The Ailing Republican Party

(All emphases by Always On Watch) to expand

Have you noticed the concerns and the general malaise on the part of typically-Republican voters with regard to the party's choice for the November 4 National Election? John Hawkins of Townhall.com has written an essay with his views as to why conservatives are less than enthusiastic about McCain's candidacy. Excerpt from "The Republican Party's Real Problem in a Nutshell," in which he states the following:

[C]onservatives, who are the heart and soul of the Republican Party, no longer believe that the GOP has their best interests at heart.

In his essay, Mr. Hawkins goes on to draw a distinction between supporters and allies:

Conservatives will stay up late volunteering for a campaign, give until it hurts, and crawl over broken glass to put candidates in Washington who're "on their side."

However, it's a totally different ball game when we're talking about mere allies. Why give money and spend precious time volunteering on the campaigns of people who are going to turn right around and cut you off at the knees on spending and illegal immigration once they get to DC?

Read the entire essay.

In my view, Mr. Hawkins has drawn an important distinction. Many conservatives will vote for McCain simply because he is not the Democratic Party's candidate, who certainly leans further left than McCain. Other conservatives will stay home, excercise the write-in option on the ballot, or cast their votes for a third-party candidate — even though those options will almost surely give the victory to the Democratic Party's candidate. The Republican Party has moved away from its conservative base, and that shift could put a Democrat into the White House.

How did the Republican Party get itself into such a mess? Yes, the GOP shares some of the blame. But not all of it. Consider this excerpt from Seth's recent essay "In The Proverbial Nutshell":

I firmly believe that the “silent majority” of right-thinking Americans referred to during the Vietnam era is still alive and well, our self-deception is in our belief that it is sufficient that we do our talking at the polls on Election Day.

The problem there is that in between mid-term and Presidential elections, the only “talking” that really gets done is between elected politicians. Granted, there are occasional, though few and far between, voter rebellions wherein We, The People intercede en masse, such as the thankfully aborted amnesty legislation a couple of years back, but for the most part, we just kinda’ sorta’ sit back in blissful unawareness or semi-awareness...

Read Seth's entire essay here.

Mustang, too, has posted an essay on the coming election. In the concluding paragraph of "Exciting Politics," Mustang opines as follows:

[T]he problem isn’t really our politicians (snakes that they are); it is about the uninformed voter who swallow everything candidates tell them and then cast their ballot based on illogical and patently untrue political supposition.

In my view, Mr. Hawkins, Seth, and Mustang are sounding important alarms about conservatism's future in America. For the coming election, however, and for a variety of reasons, many of which are conservatives' own fault, we on the right side of the political spectrum are limited to choices not reflective of our views. Perhaps by 2012, our choices for leadership will change. At the moment, such a change is the best that conservatives can hope for and, more importantly, work toward.