RSS Feed MenuWhat are the qualifications to be anointed a true conservative?
One true conservative blogger asserted in response to my post last week, “the Republican Party is not a cult. There is no secret handshake. Republicans are a diverse group.” Really, I wish someone would show me how it doesn’t look like a cult and where all this bastion of diversity is hiding. Rush deemed Colin Powell not a Republican.
This same blogger wrote “the only reason you seem to be getting a forum on this political site is because you are a regular person who has had second thoughts about your vote, not because of your political expertise.” All this sounds like cult talk to me.
I guess you have to be a “political expert” to be a Republican and have your ideas heard not a “regular person.” That’s curious because liberal or conservative, regular people who live regular lives make up the majority of voters in this country, not political experts. Us regulars support messages and policies we understand not radicalism from wherever the source.
There’s a large swath of Americans who support several GOP positions and would consider supporting these positions and MAYBE joining the party if it wasn’t held hostage in the mud by a small band of crazies. As reported in the Washington Post’s Reliable Source column, Lucky Roosevelt told Michael Steele at an event June 2 honoring Nancy Reagan in D.C., “If the Republican Party wants to win elections, they have to open the tent.” Sounds familiar…
What conservative ideas can attract a “diverse group” of voters? School choice and same-sex marriage are two issues that readily come to mind, where the GOP could find support amongst black liberals. Black liberals are more aligned with Republicans on these two issues than Democrats. Wall Street Journal reporter Brendan Miniter wrote in his May 30 article about black Democrat South Carolina state Senator Robert Ford’s fight for school choice alongside an unlikely ally in Republican Governor Mark Sanford.
In cities across the country, more low-income blacks are relegated to poor performing schools than other groups and school choice (charter school or a voucher for private school) is their only ticket to a good education. If President Obama has the choice NOT to send his kids to troubled DC schools why doesn’t he support that same choice for other parents? Mr. Miniter notes frustration is building among black voters who don’t see changes in their communities now that Obama is president. “Black voters could come to support conservative education policies (if not GOP candidates).” Looks like an opportunity to bring people into the tent.
Another is same-sex marriage. Blacks in California came out in droves for Obama but 70% voted to ban same-sex marriage in California. Black voters have always been regarded by Democrats as a monolithic group who will automatically embrace the liberal agenda. Black voters overwhelming support for Prop. 8 demonstrates this isn’t the case. Predominately black churches play a powerful role in the black community and likely influenced many black voters on Prop. 8. Here is another conservative issue for Republicans to engage more black voters and possibly other ethnic groups.
This is just scratching the surface of course but the more you engage, voila, the more you discover. The more the Republican party truly engages diverse groups, the more common ground they may find on issues with people that don’t look like the base and in this civil discourse woo more supporters of their agenda.
On Twitter, Newt Gingrich called Judge Sotomayor a “Latina woman racist.” New York Times reporter Bob Herbert described Newt in his June 1 article as one of the type of “foaming at the mouth crazies” who seem to be leading Republicans down a black hole. Not the formula for winning elections or supporters.
Someone asked me what is my conservative position on governance? I’m no political expert but I believe that government doesn’t know best and there should be less government in our lives than more, less taxation (flat tax), less regulation and more individual responsibility.
Privatize social security; what I pay in over the years is what I should pull out when I retire. Social security is headed for bankruptcy and I can manage my money better than the feds. Healthcare reform should focus on changing the insurance paradigm from treating disease to prevention. As one of my doctors recently told me, having insurance doesn’t mean anything. The insurance company doesn’t pay for anything until you have a catastrophic illness and then that’s not even guaranteed!
Our healthcare system is broken but now is the wrong time to spend over $1 trillion (more massive debt) to launch a government run program on top of all the other government run programs. Medicare and Medicaid can’t even get it right; those programs are fraught with fraud, abuse, rationing of care and inefficient spending. Dollars don’t go where they should, lousy care ensues, particularly when you get old and have to live in a nursing home but providers make an average of $77,000 a year and more than $200,000 in some states for poor care. I’ve watched two loved ones suffer at the hands of inept, careless unskilled workers who would rather steal my relatives’ belongings than change their diaper when they needed it. Do you really think national healthcare will be better?
Education reform, improving our public schools, won’t happen until you make parents accountable and in cities like D.C. address the growing number of kids born to single parents who are kids themselves. (Daniel Patrick Moynihan predicted, in the Moynihan Report, the demise of the black family because of this nascent problem, back in 1965.) If kids are truant, how about bringing some punishment on parents for not parenting; implement mandatory parent-volunteering in the school for truancy.
But I digress; I guess I’m just a regular person.
sinz54 // Jun 10, 2009 at 9:35 am
Jack Kemp knew that it was unlikely that even a large percentage, much less a majority, of blacks would ever vote for a Republican candidate for President. But he felt it was important to keep trying. Not just because every vote counts, particularly in urbanized states. But because he knew that a party that writes off minorities as unreachable will be viewed by the young (who are too young to remember the bitter civil rights battles) as bigoted or narrow-minded. It’s bad press for a major American party to let itself be defined as the party of white people.And yet, that’s what I keep hearing from the GOP base. They are perfectly content to let the GOP be the party of older white people. They have no interest whatsoever in working to appeal to Hispanics (who are the fastest-growing voting bloc in America). They have no interest whatsoever in working to appeal to young people. And no one has taken up Jack Kemp’s cause of outreach to African-Americans. Rather, they wrote a party platform that reflects their views, and they’re presenting it to the rest of America on a “Take it or leave it” basis.This insularity is going to doom the GOP–if it’s not changed. No one seems to notice that married white Protestants, the GOP’s bread and butter, are now down to only 51% of the electorate–and that percentage keeps dropping.
balconesfault // Jun 10, 2009 at 9:49 am
“But he felt it was important to keep trying. Not just because every vote counts, particularly in urbanized states.”Kemp’s outreach here mirrors the conflict within the Democratic Party over the DLC plan (focus resources on Democratic strongholds) versus Howard Dean’s 50-state plan (don’t ceed huge portions of the country/blocks of voters simply because they’ve voted Republican the last few cycles).To do that, they accepted that certain issues that were important for those northeast/west coast urban voters – such as gun control – were going to be taken off the front burner. They pretty much announced that someone being anti-gun control wasn’t going to keep the DNC from supporting them in their elections, and wasn’t going to invite primary challenges.And the Dems did that without any illusions that the hardest core pro-gun voters were ever going to vote Democratic. But for folks for whom the 2nd Amendment is a secondary issue it was a sign that the Democrats weren’t as extreme anymore as they’d been led to believe.
whospeaksforyou // Jun 10, 2009 at 11:36 am
What a great idea! Harness the homophobia of African-Americans as a path back to power for the GOP.Enjoy your years in the wilderness. And keep up the brilliant suggestions.whospeaksforyou.com
Dr. Tesla // Jun 10, 2009 at 3:37 pm
It’s funny how liberals come in here and start smearing conservatives as racists, sexists, and homophobes, and then they falsely suggest we want to harness the “homophobia” of blacks as a way back to power. I did point out that a majority of blacks oppose gay marriage in polls that I saw, which was in contradiction to what the Crystal lady asserted. I don’t equate opposition to gay marriage to homophobia and hatred for gay people…that’s a liberal construct.
ChristianMiller // Jun 11, 2009 at 8:39 am
whospeaksforyou,Hahaha. Opposition to gay marriage=homophobia! That’s a riot!
PWallgren // Jan 28, 2010 at 4:48 pm
Ms. Wright, given that you don’t have children yourself I don’t think you should write such strongly worded thoughts on how to “punish” parents.