Blogs For Victory

With the recent defeat of Lisa Murkowski in Alaska, the debate over the fundamental direction of the GOP has heated up. On one side are those who would rather lose a few races on November 2nd rather than keep or install a few more RINOs in to Congress, on the other side are those who say that the pragmatic facts of life are that we must have some RINOs in order to have a majority. Over at Hot Air Allahpundit wades in to this regarding the Castle vs O’Donnel GOP Senate Primary in Delaware.

Allahpundit admits that Castle is a RINO – that he’ll vote against us some of the time, but also asserts that only Castle can win. A vote for TEA Party-backed O’Donnell is, in effect, a vote to keep the seat in liberal Democrat hands. I have to say that I’m less than impressed with the argument.

If we lose the Delaware race then we’ll be replacing an ultra-liberal from a blue State with an ultra-liberal from a blue State. Meaning that if we lose, we’re no worse off than we are now. Additionally, none of us ever thought we had a chance to win the Delaware race, anyway. Getting the seat is not crucial to GOP or conservative long term prospects – it’d be a nice feather in our cap, but our movement doesn’t stand or fall on the Delaware result.

Now, let’s step back for a moment and ask ourselves, what do we want? I mean, as the Republican party and as a conservative movement, what are we trying to accomplish? Getting 51 Senators? Making Mitch McConnell Senate Majority Leader? Obtaining the chairmanships for our guys? No, that is not what we’re after. What we’re after – if we’re Republicans and conservatives, at all – is a constitutionally governed Republic.

Getting such means getting judges who will rule on the law, not make law. Getting legislators who will do their job, and not leave it to the permanent bureaucracy to work out the legal details of vague, badly-written legislation hastily passed through Congress. Getting our fiscal house in order by eventually balancing the budget and paying off the debt. Reducing the tax and regulatory burden on the American people. Fundamentally curbing the powers of the federal government so that the people and the States will be once again able to run their own affairs. This will, naturally, take a lot of time and effort – and the thing is that in getting to such a place RINOs would continually cut us off at the knees.

When we needed to curb the power of the minority to filibuster judges in the Senate, who stopped us? RINOs. When we needed to stand firm to stop Obama’s stimulus package, who gave way? RINOs. When it comes time to cut spending, who is out there willing to “compromise” with Democrats? RINOs. Always and everywhere, when conservatism – when the principles of Constitutional governance – are swept aside, it is always RINOs who are joining with the other side to defeat us.

I know the theory – better to have someone in office who will vote with us 80% of the time than someone who will vote with us 20% of the time. That would be fine but it is always on the most crucial issues where the RINOs decide its time to show “independence” and break with the GOP. It gets them invited to the nice parties; it gets them glowing write-ups in the MSM; it gets them on the Sunday morning talk shows…its all good, for RINOs. Not so good for the GOP and the United States.

We can already see a bit of what 2011 will be like if the GOP wins a Senate majority – Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe and Lindsay Graham will try to carve out some sort of “maverick”, independent position (at least in the MSM narrative – they’ll actually be slavishly devoted to the Ruling Class, of course). On the happy morn of our victory, it will be those RINOs who will irk us…who will “reach across the aisle” when its time to confront Obama and his Democrats. We’ll be trying to get them to concede to American Constitutional principle, and here will come our RINOs to completely wreck the program. Why add to our troubles by adding more RINOs? Why even get a Senate majority if it is by grace of RINOs? Better to have a strong, difficult-to-break-a-filibuster minority than be dependent every step of the way on placating people who are just waiting for their chance to throw us under the bus.

2010 is turning out to be a gift for us in the GOP. As recently as a couple months ago, our brightest dreams were of adding two or three GOP Senators. Now there is an outside chance of a GOP majority. But more important than what happens in 2010 for the Senate is the fact that in 2012 and 2014, we have the opportunity to really clean up – in those two cycles a large number of first-term Democrats from red States will be up for re-election. Well-run campaigns from us will allow us to really stock up on conservative Senators…enough, when added to those currently in and those we’re likely to get in 2010, to have a genuine conservative GOP majority in the Senate. Might still need some RINOs for cloture, but we’ll never need them to get a majority vote. If we play our cards right – and if we don’t shove a bunch of additional RINOs in there.

And, finally, we should never concede that liberalism has a place in America. When we say, “well, its a blue State so we’d better RINO-up or we’ll never win” what we’re saying, in effect, is that conservatism is not true and not worthy of support. Either we believe in our conservatism, or we don’t – if we do, then we should be presenting it everywhere. Tactical adjustments can be made depending on where we’re running – deciding on what part of conservatism to emphasize, that is – but we must hold that conservatism can win everywhere…because the truth can win everywhere.

Supposing O’Donnell, winning the nomination, does get clobbered (and, yes, I did read the Standard’s piece on her – she does drift in to some whining kookism..memo to O’Donnell…even if your opponents are rat bastards, don’t complain about it: it looks weak). So, what? Just an incident in the long process of turning Delaware conservative. It is what we must do – hit again and again on conservative ideals in all 50 States until we win the whole ball of wax…until, that is, all political debates are carried out within the framework of conservative ideals, just as when liberalism won it all back in the 1930s, for 40 years we essentially debated only what sort of liberalism to have. Better, at any rate, to fight it out on principle, and lose, than to fight it without principles and merely get a built-in knife in the back.

There is room for a wide variety of views in conservatism. For instance, no one can really question my conservative credentials, and yet I’m opposed to the death penalty and I favor some sort of path to citizenship for at least some illegal aliens. You can be conservative and be a lot of things – but what you can’t be, because we can’t afford it, is a “moderate” who just waits for the chance to go against us when the chips are down. When the crucial “either/or” votes – the votes which define conservatism as being in opposition to liberalism and in favor of a distinctive world view – that is when we must rally ’round. And that is when, precisely, we’ll regret it if we backed RINOs just to get someone with an “R” next to their name in Congress.