Tea party surprises: are old conservative principles finally getting some due?

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Tea Party Surprises

Those Who Forget History Are Doomed to Repeat It


Vindication for some old principles?

Are long-standing conservative principles finally getting some due?

Recent Tea Party victories put Republicans in better light

Just dating ... for now
Jimmie Walker & Ann Coulter
Jimmie Walker & Ann Coulter
Somebody tell me why conservative women are so sexy!

One of the most famous column writers that leads the force in modern conservatism, Ann's columns have been featured on many high traffic websites. She is definitely one of the most sexiest and most influential people in the Republican party. One liberal sighs that Ann is the sexy conservative Queen of Mean. Well she might just give 'mean' a good name. Not only is she hot, she's super smart, and super conservative. And don't you just love tall, svelte, and stylish? I think JJ Walker does.

Some women still like masculine guys (have liberals made America wimpy?)


Some former Obama supporters begin to voice disappointment with President

Dr. Ben Carson on why he "baited" Obama. (the overwhelming majority of America's Blacks support the President)
The following was written before the author turned against the sharp drift of the Republican Party (off the cliff, some have said)

Has liberalism and its soft theories sapped us of our pioneer hardiness?

We have more affluence, more education, more white supremacy. Yet with liberalism in the driver's seat, we have lost our faith and the fortitude of our humble ancestors. We bully nine tenths of the world but our men are wusses. Ironically, in the so-called Dark Continent, the churches still believe in old moral values, still believe men should be men, still hang on to the Bible instead of gay marriage and spoiled teen agers. Has America fallen from grace?

But there is hope

The dramatic successes attributed to the Tea Party Movement in America mark a kind of resurgence for conservative ideas here. For the red states, generally, there is an element of satisfaction, of vindication as it were, as the public mood shifts in a more conservative (and Republican) direction. As an American whose parents hail from Dixie, I have felt mixed feelings, knowing the sense of triumph that an underdog is bound to feel (perhaps against our better judgment) at an unexpected favorable sign. What Cicero called an aura popularis has shifted in a conservative direction.

Our first president under the Constitution was George Washington, who was twice elected (unanimously) yet never served in the City named for him. He grieved over the division between the conservative and liberal "wings" even then beginning to wrench (or rend) American politics. The family feud is usually cast in economic terms. The liberals were Jeffersonians (and have been ever since). The conservatives were Hamiltonians (and have been ever since.) But beyond the economics the fight was also cultural, and social values were important,too -- with Jeffersonians accused of moral liberalism (as they are today), and branded with the radicalism of Jacobin France. The conservatives likewise were branded, as being authoritarian, absolutist, monarchist, and in the pocket of the wealthy. (And in those early years, of siding with England against liberalism anywhere in the world.)

Washington deplored the bitter division between the two sides. I believe he honestly saw a role for both the Hamiltonian and Jeffersonian principles. But in those early years, he tilted clearly to Hamilton, the suave and impressive, eloquent and "magnetic" Alexander Hamilton, with his push toward state-encouraged Capitalism, and America's budding industrial potential. Jefferson, as time passed, felt pushed aside, along with his supporters of the West and South.

When Jefferson was elected in 1800, it was a victory for the liberals in the west and for the agrarian Southerners -- the Jeffersonian 'Fanfare for the common man.' But the Federalist conservatives railed that the Jacobin radicals and atheists would be taking over. Timothy Pickering belittled Jefferson as the Negro president, since the electoral votes of the South were augmented by the 3/5 rule giving weight to the non-voting slave population -- without which Jefferson would not have won.

Today's liberals are descended politically from the wing represented by Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson. Ironically, the states have done a turnabout. In early America, New England and New York were conservative regions (by and large), bastions of Federalist sentiment, essentially the "religious right" of their day.

These days the areas taking a beating (in the Obama election of 2008, for example) were Red States, the rural southern and heartland regions condescendingly labelled the Bible Belt, or the gun-loving rural areas -- the conservative states of our time. In fact, since FDR gave the masses "What they wanted" while scapegoating the rich or privileged, anything deemed old or conservative have suffered in the public mind.

Roosevelt was a patrician himself (as was Jefferson, and as was Kennedy). But he appealed to the masses. And history (at least as written by the liberals) has made Roosevelt the great modern savior. everso succurrere saeclo. He appealed to the lowest common denominator, the vulgar belly, and lowered the old standards of virtue, excellence, valor, self-sacrifice.

Traditionalism was the new villain. Herbert Hoover, one of the noblest men of character of his time, was the new arch-devil. The high principles of Alexander Hamilton were portrayed as conducive to a corrupt state-capitalism (thus evil in and of themselves). Now, perhaps, with the resurgence of China's own state-capitalism, strategically following a kind of classical capitalism of the kind that Herbert Hoover and the Republicans were tarred with, some of the more open-minded are rethinking their views. And the Tea Party activists are bravely performing their part. Witness the upset election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts. Yes, Massachusetts.

