The Government We Deserve Part II: Worthless Republicans, Unprincipled Conservatives
It should come as no surprise that the Republicans underachieved in the 2022 midterm elections as they offered nothing different from the Democrat tyrants
“I have been reading a lot of the things about the Big Red Wave that wasn’t. As a committed non-voter I have been explaining to conservatives for a long time that Republicans will never generate enough voter enthusiasm to get anywhere as long as the party apparatchiks keep offering flawed candidates as the only alternative to whoever the flawed Democrat candidate is. For those who control the party apparatus the most important quality in who they allow to run is how obedient they will be. They would rather loose elections than support someone who thinks for themselves. The example I loved pointing out to people is this year’s Georgia Senate race. The two parties gave the voters the ‘choice’ between the guy who put a gun to his wife’s head and threatened to kill her, or the guy who tried to kill his wife by running her down with his car! So rather than decide who to vote for based on various policy positions, you get to decide based on which method of attempting to kill your wife you find to be the least offensive.”
It’s safe to say, the Republican Party was embarrassed in the midterm elections. And the thing is, they deserved that embarrassment.
Not only did the Democrats retain the U.S. Senate and the Republicans are likely to only have a narrow majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, it appears the Democrats have made gains at the state level when Republicans had solid numbers at the state level previously.
What I expect from the fallout is a bunch of finger-pointing, no introspection. The so-called RINOs (Republican in Name Only) will blame the conservatives. The conservatives will blame the RINOs. During the elections, both sides of the GOP pointed their fingers at the Democrats.
I wrote, in Part 1 of this series, about the exit polls which show the American people love big government. They love being taken care of. They do not want freedom. They do not want liberty. They want to be slaves.
Ultimately, the fact that we were shutdown, that we allowed the government to call us “nonessential,” is all of our faults. The fact that we’re over $31 trillion in debt is a result of both the Democrats and Republicans as well as the American people who want all the handouts, entitlements and welfare.
And the reason the Republicans lose is because the GOP offers nothing different, and the conservatives will always abandon principles for potential political gains.
Finger-pointing on display
To illustrate the finger-pointing, I’ll look at my home State of Illinois. The GOP gubernatorial candidate Darren Bailey lost to Democrat tyrant J.B. Pritzker. Bailey was definitely the most conservative Republican gubernatorial candidate in a long time, a feat that is not too hard to achieve.
In response to the loss, the leader of the Illinois GOP, Jim Durkin, stepped down. Durkin said, as he announced he was stepping down, that Republicans need to “not take these strident positions when it comes to issues related to firearms, issues related to women’s reproductive health, issues related to the gay and lesbian community.”
That’s right, Durkin called murdering babies “women’s reproductive health,” he is perfectly fine with destroying the Second Amendment and he will submit to deviant lifestyle for the sake of political power, but I digress.
Regardless of what an immoral, soulless hack Durkin is, he already had his wish. Bailey watered down and even abandoned his message during the campaign.
I did vote for Bailey simply because he earned my vote by standing up to the mask tyrants when it counted. I believe Bailey lost because instead of constantly reminding Illinois voters about Pritzker’s tyranny and the fact he called us “nonessential,” he chose standard GOP talking points during the campaign.
But the GOP will blame conservatism for the loss. To illustrate, I’ll show you a social media back-and-forth I had with someone who describes himself as a conservative but easily will throw conservatives under the bus for political gain. I’ll leave his name out and just refer to him as GOP Strategist.
GOP Strategist posted:
“I’m honestly amazed at how many people in Illinois are so shocked JB Pritzker won re-election as Governor.”
“Here’s a hard truth for conservatives: 41% of the state’s population is found in ONE county (out of 102 counties) and that county is far from conservative. Running the most conservative guy in Illinois as the Republican nominee was NEVER going to turn out well, and it never will. (PS - Illinois is NEVER going to split into two states so move on from that too.)”
My response:
“Darren Bailey lost by 11 points. Leftist-never-had-a-single-conservative-bone-in-his-body Bruce Rauner lost to Dictator Pritzker by 16 points. So there goes that theory.”
“Conservatives lose because they’re spineless, they’re weak. They sat back and complied when J.B. Pritzker (and Donald Trump) locked them down, called them ‘nonessential.’”
GOP Strategist response:
“But everyone (including a lot of republicans) just hated Rauner during his term as Governor. He could’ve lost by 16 points to almost anyone.”
My response:
“Yeah, and your point? You just said conservative candidates are the problem when Rauner proves otherwise. The problem is GOP consultants who water down the conservative candidates.”
“I never voted for Rauner. I voted Libertarian. I voted for Darren Bailey. I voted for Darren Bailey because he was a real human, not some programmed Republican hack. Darren Bailey actually stood up to the mask tyranny when it counted, and his worthless GOP voted along with the Democrats to boot him out. Darren Bailey is a man who will stand on conviction. Unfortunately, when the campaign began, he went through the standard Republican programming.”
