GraniteGrok

I also am thankful for Fred Tausch holding the event and bringing in the wonderful Andrew Breitbart, and helping out other GOP candidates...to the extent that the other candidates are real Republicans, and not RINO's. One cautionary note, however: The reason some are indicating hesitation about Tausch has not been clearly explained. It is not simply because he voted for Obama; it is what the vote for Obama (and support for other Democrats, and RINO's) indicates.

That is, Mr. Tausch probably has no underlying political philosophy to guide him. That is, he hasn't done the reading and done the thinking that results from reading, oh, Goldwater, Bastiat, Jefferson, Madison, Mises, Rand, Hayek, Heinlein...those kinds of people. This is the perennial and traditional weakness of Republicans who are not "movement-conservatives." If you don't have an underlying political philosophy that leaders like Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan in the past, and Jim DeMint, Tom Coburn, Ron Paul, Michelle Bachmann, and others today display, then you're an "easy kill" for an opponent who does have a clearly defined ideology. John McCain and George W. Bush are perfect examples of the problem: Having no clearly defined conservative ideological underpinning, Bush could easily be talked into signing McCain-Feingold, pushing a senior drug benefit boondoggle, imposing Canadian lumber import tariffs, agreeing to sign the "assault weapons ban" if it were presented to him, trying to protect union jobs by restricting steel imports, doubling the budget of the federal Dept. of Education instead of abolishing it...and on and on and on. McCain was and is similar: He has no foundational political philosophy to be guided by, and is thus easily "turned" to become the darling "maverick" of the mainstream media and other enemies of freedom. Thus his willingness to "reach across the aisle" and become "bi-partisan" by co-sponsoring a direct attack on the First Amendment. Why not? He has no ideological compass that would forbid him from doing so.

This is the perennial problem with Republicans who may "talk conservative" when they're running for public office, but then don't have the foundational knowledge and resulting ideology to "back it up" when they're in the trenches. This is why it is so common for Republicans to "turn" once they are in positions of power. New Hampshire's own former U.S. Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter was pushed by Gov. Sununu and nominated by the first President Bush I...as a "conservative" justice. The rest is history, but Souter is just an example. Super-statist Justice John Paul Stevens was nominated for the Supreme Court by Republican President Gerald Ford. The "conservative-to-liberal-statist-switch" so common for "conservatives," on the other hand, is exceedingly uncommon for liberals. Why? Because liberalism is a political philosophy that...oh what the hell. I'm rambling. This is really a subject for a future rant, if ever.

So...that's why I am thankful for Mr. Tausch, for his Republican activism, for the money he's spreading around...so long as it is understood that he is probably not a learned, ideological conservative, and thus may not be able to resist harmful invitations ("post-partisan," "reach across the aisle") and pressures ("work with the democrats," "don't be difficult") in the future if he does find himself in a position of political leadership.