Standford Fellow and Syndicated Columnist Thomas Sowell attackes the Republican Party elite one more time as he ruefully reviewed 2012 in preparation for an apprehensive 2013.
Sowell quoted Bret Stephens of The Wall Street Journal from early January 2012:
"The GOP deserves to lose."
Sowell then delineated a litany of losing Republican Presidential contenders and conservatives candidates who coasted on platitudes and plaintative speech, refusing to get tough and punch back at their liberal and Democratic opponents. The most devastating loss was in 1986, when Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork refused to refute the malicious attacks of liberal US Senator Ted Kennedy. Bork's advisors were convinced that the liberal lies would discredit themselves. They didn't, and Bork didn't get confirmed.
A deeper strain defines the strain of Republican candidates who are not winning: they readily assume that the voters out there know and believe that free markets make free people, that government intervention hinders freedom, that equality in principle creates inherently unequal results at the expense of minorities and women. Claremont scholar Charles Kesler comforted a crowd of cowed Republicans in the Beach Cities by reminding them that what is second nature knowledge to a conservative is not necessarily well-known anpong most people in the street. While the rise of online learning is taking impressionable young minds away from the heated Marxist rherotic of academic elites, all too many are simply uninformed about the true benefits of individual liberty, limited government, and constitutional rule.
Sowell claimed that the Republicans deserve to lose. No, not the Republicans, but the arrogant GOP elites who insist on following the money instead of paying attention to policies and principles in the best interests of the party and the country. The New England Elite of Nelson Rockefeller did not serve the GOP then or now. Not Wall Street elitism, or Goldwater extremism, but Main Street conservatism is what the Republican Party is all about, a Reagan Revolution based on cutting spending and taxes, not just fighting against Communists.
Richard Nixon paid attention to the Silent Majority of 1968. Today, the Silent Minorities are waiting for leaders who will respect them for more than their color, but enhance in their midst a culture of respect and opportunity, like New York Jack Kemp's "Enterprise Zones". Forget Pete Wilson and Prop 187, and bring out Condoleeze Rice, Bobby Jindal, and Nikki Haley of South Carolina.
The Republican Party has a better civil rights record than the Democratic Party, but not enough people know about it. It's time for the Republicans to stop waiting for people to figure out this truth for themselves. The Republican President, Abraham Lincoln, championed the enslaved, announced the Emancipation Proclamation, ushered in the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, each of which respectively granted ,citizenship and vote. The "Radical Republicans" passed the first Civil Rights Act in the late 1860's and early 1870's. The Democratic Party remained "The White Man's Party" for decades, culminating in the ascension of the elitit, racist "Progressive" academic Woodrow Wilson, who resegregated the White House, purging the civil service ranks of all African-Americans. "Return to normalcy" Republican President Warren G. Harding, despite his embarrassing induction into the KKK, reintegrated blacks into the White House, pardonded the socialist Eugene V. Debs, and cut taxes and spending so low that a roaring economic recovery returned to the United States during the "Roaring Twenties."
Which President first withstood the backlash against desegregation in the South? Republican President Dwight David Eisenhower, who sent in federal troops to Little Rock, Arkansas. Which party resisted Civil Rights legislation in the early 1960's? The Democratic Party, even though they had their own President in the White House. Which party advanced the first African-American to the US Senate by popular vote? The Republican Party, which gave Edward Brooke his chance to rise and shine in moderate Massachusetts, of all places. Who finished the job of desegregation in the South? Richard Nixon. Which President coalesced a great deal of the minority vote along with the white vote for two elections, winning by stunning landslides? Ronald Reagan, who had gathered the respect of Hispanic voters to win two terms as governor of California. Which president took on the tough task of advancing immigration reform which respected the individual immigrant yet at the samet time sought integrity for our nation's borders? George W. Bush. Which President candidate actively reached out to black communities in 2008 and 2012? Not McCain, but Mitt Romney. Even if his heart was not in the race, his head was in the right place.
For the past two elections, the Republican Party's "1%" has stood by middling moderates and wealthy technocrats who hoped to coast into the White House repeating the same lines that Ronald Reagan elected in 1980. The Karl-Rove brain trust wanted to take the Southern Strategy which benefitted George W. Bush and play out the next two elections. The South has gone Republican, with black Georgia Democrats and Alabama Democrats joining the Republican ranks. A coastal-Northeast Strategy is needed now. Not the wealthy, but the willing and thrilling will win the next Presidential election. Not businessmen in the private sector, not Tea Party outsiders who say too much about the government doing much less, but tried-and-true executives in red or purple states with a demonstrable record of achivement for all Americans will inpsire voters and take the White House in 2016.