Social Conservatives to the Back of the GOP Bus, Again
Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, who is chairman of the Republican Governors Association and who is also thinking of running for president, has now endorsed the call of another potential presidential candidate, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, for a campaign moratorium on social issues. Of course, there is no reason to believe that the GOP will take action on issues that its candidates don't even want to talk about. Would Barbour or Daniels or any other GOP bigwig ever endorse a campaign moratorium on economic issues or foreign policy?
Barbour's statement follows former GOP chairman Ken Mehlman's recent announcement that he is gay and is now fundraising to support gay marriage, an effort supported by the manager of John McCain's presidential campaign, Steve Schmidt. Of course, the legal case for gay marriage is being made by George W. Bush's solicitor general, Ted Olson. How long will social conservatives continue to play Charlie Brown to the GOP's Lucy, or will they eventually learn something from the fact that the football is pulled away every time they go to kick it?
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Will they ever learn? I think November will provide a definitive answer.
Of course they won't learn.
As a Hoosier- I can say that Mitch is not now, nor has he ever been a "Conservative". He is just another apparatchik of Big Business (in his case a former Eli Lilly employee – of no new drugs since Prozac (and Cialis) and pro Obama’s drug plan- fame) ). He forced changes that the ordinary Hoosier did not like: shoved Daylight savings time down our throats (so golfers can get away from their families more; and business found it too hard to figure out what time it was in New York?); sold our Highways to foreign companies in order to aggrandize himself, outsourced many other historically traditional governmental functions (e.g. prisons –causing prison disturbances), etc. Yet he is our “Hero”. No. He only knows how to pinch a penny. He has a reason to run from the social issues given his background and past arrests. He is the stereo-typical “me” politician. But I do not blame him- but the rabid evangelicals that support him- a la Charlie Brown- hoping that he will stand up for social issues-like gay marriage- which he said was a waste of the legislature’s time. No, Mitch is a low life cog- a weasel- but he is not our problem- “Conservative” religious backers of the Party are. May they realize what fools they have been.
"... will they eventually learn something ..."
One is tempted to ask what you think they might learn and what you would propose that they do with their new found knowledge.
Withhold their support for libertarian or conservative candidates so that the progressives can continue to destroy our economy and society at their present rate?
Hold the GOP hostage so it will adopt social conservative positions that will alienate independent and center-right voters at this critical time?
Perhaps the SocCons can realize that the future of their game is in state and local politics as we shrink the federal government to where it belongs. SocCons are always more effective at that level anyway. The things they want the federal government to do are largely not proper functions of the federal government to begin with.
I don't one bit think that bothering about social issues that materialize in every day life is foolish or futile, but I think there is a negative precedent here. Pardon me for being Devil's Advocate, but...
When the Nixon-era Presidency was marked by recession, high inflation, and shortages of utilities, why were the problems of smoking and drinking given so much press by neoconservatives like Bill Buckley and company?
What happened with the recent medical insurance bill in United States? Scott P. Richert did mention on Chronicles that the Republicans just did a fake opposition to it with sidetracked talk about abortions. Why else are Republicans accused of using gay marriage as a flashbang grenade during any debate? The very Republicans who turn out in this piece here to not care about such issues?
To give a comparison, the National Review had monarchists writing for it in its early days. Which is OK, monarchy probably is better than democracy; except you'd suspect that a person is following too much down the distraction side, if he makes it a central issue.
I would suspect that there is simply a better timing, manner, and style to approach social issues separately, and since it is normally not done, it doesn't surprise me that Mitch Daniels (is he the biker guy heavily featured in international press?) wants to avoid it altogether for now.
I still think modern decadence is disgusting, and I do occasionally get no less angrier than many about it, so I hope I am not misconstrued in anyway.
Sorry for double post, but maybe this clarification was necessary.
I don't think GOP presidential candidates ever talk substantively about economics or foreign policy, either. On the former, they just mouth the current totalitarian free-trade line (are there any non-, let alone anti-, totalitarian economists still alive?), and on the latter, whatever the Israeli hardliners tell them to say.
Reagan taught them all to be content-aversive opportunists, entertainingly conning the citizens as they prepare themselves and their cronies to fleece and eviscerate the nation. They could observe a moratorium on all the issues, and the ensuing campaign would be indistinguishable from all its predecessors of the last 30 years.
As Dr. Clyde Wilson keeps reminding us, the Republicans always have been the party of Big Business. Everything is about them getting more money -- the railroads under Dishonest Abe, the oil-military-industrial complex today. And their party stooges just want to get huge consulting fees.
You should see it out here in California with the Meg Whitman campaign. At the GOP convention in San Diego last month, even moderate Republicans were banned from speaking because Meg had stuffed so many of her $1.4 billions into the mouths of the hacks who ran the show.
It's not a party, it's a ripoff.
What would social conservatives learn from an outright GOP betrayal?
Assuming that social conservatives' political participation is wise and necessary, what is a plausible scenario for social conservatives to reassert themselves among the Democrats?
Barbour is among other things, a product of that process which has produce that which is referred to as the "New South." Barbour has proclaimed in no few fora that "his" generation is not a part of segregation, Jim Crow and the nostalgia for the past. He and his people are progressives. He has acquired the respectability which he has lusted for and in so doing has turned his back on his people and the legacy, good and bad/warts and all, which he was obliged to claim. He has refused to claim it. He is the Quintin who did not leave the South and drown himself in the Charles River. He stayed and is now among those drowning us.
Rob #2 and Ray #5 say all there is to say.
The Republican Party was born the party that crossed the most wild-eyed New England Anglo-Saxon uber-Liberaliasm in religious and cultural areas with the most thorough Wall Street greed. That was no freak mating; each is a natural and inevitable product of Puritanism. The Republican party thus naturally at its inception was the heir of the Know-Nothings and hated Southern culture. As a fake 'conservatism,' the Republican party must always play a balancing act of pretending to honor and even promote aspects of actual conservatism, while acting to tame and then destroy all aspects of actual conservatism.
There is zero evidence that people will ever catch on.
On Republicans: I was visiting the late Joe Brown at his home in Deerfield shortly after Ronald Reagan took office. What did he think of the new administration, I asked. "Business as usual," was the reply. He got it right away. It took me much longer.