What is surprising, although I guess it shouldn’t be, is that everyone is saying this is bad for the Republican Party because it shows that they are no longer a national party.

This is bunk.  The last time the Republican Party was ideologically conservative, they had historic wins.  (Yes, I am talking about 1994.)  People like Arlen “Spendulus” Specter are obstacles to that end.  How is his leaving a problem?

The Democrats are trying to turn this into “the Republicans went too far to the right,” but even they haven’t been able to stop the truth from getting out that this was purely to save Specter’s own butt.

Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Fla., said that in a private meeting with Republicans, Specter “gave a purely political explanation. … He said: ‘I’ve looked at the polls. I can’t win as a Republican, I can’t win as an independent. The only way I have a shot is to be a Democrat.’”

As recently as late winter, Specter was asked by a reporter why he had not taken Democrats up on past offers to switch parties.

“Because I am a Republican,” he said.

I fail to see how losing an unprincipled opportunist can be anything but good for the party that was brought down by its own political opportunism.

In my view, the Republican Party will never gain credibility with conservatives, or with anyone for that matter, until every last unprincipled opportunist, every member who betrayed ideology for power and political gain, is gone.

It was not conservatism that brought down the Republican Party; the Republican Party has not represented conservatism in years.  George W. Bush was not conservative, not in the limited government, fiscal conservative sense.  John McCain was not conservative, either.  To the extent he pretended to be on the campaign trial, he failed to articulate it well to the American people.

If conservatism is really dead, if it really is a losing political philosophy in 21st century America, then why have the left, the Democratic Party, and the President of the United States tried to marginalize it?  Why the feigned concern that Specter’s departure is bad for the Republican Party?  Why seek to marginalize Rush Limbaugh and FOX news?  Why classify mainstream conservative thinking as right-wing extremism?  Why mock the tea parties?

Why not let conservatism go head-to-head with liberalism, progressivism, social democracy, or whatever you want to call it?  Why not let America hear the best arguments on both sides and make a choice?

Answer: because conservastism is not dead.  Not even close.

I was about to dismiss it entirely, as I think is the proper response at this point to the accusations of racism that follow every single criticism of President Obama by anyone on the right, and even some that come from the left.

I mean, how seriously can we take the prized argument of such intellectual giants as Janeane Garofalo, especially when there is no attempt at an actual discussion of said criticism?

But then, it occurred to me that there is more to this post than intellectual laziness.  The left really does not get what’s gotten everyone on the right so worked up about Barack Obama.

Let’s take the post I mentioned above as an example.

They hate him not because of policy or politics. They hate him because of who he is. Not like them. By the color of his skin. It’s time to stop pretending or excusing or evading the obvious. They hate him because he is black!

I am not even sure where to begin with that.  Has there been no criticism on Pres. Obama’s policies or politics?  I read thoughtful, reasonable criticisms of his policy every day.

So, how did this insightful blogger arrive at this conclusion, that there can be no other reason, except for race, to explain this outrage?

The right did not respond this way to President Clinton.  Yes, really, that’s the entire argument.

First the full quote, then I’ll break it down.

They hated President Clinton, and tried to destroy him. But one of their elected governors didn’t talk secession. They didn’t talk revolution. They didn’t attempt (and miserably fail) to launch nationwide protests against him. Bill Clinton was a lot of things. He was not black.

President Obama is no crazy liberal. He is increasing defense spending. Even Alan Greenspan is suggesting economic solutions more akin to “socialism.” Gun lovers have nothing to fear. On policy grounds, we crazy liberals have been criticizing him from day one. The radical right have been lambasting him. With the nation fighting two wars and an economic meltdown, they openly hope he fails. But they are not about policy. They are about hatred. And they hate Obama as they have never hated any president. It’s not complicated.

Rather than succumb to this poor application of Occam’s Razor, let’s look a little deeper at other possible reasons for why this behavior is happening under President Obama, but did not happen under President Clinton.

They hope he fails. This widely misinterpreted Rush Limbaugh quote actually referred to any socialist policies Obama would enact.  A point Rush has clarified repeatedly, explaining the ideology that he believes Obama comes from and the policies emanating therefrom that would be ultimately bad for America.  To that end, Rush hopes he fails – fails to destroy America.

But this isn’t about policy is it?

Gun lovers have nothing to fear. That is not a unanimous opinion.  Most “gun lovers” do think there is much to fear.  Gun sales have skyrocketed since Obama was elected.  Most people who follow gun control legislation suspect that Obama will enact gun control measures as soon as it is politically viable, that is, after he deals with energy and health care.

Secession.  Revolution.  Mass protest.

Why are these things coming up now, but not then?

Then, we did not see an increase of government spending of this magnitude.  Then, we did not have a national debt of $11 trillion, and growing.  Then, we did not have a pork-laden spendulus stimulus bill, passed before anyone could even read it.  Then, we did not see the government fire the CEO of a major corporation.

But most importantly, then we had a Republican Party that was able to organize an opposition, formulate a platform that reflected the conservative ideology, and take control of both chambers Congress a mere two years after Clinton was elected.

