The GOP Must Stand for Something

by Karl Rove - May 15th, 2008 - Wall Street Journal

Republicans received a hard shot in Mississippi. Greg Davis (for whom I campaigned and who was a well-qualified candidate) narrowly lost a special congressional election in a district President George W. Bush carried four years ago with 62% of the vote. Democrats pulled off the win by smartly nominating a conservative, Travis Childers, from a rural swing part of the district who disavowed Barack Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and hit Mr. Davis from the right.

This blow to the GOP came after two other special congressional election losses in recent months. Republicans lost former House Speaker Denny Hastert's Illinois seat and Rep. Richard Baker's Louisiana seat.

George W. Bush, Karl Rove and Dennis Hastert have destroyed the Republican Party. It is the height of arrogance for this populist political consultant, the primary architect of Republican destruction, to talk about this problem as if he did not cause it.

No one knows what the Republican Party stands for any more. Newt Gingrich, a populist like Rove, helped to defend the liberal Walter Jones here in North Carolina. Jones was helped to secure his re-election by evangelical support. Evangelicals embraced Jones constant bragging about his Christianity, even as he voted with the liberals to abandon the Iraq battlefield and bring our troops home in defeat.

Evangelicals are the same group who embraced the socialist Mike Huckabee and worked hard to defeat Mitt Romney, not based on his policies, but based on hatred for Mormons. Evangelicals consider Mormons a cult. There is more hate for Mormons than hate for Islamo-fascists among evangelicals.

Travis Childers of Mississippi will be like Heath Shuler of North Carolina. He campaigns as a conservative. However that is all talk. He will vote as a liberal in Washington and his constituents will still send him back.

The Republican Party is in the process of imploding. For those who recognize the anti-American underpinnings of Barack Obama, it is extremely discouraging to realize, no campaign against him will be successful as long as the Republican Party is so fractured.

As a blogger on Lucianne noted, "W is more worried about polar bears than the two border guards rotting in jail." On most of the conservative blogs what is written is anger at the party about one issue or another. What you realize though is that it is the conservative bloggers who have given up on our Representative Democracy. Conservative bloggers take the position that you must agree with them 100% or they will abandon you. And they have.

Various flavors of conservative, religious conservatives who demand adherence to their position on abortion, cultural conservatives who demand adherence to their position on closed borders, patriot conservatives who demand adherence to their position on defending America, fiscal conservatives who demand adherence to their position on capital gains taxation, social conservatives who demand adherence to their position on gay marriage, rational conservatives who demand adherence to their position rejecting global warming, traditional conservatives who demand adherence to their position opposing earmarks, and so on ad infinitum. Each fraction of the conservative movement has some part of the Republican constituency that they hate as much as they hate socialists, progressives, Marxists . . . and moderates who will tolerate anything. Each in their own way have defined some part of the Republican Party they demean as RINOS. That is the imprecise label affixed to their enemies.

They have stopped supporting the party with money and, in many cases, with their votes. Some have even reached a point where they do not understand the reason Parties are so important to our nation succeeding. People cannot and will not spend the time to understand where someone stands on all the issues. Parties allow for a governing majority to be formed.

Today, the only governing majority that is holding together is the greed and tyranny based socialists of the Democrat Party. All the various factions of the Republican Party have conceded the day to their worst enemies, people who oppose them on every important issue, not just one or two. The Republican Party will not be an effective agent in this nation until it reforms with people who accept some compromise for the greater good.