The Republican Party: Tearing It Down

Arch conservative Richard Viguerie suggests that perhaps it is time to destroy the republican party to save the conservative movement. Here is a couple of key paragraphs from his op-ed in today's Washington Post:

The current record of Washington Republicans is so bad that, without a drastic change in direction, millions of conservatives will again stay home this November.

And maybe they should. Conservatives are beginning to realize that nothing will change until there's a change in the GOP leadership. If congressional Republicans win this fall, they will see themselves as vindicated, and nothing will get better.

[snip]

At the very least, conservatives must stop funding the Republican National Committee and other party groups. (Let Big Business take care of that!) Instead, conservatives should dedicate their money and volunteer efforts toward conservative groups and conservative candidates. They should redirect their anger into building a third force -- not a third party, but a movement independent of any party. They should lay the groundwork for a rebirth of the conservative movement and for the 2008 campaign, when, perhaps, a new generation of conservative leaders will step forward.

Strangely, the immigration "crisis" seems to be the straw that broke the camel's back. I'm not sure how this became a crisis overnight, the situation has been the same for the last twenty years. I guess it's a case of fool me once, shame on you, fool me 2345 times, shame on me.

I often wonder how conservatives like Viguerie think that their positions could ever be pushed through an institution such as the US government. A lot of their ideas are simply not mainstream, no matter how many times they claim they are through various mouthpieces.

I think this presidency is about as good as they can hope for. Unfortunately for all of us, when they got their shot, they chose incompetents to try to implement those ideas, and even worse, they gave the idiotic neo-cons the keys to the hen house of our foreign policy.

There is a lesson in all of this for the kingmakers in both political parties, and it's not the point of Viguerie's op-ed that if you don't push the bases's ideology they will abandon you. The American people are never going to happy being governed by the far left or the far right.

It's far more important to put forth candidates based on ability to govern, not electability. In fact, I think that in 2008, the buzzword you'll hear a lot is proven, which makes me think our next president will once again come from the ranks of this nation's governor's offices.

I think that by 2008, mainstream Americans are going to be suffering from partisan fatigue, and simply be just looking for a person with a proven track record at the state level to run the country.

I'm happy to hear that those across the aisle from me are disgusted with the modern republican party, albeit for different reasons than me. They've horribly damaged the country and need to be replaced.