Conservativism Lost Or Ultra-Conservatism Gone Wild?

REPUBLICANS ARE OUT OF IDEAS

Ever since Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980, conservatives have been gloating that their success comes from their superior ideas. The frequency of this claim tends to spike when Republicans are coming off an electoral triumph, and the 2004 election prompted a fresh batch of gloating. As recently as January, Karl Rove was crowing, "We are the party of ideas." Well, where are all the great conservative ideas now?

There are those of us that separate conservativism from ultra-conservativism. Conservatives have arguments based on principles, ideas and agendas that are not rigidly defined no matter what information is present. Ultra-conservatives have only rigid agendas that are defined without any real thought process, integrity or reasoned principles... just like the extremists on the far-left.

Let's go through the list. The biggest issue the country now faces is Iraq. What's the Republican position? Stay the course. How about domestically? Keep the tax cuts in place. Don't change a thing. Bush's agenda is completely exhausted at this point.

Why such a short list... My own version of this list is three miles long and merely not printing it out saves a rain forest or two.

Am I being unfair? Yes--in fact, deliberately so. The essence of the modern conservative argument has revolved around the assertion that their side is proposing change while the Democrats propose stasis.

So let me be a bit--deliberately--unfair: The conservatives among us are so dominated and Bible-whipped by the ultra-conservative Christian Right that they no longer have a voice in their own party. The ultra-conservative agenda and ideology has so skewed--and screwed--the Republican party that the only hope for reasoned conservatives is to form their own party and insist that a multi-party election process be implemented... the benefit of which would be the marginalization of the freaks, geeks, thumbers, bumpers, secret squirrels and mini-dictators on both sides of the political spectrum and allow moderates to emerge as the voices of reason.

Right now all we see is entrenched partisanship, ideology, political hacks and pork-oriented influence peddlers.

This was the dominant theme of the debate over Social Security privatization. President Bush accused his opponents of having "the philosophy of the stop sign, the agenda of the roadblock." One labor leader confessed to The New York Times that "it makes me realize how vibrant the Republicans are in creating twenty-first century ideas, and how sad it is that we're defending sixty-year-old ideas."

If one can call regime change, torture of political or combat prisoners, the reconstructing of science and history, an overreaching executive branch, a poorly-planned and utterly screwed up foreign policy, casting aside the Constitution and wasteful expenditures of our tax dollars "new," "dynamic," "vibrant" or even current, then I guess we can give a hat tip to the Republican Party and its current leadership... Otherwise, I think we ought to go back even further than 60 years for some well-established ideas and principles.

All this was based on a deep confusion between cause and effect. Republicans were pushing new ideas because they had political power; they didn't have political power because of their ideas.

Wow... somebody has called the spade a spade... It's all about the power, influence peddling, and getting folks under control to vote.

Once again let us examine our current political realities:

1. Nationally, only about 50% of those eligible bother to register to vote.

2. Unless there is some compelling controversial issue, only about 25% of those registered to vote actually vote in the primaries, and in most elections less than 30% of all registered voters bother to cast a vote.

3. There are approximately 271 million people in the US. At least 38% of these people are not eligible to vote, leaving approximate 168 million people eligibe to vote. If only 50% actually register, that means 84 million people fill out the forms and get on the voter rosters. If only 30% bother to vote, that means our political destiny is being decided by approximately 25 million people, which is actually less than 10% of our total population... and only a slight majority actually know what the hell, or who the hell, they are voting for in the first place.

4. That means that even during a major election campaign where the trunout might be higher, there really isn't a majority view being expressed by any election, any campaign, any party or any democratic process. Essentially, almost our entire nation is disenfranchised from the political process.

5. Michael Medved and others have identified at least 40% of our nation's families attned church, synagogue or mosque on a weekly basis. Again, if we accept these stats and examine the data with even a cursory sense of numbers, we find 30 million families attend worship based on "God" in the Judeo-Christian-Muslim sense. If we subtract for Jewish and Muslim populations (aproximately 12%), we find about 25 million families--or about 50 million people of the Christian faith--are eligible to vote. Given that only about 25 million of our entire population vote on a regular basis, only about 14 million are Christian, and only about 8 million of those espouse the ultra-conservative agenda.

THAT MEANS THAT 8 MILLION PEOPLE--APPROXIMATELY 3% OF OUR TOTAL POPULATION--ARE DICTATING AND DOMINATING THE POLITICAL AGENDA

During a couple of phone calls this week I heard the following:

"That's the federal government. I don't really care what the feds choose to do. I am only interested in local and state politics." - An active candidate for the Indiana General Assembly

"It's gotten to the point where I feel it's hopeless. I am so tired of hearing about this stuff and, after three or four years of it, who cares. We can't change it. They won't let us." - A college professor/librarian with a doctorate in education

Our political process is not only subject to being bought out by the influence peddlers and lobbyists, it is sold out by the voters themselves. Is it any wonder that we get crappy, unprincipled, unethical ideologues as leaders of the US? Those in power count on you and yours staying out of the ruckus that is politics.

If someone wants to argue about these figures, I will point out that I have been at the polls in Indiana, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Texas... and been involved in running/volunteering for five political campaigns and these figures are accurate in the anecdotal sense. The actual numbers may fluctuate from time to time, from place to place, and may even spike on hotbed issues, but the overall averages are relatively constant. Hell, when I lived in Mason, NH, we had a turnout in one election that went over 98%... it involved a school issue that would have doubled our tax burden.

My current political campaign efforts involve strategizing about how to get more than 200 people (out of over 40,000) to show up for a political rally or fund raiser. The campaign is talking about bands, gimmicks, give-aways, door prizes and tricks to get people to attend the events...