Disunity may sink GOP this fall

(Nantucket, Aug. 16) The two topics dominating summer cocktail chatter on this resort island thirty miles off the coast of Massachusetts both have a nautical flavor. The first involves the return of the Great White Sharks. Ever since Peter Benchley made this area the thinly disguised setting for his blockbuster novel Jaws the Great whites have become a staple of local legend. A wrongheaded environmental Protection Agency ban on seal hunting has led to a population explosion among the furry little critters all along the Northern New England coast. Unimpressed by EPA logic Mother Nature sought to redress the balance by sending a bulletin to Atlantic based Great Whites (and smaller sharks) that liberals were sponsoring a “Free Lunch” in these waters. Soon shark sightings abounded leading to many beach closings and other attendant economic dislocations. The second involves island summer resident Massachusetts Senator John Kerry who got caught trying to evade taxes on the seven million dollar yacht he just had built in New Zealand (so much for Buy American). Johnny thought no one would notice if he quietly listed the boat’s berthing location in nearby Rhode Island which has no tax on these luxury items. By doing so he would deprive financially strapped Massachusetts of $420,000 sales tax revenue and Nantucket where the boat will usually be docked of $70,000 excise tax. Unfortunately for Johnny someone tipped off the Boston Herald, the Rupert Murdoch owned tabloid that delights in flaying the local liberals. For five straight days the Herald gave the entire front page to this story complete with pictures of Johnny in a digitally added pirate’s hat and juicy details about the boats wine cellar, his and her wet bars etc. The Senator- so unfairly harassed by national and local media- moved from a) “I don’t owe any taxes”, to b) “It’s my wife’s boat”, and finaly c) “We always intended to pay these taxes”- which he promptly did. All in all great fun with yet another democrat who wants to raise your taxes while dodging their own ( see Geithner, Sebelius, Rangel etc.)

For Republicans a more ominous political symbol manifested itself last week with the appearance on the island of Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick for a re-election fundraiser. Patrick who gave the disingenuous “Hope and Change” campaign theme its very successful trial run in 2006 is a very lucky man- and not just because bosom buddy Barack Obama has sent his own political guru David Plouffe to run Patrick’s 2010 re-election effort. Owing to the familiar democratic penchant for taxing and spending Patrick is the most unpopular Massachusetts governor in living memory. Nonetheless current poles make him a good bet to win re-election thanks to the third party candidacy of renegade democrat now Independent State Treasurer Tim Cahill who is ruining the once excellent prospects of republican Charles Baker.

Patrick’s good fortune is very like that of Florida Governor Charlie Crist who went from Dead Man Walking in the Republican Senatorial primary to third party independent now topping the polls.

And we have Colorado ex-congressman tom Tancredo whose impending third party candidacy will be the final blow to the once bright prospect of Republicans reclaiming the governor’s mansion in the wake of the inept taxing and spending regime of democrat Bill Ritter.

Twentieth Century history gives prominent examples of third party candidacies that were ruinous for Republicans and by extension the whole country.

The most consequential instance was the fierce quarrel between President William Howard Taft and ex-President Theodore Roosevelt over the “true meaning” and “soul” of the Republican party which led to TR’s third party or “Bull Moose” candidacy. Their fracturing of the Republican Party delivered the White House to Progressive icon Woodrow Wilson whose redistributive “New Freedom” became the model for FDR’s New Deal and the intellectual ancestor of the Obama approach to governance.

Eighty years later the twangy voice of the egomaniacal third party Presidential candidate Ross Perot persuaded millions of voters that George H.W. Bush had “corrupted” the Republican Party and that America needed a “rebirth” and “purification” under his leadership. What America got instead was Bill Clinton. Enough said.

For generations Republicans and Conservatives have disemboweled themselves in a fruitless quest for “Purity” (e.g. Goldwater 1964). If conservatives in Colorado or elsewhere insist on “clarity, specificity, and agreement” on identity, issues etc., we are just forming up yet another circular firing squad. The ultimate temptation of course, is the suicidal Third Party impulse.