Does anyone think the GOP can do that now?  Does anyone think the GOP has any credibility whatsoever with conservatives?

This spending orgy started with a Republican president.  The last Republican presidential candidate’s big moment in the debate with Obama was that he – the Republican – wanted the government to bail out people who couldn’t afford their mortgages.

Conservatives have nowhere to go. There is no leader of the conservative movement.  There is no political party that embodies conservative principles.  There is no one who can even articulate – on a national level – what the tea party protests were about to the media, for crying out loud.

What are conservatives supposed to do, if not speak out for themselves, talk about revolution, try to organize some sort of protest to let Washington know their views?

And why wouldn’t we want to leave a country that has abandoned its roots of personal freedom and limited government?

This is about policy.  It is all about policy.

But, it is true that it is being expressed in an unproductive way, many times as hatred.

And for that, my dear left-wingers, you have yourselves to blame.

You know hatred, boy, do you ever.  You have hated for the past 8 years.  Some of you even forgot how not to hate and are still spewing hate on a daily basis toward anyone who dares disagree with you.

After Obama was elected, I read time after time on conservative blogs how we had to resist doing what the left did for the past 8 years.  The hate.  The screeching.  The inability to formulate coherent sentences.

Unfortunately, some of us can’t resist emulating what has become the standard in political thought.

So, if anyone on the left wonders why the level of discourse is so base, so visceral, compared to the past, it’s not because he’s black (with or without scare quotes), it’s because you lowered the bar.

“Michael Steele, Former Lt. Gov. of Maryland was elected the new Chairman of the Republican National Committee. He received 91 votes on the sixth ballot. Eighty Five votes were needed to win.”

The video of his acceptance speech will be available soon.

In the meantime, here is his speech at the RNC convention last fall.  There’s some good stuff in there; government should be limited so it never becomes powerful enough to infringe on the rights of individuals, change the tax code to let people keep more of their hard earned money, school choice, and the money quote, “drill, baby drill and drill now.”

The House passed the stimulus bill.

No Republicans voted for the bill

I decided, though, that it makes little sense to go with a third party.

No, not because we need to stop Barack Obama at any cost and John McCain is the only one who can do it, although those arguments are persuasive.

There is nothing that the left can do to this country in two or four years that cannot be undone. (I know that many people, including my husband, would disagree with that.)

If anything, I think two or four years of unbridled Democratic control will finally put to bed the notion that these liberal ideas, which have failed elsewhere, will be embraced America, not to mention this silly notion that conservatism in America is dead. If liberalism was popular, Obama would run on it, not from it.

But, back to the third party thing.

If I may, let me use as an analogy Bill Ayers. Now here is a guy who has a commitment to a particular ideology. At first, he thought the best way to further that ideology was to attempt to overthrow the government using terrorism tactics, send people to re-education centers to get them in line with the new way of thinking, and exterminate the approximately 25 million people who refused to be re-educated.

At some point, Mr. Ayers decided that a better way was to work within the framework of the current system. He became an education professor, where he could freely indoctrinate the future teachers, who would then indoctrinate countless numbers of impressionable young minds. He worked on boards where he could collaborate with others to implement some of his ideas. He used his home to host the launching of the political campaign of a future presidential candidate.

Using normal acceptable means to further his agenda, he has gotten much further toward his goal than he did using the radical, dare I say, homicidal, means.

I view voting third party as the Weather Underground Ayers. Not that you folks are homicidal radicals, but that you are going to accomplish about as little, except without killing anyone.

The system is against you. Third party candidates are not taken seriously, they get little to no media attention, and it is going to take you ten times as long to accomplish half as much, if even.

You can learn from Bill Ayers. When he chose to work within the system, he went from crazy 60s homicidal radical to respected citizen and university professor, who has worked together with prominent politicians.

The Republican Party is already in place. The media recognizes it, as do the uninformed voters who get all of their information from said media. It once stood for real conservatism, and many people who call it home are still conservatives. Why reinvent the wheel?

We need to be ready on day one to rebuild this movement. If Barack Obama and the liberal Democrats win big, they will provide us with the gift that keeps on giving. Once they try to enact their plans, such as effectively killing people’s 401k accounts and bankrupting utilities, people will come running back to conservatism in droves. We need to be there when they do, not off trying to build a new party from the ground up.

So, for now, I am not going to abandon the Republican Party.

So here you go.

Introducing, Zo, in his final video before the election:

There is more Zo at his You Tube page and at his page on the website black-and-right.com.

You also might be interested in his video, Why I’m a Conservative Republican. Good stuff.

I can’t identify with a party that is so blatantly racist.

The Republicans want people to think that Obama is different. They say Obama is elitist. They tell people that he doesn’t understand them.

Sen. Obama: Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula?

Obviously, words like “different” are code words. What they really are trying to say is that they don’t want to see a black person in any visible executive office in the United States government.

I mean, surely, Republicans would never, ever treat a white candidate the way they are treating Obama, accusing him of not being like us.

