Republicans: why can’t we all get along?
Trying to get Republicans to agree on something is like herding cats. Democrats tend to hang together for the good of the Party and the larger vision, as well as the promise of more specific rewards for cooperation (jobs, pork, etc.) or threats for non-cooperation. But Republican seem a lot more disorganized—or is it ornery or individualistic or uncompromising or principled or stupid or what?
I was thinking about that yesterday, and I thought the issue might deserve highlighting in a thread of its own:
I was watching some commentator on some TV news show on Fox (forget who) saying that Republicans had a lot of Obamacare-alternative proposals but needed to get together and settle on one to get behind…What is up with this stupid inability to come together? I think it’s the lack of the ability to compromise with each other that I was talking about the other day.
Note that here I’m not talking about, nor suggesting, compromise with the Democrats. I’m talking about presenting a united face to the public so that the message of the right is clear and understandable, and something people can relate to. And then to drive it home with repetition and memorable phrases.
Scott Walker had some good things to say in his interview with John Hawkins, which I quoted yesterday:
…the Left, they want you under their thumb. They want to control you. They want to control your lives. They want you to be dependent on the government. We should say we’re the ones, not only for the poor, but for young people coming out of college, for working class families, for immigrants, for others out there. We should say we are the ones who empower the American Dream. We’re the ones who say you can do and be anything you want, but it’s because we empower you with the ability and the platform to do that.
Now, is that so hard to say? Apparently.
In the years I’ve been on the right, I’ve been impressed by how much infighting there is compared to the left. Not that the left doesn’t have disagreements, but they pull together for the sake of the all-important prize: winning. Conservatives seems to take pride in their dissent from each other, as though it shows their integrity and their devotion to principle.
And I suppose in a way it does. But as a strategy (or is that a tactic?) it stinks.
“…they [Democrats] pull together for the sake of the all-important prize: winning.”
This does explain Democrats. Winning is the goal and specific tactics don’t matter. In fact, they seem to take a “throw everything against the wall and see what sticks” approach. Having few concrete principles makes shifting the goalposts easy in retrospect. See their changing criteria of success regarding Obamacare for an example.
The disappointment comes after their leaders aren’t able to deliver everything that was promised.
For Republicans, principles do matter. Not only must things get done, but they must be done in the correct manner. No sense being a Constitutionalist if you throw out the Constitution on the way to power.
Additionally, the left has continuously and incrementally moved the debate to the left over the years. There is a sense on their side that they are getting closer to the goal.
For the Republican base, they see this drift as getting further away from the goal. It is a slow-motion retreat. This fosters a real distrust of the leadership who let this happen. The base ends up wondering if the establishment even shares the same goals.
Compromise is almost impossible if you cannot trust the interlocutor.
The Bush era overshadowed a lot of this, because there wasn’t much choice about it. I think a crucial split happened when HW Bush, someone who disagreed with Reagan, got in power. Then his son, Bush, tried to meet Reagan and his father in the middle. Ended up like that.
It seems like the people who are the least corruptable are former Democrats or Leftists, who wake up and reform their view, because it provides the least amount of time to be conditioned by the Left or the Right. Although people like Horo seems to have some untreated Leftist conditioning left over, given his reaction to American Betrayal.
As an example of my last point, here is an article from Erick Erickson of Red State:
http://www.redstate.com/2014/01/17/connecting-more-dots/
Some Excerpts: “Mr. Piper is not just Mitch McConnell’s former Chief of Staff. He’s now a well paid lobbyist working on behalf of companies implementing Obamacare.”
“Senator Mitch McConnell has received $75,000.00 from UnitedHealth Group. UnitedHealth owns the company that built Healthcare.gov. It also “retains former McConnell chief of staff Billy Piper as a Washington lobbyist to work on its behalf in Congress on implementation of the Affordable Care Act, Senate records show.”
As Erickson states, this makes it in McConnell’s self interest to NOT repeal Obamacare, but instead “fix” it (as if that were possible).
How are conservatives supposed to compromise with someone actively stabbing them in the back?!?
The Republican base falls into two broad categories:
1) The uninformed. They may not keep up on current events, but they know their party keeps losing or at least, doesn’t win. This forms a vague sense of unease in the back of their mind.
2) The informed. For those who keep abreast of intra-party affairs, they know there are Quislings in the party. They’ve seen the evidence, and there’s nothing “vague” about their unease. In fact, I think the word “fury” describes their feelings.
Bribes can work just as well as blackmail, hey.
but they know their party keeps losing or at least, doesn’t win.
Doesn’t do anything about the Left when they win, yea.
