Lee P. Butler

“Conservatism did not lose; Republicans lost last night. In fact, Republicanism, being a political party first rather than an ideological movement, is what lost. The Democrats beat something last night with nothing,” stated talk radio guru Rush Limbaugh on the day after the election in which Democrats took control of Congress.

In the first place, Conservatism did lose. It wasn’t Conservatism, as a fundamental ideological belief, that caused the loss, but the end result is that because Conservatives decided to teach Republicans a ‘lesson’ by not voting, Conservatism will be the big loser in the new Congress.

Second, saying Democrats beat something with nothing is also not an accurate portrayal of the election night results. Democrats beat Republicans because they were able, with tons of help from liberal media elitists who constantly promoted the Democrat agenda, to get Conservatives not to vote or not vote Republican by brow-beating them into a mindset that ‘tough love’ would solve what they viewed as ‘big government Republicanism‘.

Conservative talk radio hosts helped in this endeavor, especially on the issue of illegal immigration, but while Democrats were painting Republicans as corrupt, big spending, power-mad freaks, they were also pushing pseudo-Conservative Democrat candidates.

Any forest ranger will tell you that one of the most effective ways to stop a forest fire from getting out of control is to fight that fire with fire, where they utilize a control burn eliminating the fuel fire needs to continue burning.

That is exactly what Democrats did during the campaign leading up to Election Day. They told Conservatives; that includes the so-called group of Reagan Democrats, that Republicans are bad and need to be punished, but here’s a nice Democrat alternative you can vote for that’s just like the hated Republicans, but they’re Democrats.

Something needs to be explained here. ‘Conservative’ Democrats are a separate group from ‘Reagan’ Democrats. Reagan Democrats almost always vote Republican and are in many cases more supportive of the Republican Party than life-long Republicans, because they have made a life altering ideological shift in their principles and they know the big ‘D’ Party has nothing for them.

They remain registered Democrats for varying reasons, most notably, as in the case of former Georgia Senator Zell Miller, they have always been Democrat and just can’t bring themselves to change their registration.

Conservative Democrats, like New York’s former Mayor Ed Koch, vote Republican on certain issues but remain Democrats because they believe that the big ‘D’ Party still has something to offer them. Meaning that they may understand the importance of the War on Terror, or lower taxes for a prospering economy, but they are liberal on just about everything else.

People with that same sort of mindset exist within the Republican Party and they are called RINO’s; Republicans In Name Only.

And just like the Democrats, it cannot be ignored that they are still big ‘R’s in the larger picture of the political process. Although the basic fundamentalism of the Republican Party is Conservative, these registered Republican’s are a part of the overall Party.

Without their participation, there are places in the United States that Republicans would never have representation. America is still a two-party country and for any issue, Conservative or Liberal, to gain legislative mandate status, members of Congress need ‘D’s and ‘R’s to make it happen.

A recent news report quoted conservative syndicated radio host Sean Hannity as saying, “The key here, if the Republican Party is going to learn the lesson, is don't abandon your roots.”

He’s absolutely correct, but it should be said that you don’t cut down the tree because some of the leaves fell off the branches. Now, because Republicans had to be taught a ‘lesson’, the Democrats control the water, fertilizer, and trimming shears.

Don’t think so?

Caroline Fredrickson, legislative director of the ACLU recently said, “We will hold their [Democrats] feet to the fire and use all the tools we can to mobilize our members."

In that same L.A. Times article they reported, “Similar vows are coming from lobbyists for abortion rights, who want to expand family-planning options for poor women and scale back Bush's focus on abstinence education, and from gun-control advocates, who hope to revive a lapsed ban on assault weapons. Labor unions, a core Democratic constituency, are demanding universal healthcare and laws discouraging corporations from seeking inexpensive labor overseas.”

Union leaders are also planning on ‘mobilizing’ to give them more power, NARAL is partying in the streets because they think they can now reverse the ban on ‘partial birth abortion’ plus raise the national abortion rate, and even more important, soon-to-be Armed Services Committee chairman, Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.) said, “We need to begin a phased redeployment of forces from Iraq in four to six months.”

