Townhall.com | Paul Weyrich | May. 12, 2008
It remains to be seen if conservatism can regain the initiative which was lost in the past few years. When there is a vacuum liberals always are prepared to rush in. When President Reagan took office the majority of Americans believed that government was the problem. Today, I am sorry to report, the majority of Americans are convinced that government is the solution. It isn’t, of course, but by time the public again is convinced that government is the problem it may well be too late. Conservatives gave up some of their principles in order to retain power. The public has lost confidence in the conservative movement.
As one who has devoted most of his adult life to the conservative cause, it saddens me to recognize this. Yet we can’t begin to recover unless we acknowledge the problem. We hope when our book comes out you will help to start a debate over some of the ideas we advance.
Only by that means will we be able to begin to recover. It remains to be seen if conservatives again can seize the moral high ground and frame the issues so that conservatives will have the initiative in my lifetime.
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Conservatism has “lost its clout”. I do not think that it can regain its initiative. The reason I believe that is because conservatism just is not being given a chance to work. Our politicians have diluted the conservative cause so that what is today called conservatism is hardly a shadow of the true conservatism that existed when America was being built into a great nation. I don’t think that any reasonable person can truly believe that if liberals were in control, the United States of America would have been formed from The Thirteen Colonies. The type of conservatism that I think of is the conservatism that existed when the United States of America was made into a nation from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans, with a railroad that was built which connected those two coasts. It was in a conservative America that the telephone, telegraph, movie projector, gramophone, airplane, television, helicopter were invented. Sure, liberals complain that America was a cruel and cold nation in those days. However, I see people flocking to America from all over the world because of the great lifestyle that was created in that conservative America. Liberals just create high taxes, a loss of individual freedom and big government. I doubt if we’ll ever see a renaissance of conservatism because we have the idea that we should be governed by mob rule. This mob rule is called democracy. Most people don’t want to have personal responsibility. They want Hillary Clinton to take care of them. And boy oh boy, she’ll take care of you allright.
Too many in the Republican party have lost their conservative soul and embraced the statist and leftist agenda of the Democrats. Believing that compromise with leftists will make them popular and build good will these politicians have dug their own graves.
Embracing corrupt ideologies and giving in to socialist ideals never works and destroys those who buy into the lies. It empowers the radicals and enboldens them to continue their push towards a totalitarian state. The consequences are dire for the GOP, the culture, and the country as a whole. We’re continuing our gradual march towards an Orwellian society and ever greater surrender of our liberties and freedoms to a bloaded and incompetent bureaucracy.
The problem in our country is the “softness” of Americans. We are no longer a country of people with the “pioneer spirit.” We want ‘hand-outs.’ We look for “get rich quick” schemes. We step on others to “make a buck.” The “instant society” and “victimhood nation” is winning out.
The so-called neo-con “leaders” are just as crooked as the the political left. And they cowered against the “libs.” Just look at their prez candidate, John McCain, what a “wimp”!
I left the “neo-cons” a long time ago, when I realized that they are not true conservatives. More folks are realizing it now. I will not accept the argument that voting for a third party candidate is throwing away my vote. IMHO I believe if we do not stand up and protest, politicians will continue to do what they are doing. And for me this means not voting for the “lesser of two evils.”