Ron Paul said we've had "too much bipartisanship" over the decades. Both parties have agreed to get along and legislate us into the entitlement society approaching internal fiscal implosion that we find ourselves to be. Since the New Deal, we have one party ever ready to expand the centralized welfare state and another party that seems to want no so much of that not as quickly.
Half of the one party (I hope it is at least half) wants no part of expanding the welfare state. So instead of a two party system it looks like we have a one and a half party system.
I get the impression the half is growing, and the Republican Party is flirting with returning closer to its core principles.
The Siren Song of Electability
I've heard the "Buckley Rule" tossed around a lot at CPAC. Support the most conservative candidate that is electable.
That dogma gave us who, again, as the last three Republican candidates for president? McCain, Bush II, and Bob Dole. And what did the one of these three that became president give us? A vast expansion of the size and scope of government, two unconstitutional and unnecessary wars that are looking more and more like eternal occupations, and a setting of the table for everything that has happened since Inauguration Day, 2009.
Conservative activists interested in returning the party to its core principles are scorned, dismissed, and patronizingly labeled "purists" by the crowd I would call the let's-just-get-any-warm-body-or-empty-suit-Republican-elected. The paramount goal for this crowd is getting not-Democrats elected and worry about the disastrous policy consequences later. (Let's cross that bridge over the Rubicon when we get to it, shall we?)
Who are the "purists" again? They are electoral purists. Activists interested in a revival of liberty and limited government are principle purists.
Rather than worry about who is electable, why not work to persuade enough Americans to prefer freedom? Would votes then follow after principled candidates? Liberty sells; empty suit politicians who offer little alternative to that statism Americans instinctively know is wrong do not sell.
The country knows there is a lot at stake, that government has really left us in a bad place. Isn't now the time for one big teaching moment?
The Elephant In Denial In The Room
As conservatives, what is upsetting about Barrack Obama? Take three minutes and talk amongst yourselves...Okay. Did everything you just jotted down come out of thin air starting in January 2009?
When is the honest public self examination going to take place?
There is an unfortunate reluctance for POTUS aspirants to focus solely on what the Left has been doing since 2009. What part in the mess has the Republican Party played? Listening to these speeches and tepid applause responses to same old cliched "They suck, now, don't they?" makes me feel like I'm sitting at the Thanksgiving table of a wildly dysfunctional family that refuses to outwardly acknowledge their dysfunction, looking down at their plates and avoiding eye contact, and counting the seconds until the game comes on and everyone can more easily avoid the gigantic elephant in the room.
Then Dr. Paul bursts in and tells everyone they've got to wake up and he get's cranberry sauce flung at him.
Doesn't matter. He's not electable anyway.
