Jan 19 2009
Hope Hype and Four Years to Change
The New World Order begins tomorrow, with Barak Obama ascending to the right hand of God. Or at least that’s how it seems to those of us on the ground. We have heard promises that effective tomorrow, even before all the dancing is done and the detritus cleared away, global warming will cease. Unicorns will once more frolic the fields of Avalon. Rainbows will end with pots of stimulus checks and fair trade coffee will be cheaper than Taster’s Choice.
Utopia.
Well, Utopia for anyone who isn’t a free-market conservative or a small business owner, anyway. After all, someone has to pay for all this, right?
While all this bliss and rapture is happening in the foreground of the world stage, the Republican party will be busily beavering away behind the scenes. There is a four year window of opportunity that presents itself effective tomorrow, in which the GOP can heal its wounds of graft and stupidity, and start making headway into becoming the party of the 21st Century.
There are many ways in which this can be done. Some of these are already underway. One of them is by embracing youth. We saw with the choice of John McCain as nominee for president that the GOP had lost its way and stopped listening to the people within the party. With the exception of a few older cronies, McCain was universally despised. The bloggers who had so ardently defended Bush four years earlier were bored by McCain, and merely paying him lip service as the nominee. He inspired no excitement within the party, until the fateful day he chose his running mate.
Suddenly there was interest. Good or bad, there was interest. There was excitement and vibrancy again. People cared. They were passionate about Sarah Palin - some passionately loved her, others passionately hated her.
The GOP needs to consider that passion, and how to harness it over the next four years. Not necessarily with Palin, who needs a break from the public eye for sure, but through other underdog voices in the party. Stop pushing the same old sods on us year after year. We didn’t like McCain in 2000, and we didn’t like him any better in 2008. Ours should not be the party of “Well, who else have we got?” In the next four to eight years, many high profile members of the party will be dead. It’s a harsh reality, but it’s true. We’ve already lost William F. Buckley Jr. His generation is leaving us in droves. Perhaps it’s time for the GOP to stop catering to the past, and begin harnessing the future of the party.
If you want to talk about revitalizing the GOP over the next four years, drop me a line in the comments or at rightrantstoday@gmail.com.
As a libertarian I would love to see the GOP embrace some of its more conservative views that they’ve abandoned a while back.
Ways the GOP could change for the better? There’s a few things I’d like to see.
1. Less hot-button issue stuff. Yeah, no one likes abortion. At the same time, the GOP isn’t exactly doing much to stop it - but they sure talk about it a lot. Abortion is a big issue to a lot of Americans, but not nearly as big as some of the others.
2. Be more enviromentally friendly. Look I don’t know what to think about global warming either - but regardless of that being enviromentally friendly shouldn’t be looked at as a bad thing. One of the biggest things the GOP could do is promote the legalization of hemp - one of the most resourceful plants on the planet.
3. Small fricking government - isn’t this supposed to be a staple of conservatism? Where the heck has it been lately?
4. When it comes to the economy, listen to Ron Paul. Seriously, the guy knows what he’s talking about. Or would you like to keep giving all of our tax money to Ben Bernanke and Hank Paulsen with no strings attached?
5. Limbaugh, Bill-O, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin…. these should not be the voices of your party. They’ve all shown time and again that they are ignorant, hate-filled, sometimes racist, and unrational. Just because they think the same way about some of the GOP’s issues does not mean they’re good romodels for how to run a political party.
my two cents… whatcha think?
Jeff, do you mean Third Way? I agree that the parties we have now are tired and disgraceful, but I don’t see a Ross Perot as being the answer. Not at this juncture, anyway.
skw, I agree with most of your points and plan to extrapolate on them in the near future. However #5 seems a bit unnecessary and over the top. If you want to see real racism, try reading some of Michelle Malkin’s hate mail. And is Limbaugh hate filled because he lacks subtelty?
Personally I’ve always found O’Reilly too liberal for my taste. And all for ol’ Annie… I am often referred to as the “fat Ann Coulter”!
Wendy
“Our Libertarian friend, skwguitar, is more of a Republican than most Republicans.(no offense intended skwguitar)”
- none taken at all, many times I’ve felt the same way. And unless if the libertarian party suddenly breaks through the political climate - it’s in my best interest (and in my opinion America’s) that the GOP reform itself to its old values.
There are a lot of fed up americans on both sides of the fence. If the GOP was to take a radical new stance on issues like the Federal Reserve’s unchecked powers, or perhaps making our Federal Income Tax constitutional for a change - I think it might be just what Americans are looking for and just what the GOP needs to save some face.
But if history is any indication then the issue will only be brought up amongst third party candidates - hence my vote for Bob Barr this year.