[detbuch]

Originally Posted by Jim in CT

Ryan submits his budget. From what I saw, it still includes funding for Planned Parenthood. Take it out of there, and let Weird Harold veto the budget if he wants to stick his neck out.

I think a lot of conservatives like me are getting ticked off that Republicans like Ryan promised that things would be different if we gave legislative control to the GOP, which we did.

Didn't happen. If you told me that Nancy Pelosi submitted that budget, I would believe you. And we nominated this idiot to be our VP? Couldn't even carry his own state.

This is part of th ereason why Trump is popular, he's not afraid to call out the Paul Ryans of the world for being the liars they are. If we lose this election because of infighting, we did it to ourselves.

We've already done it to ourselves. What Ryan did with this budget is what, in essence, he has done or proposed to do in the past. He is one of the Republican leaders on the edge of the establishment. He talks a good "conservatism" but votes for compromise. We've discussed this problem of centrism and compromise before.

It seems to me that the Republicans who came to power after Reagan (even well before Reagan, but he temporarily reversed the trend) did not seriously understand the nature of the political war they were in. They understood neither what political principles they were fighting for (or forgot them, or abandoned them), nor how to fight that war.

They accepted that politics on both sides of the aisle were about the same thing, just a different way of getting there. And the constant compromise consistently changed the nature of what they were fighting for so that both began to resemble each other, one merely becoming the "lite" version of the other.

It became that thing Spence likes. The Democrats (progressives) leading the way, and the Republicans (not really conservatives) just slowing them down to a more "moderate" pace, or checking them when the Dems were going too far (too quickly), too dangerously approaching the edge of some cliff.

But each compromise made the cliff steeper and closer and more difficult to avoid since both parties kept "compromising" in the same direction.

In actuality, though, it was the inept Republicans who kept warning about the approaching cliff (even though they were helping to get there), but the Progressives never saw it as a cliff. Rather they saw a growing structure incrementally taking shape from the parts, the building blocks of compromise, which constantly shifted leftward in their direction, of a new America, or new World Order. Bit by bit they were deconstructing America and thus changing the character of Americans.

This new American "character" has been reshaped from bedrock to clay, so to speak. From a self-reliant citizenry holding a common bond based on the steadfast principles of their constitutional foundation to a malleable people with no common creed and whose basis for life is molded and shaped by government. We are, in the main, a people who see good government as that which gives us things. Which creates "policies" that make our life comfortable, even sustainable. A people who depend on government and are bereft without its largesse. And, the majority of us see bad government, bad politicians, as those who "constantly insult people and don't offer them anything to appeal to them" as has been said on this thread.

So there's your real cliff. The supposedly unsustainable national debt is a mere bagatelle. It can be shooed away by an all-powerful central government. By the snap-snap of a thumb rubbing the middle finger as the hand of government waves across our face. And in that gesture sustained by its power to order its crony corporations to produce and distribute our needs (rewarded, of course, by handsome contracts paid by various government scripts or chits or privileges, and made to fear perverse regulation if they don't comply) . . . in that gesture the final bricks of a new America, and ultimately, a new World, will have been laid in place. What outdated and outmaneuvered "conservatives" saw as a cliff will be, not the "city on a hill" that Reagan saw, but the ultimate State.

So, in not recognizing what the political war was about, Republicans who thought they were conservatives, have helped to bring us to this brink. Just squeezing out some more compromises may slow its time of arrival, but it will come, unless conservatives finally realize their folly. The Tea Party does. Ted Cruz probably does. Fiorina may. Rand Paul may. Rubio says he does. And Trump blusters about making America great again, but, unless he hasn't yet articulated it, he doesn't seem to know what actually made it great in the first place. Yeah, he's got part of it down. Fearlessness. Fighting spirit. Confronting the enemy head on no-holds-barred. But he gives the impression of being the same autocrat that progressives aspire to be, just from a different direction.

So, what's left? What's the battle and how is it fought? In terms of a distinction from progressives, conservatives must not compromise what they claim to be their principles. In a sense, the American Revolution must be refought, but this time in the political arena rather than the military battlefield. In this battle between political conservatism and progressivism, the goal of the former is to protect its principles from extinction and reinstate them as the basis for American government. In that the progressive system is so entrenched and on the doorsteps of final transformation, the conservative position is desperate.

Compromise to live a little longer makes that position worse than desperate. It invites extinction. What does a leader do when the odds are so against him. Sung Tzu, in The Art of War, said:

"On desperate ground, fight."

For, as Chia Lin remarks: "if you fight with all your might, there is a chance of life; where as death is certain if you cling to your corner."

Sung Tzu says: "Throw your soldiers into positions whence there is no escape, and they will prefer death to flight. If they will face death, there is nothing they may not achieve."

The Republican Party, as a "conservative" one, is in desperate straights. It has got there partly of its own making. It has fought wars poorly. When it has had an advantage, it didn't, as Coolidge and Reagan did, govern strongly with foundational principles. It weakly gave in for the sake of compromise and in fear of how a liberal press would define it. So it has incrementally grown weaker, as the progressives, who only compromised when weak, have pressed hard when politically strong, to the point when, even now, they press on and win even when they don't have numbers. The Progressives know the art of war.

It is time for conservatives to throw themselves into positions from which there is no escape. They must not cower into picking "moderate" candidates and shun true conservatives for fear of bad press. They must fully articulate their principles as artfully as Reagan did, stick by them without compromise, and face the fear of death by media. If they do that, as Sung Tzu says, "there is nothing they may not achieve."

Otherwise "death is certain if you cling to your corner."