Democrats who asserted during the election campaign that they wouldn’t ‘cut-and-run’ from Iraq, are now boasting that they intend to ‘cut-and-run’ and feel they have the power to do so.

Why?

Because Republicans had to be taught a ‘lesson’ for giving seniors a Medicare prescription drug plan, creating the Department of Homeland Security, and doubling the federal funding for public education.

In June of this year I predicted what would happen on Election Day because of what
Conservative talk radio hosts and some members of Congress were doing at that time concerning the issue of illegal immigration.

I wrote, “Let’s just keep bashing the President so his poll numbers will continue to plummet, which directly affects the candidacies of other Republicans, so they’ll lose their seats and possibly control of the House, putting Democrats in charge while the Democrats are just standing back waiting for it to happen.

“That’ll teach the President a lesson about calling for a ‘guest worker program’... I mean amnesty. Why, after the Democrats take charge, they’ll surely deal with the illegal immigration problem by... passing legislation that really is AMNESTY.”

Hello? Is anybody out there?

Believe me, some flunky pseudo-‘Conservative’ Democrat rookie representative from Western North Carolina is not going to Washington D.C. and change the liberal agenda of that San Fransisco liberal treat, Speaker-of-the-House Nancy Pelosi and her newfound Democrat power handed to her because Republicans had to be taught a ‘lesson‘!

Libertarian talk radio host Neal Boortz admitted that he proudly voted a straight Libertarian ticket because there weren’t any Republican Senate or House candidates on his ballot, but he continued the attacks on Republicans he had produced steadily leading up to the election.

“If the Republicans had maintained their power we would have faced two more years of business as usual. Two more years of spending and government growth. Now we have two years of Republicans figuring out how they can convince the American people that they deserve to lead again.”

Then he explained what he got for his vote, “The largest component of the Democrat voter base is comprised of voters who vote for a living, voters who have abandoned their adult responsibilities and have, to one extent or another, become wards of the state. Democrats will immediately try to expand the American social welfare state. Look for proposals for new tax credits and exemptions .. but only for lower income Americans. Look for increases in the minimum wage ... the government setting wages rather than leaving that up to the competitive free market. Look for proposals to shift payroll taxes away from lower income workers and onto the evil rich. In short ... look for more government.”

I like Neal, he is at least as Conservative as I am, but I have yet to understand just how we are to advance Conservative values in Washington now that the only Party with even a modicum of Conservatism as part of its agenda can do that with clipped wings?

George Will wrote, “There are three reasons for conservatives to temper their despondency. First, they [Republicans] were punished not for pursuing but for forgetting conservatism. Second, they admire market rationality, and the political market has worked. Third, on various important fronts, conservatism continued its advance Tuesday.”

Sorry to disagree on this point with Mr. Will, but electing pseudo-Conservative Democrats does not advance Conservatism. Even the very liberal Joe Lieberman had to defect from his Party just to get re-elected in a liberal state and it was Republicans who helped him win as the Independent candidate, or as he now calls himself, an ‘independent democrat’.

The tragedy that now exists for every American who classifies themselves as Conservative was specifically defined by one of the greatest Conservative minds of our time before the election.

“Democrats have learned to avoid admitting to being liberals and this year are running a number of moderate candidates,” wrote Thomas Sowell.

“If these new moderate candidates are elected and give the Democrats control of Congress, that control will be exercised by senior Democrats who will hold leadership positions — and all of them are liberal extremists, whether people like Nancy Pelosi in the House or Ted Kennedy and John Kerry in the Senate. Getting people to vote for moderates, in order to put extremists in power, may be the newest and biggest voter fraud.”

The end result is Conservatives who needed to teach Republicans a ‘lesson’ and gave Democrats amnesty, were the catalyst for helping to advance the Democrats liberal agenda.

By every measure, Conservatism lost on Election Day.

The question is, will Conservatives realize what they have caused and rectify it by the 2008 election?