I got a link in my e-mail to an interesting article. Victories for Liberty Outweigh Tuesday’s Losses. You should read the whole thing but near the bottom of the article this caught my eye.
…after the attacks on the grassroots of the party launched by the Romney campaign, party leaders and special interests, in many ways a Romney defeat is a victory for Liberty Republicans. In the long term it may benefit us more than defeating Obama would have. The party establishment and the special interests which back them placed all their bets on Romney and his failure was their failure as well. They have lost credibility with all the grassroots groups in the party and they are saddled with the blame for the abuses of power and bad choices which led to this debacle. Now everyone knows what we have known for years. If the Republican Party is to survive it needs a substantive change of leadership and a return to principles which can win elections.
After this election it is much more likely that our next presidential nominee will have strong liberty principles and Rand Paul’s stock as a presidential contender is way up. We should also expect to see the party distance itself from single issue voters on the religious right and a deemphasis of divisive social issues. This might well be the jolt the party needs to become the fiscally conservative and socially tolerant party which it needs to be in order to win and if it doesn’t happen quickly, we’re here to give change a push.
Amen brother. Amen.
Comments
10 responses to “Republicans Lost – Liberty Won”
Yeah, right.
Sure.
So, who do you think will be the next “World Power”?
I’m voting for China. Maybe India. But we’re done. Sorry.
Kathy,
I wouldn’t bet on it. From the inside you imagine – how could any place else be worse?
From the outside – boy those guys are bad. But these other guys are worse.
I could live in China. Not happily, but not unhappily either. India, not so much.
But if America becomes America again, yes, here is where I’d chose.
Simon, you underestimate the new Democrat party. They now stand for millions of pages of “discretionary” regulation. Regulations which cannot be complied with. Meaning, if you want to do anything in this world you have to have a powerful “mentor” or plenty of ready cash with which to pay off the regulators who have the “discretion” to let you off the hook. True, there’s always been some of that, but there have always been places one could go to escape it. But now it’s wholesale on the part of the Feds–no escape–and it’s a self-reinforcing institution.
If the Democrats manage to keep the system through the upcoming fiscal crisis (granted, that’s a sizeable if), you might end up re-thinking your stance that freedom in the bedroom is more important than economic freedom.
[…] I am too exhausted by politics to have anything to say, and I’m delighted that M. Simon has taken up the […]
Neil,
I know what is coming. The Ds are going to strangle the economy. OTOH the Rs want to put every offender of their moral code they can find in jail.
Tough choice.
The Rs scare more people than the Ds do. The dopers or former dopers. Now 50% of the population. Women who have had abortions (20 to 30 million).
And even with all that it was close.
Nice superficial analysis. However, when you look at the numbers, what you find is that running liberal-lite simply convinced a lot of conservatives not to bother showing up.
Bring on the Apocalypse. Dopers make much easier targets.
SDN,
My friend according to election result, in the Dope Wars the dopers are winning.
BTW I didn’t like Romney either. So I voted for Johnson.
But I do applaud conservatives who are conserving the Progressive reforms of the early 1900s and onwards. The conservatives of 1900 thought that the Federal Government didn’t have the power. Ever notice a Dope Prohibition Amendment? Me either. But thank you for your staunch support of Constitutionalism. What ever would the Democrats do without you?
Neil,
You can’t keep one freedom without keeping the other. As soon as you go down the “Government should …” route you have opened the floodgates.
The Ds then counter with “No I think the government should…” and its off to the races. Because you have already conceded “Government should”.
I have given up arguing that “government should not”. I think Johnson’s 1% constituency is about accurate for the number of people who actually believe that and are willing to act on it. It’s a loser.
What we CAN do is to argue for Federalism, for space in which different people can emphasize different things, and still live together. What that does is to short-circuit the Washington bidding process by which socons and progs trade off restrictions on freedom.
Every conversation I’ve had on the subject with a socon has lead me to believe they will accept that compromise. They believe firmly that their ways are winning ways and that they can out-compete everybody else if given the opportunity. They also realize they’ve lost the fight in Washington. They don’t even *want* to deal with Boston and L.A., so long as they can have it their way in Idaho. Fine. Let them try, so long as I can move to another state. That 20 to 30% of the electorate can be convinced.
I’ve never had such a conversation with a “progressive”. Not once. They’ve got the totalitarian disease, and they’ve got it bad. Actually, they spend an inordinate amount of mental effort on the doings of those “sloped foreheads” in Idaho. Everybody has to do it their way, or else. I think it’s at least in part because they know that their envy-based economic policy is not a winning formula. Whatever the reason, that is 30% of the electorate that cannot be convinced.