If our country is to be saved, it is imperative that Democrats be decisively defeated in the next two elections. All else must be subordinated to that goal for if we fail the damage to our country will be catastrophic and irreversible. As I sit here in Nantucket watching the liberal species up close (MSNBC yakkers Chris Matthews and Joe Scarborough within walking distance) I am reminded that Democrats never accurately define themselves or publicly admit of their real plans for “transformational change”. Such deception allows them to win elections every time Republicans screw up. The Progressive agenda like that of its union core is narrow, radical, and unchanging and it has advanced incrementally- by fits and starts- for nearly a century.

Great election victories (1932, 1964, 1980) are won when people decisively reject the opposition (Hoover, Goldwater, Carter). The issues all conservatives can agree on are the Deficit, the Debt, runaway Spending, Metastasizing Government, and the Death of the American Dream for our own children and grandchildren. Let’s leave Purity and Perfection to the afterlife.

William Moloney’s columns have appeared in The Wall St. Journal, USA Today, Washington Post, Washington Times, Human Events and other publications. He lives in Colorado.

This Republican is staying

(Denver Post, Aug. 15) “I don’t know what the future holds,” my biblically-minded friends will say, “but I know Who holds the future.” Thus grounded, they’re able to be calm, courageous, confident, and cheerful in the face of adversity. Amidst a Republican base disheartened over the struggle to pick our nominee for governor, I am of good courage for a similar reason – political rather than theological. Even though I don’t know who will stand for my party this fall, I know what my party stands for. So division or defeatism is not an option for me over the next 11 weeks. Former state Sen. Cliff Dodge resigning as president of the Arapahoe Republican Men’s Club in order to join Tom Tancredo’s third-party bid, the morning after primary voters nominated Dan Maes, wasn’t quite Robert E. Lee choosing gray over blue – but it dramatized the deep fracture in GOP ranks. The kind of year we’re having, Maes and Tancredo may both be out of the race by the time you read this; no matter.

Each is a good man, neither is the next Lincoln, and the point here is bigger than either of them. Simply put, our state needs a unified Republican party to anchor the center-right. Sustaining the vitality and viability of this “grand old” institution of self-government in Colorado, 150 years and counting, is more important than winning any one election for any one office. Far more.

Shattering the state’s only vehicle for conservative governance in a petty power struggle, a summer fit of petulance, pique, and panic – and handing a plurality win to liberal John Hickenlooper as liberal Bill Ritter’s successor, at a time when liberalism is ever more discredited – would be an act of self-destructive folly with few parallels in modern history. My fellow Republicans shouldn’t do it, though many are tempted.

Not me, because I know what my party stands for. To say this is to assert two things. One is about principles. Republicans stand for individual liberty, personal responsibility, economic freedom, limited government, strong defense, traditional morality, recognition of human imperfectibility, and the understanding of rights as God-given, not manmade.

The other assertion is about process. My party stands (as in fact do our opponents, the Democrats) for the proven superiority of two well-established and diversified competitors vying for the consent of the governed, in preference to three or 23 splintered rivals, evanescent and narrow in the European style. Breakaway factions have occasional value if driven by issues; but the current Chicken Little outcry of “not electable,” opportunistically roosting on the Constitution ticket, hardly qualifies.

I voted for rookie-of-the-year Dan Maes in the primary. Barring the unforeseen, you can expect I’ll be for him again in November. He may not win; but nobody expected him to get this far. As noted here on August 1, Maes for Governor 2010 has echoes of Andrews for Governor 1990, another darkhorse nominee. Though I lost that year, the GOP began a decade and a half of dominance – which never could have occurred if someone like, say, Ted Strickland had gone third-party against me and toppled the temple.

Conservatives conserve. We’re the sensible ant to the liberals’ impulsive grasshopper. We don’t eat the seed corn. We don’t burn the house down for firewood. We don’t trash time-tested institutions for transitory whims, as too many Colorado Republicans now seem inclined to do. Think twice, compadres. Stop before it’s too late. Wake up.

Conservatives know, as Thomas Ferril’s poem in the Capitol rotunda has it, that “today is going to be long, long ago.” A single executive term is nothing – a robust and durable two-party system in this state, everything by comparison. Gov. Hickenlooper or no, my Republican devotion is immovable. My faith in Colorado self-government, unsinkable.

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