Democrats tend to hang together for the good the larger vision (a “socially just” world), and for specific rewards for cooperation; passage of desired special interest legislation, jobs, pork, etc.
”Trying to get Republicans to agree on something is like herding cats. Republican[s] seem a lot more disorganized–or is it ornery or individualistic or uncompromising or principled or stupid or what?”
A combination of course.
The categories are broadly; ‘moderate’ republican (status quo), fiscal conservative, social conservative, small government conservative and libertarians. Mostly, we are an individually varied mix of these categories dependent upon the particular issue and our primary, secondary and even tertiary focus.
Absent religious faith and strong allegiance to the founding father’s vision, I’m not sure that those of the right have ‘a larger vision’. We’re not looking to create a utopia on earth. We’re not rejecting reality in pursuit of an ideology.
”Republicans had a lot of Obamacare-alternative proposals but needed to get together and settle on one to get behind “
We’ve already settled on one to get behind, what we previously had, private health care based in capitalism. There are a lot of proposals to improve our former system. But private health care, however effective and efficient, accepts that it is NOT going to provide the same level of service to everyone and that in the main, how much health care is available is determined by one’s fiscal resources.
That reality based system is easily misrepresented as morally unacceptable and evidence of a lack of compassion. Responding to that false charge is not easily encapsulated into a politically acceptable sound bite.
Honestly saying, ‘well, for 15% of people it sucks to be them but for the other 85% and for future generations it is by far, the best system’ does not a convincing argument make for the 15% nor assuage the discomfort contemplating the lot of the 15% brings the other 85%.
”Not that the left doesn’t have disagreements, but they pull together for the sake of the all-important prize: winning.”
They pull together for the sake of conformity and approval. Political correctness is a child of the left. Winning at the ballot box is a result of political conformity. Those on the left do not criticize each other because they so greatly fear criticism.
”Conservatives seems to take pride in their dissent from each other “
It is not a matter of pride or pretentiousness. Conservative dissent from each other is a result of allegiance to principle and belief. There can be no integrity if allegiance to principle and belief is absent. As a strategy it stinks due to John Adam’s observation that, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” Far too many Americans are neither morally objective nor religious (answerable to a ‘higher power’).
Given that a majority of the American public is no longer moral nor religious… how could a message of principled integrity, of limits and self-discipline… sell?
Tocqueville had the right of it, “The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money. A democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it.”
The Democrat Party long ago discovered that it could bribe a dependent public and everything they have done since then has been with the aim of growing that dependent class.
In 2012 they proved that the dependent class had reached the tipping point.
You can only teach a man how to fish who wants to learn how to fish. Given that the nature of fishing (a metaphor for reality) is that sometimes the fish aren’t biting no matter how skilled the fisherman, the attraction of being given a fish every day for no effort whatsoever is powerfully attractive.
All it requires is the willingness to sacrifice a little liberty for the promise of future security.
Geoffrey Britain has just about nailed it. When you have five or six categories of Republicans who tend toward more individuality, it makes for a cantankerous group. Especially if they feel that compromise is unacceptable. It has often been stated by some commenters here that this or that Republican candidate will not get their vote because the candidate is not pure enough in every area of conservatism or libertarianism. That is one reason why we don’t win elections.
The vision of the left is for the state to create an egalitarian society. One where equality of economic results is the norm and where greed, ambition, unfairness, and poverty have been erased. Such a vision is held in spite of all evidence that all previous attempts at such have been unsuccessful. Thus, what the Republicans face is a form of secular faith, a religious zealotry if you will, that is hard for conservatives and libertarians to match. For what we offer is self reliance, responsibility, hard work, and possible failure. Not a very appealing package fro LIVs when compared to the nanny state.
One principle that I think most Republicans of the various stripes can get behind is that big government is not the answer. The other is that we can do nothing to reduce the size of government unless we win some elections. To win elections we have to put aside our squabbles over purity of conservative or libertarian views and vote for any and all Republican candidates. The worst of them will be far more likely to be for smaller government than any democrat. But that is only the start. Once a candidate is in office we have to keep on demanding that they work for smaller, less intrusive government and keep the pressure on. They do respond to pressure when enough of it is applied.
The surest way to let the march to the left continue is to not vote – something that helped insure the re-election of Obama. Do we have anyone who can unite the party and lead us in that direction of being just as zealous in winning elections as the left? So far I haven’t seen anyone. I’m praying that another Reagan will appear.
I cannot understand for the life of me why people don’t vote.
Every ballot choice should include the choice of none of the above. If none of the above wins 10+% there must be a new election. Do it over until we get it sort of right.
the Left, they want you under their thumb. They want to control you. They want to control your lives.
