Conservatives are off the GOP reservation: Will they find a home in the Libertarian Party?

 

Democrats and Republicans have failed America.

Americans are troubled and America is in trouble, domestically and around the globe.

More than any time in memory, our leaders have failed us, lied to us, and betrayed us.

And the people know it.

* 80, perhaps 85% of Americans believe the country is going in the wrong direction

* 66% disapprove of President Bush's performance

* 76% disapprove of Congress

* 86% believe the news media try to influence public opinion...

while fewer than 20% believe most or all news media reporting

Never in the history of America have our leaders failed us in so many big ways:

* The mortgage crisis

* Schools that don't educate

* America being dependent on the likes of the Saudi royal family and Hugo Chavez for our energy supplies

* Over 59 trillion dollars of unfunded debt

* Programs such as ethanol - enriching a few while raising the price of food for all, and harming the environment in the name of protecting it

* Judges who twist the law to their own ends, who ignore the Constitution

* Politicians and bureaucrats who ignore the Constitution

* Wars without end

* And campaign laws and ballot access laws that are really designed to limit competition, to protect fatcat special interests from grassroots competition and to protect the monopoly shared by the Republicans and Democrats

One after another, America's major institutions are rocked with scandals and are under attack

* Sports

* Big Business and unions

* Organized religion

* The legal profession

* Most of all, our government

Almost daily we read of another politician at the federal, state or local level being forced to resign because of a scandal or a crime.

Power has corrupted Republicans and Democrats.

In the case of Republicans, they have become that which they beheld.

In the late 1980s and the early 1990s Republicans beheld the corruption of the Democrats and their abuse of power.

Republicans promised to change things, and the people voted the Democrats out, and the Republicans in. But soon, the GOP became corrupt. Soon, the Republican majority in Congress was abusing power just like Democrats.

In the late 1950s, as chairman of the Young Republicans in Harris County (Houston) Texas, I would hear the party leaders talk about

* Government being too big

* Government spending too much money,

* About how we must shrink Government programs, and abolish this or that Government agency

Government, they said, was the problem, not the solution.

And that sounded right to me; it sounded good to me.

And I continued to hear that in the 1960s, '70s, '80s, '90s from Republicans at all levels of government.

But all that talk stopped in January 2001 when the Republicans took the White House, and held the Senate and the House of Representatives.

You could almost hear Tom DeLay, Denny Hastert, Trent Lott, Karl Rove, George W. Bush and friends say:

* "Just kidding."

* "We didn't mean it."

You could almost hear them say, "What we meant was that we didn't want the Democrats spending the money -- but now that we can spend the money any way we want, lets blow the doors off the bank vault and spend and spend and get re-elected and re-elected."

I can visualize a meeting in Karl Rove's White House office in January 2001 with the Republican leadership to decide on a governing strategy and someone coming up with the idea of a one-word governing idea:

No, not "strategery."

BRIBERY... as in "Let's bribe the voters."

...as in "You the voters have the votes.... We the Republicans have the taxpayers' money.... Let's talk. Let's make a deal."

In the big picture, the corruption of Jack Abramoff, Duke Cunningham, Bob Ney, and others is not a serious problem. They've been caught and punished and their illegal activities will not affect your children or grandchildren one iota.

What will seriously threaten the quality of life for our children and grandchildren is the Republican's legal theft, or as Frederic Bastiat might say, the legal plunder by President Bush and Congressional Republicans.

They tried to bribe the voters with trillions of dollars of your children's inheritance.

* They tried to bribe the people of faith with the Faith Based Initiative.

* The Republicans bribed the farmers with the largest farm subsidies in American History (and in the spring of 2008 they are doing it again).

* They joined with Ted Kennedy on "No Child Left Behind" - a huge bribe, $23 billion for just the last year, a program that has also had the effect of greatly expanding federal control of local schools.

* They bribed Midwest steel workers by putting a tariff on steel imports.

* They bribed seniors with a $10 trillion prescription drug bill.

* They bribed the entire state of Florida with money to repair homes in areas where no sane person would build unless someone else was paying for hurricane damage.

All of this was done for the purpose - the immoral and corrupt purpose - of holding onto power.

And it has turned to ashes in their mouths.

Today we have Republican leaders in the White House and the Congress who have moved left and abandoned the base of their party - the conservative voters - those who walk hand-in-hand with libertarians in opposition to Big Government... in opposition to high taxes, to bureaucracy, and to the arrogant elite - those who believe they know best how we should live our lives.

Republican leaders have treated conservatives with utter disrespect... and, in turn, conservatives have lost all respect for Republican leaders.

Millions of grassroots conservative activists and donors have left the Republican Party and taken with them their volunteer time, their checkbooks, and their votes.

John McCain has had the Republican Presidential nomination sewn up for 3 1/2 months and has done nothing to convince conservatives to come off the sidelines and enthusiastically support him.

Senator McCain is trying to get the conservative support on the cheap - that is, without having to give ironclad assurance that he will fill the government with people who believe in individual liberty, individual responsibility, and in freedom.

He hasn't given conservatives any encouragement on what I believe is the most important question:

Who will advise him? Who will run his administration? Who will he appoint? 

That's the ballgame. Personnel is policy. Tell me who you walk with and I'll tell you who you are.

The fact is, after more than 20 years surrounding himself with supporters of Big Government, he won't change now.