It may be appropriate to note the viciousness and personal nature of many of the attacks on Herbert Hoover, as if he were the incarnation of evil itself. Much of the attacks were sheer politics, and Franklin Roosevelt, who knew better, sometimes remained silent when he should have (ideally) said "ENOUGH." After all, the real disagreement was over (simplyfying this) the classical economics of Hoover versus the liberal economics of Roosevelt. Ultimately, the New Deal moved toward a redefinition in Jeffersonian terms of an American economics balancing the demand side (market) with the socalled "supply side" stressing production (and creating wealh - ie, capitalism).

The personal attacks on President Hoover were mean, and they were also inaccurate, as those who knew him have attested. Harry Truman, a dyed in the wool Democrat, both western populist and city (machine) politician, Truman sought to make amends to the still-living Hoover, and did what he could to rehabilitate his standing with the American people. Hoover was never like the "malefactors of great wealth" that FDR pilloried. He was in some sense a plutocrat. He was a self-made man, and his wealth he came by the hard way, by working for it. Hoover started with nothing, an orphan in Iowa, a Quaker boy. He wound up at Stanford in California, became an engineer, and went to work in mining - round the world. But he was always a giver, always generous, and his philanthropy came naturally to him. When the Great War that began in 1914 devastated much of the old world, it was Hoover who rallied American capitalists and companies to jump in with aid. All this is separate from the political controversy that has divided America from the beginning. (Ie between Hamiltonians and Jeffersonians).

True enough, conservative presidents have sometimes been their own worst enemies. Richard Nixon was one of our astutest leaders on foreign policy, but he was suspicious and unsocial by nature. He had an admiration for Benjamin Disraeli that was strong (and inexplicable). But his grasp of foreign policy was unsurpassed in modern times. He outwitted the Soviets by reaching out to the Chinese -- essentially out-flanking Moscow. His style in geopolitics was to supplement main force with the rapier. His deftness at times would have done credit to Robert E. Lee on the battle field. But though he "had to have" the South, his history-mindedness made him a lover of Lincoln. His coolness on the racial issue led him to give his blessing to Moynihan's benign neglect approach.

Pat Buchanan as a young man worked closely with Nixon, as he later did with Reagan. He has not yet written a full-scale memoir, but the little glimpses I get of Nixon show a far different picture than what the media (and liberal) stereotype gives us. We see a very human Nixon, a man of inner passions and loves (as well as torments), a man who loved his interludes of piano-playing, a student (almost scholar) of history, and in the field of foreign policy his sheer sagacity at times approached brilliance. Buchanan has also defended Nixon on the issue of Civil Rights, something liberals are at odds with.

In politics Nixon's own personality was clumsy, some would say, but his southern strategy and big tent appeal to working class Democrats presaged the brilliant political triumphs of Ronald Reagan.

Jumping forward the more conservative wing of Republicans have distinguished themselves in their phillipics against the big-tent wing of compromisers, the socalled moderates and Lincoln Republicans. A century ago, Teddy Roosevelt wore the mantle "Republican" but his doctrines were those of a progressive, a trust buster, a friend of Black Man (invited Booker Washington to DINE with him at the White House!) and additionally, besides being anti-corporate, he was anti-Southern. In modern times the elder President Bush fulfills some of these same "big tent" heresies, invoking kinder and gentler (liberal) views, and eagerly befriending liberals and Democrats, supporting affirmative action, while chastising the more conservative right wing core constituency.

RINO: Is it any wonder that Bush was castigated by the talk radio conservatives as a big tent Republican, a Lincoln Republican, a compromiser with Democrats, etc. Colin Powell of course consistently defended Bush, considered him one of a dying breed of old conservatives, a gentleman, always courteous. But Powell is just as bad. He sounds conservative when he praises fiscal restraint, moral values and fortitude, and old fashion work ethic, personal responsibility. Yet Rush Limbaugh rallies the Right Wing when he throws these Lincoln Republicans out of the party for failing to adhere to conservative principles.

Can Women Save the Republican Party?
The Grace of the Woman's Gentle Touch

Sarah Palin
Sarah Palin visits one of the nation's wounded

The Paradox of Lincoln's Audacity

Lincoln has always been a bit of a lightning rod figure, and does not fit neatly into any category. Like a few other great figures possessing outrageous saliance and controversial reputation, Lincoln is one of those world historical characters about whom you probably learn more from their enemies than from their friends. Because of their hubris, their existential insolence as it were, their place is maddeningly ambiguous, men like the Christ of Galilee, like the Persian al Hallaj, like Martin Luther King.

Was Lincoln liberal? Was Lincoln conservative? History generally labels him liberal, and he certainly provoked the red states to withdraw (circle the wagons) in 1860. Allied with the Bible-thumping abolitionists, he alienated the South by the high-handed moralistic (holier-than-thou) attitudes of the ultra-liberal abolitionist movement. On the other hand, the radical abolitionists branded him as "friendly" to the South, on account of his marriage to a slave-holder (Todd), his confederate brothers-in-law, his supposedly pro-southern statements.