So do some in the GOP, and they happen to be the Establicans. Now, they’ve begun to wage war openly against the Tea Party and conservatives, who are demanding that politicians vote themselves less power.
They’re not spineless Quislings: they’re on the other side. They call what they’re doing “compassionate conservatism” but it’s actually me-too Leftism: expansion of “entitlements,” spending increases with cosmetic cuts (the howls from the Left somehow proving that the cuts are real), and as much cronyism as you can shake a stick at.
The problem is that some on the right have awakened to the enemy within and others still believe that the GOP represents them. THAT’s the fight: between those who want to get rid of the covert leftists and those who think that a leftist in the GOP is the lesser of two evils.
We do ourselves a disservice by attributing GOP fecklessness to moral cowardice. The Establicans fail to “make the case” because they don’t believe in the case, not because they’re poor communicators.
The fighting amongst ourselves isn’t squabbling over scraps: it’s a battle to reclaim the soul of the GOP, else we lose the Republic.
To win elections we have to put aside our squabbles over purity of conservative or libertarian views and vote for any and all Republican candidates. The worst of them will be far more likely to be for smaller government than any democrat.
That’s not true. Yeah, with majorities we get committees and chairs, but GOP leadership is just as determined to thwart the work of reducing the size of gubmint as the Dems.
They’re NOT “far more likely to be for smaller government”; they’re just far more likely to lie about what they’re doing and why.
And we fall for it year after year. They keep telling us that this latest nightmare compromise is necessary to set up a 3D chess move in the future, and yet that future never comes.
Insisting that the GOP not move the ratchet leftward AT ALL is not “purity.” “Purity” is a weasel-word that politicians use when their constituents yell at them for moving the ball leftward. Again. And again.
The groundwork is being laid for the GOP to NOT repeal Obamcare, regardless of the outcome of elections. They’re not going to pass up on that much control over the citizenry – and that much money from the Chamber of Commerce, which adores Obamacare, as it allows bidnesses to dump their employees into the system.
Not ideological purity – corruption and cronyism. That’s what we’re fighting against. That’s what’s at stake.
“Note that here I’m not talking about, nor suggesting, compromise with the Democrats. I’m talking about presenting a united face to the public so that the message of the right is clear and understandable, and something people can relate to. And then to drive it home with repetition and memorable phrases.”
This is EXACTLY what Newt Gingrich did in 1994 with his “Contract with America” which was overwhelmingly responsible for the huge Republican midterm win. Subsequent slanderous attacks by the Left on Gingrich over his personal life may have caused the Pubs to be fearful of ever trying that again. The “Politics of Personal Destruction”.
dicentra,
That’s why in 2008 I started thinking we needed to purge the GOP before we could purge the LEft from even DC, let alone the rest of the country the Left were occupying. After 5 years of fighting the Islamic Jihad in Iraq and Afghanistan,, it was tough going whenever Jihad’s Leftist allies in DC kept helping them out when the terrorists started to lose. The Left had a point about focusing more on domestic enemies and problems. The thing was, they were talking about poverty and Republicans. I was thinking of using COIN on Chicago though. Difference of goals there.
But it just goes to show that political solutions are a long bet with long odds, given the current situation. Force is much more guaranteed, even though some consider it riskier and reckless.
dicentra and GB get it right (correct!).
It will take force, and we are not up to that, even while the Left is using it on us.
Let me ask these few questions:
Do we really think that any great numbers of today’s Congressional Republicans, the Leadership of the Republican establishment, or the candidates that have appeared so far are filled with the faith, the knowledge, the principles, the fire, and the grim determination to attain freedom and justice that filled, animated and directed our Founders?
Would any of these people today, as our Founders did, pledge and actually risk “their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor” to restore our Republic, and to preserve our Constitution against its destruction?
P.S.–The cost of that pledge was dear for quite a few of our Founders, who suffered all sorts of retaliation and misfortune, and sometimes died, not honored, but penniless, neglected, and alone.
Wolla Dalbo:
Definitely not “great numbers.”
But a few.
So long as the face of Republicanism remains angry old white men it is doomed. Now I’m an angry old white guy myself but the modern culture has relegated us to criminal status. Nothing will turn back the progressive mindset until many more strong and forthright women make their beliefs known. We need thousands more Sarah Palins, Michelle Malkins, Michelle Bachmans, and Ann Coulters.
Whatever personality flaws Newt Gingrich might have (and after the MSM’s intense carpet bombing of his history, character, and reputation, who knows what is really true?), he has always struck me as being extraordinarily intelligent, as a Patriot, and as having an almost encyclopedic knowledge of our history, the Constitution, our Founders and their principles, politics, and government; his head and heart are in the right place.
