Newt Gingrich Might Go Third Party? The Conservative Delusion Continues
By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Newt Gingrich reportedly said that conservatives might bolt the GOP if the party doesn't stop "being the right wing party of big government."
Newt's a smart guy (you can tell because his writing appears in important publications). And he certainly seems to be positioning himself to run for president. But ...
He seems here to buy into the conservative delusion that their problem in 2008 was that they were insufficiently conservative. That if only Republicans had spent less, cut taxes (even more), and scaled back government, John McCain (or whoever) would be president today. Gingrich feels that if these purists are not satisfied, they'll bolt from the party, presumably on the theory that true conservatives will be able to win election because the United States is a basically conservative country.
I have two problems with this. The first is that our liberal president and his policies have the strong support of the American people right now.
The second—and more important—point is that the Republicans who became the right wing party of big government over the last eight to 15 years were all politicians. Politicians sometimes break with their principles when political circumstances dictate it (in other words: when the non-principled policy is popular) and they sometimes do unpopular things when their principles demand it. But it's rather rare for a politician (let alone a whole party) to do something simultaneously unpopular and unprincipled.
But that, according to Gingrich and others, is what they did: They embraced unpopular (in a basically conservative country) policies that flew in the face of their own principles. Well I guess that's one explanation for why they cratered.
There is this: I would pay real money to see Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin in a 2012 GOP presidential debate.
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Reader Comments
Newt Gingritch and Conservative Third Party
Actually sir, if the pricniples of conservatism were followed by the GOP, there would be no war in Iraq, no foreign military bases, no income tax, no federal reserve, no HMO's, increased propserity . . . along with some of the other things that us non-conservatives despise, such as anti-abortion laws for instance. the problem is the neo-cons came from the left, and so you have this Republican Party that's just as Newt said: the right wing of big government. they leverage the economy up on debt and cut taxes only to yield more taxes in return. tey handle globalization by expanding Truman's empire to the very limits of true colonialism, ect. The problem is, you buy into the nonsense rhetoric that the GOP today are conservative.
real small-government conservatives would oppose all marriage regulation, preempive war, entangling alliances, trade control, ect.
Why I Am No Longer an (R)
I'm sick of the the religious right dictating the terms of the Party's future. I'm tired of televangelists screaming about socialism while they don't pay taxes. I'm sick to death of so-called conservatives trying to ram their moral values down everyone's throat and failing to call it what it is - Fascism.
I'm sick and tired of Republicans turning into liberals who never met a government program they didn't fall in love with. I'm sick of people calling George Bush a conservative - he wasn't.
And what's with the notion that a conservative can start a war? We don't do that.
I'm sick of Republicans telling me that Muslims are coming to kill me - so they'll need to borrow my civil liberties (for a while) - and yet failing to secure our southern border so that their fat cat business friends can still have all the cheap labor they can vacuum up. If we're under such threat, where have the attacks been that a hyper-paranoid nation like Israel can't seem to stop, and yet we see none of?
Bringing me to my next point. Israel. If I hear that Israel is our ally and friend one more time, I may very well vomit. Does the attack on the USS Liberty ring a bell with anyone? How many times has Israel been caught stealing our nuclear secrets, only to sell them to China, who promptly sells them to North Korea? Israel is not our friend. It is run and is full of opportunists who see us as a weak, stupid people, driven to love Israel because of Biblical prophecy that people have been waiting for for 2000 years. Israel writes our foreign, to be sure. We excuse their acts of ethnic cleansing - please don't try to tell me that there was no one living in Jerusalem when Israel was "awarded" to the Jews after the barbaric events of WW2 (see, you have to say things like "barbaric events" when you talk about Israel and what happened to the Jews in WW2 or you become an anti-Semite and therefore unworthy of being listened to).
I do enjoy seeing the Republicans trying to justify runaway spending in other foreign countries, but poo-pooing infrastructure spending here at home. I wonder why this is. I wonder why its okay to spend hundreds upon hundreds of billions of US taxpayer dollars in a third world piss-ant little crap-house false nation like Iraq (which didn't exist until the Brits decided it should...the same people who decided that Israel should be redrawn after natural selection had ordained her death). I wonder why we were told that the war would be paid for from the Iraqi oil revenues which build up and build up in Iraqi coffers, but all we get here is a steady stream of dead and wounded. I wonder why it is we bother trying to help a nation like Afghanistan, who has essentially legalized rape.
Whatever. I was gone when the Party selected McCain as their nominee. Pandering to the left is no way to get elected to a party full of conservatives - even if you do try to scare them. The Party is no place for thinking people. Its a place for sheep.
a conservative country
When are all of you political "experts" going to realize, that America was founded by people who believed in principles, unlike the current crop of clowns who raise a moistened index finger to determine the direction of the political wind? It's not about what ideas are "in fashion" today. Conservatives don't necessarily believe that America IS conservative. They believe conservatism is best for America, and that America prospered under true Conservative leadership. Conservatism deserves a voice in the political debate, whereas the GOP has moved away from small government Conservatism in a huge way in the past 8 years. The Republican party as a representation of conservatism in government is largely an imposter.
Many Conservatives believe that we have not had a true conservative voice in America since Reagan. Looking at the spending practices of the 3 Bush terms, it's hard to deny this argument. Don't blame Conservatives for not wanting to support a rapidly leftward-leaning GOP, no matter what percentage of America considers itself "conservative."
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