I became a Republican because of the writings and speeches of Barry M. Goldwater in the 1960’s.\u00a0 In addition to being an inspiring US Senator and a syndicated columnist, Barry wrote an wonderful book titled “Conscience of a Conservative” which made many of that long ago generation to which I belonged think about the state of contemporary politics, the status of the American republic and where our politicians were taking us.\u00a0 Barry was a Republican and a conservative, so I assumed that all republicans were conservative.\u00a0 I became involved in Republican politics and ardently supported Goldwater for President. (Ah … the bumper sticker \u201cAuH\u2082O\u201d!!)<\/p>\n
Barry believed that we should balance the budget, get out of foreign involvements, fight to win the Viet Nam war and stand against socialism abroad and at home.\u00a0 Naturally, the Democrats were violently opposed to him and used every dirty trick they could think of to defeat him, including a TV commercial depicting him nuking a little girl picking flowers.\u00a0 All in all a horrifying and, I think for the first time in American history, a taste of how really vile a media campaign of demagoguery and misrepresentation could become.\u00a0 In retrospect, a primer on how lies and defamation could be used to sway, successfully, the credulous, ill informed American voter.<\/p>\n
I was young and impressionable, but even then, more or less prepared for the vitriol of the Democrats \u2026 what I was not prepared for was the major effort to defeat him from the Republican left that emanated mainly from the machine Republicans of the mid-western and eastern states.\u00a0 To be sure, there were plenty of operatives:\u00a0 Governors, Representatives, Senators, lobbyists and party functionaries and such who believed that following the socialistic thrust of government, well started by FDR\u2019s \u201cNew Deal\u201d, to be the new norm for personal success in American politics.\u00a0 These Republican Judas’s had signed on to the Fabian socialism of the time.\u00a0 Helping big government and big bureaucracy seemed to be the “pragmatic” play for the future.<\/p>\n
In those days, those pro-government, pro-international interventionist Republicans, whom we called \u201cLiberals\u201d, openly and proudly declared themselves to be \u201cProgressive.\u201d\u00a0 “Progressive” was a word that the socialist movement, after failing miserably to gain popular support for their ideals, had long ago co-opted to mellow their image with the public.\u00a0 We should note that until the Democratic Party took up the aims of their philosophy in 1970’s that there were organized socialist and communist parties in America.\u00a0 Many of the old line democrats, the Wilsonians and New Dealers, were not true socialists and would have bristled at any suggestion that they were.\u00a0 After all we had just fought and won two world wars and with the spilling of much patriotic American blood had defeated world imperialistic tyranny and totalitarian socialism and were mortally engaged in confronting the worst socialistic threat ever, International Communism.<\/p>\n
Many at that time believed that the \u201cProgressive\u201d movement intended for government to give a leg up to the poor and oppressed\u00a0and coincidentally it was understood that \u201cSocialism,\u201d could best be described as government control of everything by committee, a cascade, a series of ever smaller, ever more powerful committees, culminating in a supreme council overseen by some omnipotent leader or \u201cgeneral secretary.\u201d\u00a0 Nowadays, “Progressive” is a euphemism for “Socialism.”\u00a0 Interestingly in those days, one of the people who understood this socialistic system best and who fought it the most ardently was the then head of the AFL-CIO, its president, George Meany.\u00a0 So, to many in those days, Progressivism was not synonymous with Socialism, but meant that you wanted everyone to get ahead and that you had \u201cempathy\u201d for those less fortunate than yourself.\u00a0 Few realized that being a little bit \u201cProgressive\u201d is like being \u201ca little bit pregnant.\u201d<\/p>\n
The arrogance of the progressive \u201cLiberal Republican leaders\u201d because of their self perceived intellectual superiority and because of the often ham handed approach that the Democrats used to implement their governmental intrusions into the personal lives of individuals, they believed that they should take control of the government and make the failed or failing policies of the Democrats work.\u00a0 Occasionally, they did gain power, and when this happened, they often tried to and sometimes did improve the administration of big government schemes.\u00a0 The “old saw” was that the democrats proposed but were unable to make things work and thereafter, the Liberal Republicans gained office by promising to make them work.\u00a0 A good friend of mine used to say, \u201cYou\u2019d better praaaay<\/i> that they can\u2019t make it work, because if it works, it works on you.