Daniel Greenfield over at Frontpage Mag has his take on what ails the GOP. Like Steve, like me, he sees what’s wrong and the inertia that stands in the way to start winning again. A few excerpts (emphasis mine):
If you don’t fight, you can’t win. That’s what the Party of Lincoln, a party that tested its mettle in a devastating national conflict, has forgotten. Instead it has become a party of good losers who would rather lose easy than fight hard.
The Republican Party. Its genesis was in taking on the mantle of Abolition – the task of eliminating slavery. A long fight. A bloody fight. A fight that tore the country apart. But a fight it willingly took on for the end was a most precious thing – Freedom. Now? It seems that the conviction to do the hard things, to achieve that Freedom goal again, has gone limp. Why? Spirit – or the lack thereof. That ‘fire in the belly” – has it been replaced by complacency or hubris? Or both?
The GOP would like to win without fighting. It wants to wait for the voters to come around and recognize that it’s the better choice because it compromises.
Like the nerd waiting for the pretty girl to recognize his niceness, the Republican Party is futilely courting an American voter who barely even knows it’s there… at least until he watches the next Saturday Night Live skit depicting Republicans as crazy evil billionaires who want to power Christian nuclear plants with the corpses of minorities.
And he’ll believe that is what the Republican Party really stands for because the elephant no longer roars loud enough to be heard, it moderately whispers, and is outbrayed by every jackass.
Quick – tell me what is the GOP message? Quick – tell me how well they are achieving it?
The Republican Party has allowed its enemies to define it. Its moderation has convinced voters that it’s crazy and dangerous because without raising its voice and fighting back, the only things they know about it comes from its enemies.
Complacency has made it impossible for the Republican Party to compete. It’s so busy being reasonable that it unreasonably fails to realize that no one is paying attention to its displays of moderation.
At every turn, in every form of media, it stands arms akimbo. The Establishment looks snottily at the TEA Party folks – full of vim and vinegar but sneer at the message or how the message is portrayed. Nuance, they say! Careful phrasing, they want! Polished, they desire. They scoff at how the vibrant wing of the party (yes, that was a dig) sometimes says the wrong thing, the inartfulness of the stump speech. Dole, Ford, Romney – yeah, that’s the ticket, they wanted. Well, how did their Presidencies go?
The Establishment Republican brings a blue blood, gentlemanly quality to the fray – but how well does a Marquis of Queensbury boxer fare against a Mixed Martial Arts fighter? Umm, usually on his back – a loser. Just like those moderates Ford, Dole, and Romney. In not fighting, in not putting the fight FIRST AND HARD, it gets outflanked at every turn. Americans like winners, they love fighters – and hate wussies that get the snot kicked out of them for that lack of fighting spirit. And they want to know WHY and WHAT they are fighting for – and that is what has been lacking from the Establishment. There is no sense of getting out into the street and simply brawling.
There is no sense of getting out into the street and looking for their political enemies and taking them on (and out). It’s beneath them. But not to those that actually won the 2010 elections (regardless of what Papa Smurf told the GOPpers):
The midterm reversal happened because a bunch of people wearing costumes and waving yellow flags began arguing with Democratic politicians trying to sell their constituents on a disastrous health plan.
The TEA Party took it to the enemy (and yes, not the gentle “opponents” as the Establishment would prefer, and not “my friend” as CongressCritters say). No, the folks with the Gadsden Flags and the homemade signs and the neighborhood groups truly see the Democrats (having assumed all of the qualities of Socialists) as the enemy of the Freedom that was bequeathed to them and given to them as a sacred Trust to be protected, to treasured, and pass on undiluted. The Establishment sees no such viewpoint – and thus, see only Power that is held – and not WHY that Power is useful and necessary.
Instead, the Establishment would rather just see these rambunctious, loud, spirited, and (most importantly) uncontrollable masses go away. After all, “it just isn’t how we do things, these unorderly gaggles all over the place and unwilling to be taking our orders. It’s like they want to be free to do their own thing or something.
Ted Cruz isn’t the biggest threat to the Republican Party. He’s the only hope for the Republican Party. Cruz understands that you have to fight to win. You don’t get points for compromise. Compromise is what it takes to run the system, but voters elect candidates to do specific things for them. They want politicians who will represent their interest to the best of their abilities.
Not compromisers.
His voters sent him to do one thing and do it well. He said what he would do, and has done it well. He kept his promise and showed Consistency. That Consistency was rewarded – I note that Cruz received an 8 minute standing ovation this week from the Texas Federation of Republican Women for his efforts. That is Trust explicitly shown.
NH’s Frank Guinta was sent to do one thing and do it well. He said what he would do – and then failed to do it. He broke his promise and showed a Lack of Consistency. That Lack of Consistency was rewarded – with a vacation provided by his [no longer] voters.
Look, I am still mad that I got played, that I got lied to. So be it and a bit of this stems from that. But Guinta should also be serving well as an object lesson that the larger NH GOP (and GOP) should be paying attention to, as it is EXACTLY the problem. No Consistency breaks any Trust with the resulting lack of Votes.
…While the Republican Party worries about Ted Cruz alienating voters, it might want to consider the voters that Ted Cruz is bringing in. Conservative voters have been staying home from elections that don’t inspire them.
Passion wins elections. Passion feeds turnout. Passion makes voters feel like it’s their fight, not just another election.
Their fight. Like it or not, that’s what Obama did – twice. He made the election about them and made them feel it WAS them – and in that way, gave them the motivation to go all out. After all, who likes to lose, personally lose? In 2010, the ethos of the TEA Party made it THEIR fight too and gathered up millions of new folks to the political fight for the future of the country – the Establishment Republicans thought it was just simply a bunch of new shock troops to be used.
What they didn’t realize was that the TEA Party simply was using them as an electoral tool. Until afterwards – and now the Establishment wants that power back. Problem is, they can’t take what isn’t their’s – for if we walk, the Democrats will take their lunch money.
Instead of bringing passion to their fight against the left, Republicans misdirect their passion into circular firing squads. There have been more passionate Republican attacks aimed at Ted Cruz in a single month than there have been against Barack Obama in an entire year.
And the grassroots see that. They also see through the idiocy of voting to repeal Obamacare 40 odd times – and the failure to effectively stand by their specified power of the purse given to them by the Framers via the Constitution (Article 1 Section 8). Truth?
The grassroots remember that the Democrats were willing to sacrifice their Congressional seats to ensure that the last bolt of large Socialism, Obamacare, was enacted. Now, they perceive that the DC Republicans put their own political careers ahead of the good of the country. After all, the Republicans have effectively said, they can’t runaway this day to fight the fight somewhere down that road. How much fighting spirit can there be in mere can-kickers? Or those lacking that fire in the belly?
…American voters had a choice between two men. One was passionate. The other was reasonable. One was applying for a job interview. The other was warning that their children would starve in the streets and their daughters would take wire hangers to themselves if he wasn’t reelected. Despite the poll numbers, the turnout favored the passionate candidate. It favored the teleprompter demagogue warning that the sky, the phones and the food stamps were about to fall.
Message. Spirit. Taking the fight to the Enemy. Heart.
The Tea Party was right about what it takes to win. Sarah Palin was right. Ted Cruz is right.
The Republican Party has two options. It can learn to fight or it can give up. A political party that fails to compete abandons itself to the tender mercies of its enemies. And the left has no mercy.
Ted Cruz tried to teach the elephant to stop eating grass and switch to a diet of red meat. The American elephant can either evolve into a predator or devolve into a rhino and be preyed upon by the wild asses of the Socialist desert.
Decision time.
