It's time for ruthless competition by conservatives

[Bruce Donnelly]

We tried to play nice with the RINOs in this election after playing into their hands in the primaries by splitting the conservative vote among multiple candidates.  They got the moderate, "electable" candidate they wanted in Romney despite our objections.

We swallowed our pride and did what we could to help him, even though he was following a typical failing Rove / political consultant strategy of ignoring 90%+ of the voters around the country and concentrating exclusively on just a few swing states, other than to raise money to spend there.  The campaign did virtually nothing to help other Republican candidates down the ballot in Illinois or other states, or to help grow support for the party between elections.

Principles didn't matter.  The ends justified the means, because Obama was so demonstrably bad that surely they could get back into power with enough money and advertising as another Hobson's choice, even though this strategy had failed against Clinton and Obama, and very nearly failed against Gore and Kerry.

They saw no reason to give voters a strong case for voting Republican.  They showed no real respect for voters.  They thought they could just attack Obama and the other Democrats (as well as conservatives in the primary) through a costly media-centric strategy plus a lot of GOTV calls without actually doing the hard work to organize a growing base of enthusiastic Republican voters and build up a strong campaign organization of volunteers and local staff nationwide.

That's the same approach which gave us Clinton, two very narrow Bush wins, and now the two big Obama victories even though both the White House and Senate were clearly in play among very frustrated voters.  Rather than learn from repeated defeats, party leaders remain in denial about even having a problem, and are looking for scapegoats again - such as conservatives.

Rove's skim-the-market, "micro-targeting" approach to just turn out the base and pick up a few swing voters differs sharply from the patient Reagan national strategy by which he built up a growing base of public support across all 50 states over many years (from around 1964 until his election in 1980.- including learning from his defeat in 1976).   Reagan won big by making the case for conservative Republican principles and values - while negotiating compromises from a position of strength - but the long decline started with George H.W. Bush, both nationally and here in Illinois.  The focus shifted to cutting deals in Washington rather than earning support among voters nationwide for a more conservative, limited government Republican agenda.

The Dems have been systematically growing their base over many years while the GOP has been neglecting or even insulting theirs and just wasting obscene amounts of money on campaign consultants and media-centric campaigns with a hostile liberal media and no effective communications strategy to boldly make the case for conservative principles in America.

No more "Mr. Nice Guy", or wasting time arguing with a party leadership which has persistently refused to listen or respect us.  We thought they might "get it" after the 2010 election, but they went right back to business as usual.

As soon as Romney showed signs of life in the first debate, they persuaded him to go timid again and follow a run-out-the-clock strategy as another Hobson's choice, hoping that he would win just because Obama was so obviously bad for America, without really making the case for what Romney and a Republican majority in the Senate would do.

He went back to the usual poll-tested, meaningless rhetoric as though he had no core convictions to defend.  Rather than take the fight to Obama in the final debates and his "closing argument", Romney returned to the political consultant mantra about the need to reach across the aisle as the way to win the support of independent voters.  In effect, that accepted the Dem premise that the real problem in Washington was all those radical Tea Party conservatives.

This was an insult to conservative voters, as though the problem is just that we all need to learn to shut up and get along with the radical progressives even though they have demonstrably shown absolutely no interest in reaching reasonable agreements with us.

Their idea of compromise is heads we win, tails you lose.  The progressives take half or more of what they want, and then fight to get the rest over time, while the Republican leadership fails to even make the case to the public for more conservative proposals.   Boehner is already rushing to the microphones and offering to be more conciliatory, now that he is happily rid of some more of the principled conservatives we elected in 2010.  The Republicans in the House won't challenge his leadership.  We will have to do that ourselves in 2014, as in 2010.

In effect, the progressive big-government Republicans are perfectly happy to keep cutting lousy deals with the progressive Dems to spend our money, raise our taxes, and drive us further into debt or weaken our nation our great detriment, while the permanent political class lives happily ever after with just very marginal changes in each election.  Their idea of change is basically to rearrange the deck chairs a bit on this Titanic, and declare that we'll try to do better at avoiding icebergs in the future.  If this ship of state sinks into disaster, they can just blame somebody else.  There is no real accountability for their performance - unless we work to defeat them.

That game must end.  If the party doesn't stand for anything different, then it has no reason for existence.  It is not justified by a few abstract theoretical differences in the party platform which are hastily abandoned at the first hint of opposition by a determined and united Democratic progressive leadership.

If Boehner, McConnell and others in Washington and Springfield are going to cave on everything just to put their own jobs before our intersets,  then what purpose do they serve from the perspective of "we the people" to justify electing them?

They hardly even serve as an effective check on the risk of abuses of power, as recent events in Libya demonstrated once again.  The Republican leaders brilliantly concluded that this was not something which voters cared about before the election, so they basically went along with the cover-up and lies as they assumed that they would win on economic issues.

Wrong.  Instead, we now have Obama pushing his radical agenda as fast as he can again, while the GOP even failed to make any gains in the Senate despite many races which should have been won.  Don;t even expect the Senate filibuster to save us now.  They will cave on the rules changes to make it very difficult for spineless Republicans to go on the record in opposition to Obama's agenda.  Instead, we'll be back to the "go along to get along" Republican game plan of begging for a few favors and avoiding any significant controversy to protect their own jobs.

Their definition of conservatism is just to go along with business as usual in DC and Springfield by cutting whatever deals they can get, rather than standing for basic principles and fighting for what we firmly believe is best for the future of Illinois and America.

If this were a business, we would either shut it down as a failure or force a major management shake-up and a very aggressive turnaround plan.  No more excuses for failure.

Frankly, that's what the party should have done in 2009, but other than to replace a few scapegoats like Michael Steele, the leadership remained in denial about even having a problem, and went back to the same failing strategies with Romney as their new McCain.   They thought the solution was to raise more money and do more attack ads, including in the primary.  Rather than build up the Republican "brand", they spent a fortune attacking conservatives.

Meanwhile, they actively resisted the rise of the Tea Party movement in 2009 - 2010, and kept finding excuses to ignore it in 2011 - 2012.  They happily accepted the progressive meme that "radical", "right-wing" Tea Party conservatives were "ruining the party" or obstructing "accomplishments" (deals) in Congress and hurting their chances of winning this election by driving voters away.

Rather than stand firmly on fiscal conservative issues, they let the progressives spread an unchallenged false narrative about Tea Party supporters as radical advocates of extreme social conservative positions, which was never the focus or the truth.  It  served their purposes to let the Dems demonize and smear the Tea Party as an internal threat to their own power on both sides.

Bottom line - we don't want to develop a third party, but we need to transform the Republican party because it is demonstrablly failing again and again.  Over two billion dollars of donor money was largely just flushed down the drain again on the same failed strategies while we bit our tongues and let them try again to prove that their strategy works.  Instead, they failed again, which will cost us all dearly.  We tried to be loyal supporters, but they just treated us as useful idiots to exploit.

Never again.  Rather than arguing with idiots who refuse to listen or learn to improve, we need to apply the basic principles of ruthless free market competition.  We need to drive them out of business by demonstrably outperforming them so that voters flock to a better alternative to save America.

They will only change behavior when they see that the game has changed, and that they can't defeat us.  If we can't beat them in the marketplace among voters, then we deserve to lose.  It's time to get out there and fight it out for what we believe again, rather than simply work for these losers.