Recently I was given an article taken from "The Rider" written by Burt Prelutsky. It was titled “Choosing Between Rinos and Libs”. In this article he wrote the same old jibberish that we often see from those that got us into this mess to begin with.
“It’s their contention that it is better to vote for a third party candidate than for a Republican In Name Only (RINO). In response, I have pointed out that a third party candidate can’t win the presidency, and while wasting your vote on one can have the short term benefit of making you feel good about yourself, in the long term, you’re merely making it easier for the liberal to win the election. So while there’s nothing to prevent a conservative casting his vote in 2012 for a Libertarian or a Constitutionalist, in reality he’d be helping to re-elect a left-wing radical named Obama.”
Wasting a vote? How dare this person pass judgment on my right to vote. So in the eyes of the Mr. Prelutsky, any vote that does not prop up the GOP is a wasted vote. If there is any such thing as a wasted vote it is to vote for a candidate or party that will only further damage our country. To him, slow death is preferable to quick death. For some of us we do not see the death of America as a given. Basically he is okay with cooking the proverbial frog. As long as you turn up the heat just a little at a time. The author goes on to further demean true conservatives with statements such as…
“What I have come to believe is that a lot of conservatives don’t really want to elect a president, but, rather, wish to install a dictator. They want someone who will get rid of all those annoying federal departments, bureaucrats and even those pesky checks and balances. For good measure, they’d like Sir Boss to make the Federal Reserve Bank disappear, along with the Supreme Court and just maybe daylight-saving time. While he’s at it, they’d appreciate it if he brought back doubleheaders, 25 cent-a-gallon gas and Tom & Jerry cartoons. The reason I suspect that’s true of many conservatives is because it’s true of me.”
On the contrary, its not that we want a dictator to take these things away, its that we want to remove these already dictatorial things.
“So, while I can certainly understand and even share a great deal of the frustration of those who have no use for RINOS, me or even reality, for that matter, it seems clear that threatening to sit out presidential elections simply because the Republican candidate doesn’t possess all the various attributes and convictions of Ronald Reagan, Ron Paul, Barry Goldwater, Abe Lincoln, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter, is not only antithetical to pro-American conservative principles, but as childish as pinning all of one’s hopes on Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny.”
Oh, I see now, its better to allow the status quo to continue rather than to right the ship.
“A few of them swell themselves up like bantam roosters by quoting Thomas Jefferson about the blood of Tyrants and Patriots occasionally being required to water the tree of Liberty. If you took them seriously, you’d actually have to believe they’re planning an armed insurrection, sitting home oiling their muskets, deciding whether to first target their liberal next-door neighbors or the family of RINOS living on the corner.”
Imagine that, someone thinking that they should oppose tyrannical governments or demanding freedom. Oops! That’s how this country began. While no one is suggesting “shooting” a Rino with a firearm we do want to remove them from office. As for the tyrannical government, one only needs to read the history books as well as the headlines to see that this is happening everyday and the U.S. government is embracing it in other countries. I for one hope that it never comes to that, but I honestly fear that it may due to the apathy that exists within the GOP, as well as America in general. Basically the author is using the old tactic of trying to create the perception that those who embrace conservatism are radicals thus discrediting the movement itself. This is a tried and true liberal tactic. How ironic that a so-called conservative would use it.
“It would be much easier to picture all this if you didn’t know that these are the same folks who get very upset if their Social Security check arrives a day late.”
These “folks” are the ones who were forced to pay into the system and it is only right that they expect to get what was sold to them. Or are they now guilty of having the nerve to not be satisfied with “contributing”?
What I see through all of this are several very enlightening things. The obvious is a disdain for true conservatism, which incidentally is what made this country great. Also I see in the open what was hidden in secret (which I get to say a big I told you so) in that the Tea Party, which the GOP embraced during the last election cycle, which got them into power, is now a bothersome toy that keeps getting in the way. But let me digress a moment and deal with the very weak logic espoused by Mr. Prelutsky. If “Republican lite is better than a Democrat”, then let’s take this through a historical journey that will lead us to a logical conclusion. For the sake of space and time we will make some very short term comparisons.