The only thing Senator McCain and his consultants can say to conservatives and libertarians is

* The Democrat boogieman is going to get you if you don't vote Republican

            or

* I'm the lesser of two evils

            or

* I may not be what you want, but the other fellow is worse

Fear of the other guy is not a governing philosophy, Senator McCain.

The lesser of two evils.... is evil, Senator McCain.

For the past 60 years, every time we conservatives have been unhappy with the Big Government, Country Club, Establishment Republicans, the GOP has tried to win by scaring us and saying conservatives have no place else to go. They did that in 1948, 1960, 1976, 1992, on and on right up to 2006.

And it looks like the Republicans are trying to add 2008 to that list.

Here's a message to faithful and loyal Republican activists: The Republican leadership is clueless. 

Think about it. If you were on the board of a company whose leaders had wrecked your brand, blown through your money, lost a huge amount of your market share , and refused to change, no matter how bad things got - wouldn't you try to get them fired? Not if you're a Republican!

What can you say about a political party whose leaders were silent when Senator Ted Stevens from Alaska threatened to resign if he didn't get $325 million dollars to build a Bridge to Nowhere?

The Republican Senators' silence in the face of Stevens's threat speaks volumes about the state of the Grand Old Party.

Voters know politicians lie to win office.

Then they write laws to keep themselves in office and hold onto power.

They abuse their power to help themselves and their friends.

So how do we change things?

How do we take charge of our own political future?

How do we reclaim America for ourselves and future generations?

We all know that one definition of insanity is: repeating the same behavior and expecting different results.

In my opinion, the number one mistake conservatives made in the last 10-12 years is that they became an arm of the Republican Party.

Too many conservative leaders drank the Republican Kool-aid.

America needs new, principled leadership - mostly younger leadership - leadership uncorrupted by the system, and independent of the system.

America's current Establishment leaders have failed.   Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals - whether in politics, Big Business and unions, our colleges and universities (including the so-called best and brightest from Harvard, Yale and Princeton), our churches, the news media - they have failed America.

Today this country has a vacuum of leadership.

In 2008, Americans are like the Biblical Jews who had to wander the desert for 40 years before they could get to the Promised Land. They had to wait until a generation of faithless leaders passed from the scene.

And America will continue to wander, to careen from one crisis to another, until these leaders are replaced.

Power is intoxicating and addictive. These failed leaders will not go quietly or easily.

Today, the Libertarian Party has a major opportunity to provide leadership for America

But it won't happen just because you are correct on the issues.

Virtue will not be its own reward in this case.

There is no guarantee America will turn to Libertarians for ideas, for leadership

People follow those who have energy and passion - those

* who have a plan,

* who have ideas,

* who have a vision that people can believe in, and

* who communicate their plan, and ideas, and vision in a way that people can understand.

In the spring of 2008, Americans are uneasy. They are looking for new political leadership.

And when I speak of leadership, I'm not talking just about Bill Redpath and the other officers of the Libertarian Party or your Presidential or Vice Presidential candidates.

I'm talking about you and you and you

Leadership begins with each of us.

And guess what? In today's world, it's easier than ever to be a leader.

A few years ago, I wrote a book - America's Right Turn - about how conservatives used new and alternative media to help level the playing field.

In the 1950s, when I started in politics, conservatives were the tree that fell in the forest and no one heard us..

Our candidates, causes, issues went unnoticed

But, starting with direct mail in the 1960s and 1970s, we were able to go around the blockage the Left had on the country's microphones.

Then in the late 1980s, talk radio came on the political scene, and cable TV and the Internet.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Walter Cronkite could come to his CBS office in the morning, put down his coffee cup and pick up his New York Times... and an hour later he and his counterparts at NBC and ABC had decided what the American people would be told was the important news of the day.

Well, never again will the Establishment be able to silence their opposition.

That genie is out of the bottle and it's never going back in.

Because of the new and alternative media, Libertarians can become a major force in America - a force outside the so-called "major parties"

The Left has had enormous success operating as a Third Force.

Liberals have thousands of so-called "environmental," "consumer," and "civil rights" organizations, and thousands of labor union locals.

They all operate independently of the Democratic and Republican Parties except when they are dictating to the Democratic and Republican Parties. They have their own membership, money, and agenda.

They pull the public policy debate to the Left.

Libertarians can do the same, pulling the debate toward liberty.

You can start thousands of new organizations at the national, state, and local level, dealing with issues of importance to people. You can blog and e-mail on these issues.

Remember: Only a relatively small number of people are interested in political parties.

But almost all Americans are interested in issues that directly impact their lives and their communities.

* Property rights

* Taxes

* Home school rights and -

* The public schools

* Healthcare

* Second Amendment rights

* Opposition to so-called "nation-building"

Libertarians, get out of your comfort zone!

There's a country and a way of life that is under attack

And if you don't get fully engaged, you'll lose. Because the socialists, the elitists, those who want to use Big Government to control your lives - they are fully engaged.

Take up a leadership role... as a candidate, volunteering to help candidates, contributing, blogging, e-mailing, calling in to talk shows, starting new organizations in your area or on the Internet.

Enlist your family, friends, neighbors, co-workers in this battle for America's soul and America's freedom.

Leadership begins with each one of us.

We have a country to take back, and the blessings of liberty to defend, to protect, and to pass on to our children, grandchildren, and generations unborn.

DO NOT WAIT FOR ORDERS FROM HEADQUARTERS

MOUNT UP AND RIDE TO THE SOUND OF THE GUNS

Thank you, Libertarians, and see you at the revolution!