Just In Time for Halloween: The Politics of Cannibals (Kat-Mo)

The Republican Party has several major issues and not particularly in this order.

1) No central message.

2) No Leadership

3) No Organization

4) No Discipline

5) No Party Loyalty

Harsh? Well, it's ten days out from the main election and the Cannibals are already tearing off chunks of the party and devouring it. They act like it is for the good of the party. Well, somebody ought to tell the Cannibals that it is damned hard to run a race when one of your legs has been chewed off and the cannibals are trying to rip your throat out. A little harsh reality seems to be in order here.

Why are so many republicans willing to go to the press and leak this or leak that about the politicians they serve? Why are certain commentators on conservative politics ready to devour and spit out parts or whole of the Republican Party and its candidates? Why is the Republican base so lackluster about their candidate or angry with these conservative "elitist" commentators?

See numbers 1 thru 4 leading to number 5. Don't blame reason 5 for numbers 1 thru 4. You only engender loyalty by having all of the others. So, here's a question for you? Who is leading the Republican party? Who is setting the message?

This is the reason why some nitwits are leaking to the press about Palin and McCain's alleged fallouts. They can't wait to the end of the election to start the finger pointing or planning for the next election. They have to start doing it now. This is the time of heightened attention to the elections where they can get enough free coverage and attention to make their case to the party if they can't make it to the electorate in general.

On the Palin front, this might be one of the few chances before the masses to make a statement before being relegated back to Alaska where the party "old guard" will be happy to see her go. The "old guard" will be happy to put the blame on her for McCain's failure if it comes to that. Not because they want to protect McCain (and I think he knows that). It's because they fear her populism will make them obsolete.

For others this reflects the original idea being floated during the primaries when certain people were unhappy about which candidate was or was not going to win. That idea was that the Republican party needed to be relegated to the desert for at least two to four years to get their act together. This is not simply about "elitists" v. "common people" of the Republican party.

Many people are already planning for "the big fight" right in the middle of a hard fought campaign. The big fight isn't the national elections. It's the heart and soul of the Republican Party.

Is it just that Palin has "no experience" that riles the commentators like Noonan or Parker? Or, have they built some sort of Republican Brand up in their minds where it is controlled by "serious thinkers" to the point where they consider themselves part of the now deteriorating and disappearing "old guard", tenuously holding on to sway and power in the Republican party? They fear Palin because she represents the "new guard" that wants to break the last hold of the Careerist Republicans without Principles.

Why is she scary to these folks? Because she draws huge crowds, something they haven't been able to do for thirty years. She has a message. Let's call it "PPL": Principled Populist Libertarian. It's hard to tell which of these three messages make the party "old guard" most afraid.

What should have been the dead give away about the deteriorating internals of the Republican party is that Karl Rove, the king maker and the most feared political operative by the left and right, stepped down and out to the side lines. He is simply writing op-ed pieces here and there, pushing the party a little this way or that with his comments, but standing back none the less.

Of course, Rove's name had some tough connotations that may or may not have been a drain to someone else's campaign. And, the truth is, as the Republicans began to fall in congressional elections, his allies and power waned. What's left now is the message and the ability to organize. Something that is missing in today's campaign.

Will Rove come back into the party as the deft organizer and disciplinarian he is? It is difficult to say. What he may be waiting for is to see where the fallout lands. What is the message? Where are we going as a party? Who is going to be in the leadership? Maybe Rove is just tired of trying to heard a bunch of recalcitrant children demanding their piece of the pie?

In the mean time, the nation seems set to elect the juggernaut of all socialist politics as president. If there was anything the party should be rallied around, it is that simple point. This isn't the soft socialism of the Clinton era. This is a far leap left. All the while the Republican party is too busy savaging itself like zombie cannibals to actually follow McCain's lead and put "country first". They are all trying to fight it out for the control of the party or, at least, to hold on a little longer to the power they have. Power that is already about nil.

The worst thing about this entire situation is that which every person knows: once government is expanded, once social programs are put in place, ending them is nearly an impossibility. We are about to enter into an unprecedented period of government taxation and growth if we don't get our act together.

It's time to shut up and take a good look at what cannibalizing the party is going to do to America. Try actually doing what the Republican party is supposed to be doing: putting country first.

There is a message if we just get on board and actually try to live by it: small government, less taxes. Anti-socialist. Pro-individual liberty. Pro-growth. Free trade.

We've got ten days left to stem the tide. Ten days to make the case. Not just that socialism is bad, but that small government, lower taxes and pro-growth is good.

After that, it is time to get back in the trenches and take back lower level government in the state legislature, state government and congressional houses. Get back on the message and mean it this time. One of the few positives about losing all those seats in congress: we might actually get to elect some principled folks ready to take the message to their fellow Republican law makers.

This time, though, let us try to live up to our principles instead of living down to the lowest denomination of big government, big spending Democrats.

posted by xgenghisx at 01:54 PM

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