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was a long and arduous battle for we conservatives to drive that kind of overt liberalism out of the party, but we did \u2026 you have to look a long and hard to find a Republican nowadays who professes to be a \u201cLiberal\u201d or \u201cProgressive.\u201d\u00a0 That kind of people get nowhere in the party anymore.\u00a0 However, did we win?\u00a0 Not by a long shot!\u00a0 We just drove them underground.\u00a0 Every Republican nowadays calls himself (or herself) a \u201cConservative.\u201d\u00a0 To be sure many professing to be Republican are not \u201cright wing,\u201d by any measure and certainly not \u201cright wing radicals.\u201d\u00a0 These former liberals want get along with the media, and because the media, like themselves, are hostile to Conservatives, they help each other.\u00a0 They characterize themselves, with the help of the media, as \u201cmoderates\u201d or \u201cmiddle of the roaders\u201d or \u201cmainstream\u201d or \u201csensible\u201d or \u201cpragmatic\u201d or “responsible” or some other benign name, certainly not “Progressive.”\u00a0 Many of the people in this group are almost certainly political opportunists who have changed parties in conservative areas in order to be elected.\u00a0 When running for office they claim to be \u201cconservative\u201d after they win election, and are on the job, they vote “Progressive” with the Democrats.\u00a0 What these people are are political progressive wolves in conservative sheep\u2019s clothing.\u00a0 Actually there is a far more frightening and destructive animal to use for a metaphor \u2026 the rhinoceros\u2026 they are “republicans in name only” … RINOs.<\/p>\n
RINOs do great harm to the conservative cause of protecting our Federal Republic and therefore human freedom.\u00a0 They continuously thwart the true Conservative agenda.\u00a0 It is the RINOs who are the name callers and bearers of false witness in the Republican Party.\u00a0 I might be caught characterizing one of them as liberal, but I would not lend myself to publicly questioning their intelligence, demeanor or motives, even though it is obvious that they are as destructive to the cause of freedom as are the Democrats.\u00a0 It is people in the party like Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham who spread vitriol like “radical,” \u201cterrorist,” \u201cred-neck,\u201d \u201cstupid,\u201d \u201chillbilly,\u201d \u201cgun nut,\u201d \u201cunrealistic,\u201d and on and on.\u00a0 We conservatives expect that kind of ad hominem hubris from people who don\u2019t have the intellectual weapons to defeat us with the facts, people like Senator Harry Reid and Representative Nancy Pelosi, but should never have to face this kind of attack from our Republican brethren.\u00a0 Maybe this phenomenon can be explained by my old philosophical buddy, \u201cOccam\u2019s Razor.\u201d\u00a0 Occam, as it does, cutting through the bull, would explain that the simplest answer is that these \u201cModerates\u201d (Liberals) are philosophically more in tune with the \u201cProgressive\u201d movement than with Conservative Republican principles, whether they are personally aware of it or not.<\/p>\n
There would be no \u201cObamacare\u201d if it were not for the RINO Republican Senators, Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins and Arlen Specter.\u00a0 When you have a problem like defunding Obamacare in the present Congress and House with leaders like John Beohner and Eric Cantor, you can make a high odds bet that the Republican Party will not make a stand, but will cave.\u00a0 It is a cinch that with the leadership leading a small minority of House RINOs to team up with ALL<\/span><\/i><\/b> the democrats that the will of millions of Americans will be thwarted.\u00a0 This is how we lose, and it happens in city, county and state governments time and again and almost always in the Congress.\u00a0 The RINOS vote with the Democrats to enable the “Progressive” agenda.\u00a0 RINOs break an ethical trust with the thousands, no millions of Americans, that labor in politics, sometimes for a lifetime, who are trying to redirect our form of government back to the ideals given to us by our forefathers in the Constitution \u2026 Individual freedom and limited local government.\u00a0 Is it any wonder that people have such low esteem for Congress?<\/p>\n Is your Congressman or Senator a RINO?\u00a0 Listen to what they are saying.\u00a0 Of course they will say that they are opposed to Obamacare.\u00a0 But if they say that they want to \u201crepeal\u201d and \u201creplace,\u201d you can be assured that they are RINOs.\u00a0 Sure you and I want to repeal, but we sure as hell don\u2019t want to replace.\u00a0 Socialized medicine is the lynchpin and crown jewel of Socialism.\u00a0 And all socialism is tyranny.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I became a Republican because of the writings and speeches of Barry M. Goldwater in the 1960’s.\u00a0 In addition to being an inspiring US Senator and a syndicated columnist, Barry wrote an wonderful book titled “Conscience of a Conservative” which … Continue reading