How Can You Fight When You Don't Believe?

By: Daniel Horowitz

January 26th, 2015

It doesn’t take a genius to ascertain the political motivations behind the behavior of GOP leaders in Washington. When you believe in a specific issue or principle with all your heart, you harness every opportunity to advance the cause. Conversely, when you lack a core belief in the cause you are tasked to pursue, you will look for every excuse to avoid any significant achievement of that goal. The recent behavior of Republicans on a host of issues reveals what many of us have known for quite some time – the party leadership fundamentally does not share our values, principles, or goals.

After decades’ worth of dependency brought on by a century of progressive policies, not all facets of conservatism are an easy sell to large swaths of the country. Add to that the left-wing dominance of our media, education, academia, and cultural institutions – and it’s not hard to understand or even sympathize with the innate apprehensiveness of Republicans to push conservatism full throttle. For example, nobody would suggest that a wholesale repeal of the welfare state or abolishing the minimum wage overnight would resonate with a majority of the public. But these are not the issues we are confronted with in the Obama era.

The Obama presidency has completely changed the political landscape. As emblematized by the red-blue map of the congressional districts, most of the country now understands and is repulsed by the radicalism of the left. On most of the relevant issues in which Republicans must counter Obama’s policies, Republicans easily have the support of the majority of the country. And yet, Republicans turn winning issues into losing issues. They don’t want to fight amnesty, Obamacare, late-term abortions, infringements on religious liberty, or corporate welfare.


Earlier this year, Conservative Review released a list of agenda items that are solidly conservative, yet are easy to message and would intuitively resonate with the public. They include constitutional national carry conceal legislation, reforming the Federal Reserve, eliminating corporate subsidies, protecting against coercion from the sexual identity movement, a host of conservative immigration reforms, and cutting off visas to ISIS fighters.

These issues, much like the ban on late-term abortions, easily garner a majority of support throughout the country. But they are not supported by the K Street lobbyists and would elicit a vocal and vigorous opposition from a minority of special interest groups. They are easily winnable fights, but you have to be willing to fight for them and stay on message – something that can only be done by people who truly believe in the veracity of those principles.


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But this all holds true only for someone who is down for the struggle and shares our values. A party leadership that doesn’t believe in conservatism will look for every excuse to turn these ideas into losing issues. They will convince themselves that we can’t win on late-term abortions. They will concoct polls from GOP pollster Frank Luntz that say people are clamoring for amnesty legislation. They will poll-test the Democrat messaging on a given issue without framing the issue accurately because they don’t have the fortitude to propagate the conservative arguments for a given cause.

Even as it relates to global warming legislation, which we thought was vanquished from the Republican Party, a group of Republicans are now convincing themselves that they absolutely must adopt some sort of global warming, I mean climate change, agenda for 2016.

After all, they can’t win in 2016 without supporting global warming.

They can’t win in 2016 without supporting the social liberal agenda.

They can’t win in 2016 without supporting amnesty.

They can’t win, in their minds, on most of the issues codified in the GOP platform because they won’t fight for them. And they won’t fight for them because they don’t believe in them.

And therein lies the challenge of our era. How do we get a party to wholeheartedly fight for a cause for which they fundamentally don’t subscribe?


[excerpt, rest of article at link above]


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How do we get a party to wholeheartedly fight for a cause for which they fundamentally don’t subscribe?

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Dude, Daniel my man..... First you actually have to have another "party." Right now we have a UNIParty that has a D wing and an R wing. (Some will argue that it has always been that way from the onset, designed solely to give the "rubes" the feeling that they could 'throw the bastards out' every 2/4 years to effect change; while the agenda marches onward, regardless of which wing sits at the levers of control. I won't quibble with that; I have Professor Quigley's First Edition, First Printing, of Tragedy & Hope (in which he basically spells that out) sitting about 5 feet away from me at the present. But regardless of taking the view that it was designed as a UNIParty from the onset, or that it devolved into one over time, the UNIParty has been our reality for decades now.)


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