“I watched the gubernatorial debates. I watched how Darren Bailey watered down the message to appease the worthless GOP consultants always demanding moderation. He didn’t run on the fact that Pritzker is a tyrant. He ran on standard GOP talking points.”
“We were called ‘nonessential’ by our government. The time for moderation is over.”
“‘Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.’—Barry Goldwater”
“In the end, it doesn’t matter to me if an election is won or lost. What matters is standing for what is right.”
And that last line is important to remember. I don’t care about winning elections. I care about standing on what is right and just.
A winning message ignored by most Republicans
There was one state that truly had a red wave, and that would be Florida.
Now, before I go on with Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, I want to share a quote from Patrick Henry:
“Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who comes near that precious jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. When you give up that force, you are ruined.”
So, what I write about DeSantis is not a defense of him but a defense of the message he ran on. I do not trust him because you should never trust a politician and because DeSantis’ actions have not lived up to his message.
Some reasons not to trust DeSantis is the medical kidnapping in his state, hypocrisy, corruption and the fact that Florida has become a center for the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.
Ultimately, though, DeSantis unabashedly ran on freedom. It was clear in his victory speech. One very simple but powerful line from DeSantis: “Florida was a refuge of sanity when the world went mad.”
I have to note that DeSantis did shut his state down, and the first story I saw of a pastor arrested for holding church service was in Florida.
Although I do not trust DeSantis, I believe that message of freedom easily won him reelection. It was the message that should have been run across the country.
Unprincipled Conservatives and their Idolatry of Trump
It’s kind of hard to run a campaign on freedom, like DeSantis’, when conservatives rewarded GOP tyrants across the country. It was not just Democrat governors who shutdown, as conservatives like to say. It was every governor. It was even DeSantis, as referenced above, but DeSantis did reverse course earlier than the rest.
I’m sure most conservatives are offended by the statement from Durkin in Illinois. But the thing is, I’m sure the conservatives will capitulate. They already have. It was on full display during the Donald Trump regime. Conservatives, who love to say they believe in limited government, love the biggest big government president ever, Donald Trump. Certainly, I believe Joe Biden will overtake Trump on the big government front relatively quickly, but in terms of total spending Trump stands alone right now.
I’ve given up hope that arguing from principles or philosophy will ever open the eyes of conservatives on Trump. All conservatives care about is political gain, and now they may be awakening to what a petulant child Trump is.
Some conservatives are abandoning Trump as he attacks DeSantis. Trump even said that Florida did well during the COVID scam because of “the advantage of SUNSHINE,” not because of freedom.
And Trump is responsible for some of the worst GOP candidates of all, like Dr. Oz in Pennsylvania and Herschel Walker in Georgia, who the Republicans are now resting their hopes for at least maintaining a 50-50 split in the U.S. Senate. Brian Wilkins detailed well the pathetic Trump candidates for the COVID Blog, including Walker who “literally needs an in-person interpreter and subtitles on TV for anyone to understand a word he is saying.”
Wilkins noted that Walker “lied about abortions, which turned off many conservative voters,” and his “own son, the LGBT Candace Owens, Christian Walker, even threw Herschel under the bus in early October. But give Christian, 23, credit for being honest about how his dad’s absence affected him and what he is as an adult.”
I’m not so sure the conservatives will abandon Trump, but there are some indications they’re turning.
But it shouldn’t take Trump’s political failures for conservatives to abandon him. They should have done it a long time ago, at least in March of 2020 when Trump LOCKED US DOWN. And Trump has never shown any ounce of having conservative values, as seen in his helping start the “GOP Pride Coalition.”
The Big Government Party
Both political parties want to control us. They are the Big Government Party. That’s the reality. There has never been a serious effort from the Republicans to return power to the people. They and their Democrat buddies always work together to destroy liberty.
That’s the reality, and yet, the conservatives refuse to remove their chains from their precious GOP.
Judge Andrew Napolitano detailed how there are no real differences between the Democrats and Republicans. Napolitano wrote:
“In Congress, both wings of Big Government believe that they can right any wrong, regulate any behavior, tax any event and interfere in any process, whether the Constitution authorizes their legislation or not. Yet, Congress is a creature of the Constitution. The Constitution gives Congress only 16 discrete powers and one catch-all — to make all laws necessary and proper to effectuate the 16.”
Napolitano goes on to explain how the two parties work hand-in-hand for every unconstitutional war. We are in perpetual war, and when a nation’s at war there are no liberties at home. Napolitano writes:
“That’s what war does. It doesn’t spread liberty; it spreads killing. It enhances the health of the government because it induces higher taxes, a bigger military-industrial complex, nativist patriotism on the part of the masses, repression of civil liberties and a general compliance on the part of politicians. Both wings of Big Government have been complicit in this.”
