By Carter Clews
Every day in Washington’s political citadels, a new coalition triumphantly announces its emergence as the self-anointed savior of the increasingly moribund conservative movement. Or, some old organization “re-invents” itself and declares that it is now ready to lead as never before.
Most boldly proclaim their unbridled affection for the “New Media.” And some even demonstrate an admirable aptitude for digitalizing prose and pressing “Send.”
All of which is fine – as far as it goes. The problem is, it doesn’t go far enough. In fact, much of it at this point in time is dangerously going in the wrong direction. And the conservative movement desperately needs a few good men – and at least one good woman.
Let me put it bluntly (so that those who would take umbrage can, instead, take their leave before they lose their lunch): If I hear one more conservative or Republican “leader” on TV or at a “coalition” meeting say that we need to “wish the new President well” and “change our message to reach out to new voters,” I’m going to be the one who loses his lunch.
As to wishing the new President well (a sentiment invariably followed with the inane shibboleth “after all, we all want our country to succeed”), personally, I don’t wish the new President well in the slightest. And, no — just like tens of millions of other true-blue conservatives — I don’t want our country to succeed in the direction in which he has made it abundantly clear he wants to take us.
You see, I think Barack Obama is a socialist. I think that his much-ballyhooed plans to hire 600,000 new bureaucrats (for such vital endeavors as changing light bulbs in government buildings) is absurd. Particularly when it’s coupled with his announcement that the federal government already plans to run up trillion-dollar deficits from here to eternity.
And I think his maniacal obsession with redistributing the wealth by raising taxes on the rich (who, by his increasingly erratic definition includes anyone who works hard and brings home a paycheck) in order to reward society’s dregs and drones is insulting, insane, and in his case particularly puerile.
Look, I’m as sorry as anyone else that Mr. Obama was born into poverty, abandoned by his ne’er-do-well father, and jettisoned by his mercurial mother. Life’s tough that way. But, since Mr. Obama prides himself (often and openly) on being an exemplary Christian, I’d like to recommend for his consideration Corinthians 13:11: “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child. But when I became a man, I put away childish things.”
Here’s my personal application of that passage: Once you get to be 40 years old (in Mr. Obama’s case, a trifle older) it’s time to stop whining to everyone around you about how awful your childhood was. Mommy and Daddy are likely gone, or going. You’re a big boy now. So, stop saddling everyone else with your poor-me baggage, so that you can cover for all of those inveterate con artists who share your pity-party background.
In Mr. Obama’s case, that means, no, I emphatically do not wish him, or his ilk, well. I don’t want him to succeed. And I don’t care to live under his misguided, childish, churlish application of “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.”
Furthermore, I really don’t care to watch or listen to John McCain, Mitch McConnell, the posturing, pontificating aspirants to the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee, or a handful of re-inventing conservative “leaders” prostrating themselves and genuflecting before the Obamessiah’s altar.
Which brings me to the whole preposterous idea that somehow, we conservatives need to change – or to use the in-vogue word, “redirect” — our message. The problem we conservatives have is not with our message. The problem we have is with the men who were supposed to deliver it (as opposed to the one woman courageous enough to carry our banner, who did fine and dandy, thank you). The problem we have is with our “leaders’” methods. And their meandering, miasmic, mealy-mouthed meekness.
Remember the congressional majority we suffered through for nearly 12 long, harrowing years? For your sake, I actually hope not. For more than a decade, the Republicans (self-described conservatives almost to a one) controlled the Senate and the House. And they proceeded to surrender on almost every front. They bleated about being “non-partisan.” They whined about maintaining their majority (for what reason we now know not). And they “reached across the aisle” so often that the lines between the parties dissolved into an amorphous blur.
Then, when, inevitably, the American people tired of the Republicans’ pusillanimity and spit them from their mouths, the do-nothing losers blamed the message they had long-since betrayed. And now – after a Republican President pushes for open borders and blanket amnesty; after he spends like a drunken sailor on a Cinderella liberty; after he nationalizes everything but grandma’s put-back pin money; and after the American electorate shows open disdain for him, his policies, and his party – lo and behold, the self-same nervous nellies say it’s time to, you guessed it, change the message.
Now, I don’t want to ride this horse into the ground (at least, not yet), but just imagine, if you will for one ghastly moment, what would have happened in the late Seventies had the stalwart warriors of the New Right (Reagan, Helms, Viguerie, Weyrich, et.al.) looked at the victories of the Democrat congressional majority in 1974 and the Carter victory in 1976 and abjectly muttered that the conservative movement was miserably “off message.” What if they had declared the need to “reach out” by redefining conservative doctrines and dogma in order to make our message “applicable” to the changing times?
Well, let’s see now: Jimmy Carter may not have been the father of Islamic Radicalism – but he was certainly the guy who grandfathered it in. Had that sniveling “humanitarian” not personally pulled the rug out from under the Shah of Iran and piloted Khomeini’s magic carpet from Paris to Teheran, there very likely would not have been an Islamic revolution of anywhere near the proportions we have been forced to suffer. And millions of innocent “heretics” – including some 3,000 of our Americans at the World Trade Center – would not have been sadistically slaughtered by Islamic terrorists.
Supinely surrendering, you see was just Jimmy’s way. And had not the Founding Fathers of the New Right fought him tooth and nail, our women may today be wearing bhurkas and our men (at least what remained of them) would all be bending, bowing, and chanting to Mecca three times a day.
But, the conservative leaders of yore (and lore) did not wish Mr. Carter well. And they certainly did not trendily adapt the message to fit and moods and transient mores of an errant time. They waged political war. They won. And because those men stood tall, we all had the sheer pleasure of sharing that “one, brief, shining moment” known nostalgically as the “Reagan Revolution.”
Now, as conservatives, we need again to go to war. And this time, we need to wage that war with ruthless zeal on every front: Political, Cultural, and Academic. We need to fight Mr. Obama and his evil twins, Reid and Pelosi, every way, in every way. We need to follow Sen. Tom Coburn’s lead in denying them a political inch without a fight to the death. We need to counter Hollywood bilge, as young Dani DeLay is trying to do, with entertainment reflecting the timeless (though now neglected) tenets of noblesse oblige. We need to dominate the Internet. And we need supplant compulsory government educations (read “indoctrination”) with meritorious school choice.
Please understand: we need to do it now. Anything less will be too little. Any other time will be too late. Wishing the enemy well will only lead to cataclysmic defeat. And changing the conservative message will consign us forever to the brackish backwater of our own timidity. In the opening scene of one of my all-time favorite John Wayne movies, Big Jake, the notorious Fain gang raids Jake McCandles’ ranch, slaughters his hands, shoots his son, and kidnaps his grandson. Big Jake, as it turns out, is nowhere to be found because he has long-since left his wealthy (and very angry) wife (Maureen O’Hara) behind to set out and seek a new fortune.
In the aftermath of the massacre, the local sheriff and army commander – a meek-mannered duo (picture today’s Republican leadership in Old West garb) – advise her that they are “seeking permission” to go after the bad guys, but that she shouldn’t really expect too much. Mrs. McCandles turns them away with utter disdain, explaining, “It is, I think, going to be a very harsh and unpleasant sort of business and will require an extremely harsh and unpleasant kind of man to see to it.” At which point, the scene shifts to a hard-eyed Big Jake sighting down the barrel of his rifle.
As I said at the outset, the conservative movement now needs a few good men (and at least one good woman). So, to those who are still willing, able and ready to rumble: Let’s mount.
Carter Clews is the Executive Editor of ALG News.
