Yesterday I was skimming through an interview with Mitt Romney about his decision to retire from the Senate. Naturally it was thoroughly self-serving and delusionary about almost everything he mentions; his motives, the actions of the other politicians in both parties and about the needs of the country.
But one line seemed true, “What he seemed to know for sure was that he no longer fit in his current party. Throughout our two years of interviews, I heard Romney muse repeatedly about leaving the GOP. He’d stayed long after he stopped feeling at home there—long after his five sons had left—because he felt a quixotic duty to save it.”
So even someone as dense as Mitt Romney recognizes that the Republican party is being pushed away from its current orientation, as a sham conservative organization. Of course, Romney thinks that what he believes is the true conservative creed. But he’s an idiot so he can be excused. Who can’t be excused are people like Mitch McConnell and his henchmen or Paul Ryan. These are men who used their power in Congress to sell out their constituency to the Left and to the vested interests that are their paymasters.
But the problem is that pushing the Republican party toward the right is a herculean task that only glacially makes any progress. The inertia toward the priorities of people like Mitch McConnell is overwhelming and is continuously reinforced by the culture and business that Washington is built on. That’s the reality. So be it.
And that’s why anyone who is at all serious about trying to change this country has to come up with a new approach that doesn’t depend on trying to reform the Republican Party from within. And I’m not talking about trying to create a third political party. That would just waste incredible resources and probably achieve nothing.
What is needed is a stand-alone organization that can effect change directly at all levels and in all facets of life. In the political arena it can be a PAC lobbying at the federal, state and local level. When lobbying fails it can fund the campaign of a primary challenger against the recalcitrant law maker.
It can provide legal defense when the federal government and some state and local governments unfairly persecute those on the Right. It can bring cases to the Supreme Court (for as long as we hold a majority there) to end unconstitutional laws.
It can act as a community advocate complaining to corporations about products or even corporate policies that disadvantage or anger our constituency. In this capacity this organization can use media coverage or even advertising to embarrass or put on notice corporations disrespecting their own customers. And if all else fails it can sue them to force change.
And finally, this organization can act as an incubator for any initiatives or programs that would facilitate conservatives flourishing inside of the progressive prison, we find ourselves in. Maybe there could be a program for providing credit to private and religious schools in blue states so that more people can bring their children up safely. Maybe whole industries could be financed like a real attempt to foster a conservative (or at least non-woke) film industry. Or any one of a thousand business opportunities that would be happily patronized by the Right if they provided a competitive alternative to the woke competition.
Now none of this is new. I’ve said it a dozen times before (my apologies to my faithful readers). My point in repeating it here is this. Until such time as something like this is begun there won’t be any chance of progress for our side. Right now, we’re like the lab rats pressing the lever and waiting for the food tablet to appear. We’re not in charge of anything. We’re just part of the experiment. If we want to take control of our lives we’ll have to bust out of the cage. And until we see one of the lab rats with a file sawing through the bars of the cage we might as well stop hitting the food lever. Starvation would be a cleaner death than what they have in store for us.