Sarah Palin's speech to the Tea Party convention, and her affirmative answer to a reporter's question as to whether she would consider running for President, has spurred conversation as to whether conservatives and independents should jump aboard a third party. They did so in 1992 with Ross Perot, and that enabled Bill Clinton's victory. Influential pundits like Glenn Beck tell us to be wary of both Republicans and Democrats. Rush Limbaugh counsels against leaving the Republican party; instead, he wants conservatives to take it over. Mike Rosen warns us that if we vote for a Democrat, we are voting for someone who will respond to the coalition of groups that the Democrat party answers to.
Herbert Schlossberg wrote in Idols for Destruction that conservatives, when they are in power, tend "to keep intact the system that their opponents caused to flourish" when they were in power. As Schlossberg says, "they will change the beneficiaries and the victims." "A tax increase disguised as a tax cut, a budget increase disguised as a budget decrease, and the continued policy of rewarding political friends from the public purse" was a feature of the first Reagan administration. As Tom Tancredo said last weekend in his speech to the Tea Party convention, we would have gotten a "progessive" agenda if Senator McCain would have been elected, and Sarah Palin would not have been free to speak out as she is now.
So, what are we to do?
2 comments:
Term limits and no parachutes. That would get rid of most of the riffraff and the others we could rotate out as needed.
Late to the confab here, but to me the only option has been to get involved in the Republican Party in meaningful ways and push conservative ideals on the country club people. Third parties, protest votes, etc., may feel good, but like most tantrums, they are regreted later.
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