According to the liberal history books, in 1988 the GOP cast Michael Dukakis as too elitist, cosmopolitan and not American enough. In 1992, it ran a similar attack against Bill Clinton – remember the hullabaloo about draft dodging and that trip to Russia? In 2000, ditto with Al Gore, though the emphasis was less on foreignness and more on extraterrestrialness. And in 2004, there was John Kerry’s “global test” for U.S. national security. Lack of originality notwithstanding, why is it suddenly racist to treat Obama just like the four white guys who preceded him? Talk about racial double standards. [link]

The Democratic Party thinks that a black candidate cannot withstand the same attacks that a white candidate can. The liberal media thinks that it should sit on the stories that might cast Obama in a negative light. They don’t think a black man is capable of being elected president without receiving special treatment.

I could never belong to a party that is so blatantly racist.

That’s why I don’t.

But let’s face it. These are not small government times. There are no Thomas Jeffersons looming on the horizons. And Americans love their government programs.

I have accepted that the freedom-loving homeschool blogging circles I run in are not representative of mainstream America.

I just wanted to float my fantasy of a resurgence of small government federalism before I delved into the other, more likely, scenario.

Republican voters, uninspired by the eventual un-conservative nominee, will stay home in large numbers. The voting blocs that consistently support the GOP – the 2nd amendment crowd, the smaller government folks, the lower taxes bunch, the pro-life gang, and, let’s not forget, the capitalists – will not turn out for a candidate that does not uphold their principles.

The Democratic Party will sweep up this election. Then they will have the freedom and ability to implement their agenda.

Then people will remember why they don’t like Democrats. They will remember why everytime we have had an expansion of government power and government programs, there has been a subsequent rollback.

Eventually, the Republicans will realize that their smaller government ideas are winning ideas, or I should say, their small government ideas will once again be winning ideas, and we will see a return to the Republican Party that we, small government conservatives, all knew and loved.

In the meantime, conservative commentators, pundits and bloggers can rejoice in the fact that it is not our guys screwing things up for a change.

Read part one.

I guess it is some sort of big deal.

Forgive me if I am just not that excited.

As someone who has been active in the Republican Party, run for local office as a Republican, supported Republican candidates, served on the local Republican Committee, and gone door-to-door for other Republicans, this election has been difficult to experience.

I have always felt like the Republican Party was where my allegiance rested.

But I look at candidates John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Mike Huckabee (is he still in this race??), and I look at President George Bush and the Republicans in Congress, and I see a party that does not reflect the principles that I signed up for.

And I find myself hoping that the Republican Party loses.

It is not enough to win with the wrong principles.

Today’s Republican Party does not fight for limited, Constitutionally-derived federal powers.

Today’s Republican Party does not fight for limited government spending.

Today’s Republican Party does not fight to protect the rights that the Bill of Rights was designed to safeguard.

The one candidate in the Republican race who does represent all of those principles has been blocked out by the Republican establishment and the media.

That candidate is Ron Paul.

I rejected the idea of supporting Ron Paul earlier in this primary season because I was looking for a candidate that could unite the party around our traditional principles.

That candidate was Fred Thompson.

But the party voters rejected former Sen. Thompson.

Now, the party faithful rally behind Mitt Romney, a candidate whose record in government wholly contradicts everything he has said in this campaign, and John McCain, the maverick who has dogged conservatives for years with his decidedly un-conservative activities in Congress.

It is any wonder that my support for a Republican Party resurgence is waning?

Truth be told, I hope that Ron Paul runs as an independent and we witness the birth of a new party in American politics.

I am not talking about another failed third party. I am talking about a revolution. A new major party.

The death of the Republican Party and the birth of something new, something better, something that encompasses the clamor of a yet unrepresented group of Americans that wants to see the power of the federal government reined in and a return to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The funniest thing about it is that I signed it “Chairman.” If I remember correctly, they edited that. It’s even politically incorrect to refer to myself with a “gender-biased” term.

I thought it was kind of interesting to read. It’s a little too Kumbaya for my taste, but then again, I did write it. And I guess I do have that quality, which explains how I managed to ingratiate myself with so many Vermont lefty bloggers.

The date written is 10/23/2003.

Burlington Mayor Peter Clavelle told a group of Johnson State College students that he wants to bring people who disagree with the Republican ideology together to represent “ordinary people,” as if Republicans are not “ordinary people.”

That makes me wonder, what are “ordinary people?” Teachers? Factory workers? Custodians? Retired people? Stay-at-home mothers? Working families? I guess not. We have people like that in the Burlington Republican Party.

If Progressive Pete, the Winooski Democrat, wants to bring together people with similar ideologies, that’s great. More power to him.

If the Honorable Mayor wants to unite all Republican haters and run as the anti-Republican candidate, go for it. Good luck.

But, when Mayor Clavelle says that Republicans are somehow not “ordinary people,” I will not allow that assertion to go unchecked.

Agree or disagree with us, love us or hate us, Republicans are your neighbors, your friends, and maybe even your family. We are the people you see every day. Democrats, Progressives, and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, we are all just “ordinary people.”