If you missed it, [tag]Richard Viguerie[/tag]’s op-ed over the weekend was as thorough a take-down as I’ve seen to explain why the conservative base is fed up with their Republican Party.
If nothing else, it offers a fairly comprehensive list of grievances — No Child Left Behind Act, Medicare Plan D, huge spending increases, McCain-Feingold, Harriet Miers, Dubai Ports World, Hurricane Katrina response, a bungled war in Iraq, the United Nations, rising Chinese and Russian threats, and the immigration “crisis.” And that’s just for the [tag]Bush[/tag] [tag]White House[/tag]. Viguerie is just as critical of the [tag]Republican[/tag] [tag]Congress[/tag], which has “lost interest in furthering conservative ideas” and instead created “an affirmative-action program for Republican lobbyists.”
[tag]Viguerie[/tag] concludes that Bush “talked like a conservative to win our votes,” while the Republican Party’s “agenda comes from Big Business, not from grass-roots conservatives.” But the interesting part is what Viguerie suggests conservatives do about it.
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. [tag]Conservatives[/tag] 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.
If conservatives accept the idea that we must support Republicans no matter what they do, we give up our bargaining position and any chance at getting things done. We’re like a union that agrees never to strike, no matter how badly its members are treated. Sometimes it is better to stand on principle and suffer a temporary defeat.
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.
So, any chance conservative activists will follow this game plan, or is the urge to stay loyal to the party just too strong? We’ve heard bluster like this before, but this is the first time in generations that Republicans have held this much power, for so long, and so thoroughly failed to use it wisely.