Dakota Beacon

THE CASE FOR DEMANDING CONSERVATIVE LEADERSHIP

Sally Morris

Conservatives are like Winston Churchill in his memorable exchange with Lady Astor: “We’ve already established what you are; now we’re just discussing price.” It is impossible to attack Barack Obama’s unconstitutional power grab and taxpayer abuse and still be required to defend George W. Bush. After all, he provided the opening act with his illegal TARP bailout. Now all we can say is that Obama pulled the bigger heist.

And herein lies the fatal fallacy in the argument that conservatives must accept whatever refuse the “moderates” serve up. If we accept this we will simply have to accept Socialism. This is why we need to place the current celebrities properly on the spectrum.

Mitt Romney: This man holds the distinction of placing himself so far to the left of Ted Kennedy that even Massachusetts couldn’t take it any more. If you want to see a scale model of Obamacare, go to Massachusetts and take a good, close look at Romneycare. This has been such a disaster that in order to balance the books they’ve taken to denying treatment to naturalized American citizens! Presumably they are still being required to pay the tab.

If we don’t like Romney, we’re supposed to settle for Mike Huckabee – the man Fred Thompson aptly styled the representative of the “Christian Left”. Unfair, you say? Consider this: Huckabee, as Arkansas governor, handed pardons out to convicted felons like Halloween candy. He believes he has the sight top detect that these hardened criminals have found the Lord. One of them went on to find another murder victim. He calls those of us who feel it’s important to maintain our national borders akin to antebellum slave holders. His remedy? Well, for one thing, he’s offering in-state tuition to illegal aliens. So if you’re from Minnesota or North Dakota and want to go to school in Arkansas, just go to Mexico and come back masquerading as an illegal if you want Huckabee’s help. I have no idea why this man is considered a “conservative”.

Either of these two men would be a disaster as President and a very dangerous one-world Socialist. And the worst of it is, with one of these “Republicans” in office, what would be our alternative?

I recently read Catastrophe by Dick Morris. While I appreciate the many practical suggestions we can employ to counter the worst of Obama’s policies, I did find his off-handed dismissal of conservative political philosophy problematic. My son began reading it and immediately took exception to the idea that we can’t afford to “govern from ideology”. This is precisely how we got where we are today. Our failure to be guided by ideology gave us George W. Bush. Most of the votes he got were from people who thought Gore or Kerry would be “worse”. We were being pragmatic – we supported a label without seeking the truth about the man behind the label.

Bush took us down this road. His TARP bailout was a gross violation of the Constitution. He violated it to “save Capitalism”, remember? If “our guy” does it we can’t stop “their guy” from just doing it on a grander scale. So he’s “worse than Bush”. It’s like a pickpocket trying to look virtuous next to a train robber. Just discussing price.

We have an opportunity here – the best chance for redemption since Jimmy Carter handed it to us in 1980. Today there is an even greater awareness in the electorate. I can think of to reason on earth why Conservatives should bow once more to weakling “moderates” in the Republican party, no reason in the world for us to accept and promote a Mike Huckabee or a Mitt Romney. It is not a moment to soon for us to seek out and encourage the highly competent Conservatives among us – the Jim DeMints, Michelle Bachmanns, John Boehners and Joe Wilsons. Unless we want to fuel – and justify – a third party movement we’d better take the question of ideology very, very seriously.