Advice to Republicans

An open letter to Michael Steele and other Republicans

For some reason, Republicans seem to be feeling pretty good these days. I have to wonder why. Yes, there has been significant, and perhaps yet decisive, pushback by the general public (a.k.a. "voters") against the Obama administration's far-overreaching plan to control one-sixth of the economy, in addition to the slices it has already swallowed. People are awakening to the fact that Health Care Is the Door to Controlling Everything about the way we live day to day.

But I would advise Republicans that there is no real reason for you to rejoice in headlines like these:

"GOP thinks the unthinkable: Victory in 2010."

"Obama As A One-Termer?"

"Rasmussen: For First Time in Over Two Years, GOP More Trusted on Health Care"

Why should these kinds of stories cause Republicans no real comfort? Let me channel Han Solo:

Don't get cocky, kid.

The fact is that the tea partiers and the townhall protesters are not turning out to support the Republican party. Most definitely, they are against the Democrat party or, since these protests occurred with full energy and numbers in heavily Democrat districts, an awful lot them are Democrats or voted that way last year.

No indeed, Michael Steele and company, you have not made legions of new converts. In fact, hardly any. Do not count me as one. George W. Bush killed my Republicanism, and that before the '04 election. Well before that year's election, I made it clear on my first blog (reposted here) that I could not endorse GWB for reelection.

Big-government activism has come to define the governing philosophy of both parties today. The rising tide of big government has swamped us, held only temporarily at bay by the levees of the Reagan years. (And not really even then, since non-defense spending rose during the Reagan administration.)

Because the present-day Republicans and Democrats are both big-government activists, they have a foundational philosophy that is the same:

America is a problem to be fixed, and Americans are a people to be managed.

I predict that the Bush administration will be seen by freedom-wishing Americans a generation or two hence as the hinge on the cell door locking up our freedom. When my children are my age, they will not be free in any recognizably traditional American meaning of the word. I’d tell them to emigrate, but there’s nowhere left to go. I am left with nauseating near-conviction that I am a member of the last generation in the history of the world that is minimally truly free.

I voted for Bush in '04 only defensively, considering that his opponent was empty of both suit and moral character.

Then we come to 2008's race for the White House. John McCain. John McCain? Were you serious? I know his personal narrative simply buries Obama's but it didn't matter. Once Obama got the nomination, you should have known that voters were not going to care about comparing narratives. I readily admit, too, that it would have been an uphill fight for any Republican nominee against the first black nominee for the office. And yes, even so, it was still a real election race until the economy went deeply south just two months before the election.

But McCain? Two words: McCain-Feingold. This act, which George Will accurately called, "The Incumbent Protection Act," ("the most pernicious -- and for incumbents, the most audaciously self-serving -- law ever enacted to abridge First Amendment freedoms") cemented McCain as just another turf-and-privilege-protecting pol. And if that means stomping on First Amendment rights, well so be it:

"I would rather have a clean government than one where quote 'First Amendment rights' are being respected that has become corrupt," McCain said. “If I had my choice, I’d rather have the clean government."

But enough about McCain, let's talk about . . . Sarah Palin. Nice lady. A looker and all that. But why why why was she the VP candidate? And to think that many of your party, Mr. Steele, think that Sarah Palin should be the 2012 nominee! Since I already wrote what a laff-riot that idea is, I'll not belabor it here.

I should inform you, Mr. Steele (and especially Senators Alexander and Corker and Representative Blackburn), that I have never voted for a Republican for governor of the great state of Tennessee. Frankly, you've raised up only "so what" candidates for the office since Winfield Dunn, and he left office more than 30 years ago. Your most recent candidate for the office was Jim Bryson, a very good guy whom I knew for awhile. He is a man of admirable personal qualities, personal moral rectitude and uprightness - but governor? Surely he was only a sacrificial lamb your pols threw out there to be devoured (as he was) by incumbent Democrat Phil Bredesen, who did garner my vote - and the way Bredesen cleaned Jim's clock was so dignified, so civilized, that I have to think Jim almost didn't mind.

Simply out, your party is leaderless, especially ideologically leaderless. What does the Republican party stand for? Darned if I know. Oh wait, yes I do, I already mentioned it: Big Government. Just like the other guys.

It was not I who first characterized your party as one of big-government conservatism. Except for the self contradiction of the phrase, it's quite true. Does your party stand for limited government any more? Of course not. With every Democrat proposal to clamp more jaws of regulation and control on Americans, Republicans respond only that the bite of your counterproposals won't be as hard. But yours will still bite. Not for nothing are Republicans often called, "Democrats Lite."

What were you all doing during the six years when Republicans held the presidency and both houses of Congress? Where was your principled vision then, while government was growing at rates not seen since the Johnson administration? Once you were in power, you paid no attention to the voices for limited government within your own party. We were shuffled off to the side, while you taxed and spent like drunken sailors on leave. Now that you’ve lost the election, you want limited government again. Forgive me if I’m somewhat skeptical.

What you don't seem to understand, Mr. Steele et. al., is that the tea partiers and townhall demonstrators are tired of being bitten. They want the government to stop gouging out the raw flesh of their freedom. And they know that the Republican party has gouged them just as surely, though perhaps not quite as deeply, as the other party.

No, Mr. Steele (if I may permitted the editorial we), we do not support the Republican party in Obamacare or cap and trade or any other program in the news today. We just are deeply fearful of the practically provable desire of the Democrats to micromanage our daily lives. But don't you take comfort that this paves your way in 2010. It doesn't.

Let this be a "Warning to Republicans- We are Not Doing This for You!" In fact, sometimes it's hard to take you seriously.