Volume 6, Issue 37
What’s distorted today are the Republican and Democratic parties’ perception of themselves.
The Republicans
In 1988, Bob Michel, Congressman from Illinois, was the House Minority Leader in Congress. Republicans were the honorable minority. Civility was the rule of the day. At that time, the last Republican majority in Congress was in 1954. Democrats were so accustomed to being in charge that they barely acknowledged the existence of the Republican party. The GOP played the role that the Washington Generals basketball team has played against the Harlem Globe Trotters. They are not there to win, but to present the image of a contest as expected by the spectators.
That all changed in 1989. The original Donald Trump of the modern era was Newt Gingrich. He ran against Bob Michel for the post of Minority Leader with the intent and purpose of disrupting the status quo. Newt challenged the press. He called them out for their biased reporting. He organized the “back benchers” into the earliest rumblings of the Tea Party. Newt literally contested every given normalcy of the established protocol. In 1994, Republican Congressional candidates ran as a group on the theme of a “Contract for America.” This was a brilliant political strategy. Newt nationalized the elections around ten points of a contract that he promised to implement into law when he became Speaker of the House. Republicans won control of the House of Representatives in 1994 for the first time in forty years.
Speaker Gingrich understood the reflection of the image in the public’s mirror.
Fast forward to 2016. The Republican Party had again become the honorable opposition. Even though majorities had at times been achieved in both the House and the Senate, Democrats defined the agenda. Progressives took issues, thought untenable ten years prior, and made them the essence of solutions at the center of all debate. An accommodating national press was now the echo chamber for liberal causes. Republican Party leadership decided to stand on civility, even in the face of brutal attacks on the party’s moral character. Party leaders believed the public desired the image they projected.
The GOP was looking at themselves in a distorted mirror.
Following the reelection of President Barack Obama in 2012, the Republican Party, led by the Republican National Committee, went into two years of self-examination on how to regain the majority support of the electorate. The focus was on minorities, women and social issues. They went about this electoral postmortem all wrong. Parties stand for ideals, virtues, and policies of prosperity. Instead of going back to the basics and asking what’s wrong with free enterprise, states’ rights, and moral values, they allowed the very special interests opposed to their basic values to dictate the future course of the American political dialog. In other words, instead of standing on the principles of core values that presented a clear choice compared to progressives, they chose compatibility as if there was no difference.
The Republican Party came full circle back to the honorable minority.
Make no mistake about it. If Hillary Clinton had won the presidency in 2016, the Republican Party most likely would never have regained its footing. A Hillary Clinton administration would have put a boot on the Republican neck never to let the party up again. In fact, there was backroom discussion by the Democrats on this very subject. Progressives would have controlled the courts. By and through this control, they would slowly have made their issues the moral authority for federal and state races. Democrats would have achieved majorities in both the House and Senate within just a few years.
The only possible candidate in 2016 who could have beaten Hillary Clinton was Donald Trump.
As in Newt Gingrich’s day, and quite frankly Ronald Reagan’s before him, the New York Times and others opined that the Republican Party was destroying itself. In 1980, this same newspaper declared, “Ronald Reagan, if nominated, would destroy the Republican Party, and if elected President, would destroy the United States of America.” In the evidence of history and such errant intellect, somehow the Times stays in business.
What the progressives and the intellectual elites fear more than anything else are conservatives who don’t play by the rules that they dictate.
The title of Bob Woodward’s new book, Fear, may have subliminal meaning. What are progressives going to do if they lose control of the courts and, therefore, their control of policy ideology? How will they be successful if they can’t get in control of the protocol currently disguised as civility? And, how are they going to survive if they actually have to go to the public marketplace of ideas and present their case to the people as to the people’s perception of reality?
The Democrats
The Democrats are not confused about what they represent or what they want for government policy. The party is dominated by progressives, many who now profess socialism. It is not clear that the younger candidates running for Congress understand what this means. Instead of advocating an ideology that encompasses single-payer healthcare and free college tuition, they embrace the simple solutions of the single issue and wrap it in a socialistic ideology. These candidates have not indicated how this issue-driven philosophy impacts education, immigration, states’ rights, religious freedom, freedom of speech, or majority rule.
Progressives believe in a cause pursuing a societal destination that exists only in theory. Yet their faith in their commitment to such a utopia, proven by history to be a myth, is their religion.
The Democrats continue to look into a distorted mirror reflecting the false acceptance of their political objective.
The public is left without leadership that has an affinity for their personal needs in their pursuit of happiness. A recent documentary, produced by a major national news outlet, interviewed constituents in New Hampshire and Maine. They simply asked the question of citizens, “What do you want Congress to do?” The answers were just as simple. Work toward the opportunity of providing an environment in which we can enjoy a job, or a small business as we see fit, in line with our skill sets. When asked, “Do you think Congress can relate to you personally?” interviewees responded by laughing. This implied, in one part, an obvious disconnect, but also a sadness and despair.
One young brother-sister team was the subject of an interview on a lobster boat in Maine. They appeared to be around 18 and 20 years old. They were happy and eager to be in the family fishing business. When asked the question about Congress, they implied that they were doing just fine. When further inquired of, “Do you know who Paul Manafort is?”, they both shook their heads no. “Do you know who Robert Mueller is?” The same response. This was a revelation to the interviewer.
Sometimes freedom is simply being left alone in one’s pursuit of happiness.
There is a quote in the movie Braveheart attributed to William Wallace when addressing the ruling nobles of 13th century Scotland:
There is a difference between us. You think the people of this country exist to provide you with position. I think your position exists to provide the people with freedom. And I go to make sure they have it
Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich and Donald Trump may not be successors to William Wallace. But their transcendent purpose was and is to make sure that the people have freedom.
America’s enemies are equally the enemies of both American progressives and American conservatives. In the arena of the great debate for political ideals, we must remember that we are united in our commitment to protect the greatest forum of free speech the world has ever known. Our challenges are inclusive. Our resolve, when tested, is enduring. Our hope is our collective commitment.
Republicans stand on principles they do not explain. Democrats advocate a cause they cannot justify. The people simply desire the opportunity for the pursuit of happiness. In the perceptions reflections of all realities, it is eternal principles that matter.
Freedom is our charge. Freedom is our imperative. Freedom is our legacy.
The truths, held to be self-evident in the Declaration of Independence, embodied the revolutionary concept that freedom emanates from God as an unalienable right. Sovereign freedom must be the foundational building block of government policy, progressive or conservative. All architectural design for government reach or purpose must respect this fundamental precept.
In establishing a free and independent state, the Founding Fathers stated unequivocally:
--And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor
What do you believe?