“My Republican-voting libertarian friends need to be reminded what the GOP has done in the modern era. It has given us the Federal Reserve Act and its banker friends who collectively destroy the free market (nowhere countenanced by the Constitution), abolished money backed by the Gold Standard (which the Constitution requires), enacted the Bank Privacy Act (which permits the feds to subpoena bank records), enacted the wildly unconstitutional Patriot Act (which permits FBI warrantless spying on third-party custodians of records; like health care providers, lawyers, financial advisers, utility companies, computer service and telecom providers, and credit card companies).”
“The same Republicans have given us the Department of Education and its 4,400 bureaucrats (nowhere countenanced by the Constitution), the Department of Homeland Security and its 240,000 federal cops (nowhere countenanced by the Constitution), the National Security Agency and its 60,000 domestic spies (nowhere countenanced by the Constitution), the CIA and its 21,000 foreign spies and its secret wars (nowhere countenanced by the Constitution), the unconstitutional FISA Court and its domestic surveillance, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and their $2 trillion tab (neither of which was declared by Congress).”
Both parties have saddled us, and future generations not even born yet, with over $31 trillion in debt. Napolitano notes the spending spree ultimately began with the Democrat Woodrow Wilson regime, and the spending spree has gone on since then with help from the newly created Federal Reserve under Wilson.
Did you know we’re still paying off Wilson’s debt? Yes, Wilson borrowed $30 billion for World War I which Napolitano called a “useless war that brought us the horrors of World War II, and prior to which the United States was not even arguably threatened by any of the combatants.” America has only paid $15 billion of interest on the $30 billion principal since then.
And since Wilson, Democrats and Republicans alike have saddled us with more and more debt. The only president since Wilson to reduce the debt was Republican Calvin Coolidge. Coolidge is one of nine GOP presidents since Wilson. There have been eight Democrat presidents.
Napolitano wrote:
“As the Federal Reserve keeps raising interest rates, the cost of federal borrowing goes up. Thus, the government will do what is unthinkable to you and me and which no bank would permit us to do: It will borrow money to pay interest on already borrowed money without reducing principal.”
“Interest is the rent paid by the borrower to the lender. Interest rates should be the product of supply and demand like all other rentals. But Republican presidents have appointed the same mentality of central planners to the Federal Reserve Board as have Democrats.”
“The mentality of the Big Government Party is what St. Augustine condemned as libido dominandi — the lust to dominate.”
“Today, the Republicans — who expect to control at least one house of Congress in January — are threatening to decline to extend the government’s borrowing limit until they get their way on other legislation. This will result not in less spending but in more — just titled toward the military industrial complex and other Republican favorites. Republicans may slow the rate at which the government grows. But they will still grow it.”
“Government today is an instrument of repression and a grab bag of giveaways. Only true libertarians who mistrust all government and regard it as something to be starved and not fed can save our liberty and property. But don’t hold your breath waiting for this. Democracy does not ensure freedom. It ensures the confiscation and redistribution of wealth.”
What do conservatives stand for?
For most of my life, I would have called myself a conservative. In fact, I was Mr. Conservative in my College Republicans group in the early 2000s.
The thing is, I started seeing the corruption in my state’s GOP. Then, I started seeing corruption in the national GOP. Then, I started thinking for myself.
I still hold the traditional values I once thought of as conservative. I still believe in a very, very, very limited role of government that I used to think aligned with conservatives.
I have no clue what conservatives stand for except pointing the finger at Democrats and saying it’s all their fault. That’s it. And that’s the same whether conservative Republican or RINO. They just point the finger at Democrats. Then, when they get elected, they govern like those Democrats. I mean, the fact that Republicans can argue against the big spending of Joe Biden after cheering on Donald Trump’s massive spending, including the largest spending bill in human history the CARES Act, is laughable.
Today’s conservatives are yesterday’s liberals, and their Conservative, Inc. puppets do everything to pacify them as they’re constantly looking for a new political savior so you can just sit at home, doing nothing but cheering on your demise.
I started calling myself libertarian when I supported Ron Paul in 2012. The libertarians have their own problems.
What I can say is I’m not a conservative. From the root of conservative is to conserve. I do not want to conserve the current system. I do not want to conserve fascism or the morally depraved society we have.
If anything, I would call myself a restorationist. I can’t take credit for that term. That’s what podcaster and precious metals analyst Tony Arterburn has described himself as. I want to restore the Constitution that was lost a long time ago. I want to restore the Republic that was lost a long time ago.
But in the end, trying to label one’s self is unproductive. It’s ultimately a tool meant to divide. It’s evidence of the tribalist society we’ve become, and that will be Part III of this series.