We Need Leaders
Have you noticed that almost everything conservatives accomplish comes from the bottom and works its way up? Rush had this figured out a long time ago.
Have you noticed that almost everything conservatives accomplish comes from the bottom and works its way up? Very rarely, if ever, will someone at the top of the political ladder propose an idea and generate grassroots enthusiasm, at least on the right. The left immediately swallows whatever its leaders say without question, but the right does not work that way. The right tends to think for itself, rather than just blindly follow the leader. And the base of the right tends to be much more conservative than the party leadership. In fact, party leadership often despises its base. Rush had this figured out a long time ago.
“The Tea Party sprung out of the grassroots. This is what so frightened the Democrats and the Republicans. Don’t forget, the Republicans never tried to latch on to the Tea Party, just like they never tried to make a connection to the majority of people opposing Obamacare. This is one of the reasons that so many of us were pulling our hair out in frustration back in 2010, 2012. We would have had built-in majority coalitions here. All the Republicans had to do was connect with ‘em on an issue they supposedly agreed, repealing Obamacare. The Tea Party didn’t have a leader. It was not based around one person. It wasn’t a cult. It wasn’t anybody powerful personality. It was based on genuine citizenship and ideas.”
In one short paragraph, Rush captured both the genius and failure of the Republican party. The Republican party has been the party of the people for a long time. It has represented people who just wanted to be left alone. The base did not want change, they just wanted to live their lives without molestation by the government. Reagan captured this sentiment when he said: “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I am here to help.’” This is the genius of the Republican party. It wants the government kept small, where no politician or public official can generate a base of support powerful enough to infringe on the rights of the people. Thus not having political messiahs is something of a Republican virtue. They don’t want the government to fix it, they want to be left alone to fix it themselves. And they know from experience, they will do a better job fixing it than the government ever would.
This same independent streak and mistrust of government have also been the failure of the Republican party. Because conservatives just want to be left alone, they often need to be motivated to run for political office. They presume that their opponents think the same way they do, and will thus leave them alone if Republicans happen to lose. They do not realize they are fighting Marxists who are endowed with religious zeal to support their sexual humanist faith. As such, conservatives rarely rise to political power within the Republican party. Most of the Republican party leadership is composed of RINOs, men, and women either in it for themselves, or actively playing for the other team. Thus there was no reason for them to latch onto the Tea Party. Sure they said they wanted to repeal Obamacare, but most of that was rhetoric, meant to reassure the voters and ensure they survived their primary.
Because the credentialed elites of the Republican party do not actually agree with or relate to their base on much, if anything, a mutual dislike develops. The grassroots has learned that the credentialed elites will regularly lie to them to keep their power, while the elites learned that the base actually expects them to keep their word. The elites have no intention of doing so, of course, because they believe themselves to be infinitely smarter than the deplorables that voted for them. Being held to their campaign promises annoys them and generates disgust at the base for simply not understanding how much more complex the issues are.
The disconnect between the credentialed elites and the conservative base is exacerbated by the cost of running a political campaign. Federal and state races in the 2022 election cycle cost the candidates 16.7 billion dollars. This does not include local races like school boards, sheriffs, and so on. In a metropolitan area, some local races may cost millions of dollars. Conservatives tend to have lower household incomes than Democrats, giving them an even bigger handicap.
How is this problem to be resolved? The easy answer is to simply encourage more conservatives to run for office. But because of the monetary handicap, and the hand of the credential party elites being against them, this cannot be the only solution, particularly for more expensive races like statewide and national races. However, it is true that more conservatives need to run for office. That said, conservatives need to be shrewd in their marketing.
There are huge openings for conservatives right now. As an example, this author used to work with a large group of Nepali immigrants. They were all legal immigrants who either were or were working on becoming citizens. Every single one of them was a conservative. But most of them watched CNN and thus voted for Democrats. Why? Because none of them had ever heard the conservative position except when it was demonized. When this author explained to them that the conservative position was that mentally ill men should not go in women’s bathrooms, no matter what they called themselves, the Nepalis were shocked. They completely agreed and could not understand why CNN had not told them conservatives were on their side.
Nepalis are not the only ones. Latinos historically have been supporters of the left. But in recent elections that has shifted. In 2012, the gap between Democrats and Republicans among Latinos was a monumental 42 points. In a decade, that has been cut in half. Many Latinos are either Catholic or of Catholic heritage and value many of the same things conservatives do. The door is open for conservative politicians to form a new base and break away from dependence on the credentialed elites.
It turns out that even a few conservatives with a spine can achieve results. In the recent record-breaking vote for speaker of the House, twenty conservatives held back Kevin McCarthy from becoming the Speaker for days. Finally, McCarthy had to grant concessions to ensure he was elected speaker.
The concessions were significant ones. McCarthy had to restore several rules eliminated by former Speaker Pelosi, including the rule that allows any member of the house to initiate a vote of no-confidence in the Speaker. This allows a single member to halt whatever is going on in the House and force a vote on whether the Speaker should be removed. Another restored rule, known as the Holman rule, allows floor amendments to appropriations bills, meaning that if a bill comes out of committee loaded with pork, the whole House can excise it from the bill.
McCarthy’s concessions did not end there. He was forced to agree to the full text of all bills being made public 72 hours before they are voted on. No more will bills be written, shielded from the public, unread by the representatives, and voted on. Now the public, and more importantly, conservative media, can access all bills and sound the alarm on bad ones.
Even more importantly, McCarthy was forced to promise to roll back all COVID emergency powers and funding, as well as form a House committee to investigate the alphabet agencies for their weaponization of the government against conservatives. While there is little doubt the agencies are already destroying documents and preparing false statements, the mere fact that this committee exists is a victory. Had the conservative holdouts not resisted McCarthy, none of these things would have happened.
Now just think for a moment how much more could have been done if we had 40 conservative holdouts. Would the globalist McCarthy even be the Speaker? What else could conservatives have achieved? If conservatives are smart, they do not even need to be the majority of elected officials. They can simply force the credentialed elites to cooperate. For that to happen, however, conservatives need to leverage groups the Republican party refuses to reach, despite supposedly sharing ideologies. Conservatives will need to stop sitting it out and actively engage in politics, starting at the local level and working upwards.
Parts of this are so true.....however we must remember that until we limit the amount of time each of these politicians in Washington and State governments spend in their positions things will not change. We must first pressure the limit of lobbyist as a norm and outlaw it's existence. Secondly, we must demand term limits, period. This can be done by squeezing age ranges in which representatives can serve. Finally, we must look at how we tax and spend. There should be laws stating that any foreign lending (yes lending as in a loan) is matched with domestic investment in infrastructure brick and mortar, of interstate value.
Who wrote this?