Consistency and Trust - Will the Republican Party wake up? - Granite Grok

Consistency and Trust – Will the Republican Party wake up?

Consistency yields Trust yields Votes.  Simple, eh?  While I’ve been saying this for a while as to the disaffection of voters for the Republican Party, it doesn’t seem to be getting traction.  That is, at least in Republican circles.  Rarely do I even hear this idea mentioned – only that “We have to win (even if we just suck less than Dems)” seems to be the mantra.  Lots of extraneous stuff, lots of “strategic” reasoning, lots on tactics, but not much on re-establishing Trust. Sad, that.  All it takes is “walk the talk”; tell us what you really believe, tell us what you will actually do.  Then the hard part – just do it.  Don’t give us the “shuffle” and “it’s complicated”.  We expected you to play this all out in your head and in your heart BEFORE you got elected.  What are the values that you said you had – just do it.

Why is this so hard?  No, I wasn’t in DC and no, I wasn’t in Concord (NH, the state capital) – just in my little hamlet.  I was accused, all the time, of having an agenda – and that pleased me.  Why?  I had three principles while on my hamlet’s Budget Committee:

  • It ain’t my money but spend it like it was mine
  • Government growth should NEVER outstrip that of the Civil Society that pays for it
  • It ain’t my money

 

Even if Government is supposed to serve the public, I did see shades of what this Slim-down is showing us at the Federal level at my local level, that it felt that its employees should be held economically blameless while we in the private sector take it in the shorts.  That they had a right to spend mega-bucks for stuff “to better serve the public” (new fire engines are damn expensive for a town our size) even if it shoved property tax rates up even as some of our elderly were choosing between meds, food, and heat.  As an elected official, my goal was to ALWAYS put taxpayers first before ANYONE else.  Even locally, there are folks here that believe that town government must be involved in everything for the bon mots of “quality of life” issues.  I hewed to those principles, I talked about those principles, I argued for those principles, and I voted those issues.  Consistency  built that Trust.  And so says Glen Beck:

“Yes, it is a disaster for the GOP. Yes, the Republicans are despised, almost universally so,” Beck said. “[But] here’s why their numbers are going down — because the people don’t believe in them at all. At all.

“The people who are actually supporters of the GOP actually believe in something more than an ‘Obama phone,’ they believe in something bigger,” Beck said. “They believe in truth, justice, and the American way. They believe in the Constitution. And when you have a group of people that will not hold up the Constitution that say they will, of course their approval ratings are going to go down.”

The Republican Party has a built in population of voters that would be happy to vote for them if the Rs would just be Consistent.  They say that they believe in their Platform.  They talk about the Platform values, the Constitution, and Constitutional values.  And then we got Rs (here in NH) like Peter Bolster, Alida Milham, and Doc Pilliod who spent the majority of their votes against the Platform and traditional values.  Why vote Republican when you just get Democrat anyways?

He proceeded to play audio of Texas Senator John Cornyn (R) criticizing Freedom Works as advocating “Republican on Republican violence, so to speak.”

Aside from the fact that people don’t appreciate hearing the same insults hurled at them from Republicans as from the progressive left, Beck said, Cornyn makes it all about “the party.”

Grassroots vs the Elites.  Power greedy vs those seeing the Power to vote Platform & Constitutional values.  Beck is right – why would I want to vote for a Republican that is going to denigrate my values?  Or Republican “Leaders” that lip service the words but vote opposite such (as we see here in NH, where the Republican House Leadership voted opposite the “members” on most issues).  The message is “we don’t want you”.

And then the Republican Party wonders – “where did “our” voters go?” and never think “self-inflicted wounds”.

“This is why the GOP is losing,” Beck asserted. “Because…I don’t care about the damn party. I care about the principles. And I don’t care what walk of life. I don’t care what color. I don’t care what party. If they have these principles and they hold those things as self-evident, then I’m going to support them. And that’s what I want my money to do.”

Like or hate him, Beck’s right in this.  It is about Principles – and votes FOR Principles.  And not bothering for those that only seek power or “their clique”.

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