Conservative's Beef w/Establishment GOP is NOT Over Tactics - Granite Grok

Conservative’s Beef w/Establishment GOP is NOT Over Tactics

Since just before the HealthCare.gov faceplanted just out of the starting gate, there’s been an on-going debate about the split or supposed split in the GOP, where you have the TEA Party or “hard line conservatives” on one side and the establishment or moderates on the other (for clarity, I’ll lump these two latter groups in the “establishment” bucket for this post). The argument whirling around the blogosphere and media punditry claims the chasm is exaggerated and that the factions are closer than is reported. The reason, some say, is that core principles are shared between the two groups and that they simply disagree on tactics and strategy.

That may well be so for some, but not for me.

As the cliche goes, there’s something rancid in the deviled eggs…or something with a devil.  There’s something treacherous and gut churning that lurks amongst the wispy curls of the establishment’s black and sordid rhetoric that forces the bowels of the naive and the hopeful to evacuate involuntarily and in an untimely manner after witnessing another beat down the conservatives take after ingesting establishment promises.  (See that’s where the rancid deviled eggs come in– whew, I’m surprised I got that to work!)

The chasm does indeed exist. And at its core, for me, is trust and tangible results. Tactics be damned.

While the establishment parrots the right words come election time and when it blandishes the base, it resembles another bird entirely when it comes to reifying those words into actions and deeds, an ostrich. As they too tend to plunge their tiny cravenness heads into the soil when confronted with the uncomfortable. And unfortunately for conservatives, the GOP establishment is uncomfortable with a great many things, so frequently in fact, their beaks are interminably soiled.

This is the problem. The left does not do this. The left pursues its goals relentlessly. Take health care. They’ve been pursuing it for a hundred years. They finally got it (at least for now, after it does serious damage to people and our country). Sure their base wants a massive, vast utopianistic expansion of the state that would make Orwell’s O’Brien blush and utter, “That’s going a bit too far”. And yes, they’re periodically disturbed by the absence of the all-seeing, black-moustachio’d one peeking in and correcting the lives that they deem need correcting. And to be sure, they don’t get all of their macabre desires satisfied in big swoops either. But, they move their agenda incrementally, inevitably, and unalterably forward—as they say.

Every year, the state gets bigger in breadth, scope, and depth. Larger and larger. Its tendrilled regulations and rules slither into every day lives of the individual. Piercing, shrinking, and eventually collapsing the private sphere. Like a needle piercing an egg shell and sucking out all of the nutrients inside, leaving just a hollow fragile shell (Hmm, another egg reference.. and a bird.  I think I got a theme goin’)

What do our establishment types do? Talk. This is my beef. This is why I’m against the “moderates” or the “establishment” types in the GOP. Primarily, because I don’t trust them to get results. They are either unwilling or unable to accomplish the results that sustain and support the principles we supposedly “share”. The state continues to grow to the point of grotesque obesity and “our guys” burble on.

What argument can be stated that the establishment GOP really, truly, shares the TEA Party’s principles? What empirical evidence is there? When has the state retracted?

Some will maunder on about the sequester. But we all know that’s a carny trick. That’s smoke and mirrors, with a mirror so warped Governor Christy’s visage reflects anorexic. With the sequester, the rate of spending still increases, it just doesn’t increase as much as it would otherwise. That isn’t a decrease in spending in the real world. That’s a decrease in the rate of increase. Which is still an increase.

Take a broader look. Has the state gotten bigger or smaller since, let’s say Kennedy?  Bigger. What about since Ford? Bigger. Carter? Bigger. Reagan? Bigger. Never mind the Bushes–we all know the answer to that. Get my point? It’s not that we don’t share principles in rhetoric. Sure we do. But talk is cheap, (just ask Obama voters that can keep there health care and doctors period). Apparently, mendacity is the coin of the political realm and unfortunately, the establishment’s coins are just as wooden as the One’s.

So, as much as I admire many of the pundits that say our disagreement is on tactics, not on principles, it’s just not so. The problem is one of trust and results. It’s not as if the GOP establishment is chipping away, bit by bit, at the ghastly stone parapets of liberalism that’s been established over the years. They don’t seem to be moldering; on the contrary, they’re calcifying.

It’s like we’re relaxing in a lush green valley, just a mile or two from a volcano that periodically, erupts and spews liberal ooze. At first, it just flows down and hardens into rock on the volcano. Then it oozes again, smothering the previous blanket of hardened ooze, but flows further to the ground. It oozes again, over that layer, over the ground and hardens on the edge of the lush green valley. This goes on until it ignites and engulfs the rich green paradise in its sulfuric hell. Meanwhile, we’re languidly supine in a bamboo hut, armed with a squirt gun, watching the smoldering black ichor encroach, and complaining about the stench of eggs.

No thanks. Let’s see a string of consistent results from the “establishment” that support our “shared” principles, then we’ll play nice.  Until then, we’ll keep backing more and more “hard line conservatives”.   Someone has to do something besides talk.

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