failure

The Death of Reason: How the sell-outs in the Republican Party deny victory

This fight has been a long time in coming.  It's been seething beneath the surface ever since Ronald Reagan beat George the First for the nomination in 1980.  On the one side, you have conservatives, ideologically bound to firm principles, from which they will not retreat. On the other, you have the pragmatists or centrists, who will sell out any principle in the name of electoral victory. These two sides have been in a Mexican stand-off for most of three decades, perhaps longer, and in the wake of the complete ouster of Republicans from control of the federal government in 2008,  the battle has now erupted in full.  In 1994, when Newt Gingrich led Republicans to a stunning turnaround in November, the gnashing of teeth had already begun: "We don't want these people running our party."

The first thing one must understand about the pragmatists is that they are interested in "what works[today, this moment.]"  They have no particular attachment to ideas, and therefore feel free to shift and slide from one position seemlessly into another as a snake sheds its skin. The truth of a particular issue is irrelevant, and the governing hypothesis is: "To govern, we must win." At that point, all other imperatives are set aside.  On this basis, we have watched the pragmatists go along with the left on healthcare, education, social security, and defense, as well as foreign policy.  The pragmatists were those who 'led' the Republican Party in Congress as a sort of permanent minority for almost the entirety of the second half of the 20th century.

Yes, their winning strategy, 'surrender to Democrats,' paid off nicely, didn't it? 

So what do they miss? What is absent from their political agenda of flexibility to the demands of the 'political realities' of this moment? They ignore the most important facet of political victory, and longterm health of the general polity of the country: One cannot advance the cause of liberty while surrendering it.

In simplest terms, you cannot make the country freer and wealthier by voting to make it more dictatorial and impoverished.  You cannot allow coercion to be the biggest factor in economies if you wish them to thrive.  These are not strange concept, and yet to the 'pragmatists', those who look for the ever-flexing middle, they will offer what they call a 'tactical retreat' in the name of a 'strategic victory' that never comes.

What is the ugly secret of their plight?  They are statists too, and like all such folk, they wish only to survive another day, and are willing to fight a losing battle knowing that by the time they are finally defeated, they will themselves have gone.  It is what Rand called 'range of the moment thinking' that enables this mass capitulation in the name of non-existent victory.

Let's be honest: The country has marched leftward for at least the last 100 years, and in the few moments it did not, it was not the pragmatists who delivered us a respite from the slide.  Instead, the few fleeting moments of victory the right has known have been when they did not compromise with the left.  The left pleaded for Reagan not to talk about SDI, and mocked him for it, and likewise criticized his move to put the Pershing II in Europe.  Not a few 'pragmatists' in the party attempted to intervene on the side of the left!  Result: The USSR collapsed, unable to compete economically or technologically.  In the afterglow, when Reagan should have been thoroughly lionized and credited with the greatest foreign policy achievement of the last 200 years, the pragmatists showed up to claim credit.

George HW Bush may have been president when the wall came down, but it hadn't been his policies that caused its collapse.

In 1994, when Republican took control of Congress for the first time in half a century, it was because they did not compromise with Clinton on healthcare.  It was because they stood firmly on the side of freedom.  By the time Republicans lost the house in 2006, they had been neutered by more pragmatism in the name of 'victory.'  This presents a lesson every would-be Republican had ought to learn.

What had been a bigger disaster than the Republican senate, back-and-forth, the pragmatists defining every issue? 

No, Americans know where the sell-outs are, and while the Democrats may be monstrous in their desire to grasp and grab at liberty and wealth, to defeat them, we must first discharge their allies from our ranks.  It's time to clean up this mess, and we will.  The day of the pragmatist is over.  Long live the ideologue!

As Bob Dylan wrote the times they are a-changin'. The campaign model that work for republicans in the past will not be as effective in the future. The internet has had a larger impact on this than most of us would have predicted. If the Barack Obama campaign in 2008 is not evidence enough of this, with his rumored 13 million email adresses, consider that the largest online fundraising day was set by a little known congressman from Texas who managed a marginal showing in the majority of Republican primaries.

When I undertook the challenge of launching a new club for young republicans in the Bronx I opened up my MacBook and did a little research on young republican clubs. I looked at not only on the existing local New York City area clubs but other clubs and federations around country. I wasn't just researching ideas for our website but also ideas on how to make a well rounded and active club. Unfortunately what I saw was not only disappointing but appallingly bad efforts by local clubs and state federations alike. Not that the national federation was any better. How bad is it out there? 17 state federations have no website. Alaska's YR Federation website still has Frank Murkowski listed as governor of the state even though Sarah Palin has been the governor for over two years. The Texas YR Federation website has links that have been dead for over a year. California's federation isn't even listed has having a website by the Young Republican National Federation. If that isn't bad enough consider that Ohio, a swing state in the three previous presidential elections, is a federation without a website. What does it say about republicans if our federations and auxiliaries can't manage to put up websites or keep even the most basic information up to date? Is it that we don't understand the value of the internet or is just laziness? Over the past four years the functions of websites have moved beyond just providing information towards hubs of social and business networking where people engage one another individually. It is time for us to take it to the next step. Political networking. It is unlikely that more than a handful of local young republican auxiliaries would have the means to create the sort of websites we saw from the Paul or Obama campaigns. However this is exactly what we should expect from the state federations. None of the state federations offer websites that have a networking component. Most don't even use a content management system. Few offer regular updates such a blog or calender. I'm not sure what the future holds for the Republican Party but I do know if we don't bridge this gap that has emerged in the last election we will continue to struggle in state and national elections. We have to make a better effort to present our message online because younger people are trending towards the internet to gather their information on politics. This divide won't be closed solely by a better online presence but it will continue to broaden if they can't find us, and we can't keep them engaged, when they do come looking for our message, candidates, and auxiliaries. The times they are a changin' and so must we.