Newt correctly identified the problems we face, but I fear that today’s citizens are not the men and women that we would need to carry out the often arduous and painful solutions he proposed to turn the Ship of State around, and to get it back on course again.
Newt’s potential to possibly win is why he was carpet bombed, and MSM bombs are guaranteed to rain down on any Republican who shows the slightest chance of selling a major course correction, of winning, and of becoming President.
We may have our eyes on the wrong ball. There aren’t enough of us. So it will take an uprising of the LIVs to work change, and we must drive them in that direction. Which is not in our characters. Which is why we must know and use Alinsky on the Dems and the MSM and Hollywood.
Charge Celeb X with pedophilia via an anonymous source, for example. Keep opponents on the defensive. Be it ever so disgusting, do what it takes to stir up the LIVs. Like cattle in a thunderstorm, just keep them moving, circling, moving and then let them stampede in the right direction.
Mao advocated attacking the occupation forces, then waiting until they have counter striked the village the guerillas were hiding in, and then use the atrocities against the villagers to stir up a popular revolt.
Americans using Mao’s manual in the phillippines against the japanese weren’t willing to take that amount of civilian casualties on their conscience, but they still used the old yin yang method of letting your enemy do most of the work.
If the Leftist evil is as bad as we say… then why don’t we have the ammunition in the propaganda war? Where are the “evil” the Leftist rapists and child abductors creating? They don’t exist? If they don’t exist then why is the Left evil?
ACORN wasn’t evil either or perceived that way… until Breitbart and O’Keefe.
So propaganda doesn’t create itself. The Left spends significant cash and manpower reserves on their propaganda. The GOP cannot be relied on to use their funding for anti Leftist propaganda. Bipartsanship and compromise aren’t platforms upon which you can build anti Leftist propaganda.
Exactly, Ymar.
Perhaps at the local level of the Tea Parties: less $ spent, more experience gained.
But Republican seem a lot more disorganized–or is it ornery or individualistic or uncompromising or principled or stupid or what?
Crazy.
Crazy and/or corrupt. A volatile coalition of kooks and kleptocrats.
gs:
That combination of characteristics doesn’t stop Democrats from organizing and uniting; why should it stop Republicans?
We need thousands more Sarah Palins, Michelle Malkins, Michelle Bachmans, and Ann Coulters.
Heard from Michele Bachmann lately?
Last I heard from her she was pointing out the deep infiltration of the Muslim Brotherhood in the State Department and other principal posts in the government. John McCain and others became apoplectic at the very NERVE.
Then a few months later Glenn Beck asked her about the NSA hoovering up all our data and storing it in Bluffdale, Utah.
She carefully, carefully informed him that she was confident that a specific program was not being abused.
Haven’t heard from her since.
No doubt they’re holding her family hostage – not gagged and bound but they have a way to make her family hurt and hurt badly if she steps out of line. Maybe they’ll “find” kiddy porn on her husband’s computer and then the manufactured accusations will begin to emerge. Even if he’s acquitted, his life has been irreparably damaged.
Don’t doubt that the powers that be are willing to play that dirty, and that some of them have an R after their name. Otherwise, why haven’t they pursued the IRS abuses to the bitter end?
That combination of characteristics doesn’t stop Democrats from organizing and uniting; why should it stop Republicans?
The Dems are all about accruing power to the central government, by all means possible. Even the Dems who aren’t specifically power hungry – who just want entitlements expanded For The Children – will work toward that end.
The Republicans are of two minds: on one hand, the constitutionalists and conservatives and Tea Partiers and other Classical Liberals (mostly consisting of voters), and on the other hand the cronies and careerists and the corrupt (mostly in office). The two sides cannot reconcile because their goals are orthogonal to each other.
Hence the fighting.
Inflammation and pus and pain mean that your body is fighting the infection. It’s unpleasant, but the alternative is worse, because the infection, unopposed, will always win.
I dunno. The Democrat’s attitude of no enemies to the Left unifies them; it also accounts for the sympathy for and inclusion of communists in the party.
That Republicans like McCain, Christi, Jeffords, Spector have the attitude of anyone to my right is an enemy contributes to an inability to unite to win.
Judging by the Democrats, a party must embrace its worst, vilest, most anti-American elements to win.
The reason the Repubs can’t all get on the same page is because there is a battle for the very soul of the party going on right now. Establishment versus what I call Ideologicals. The reason the Dems hold together is because the Ideologicals on their side won their battle awhile ago, and elected an ideological president in the process.
Establishment Repubs have moved leftward consistently. They’ll say they are just moving toward compromise, but when the Left has moved as far off center as they have, the center now looks quite leftward for many conservatives.
