Why Aren’t the Republicans Fighting Harder?

By Douglas V. Gibbs

As a public speaker, I have the opportunity to spend a lot of time with various political clubs, groups and organizations.  When it comes to the question and answer portion after my U.S. Constitution presentations, the most common question I get is, “Why don’t the Republicans fight harder?”

I tell the audience there are three possible answers.  Either, the GOP is too fearful.  The GOP is ignorant.  Or, the GOP is a part of the problem.

It may be a little bit of all of them.

Culture drives politics, and politics drives culture.  We have turned our backs on God.  We compromise to avoid being called names that end with “phobe.”   We have stood by and watched, while sitting on our couches complaining, as what was once a virtuous society became depraved, decadent, and dependent upon an oppressive federal government that is doing all it can to expand at a massive speed over the last half-dozen years.  And the thanks we get from our political and cultural opposition for abandoning Godliness is a constant beating.  But, rather than drop to our knees and pray about it, we fall for the lies, and compromise in the hopes that the enemy will like us.

The Republican Party is like a battered wife, beaten down so many times that the desire to fight back has been beaten out of them.  The continuous onslaught of political correctness, and the idiotic establishment belief that in order to win elections the Republicans have to move leftward, is making “losing” a norm for the GOP.

The people flocked to Ronald Reagan because he articulated conservative principles, and spoke the language of liberty.  The Tea Party emerged because of the anger of many Americans.  Folks of all political persuasions were sickened by the federal government’s willingness to spend their hard earned taxes into oblivion.  Taxed Enough Already (T.E.A.) then evolved, adding the Constitution to their demands, and in response the progressive left statists of the Democrat Party launched a massive attack campaign, destroying the credibility of any political figure that dared to associate with the TEA Party, and then expanded those attacks to encompass all Republicans.  To the uninformed voters that believe the propaganda, “TEA Party” and “Republican” are terms synonymous with “racism,” “bigot,” “hater,” and everything wrong about the Democrats that they can project upon their opposition.

The Republican leadership has become fearful, unwilling to stand against such attacks, and often falling for the rhetoric themselves.  The Republicans are ignorant of what the people really want, believing that the liberal left somehow has become the majority when in reality the true believers in progressivism are actually only about 14% of the population.  The Republicans have failed to win in education, the mainstream media, Hollywood, and the courts, and they believe that means all is lost.  The GOP leadership has decided the only way to survive is to compromise, and get a few morsels here and there that fall off the liberal left’s dinner table.  They lose two steps to gain a half step.  They refuse to go on the offensive and expose the radical extremism that the hard left socialists of the Democrat Party truly represent.

As all of that has been happening, the Republican Party has also been infiltrated.  The big government statists reside throughout the Grand Ol’ Party, and the propaganda of fear is very powerful inside the elephant’s bubble of Capitol Hill.  The Establishment, the leadership of the Republican Party, has become a part of the problem.  They have come to desire big government, promising to run it in a conservative manner (as if saying that is not an oxymoron), and they are willing to do anything to hang on to that power. . . including making deals with the opposition that infuriates the conservative base, and opens wider the gaping hole at the bottom of the bucket through which the most conservative of voters are slipping through.

A friend of mine, a liberal that hates statism (yes, such people exist) criticizes me for my refusal to completely capitulate.  He doesn’t understand why during the pursuit of “moderates” the “right wing” voters and the “religious right” refuse to vote in elections.  He misses the point that conservatives are not collectivists that vote party regardless of what their leaders do or say.  Conservatives and Constitutionalists are individuals with their own conscience, demanding that their political leaders remain within a certain parameter when it comes to morality, or political conservatism.  Though not voting is just like giving a vote to the Democrats, some of those frustrated defectors reason that they can’t bring themselves to vote for the GOP when the Republican candidate comes across not much different than the Democrat.  “What’s the difference?” I hear often.  “Anymore, the parties are the same.”

I don’t believe there is absolutely no difference between the two parties, but I do believe that the gap of separation between them is narrowing day by day.  As a constitutionalist, I have not taken an oath to the GOP.  My oath is to God, and the United States Constitution, and so when a candidate refuses to acknowledge or abide by the standards of either, they will not get my vote.  And to be honest, it is getting more and more difficult to vote Republican with each passing election.

I get it.  The Republican Party is our horse in the race against what is normally a slow and stubborn jackass.  We must not shoot our horse in the head, or chase after a less sure-footed horse of a third-party, because all that does is ensure we lose the race.  But that does not mean we must do nothing, or give in to our ill-tempered, kicking, biting GOP stallion no matter what.  The way to win is to learn how to train the horse, to lead it by the reins and return that horse to Godliness and the Constitution.  Feed it a sugar cube, stroke its mane, and then show the horse what we, the voters, desire.  Teach the horse, and lead the horse, back to the Constitution, not by poking the GOP leadership in the chest, screaming and yelling, and calling our Republican candidates things that in their minds confirm with them that we are the crazies the Democrats try to portray us as, but by using strategy, truth, and by having a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence.

The reality is, we are in a war.  This is not politics as usual.  We must do more than figure out a way to get a few votes.  The entire political culture is out of whack.  We must return to the principles that led our nation to prosperity, and show our politicians it all begins with the Constitution.  James Madison said that “A well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people.”  Understanding how the system is supposed to be in the first place, and then working to return America to that standard, is the way to return the voters that have abandoned the Republican Party back to the voting polls.  We must stand up, be loud and firm, but do it in a manner that portrays knowledge and love of country, not the hate and viciousness we see from the other side.  We are not them.  We are not about conquering, or destroying, or taking away freedoms, as the liberal left progressives are.  We are about conserving the system that has worked for over two hundred years, returning this nation to the foundation it was built upon.  We, as constitutionalists and conservatives, must fight with a goal in mind, and strategies in place.

The Constitution gives us five tools for restoring the republic.  Peaceful revolution, nullification, secession, convention, and violent revolution.  We must know how these tools, or the threat of the use of them, can be effective.  We must learn how to use these tools effectively in relation to each other, rather than set up opposing camps as we’ve seen between those that support nullification versus those that support a convention of States.  You’re both right, but it takes eternal vigilance to make sure it works, to ensure the federal government is trained and obeys our commands; and it takes hard work and working together to make sure we don’t have a runaway convention, or blood in the streets.  The question is, before we get started, “Are you up for it?”

At the end of the Declaration of Independence, the signers of the document mutually pledged their “Lives, Fortunes, and sacred Honor.”  In the Preamble of the Constitution a little more than a decade later they revealed that, yes, they fought for freedom and a system of limited government for themselves, but especially for their Posterity (Posterity in the Preamble is capitalized for the sake of emphasis).  The Founding Fathers saw it as their duty to secure the Blessings of Liberty to, yes, themselves, but especially to those Americans not yet born.  Are we willing to do the same?  Are we willing to put on the line our Lives, Fortunes and sacred Honor for our children, their children, and those not yet born?  Or are we going to do nothing, and then prepare an excuse to our grandchildren when they ask us what we did to try to preserve liberty as tyranny knocked on the door?

— Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary

Learn More About Douglas V. Gibbs