50 years ago conservatism was a very definable term. There was a clear line of demarcation between Conservative and Liberal.
30 years ago we elected Ronald Reagan. By no means a perfect Conservative, but far better than what we have, yet not what we had 20 years before. But hey, he was not a Jimmy Carter.
22 years ago we elected George H. W. Bush. Definitely not a Reagan, and even less than what we had 50 years ago, But hey, he was not a Dukakis.
- 11 years ago we elected George W. Bush. Definitely not a Reagan or an H.W., and far less than what we had 50 years ago, but at least he was not a Gore or Kerry.
Are you with me so far? Did I miss anything? Oh yes, the years in between. I better get to that before I go on. After Reagan we know that H.W. was president. But then there was a gap. H.W. was only a one termer as Bill Clinton won over the Reagan democrats as there was a blur between Clinton and Bush. The clear line of demarcation was no longer so clear. Bush did not distance himself from Clinton so in essence people were not choosing between Conservative and Liberal, but between Conservative lite and Liberal.
- Then after 8 years of a disastrous Clinton presidency, out of sheer desperation, as there was no “true conservative” , George W. Bush won. We voted on the basis of the lesser of two evils. Yes, Bush was conservative “even lite lite”, but at least he wasn’t Gore or Kerry.
- After a lackluster 8 years of George W. Bush, where he failed to accomplish anything substantial with a GOP controlled Congress, it was time to offer a new candidate. Never mind that this was a “Conservative” dream come true. We had a chance to do something and did not. But we consoled ourselves with the thought that he was not Kerry or Gore. Yes we digressed politically, but that was not the point. Or was it?
Then 3 years ago we needed that new candidate, someone to take on the ultra liberal Barack Hussein Obama. On a side note we must remember that through all these years the left kept getting more liberal while the right did not get more conservative. That’s odd, the left got stronger in their convictions while the right got weaker. Its no coincidence that the left grew as the right compromised.
- So we found that candidate John McCain. No, McCain was no Reagan, not G.H.W Bush, not even a G.W. Bush. For that matter he was more like a Kerry or a Gore than anything else. As a matter of fact, if we go back 50 years, I am not sure he would be recognizable as a Conservative. But once again we said “but he is no Obama”. We cannot throw away a vote by not supporting him. America will be so much worse off with an Obama than a McCain. Granted, America is indeed worse off with an Obama. But would it have been all that different with a McCain? Some may say that this is an extreme statement. I am not saying that McCain would have been an Obama, but he would have been far closer to an Obama than a Reagan.
This brings us to the present. The GOP is rallying behind Mitt Romney among others. He is no Reagan, Bush I, Bush II, or even a McCain. As a matter of fact he once had a socialized mandatory health care system put into place. Much like….. well, Obama. The GOP claims that Romney and a handful of others are better than Obama, and I would concur, but if we keep down this path we are dangerously close to saying 20 years from now that our candidate may be like Obama, but he is no Stalin (although there are some resemblances between Obama and Stalin).
It is obvious that the GOP no longer stands for anything other than getting elected. The GOP in a sense resembles Barack Hussein Obama. In what way you ask? Obama ran on the platform of not being President Bush. It would now seem that the GOP is running on the platform of not being Obama. The GOP no longer stands for what it is, but for what it is not.
It is time to take back the country, with or without the GOP. We can either right the ship or go down with it. As the tile of the article states,” How do you eat an elephant”. Easy, one bite at a time. That’s what has been done to this point. It is ironic that there is a resemblance between elephants and rinos. I mean the real ones. One is smaller than the other, and if you took a bit off of one, a little at a time of course, they would look very similar. Isn’t that the case with the GOP and Rinos?
I for one say that we either have a GOP that represents conservative values or we find a party that does. Can that cost us an election? Yes, but doing nothing will cost us a country, if it hasn’t done so already.
Now move along Conservatives there is nothing to see here. Just shut up and vote for “not Obama”.