The Tea Party and other brands of ideological conservatives want the GOP to get back to its roots. The very roots of constitutional government, the rule of law for all, individual rights, and the American Dream. That’s their ideology, and one I completely agree with.
The GOP may be in the wilderness for awhile as this battle wears on. Opportunities squandered? Probably. But in the long run, the party will be stronger, if it survives. And if it doesn’t survive, it will be because the electorate can no longer discern it from the Democrats in terms of policy and the fruits of “what’s in it for them”.
The left preaches diversity, but practices conformity. The right preaches individuality, which in practice results in diversity.
The Republican establishment is busy selling out its own base, and they are playing increasingly dirty.
We need thousands more Sarah Palins, Michelle Malkins, Michelle Bachmans, and Ann Coulters.
I take the converse/obverse position. We need thousands of humans, not zombies, that deserve being led by such individuals.
Right now, slaves that want to be kept safe and locked up on the tax farm, don’t deserve leadership. What they are going to do with it?
1. neo-neocon Says:
January 19th, 2014 at 11:35 pm
gs: That combination of characteristics doesn’t stop Democrats from organizing and uniting; why should it stop Republicans?
That’s an astute question, thanks. I can think of plausible responses, but no single one satisfies me. (Maybe there is no single reason.)
2. Arguably, Democrat promises are more tangible than Republican promises. Democrats promise benefits right now whereas Republicans promise them eventually, perhaps in the hereafter. Even without the GOP’s blatant corporatism, the process of redistributing wealth is intuitively easier to grasp than the process of creating wealth.
3. American politics has devolved into acrimonious arguments about how to commit national suicide. Maybe something will come out of the blue to snap us out of it, but I am increasingly fatalistic.
Focus on the NSA spying. That will create a coalition large enough to win. Guess who is not part of that coalition? Establishment GOP.
The GOP originally did not control the South for votes. Democrats did, ever since Jim Crow and the first US Civil War.
The GOP has been mostly contesting with Democrats over votes elsewhere. However, when the split happened and the South decided they were going to go rogue from the Democrat party line, some things changed. It became convenient to talk like Reagan, just to get votes from conservatives, but then do something else when in DC. Politicians see their counterparts as friends, sometimes opponents, but not as enemies. They avoid burning bridges, due to bipartisanship promises and favor trading.
So long as the American public supported Republicans and voted them in, letting them do whatever, it paid to allow conservative advocates to speak of a liberty tradition.
Democrats, however, utilized party control via the rod, threats, blackmail, and bribes. If you step out of line or out of the circle, they will whip you back in. http://hotair.com/archives/2014/01/19/video-the-political-ad-that-got-a-famous-actress-blacklisted/
Or they will exile you to the outside like they did Zell Miller and Lieberman. Juan Williams was whipped like a slave and he obediently returned back to the fold and redeemed himself on healthcare.
So Democrats don’t like dissent because it weakens their control over the zombies. If the zombies start hearing Democrats speak about liberty and freedom on an actual practical level, that’s dangerous. That might foment a zombie revolt or a slave revolt. So the Democrats can’t afford that when their votes come from zombie votes.
Republicans, however, get their support by saying “look at how dangerous Democrats and this foreign threat is, you need to vote for the GOP established leader or else this country will fall into ruin”. They are right about the ruin part, but more and more people started to question whom we were obeying when they savaged Sarah Palin in 2008. Not just the Left, but the GOP itself. Then the Tea Party. People, who have resisted the Left and Islamic Jihad’s violations of humanity, started to question just what kind of people were on the Republican side.
The GOP had a decision to make. Either they could convert ideologically and throw their lot in with the grassroots patriots or… they could throw their lot in with Islamic Jihad and the Leftist alliance for human utopia.
Per my post above, January 18 @ 5:00 PM:
More evidence that big government, establishment Republicans (also known as “neocons”, though relatedly I’m not sure what a “neo-neocon” believes) are laying the groundwork for NOT REPEALING OBAMACARE, EVEN IF THEY REGAIN THE MAJORITY:
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/346585.php#346585
See? THIS is why we can’t get along. Because it isn’t an argument over tactics…the establishment does not share our core values.
(also known as “neocons”, though relatedly I’m not sure what a “neo-neocon” believes)
Hrm… anyways, a Neo Con is a new conservative, referring to people who have defected from the Left or the Democrat party.
A Neo Neocon is someone who is a new, new conservative. Another new conservative.
As a result, they are a hybridized kind of GOP voter or whatever. Neil Strauss + classical liberalism + foreign support for military stabilization of freedom + economic conservation + low taxes.