riddance!

Raise the new platform! Raise the new guidon! No, not an elephant. No, not an eagle, (lest we get caught up in the argument favoring the wild turkey all over again…), but a LION. I suppose an American lion, such as the cougar, puma or panther is called would be nice. But follow my POINT. No PREY animal here! Certainly not, either, anything so amorphous as a tea bag!

Leave behind us the days when we are described as a party of “old white men”. We can be “inclusive” without being obsequious, we needn’t grovel. We MUST NOT allow our party or our platform to be described by our opponents. We must put forth our message, loud and clear, to the people of America. They’ll hear us. In the hamlets of Kentucky and the townships of Maine. In the wilds of Alaska and the centers of Hollywood, New York, Detroit and Dallas.

Let’s hammer at this for a moment, shall we?

Take a conference room at a chain hotel. Not in Chicago or Seattle, but in a minor city. Fill it with people such as Col. West, Governors Palin, Haley, Walker and Jindal. Senators Rubio, Paul and Cruz. Congress people, mayors, police chiefs, state legislators, business leaders and even some celebrities. Pull some of our best media voices. Give them this minor history lesson and SIGN them UP.

The ISSUES must be ISSUES. Not little “litmus tests” foisted upon us by special interests or the media. Allowing them to steer us is what got us into so much trouble to begin with.

Taxes. Spending. Our borders. Foreign aid / relations / wars. The dismantling of countless agencies and laws. The elimination of bogus government “departments” and “Czars”. These are just a few of the TRUE ISSUES facing us. Believe it or not, the issues of such things as same-sex marriage and the “morning after pill” are NOT what is going to snuff the light out of our “shining city on a hill” this week. They are red herrings! They take our attention away from the drift toward communist totalitarianism we’re sliding towards.

So there you have it. A Grand NEW Party. The party of the Constitution. The party of “the various states”. The party of AMERICANS.

If you have read my requiem for the Republican Party, you know where I’m coming from. If not, go ahead and read it now. I’ll wait. Oh, and by the way, if you voted for Ron Paul last cycle you have no idea what I’m talking about, here. Matter of fact, just go put your tinfoil beanie back on and watch some cartoons, ‘kay?

There.

Good.

Let’s sally forth.

TEA is TOXIC. This is not an edict by the FDA, the USDA, the EPA or any other government agency. This is directly from me. Conservatives, Constitutionalists and any other limited-government stripes out there who are dissatisfied with the election and re-election of our sitting president need to stay away from the TEA. For that matter, they need to inoculate themselves against any and all virii that provide their opponents with great, big, stout clubs with which to beat them.

Why, you might ask, when the results the TEA backed folks at all levels have been wicked good stuff…well…yes, it has been. No one can argue the original premises of the entire TEA movement. What one CAN, (and indeed should), recognize is the abject histrionics of the Left whenever the term is applied. So great was the fear of the Left’s broad-brush smearing that it led to TWO Republican tickets that LOST the general elections. “TDS”, or “Tea Derangement Syndrome” is a malady that cannot be cured by increasing the dosage of the toxin. Similarly, “BDS” and “PDS”, (Bush & Palin Derangement Syndromes, respectively), wrought havoc, (and continue to), on all levels of discourse from 2004 extant.

Notice the way, in the 2012 cycle, that the current president didn’t use the celebrity power of former president Clinton. Notice, as well, the fact that candidates in many other races didn’t use the power of president Obama. Too much “baggage” on both counts. The savvy of the Left’s handlers was magnificent to behold. On the Right, the best we could do is to try and “moderate” our candidacies. “Centrist” was the mantra. But it didn’t, in the words of the philosopher, “Git-R-Done”. Neither McCain, (D-AZ) or Romney, (D-MA), running mates aside, represented a truly conservative skills/mind/values set. They were counting on the skills, beliefs and plain star power of their running mates and a, (hopefully), friendly legislature.

CPAC, (you remember CPAC…the “CONSERVATIVE” Political Action Conference), was this weekend. I was confounded to see Mitt Romney, (D-MA), at the podium. He had as much reason to be there as did the current president! Is CPAC dooming itself to the dustbin of political history? I think so. Rand Paul “won” the straw poll. Senator Rubio came in second. Together they garnered nearly half of the ballots cast. Not bad, but…with an eight percent take Rick Santorum came in third. ONE percentage point higher than number four…NJ governor Chris Christie…who beat out the 2012 V.P. nominee Paul Ryan. Position six went to Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, who marked five percent of the tally, ahead of Dr. Ben Carson and Sen. Ted Cruz, (tied for seventh place), with four percent each. Following even further behind were such conservative people as Sarah Palin, Bobby Jindal, Nikki Haley and Rick Perry. Note please my parenthetical at the beginning of this paragraph. Compare that with the list of people presented. Does this represent the “C” in CPAC to you? It doesn’t to me. Maybe going forward it should be “L-PAC”?

Libertarians are not Conservatives. They’re SALAD DRESSING. A little oil, a little vinegar, some herb…shake it up and pour it out. Appetizing? Maybe. Nutritive? Hardly. Would we have been better off with them at the wheel for the last twenty-odd years? Yes, we probably would. But it’s too late for the salad course, now. We need to get to our meat and potatoes. Good, solid fare. No salad, no sushi. Nothing but solid food. Something we can, as a nation, sink our teeth into. And we can’t sink our teeth into TEA, either. It’s a DRINK. A drink every bit as addictive to Conservatives as “Kool-Aid” is to those on the Left. A drink every bit as toxic. It’s a hallucinogen that causes one to see things in a very distorted tunnel-visioned way. The biggest pitfall to avoiding ingesting something baneful is to test it with litmus paper. Sure, sounds like a very expedient test – the Left tests the Kool Aid to see if it turns blue and the Right to see if the TEA turns it red. Fair enough, but analytically it’s a bit lacking. The only “litmus” paper we should be bringing forth toward a candidate is the parchment of our founding documents.