If northern friends should wonder what it is firm conservatives have against the Lincoln Republicans like Colin Powell and George HW Bush (the elder Bush) just consider the liberalism of Lincoln and the evangelical abolitionists. Try to understand the sense of desperation that caused almost ALL of the red states (conservatives of that time) to leave the Union, and write their own pro-slavery (states rights) Declaration of Independence and Constitution. These days, the Lincoln-Republicans are showing their true colors, as liberals and RINOs, just as left (socialistic) as Franklin Roosevelt. No wonder Rush Limbaugh denounces Sarah Palin, Colin Powell, John McCain ... or any other left liberal Lincoln-Republican with a secret agenda of anti-Dixie liberalism, or scapegoating Southerners.

- Tuesday, November 4, 2014 -
Team Blue Didn't Really Do Too Well

Thomas Sowell : Guess Who Is More Generous
Thomas Sowell
Thomas Sowell

Tea Party : will women save the Republicans (if minorities join in) ?


Two Minute Conservative
twin towers

hot conservative chicks

Sugar and Spice : Gals of the Right

Can Anyone Explain the Mystique (why they are "hotter")
If Conservative Women seem so Classy, Pretty, Feminine

Surprise Triumph for Two Black Republicans
2010 Embarassment for President Obama

Tim Scott Allen West
Tim Scott                         Allen West

< - FOOTER ->

Jesus Walks


Jesus Walks

God is our Refuge & Strength

From the Heart : Laura Bush

walking the walk
Sarah Palin
IS ~ talking the talk


Sarah Palin shows her sexy side



More Harm Than Good?
Koch boys steal our grassroots movement

The Kochs (sucking the good out of authentic populism?)

[2011 S&P Downgrade] Tea Party's Rich 'Pals' and the abandonment of its populist ideals

NO GOVERNMENT WHATEVER? Grover Norquist has hurt us
"We got 80% of our demands"
(out of budget showdown)

Senator John McCain reprimanded the stubbornness of the Tea Partiers for their slash-and-burn brinkmanship, which could well backfire on Republicans. Speaker Boehner scolded them in Caucus for their eagerness to play chicken at a time when the financial credibility of the nation itself is at a stake. Newt Gingrich called their obsessive support of the Ryan plan, devastating to senior citizens, and blasted it as 'right-wing social engineering.' Then after hectoring by the hard right, he backtracked, Other Republicans have also expressed dismay over the Tea Party plunge into right wing extremism. Scott Brown, the first elected Tea Partier, has also been outspoken in his disappointment with ideological extremism that the freshmen Tea Party diehards in the lower house have embraced. Bon Bennett, conservative Utah Republican, lashed out at the Tea Party saying tea partiers are actually helping Democrats, by making all Republicans seem irresponsible. Another Republican, Robert Hurt of Virginia, has backed away from the Tea Party, because of their hostility to seemingly all government, and all taxation. The first president Bush gave Big Tent Republicanism a good name. But the Tea Party is forgetting the great history of the Republic. They make their own extremism into a litmus test of what is a True Republican. Patriots have come from all across the spectrum. Let's not forget, taxes are the price we pay for civilization. Another Republican, Senator Bob Inglis of South Carolina, blamed right-wing talk show hosts like Glenn Beck as the culprits of "demagoguery" that threaten the Republican party long term.

Give us our daily bread
Economics in a nutshell

Friend, you cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. And what one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government can't give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody. And when half of the people get the idea they don't have to work because the other half's going to take care of them, and when the other half get the idea it does no good to work because somebody's going to get what I work for. That, dear friend, is about the end of any nation. [Adrian Rogers, Memphis Tennessee]

get along?
can we all just get along?

Disclaimer :: where I draw the line

Bob ShepherdWEBMASTER Bob Shepherd. Rush Limbaugh, perhaps predictably, has claimed paternity of sorts for the victorious Tea Party. I am not someone who is much impressed with Rush, not since his attacks on the elder President Bush as a big-tent Republican, a Lincoln Republican (RINO), and then his subsequent bashing of moderate Republicans like Colin Powell and John McCain, and then of Speaker Boehner over the House bufdget showdown. Boehner had said put America first, ahead of party or ideology. I believe the ethical path is inclusion, not dishonoring Lincoln and all the other great ideals of our (liberal) history, from the Founding right down to the Greatest Generation. I don't have much sympathy with Paul Ryan's harsh and extremist attacks on seniors, veterans, students, and virtually every other great program our forefathers bequeathed us. We stand on the shoulders of giants, and we owe gratitude and yes, self-sacrifice. I also find myself opposed to those who want to form a THIRD PARTY movement out of the tea party. Others will have to decide for themselves. But that's how I feel.
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