Richard A. Viguerie is one pissed off conservative. He’s finally figured out that the Republicans exist to promote the interests of big business and that their Christian conservative rhetoric is merely a pretense that allows them to attract middle class and lower middle class voters. He might consider that Jesus spent more time criticizing hypocrites than he did criticizing people that didn’t embrace Judiasm.
Viguerie lays out his case point by point. He’s not happy about the No Child Left Behind bill, signing McCain-Feingold’s campaign finance bill, or the medicare overhaul. Congressional corruption has gotten to him.
Conservatives did not spend decades going door to door, staffing phone banks and compiling lists of like-minded voters so Republican congressmen could have highways named after them and so there could be an affirmative-action program for Republican lobbyists.
He is disgraced by the federal response to Katrina and appalled by the cronyism of the Michael Brown and Harriet Miers nominations. He sees nothing being done to curtail abortion, is appalled by continued stem-cell research funding, and thinks hate-crimes legislation will ban speech that criticizes homosexual behavior. He’s even dissatisfied with Bush’s performance in nominating conservative judges. His message to conservatives?
As long as Democrats controlled Congress or the White House, Republicans could tell conservatives they deserved support because of what they would do, someday. Now we know what they do when they have control. Their agenda comes from Big Business, not from grass-roots conservatives…
…The current record of Washington Republicans is so bad that, without a drastic change in direction, millions of conservatives will again stay home this November.
And maybe they should. Conservatives are beginning to realize that nothing will change until there’s a change in the GOP leadership. If congressional Republicans win this fall, they will see themselves as vindicated, and nothing will get better.
We here a lot of the same talk from disaffected liberals (much of it on this site). The fact of the matter is that both parties are ignoring their grass-roots supporters in favor of big business. The code word for corporatism is ‘centrism’.
Viguerie favors a similar approach to the one I am pushing. I am calling for a party within a party, funded by small donations from grass-roots and independent of the DSCC, the DCCC, and the DNC. Viguerie is calling for something even more independent.
At the very least, conservatives must stop funding the Republican National Committee and other party groups. (Let Big Business take care of that!) Instead, conservatives should dedicate their money and volunteer efforts toward conservative groups and conservative candidates. They should redirect their anger into building a third force — not a third party, but a movement independent of any party. They should lay the groundwork for a rebirth of the conservative movement and for the 2008 campaign, when, perhaps, a new generation of conservative leaders will step forward.
Both major parties have abandoned any sense of populism in favor of corporate welfare, an increasingly regressive tax code, anti-environmental and anti-labor legislation and regulation. I don’t mind the GOP giving lip service to their religious conservatives, but I’m glad that their FOX News “we’re on the side of the little guy” routine is starting to wear thin. The scales are starting to fall from the eyes of social conservatives that now realize that they have been working all these years to serve, not their agenda, but the agenda of Wall Street.
