01/01/10
By John Eberhard
It’s been a rough year for conservatives. We have watched a radical leftist President take office, then, along with a radical leftist Congressional leadership, pass a bunch of far left measures, politicize events ranging from the census to the stimulus, and take over major portions of the economy. Of course, there has been reason for optimism too. Polls show that the percentages of the political makeup of the country: 40% conservative, 20% liberal and 40% moderate, have not varied more than a few percentage points since the 60s. We have also seen the rise of a grass roots tea party movement that is calling for smaller government, lower taxes, decreased spending, and no health care reform and no cap and trade. This movement is the most widespread public expression of conservative values I have seen in my lifetime, even more so than during the Reagan years. And yet, despite this movement, despite 1.2 million people showing up in Washington on September 12, and despite every major poll showing a majority of Americans being against it, the Senate just passed its version of health care reform. The only thing barring its being signed into law is the reconciliation process between the Senate and House versions, which considering what Obama, Reid and Pelosi have gone through to come this far, I believe that unfortunately they will succeed. Clearly, they see that despite the public sentiments, this is the only chance they will ever get to pass government controlled health care in the U.S., and they’re going to do it, despite what any of us think. The angry state of the polls tends to indicate that Democrats will lose a lot of seats in the 2010 elections, and that Republicans, who have been nearly universally steadfast against health care reform, cap and trade, and other socialist measures put forth by the Democrats this year, will make significant gains. Republicans may even retake the majority in both houses. Certainly, the 60 votes in the Senate, allowing Democrats to overcome any Republican filibusters, will be gone. But where does that leave us conservatives, even if we retake the Senate and House? How will that help us if the Democrats have already passed universal health care, cap and trade, and other measures, significantly transforming the United States into a socialist country as President Obama has intended? Well, I believe that we conservatives have to change an attitude that has been in place for a long time. If we can manage to change this attitude we can be in a good position. Conservatives need to abandon a primary idea that has been in place for centuries. It is basically the idea that once something is enacted or formed in government, that you can’t take it away. Oh sure, government officials feel that they can take away small things. But it is a pervasive idea that once a major change or addition or measure has been made, that you can’t take it away. There are many examples, from the Department of Education to the Department of Energy to Social Security to welfare. I am using these as examples and not necessarily urging we should scrap them all. But the point is, for nearly 100 years, politicians with socialist leanings (Mark Levin calls them “statists) have been implementing socialist policies, creating bigger and bigger government, and reducing the amount of freedom of the American people bit by bit. I believe that conservatives have to start setting their sights on removing these socialist creations and limitations on our liberties. In other words, do some real reform by getting rid of the pillars of the socialist, nanny state that the Democrats have built. The only real time that I have seen that this has been done was the welfare reform enacted by the Republican Congress in the 90s, reluctantly signed by Bill Clinton, universally successful, and completely nuked this past year by the Democratic Congress (hidden and hardly noticed in one of the big bills, the stimulus bill I believe). There are multiple barriers to this kind of reform of course. The first of these is that the American public has been moving slowly toward the acceptance of the socialist nanny state and even the demand for its so-called entitlements. So the first challenge of conservatives in rolling back health care and other socialist measures is to sell the American people on the conservative vision. The second barrier is that the vast majority of the mainstream news media, college faculties and Hollywood, is unabashedly liberal/socialist to the core. So they will scream bloody murder when we try to throw out their bastard socialist creations. Conservatives first of all have to have the convictions that conservative ideas work, that they provide the maximum personal liberty for the individual, and they have to ignore the noise that the liberal communications machine will create. We must be confident that despite all the noise, liberals do not and have never been a majority in America. It only looks like that when you listen to ABC, NBC, CBS, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the LA Times, and so on. Secondly we have to really step up to the plate and communicate! We need to utilize the alternative conservative media to the fullest, and find new additional communications channels, and tell the story to the American people of what the socialist, nanny state will do to America, and why we need to revert back to conservative principles. One of the biggest mistakes of the Bush administration was to consider that it was not “Presidential” to respond to all the ceaseless attacks of the Democrats and the mainstream news media. Thus by being quiet Bush allowed them to ruin his reputation and that of the Republican brand. We need to do just the opposite now. We need to create a huge barrage of communication and overwhelm the liberals for a change. Let’s do it.