By Douglas V. Gibbs
Part of the Democrat Party's political strategy to move this nation in a direction of a more centralized government under progressive control is to keep the electorate divided and at odds with each other. Chaos and division enables them to take hold of the situation, promising change and an end to the division, and promising to unite America with a socialist utopia that eliminates the supposed greed of the private sector, and quells the division of individuality.
The race card has been used to pit the blacks against the whites, and the rhetoric they have used regarding the immigration issue has been designed to pit Hispanics against anyone who disagrees with wide-open borders and amnesty. They have attacked any political opposition as being groups that are fringe, extreme, and to be shunned. The Right of Center is, in the opinion of the Democrats, a collection of many different groups with differences in opinion enough to pit them against each other too. The rich has been demonized as greedy, the corporations as a ruthless enemy that must be regulated, creating division among the economic classes as well. They have even proclaimed to the populace that any GOP voters that are not moderates are racist ideologues who cling to their Bibles and guns, and are therefore dangerous and people that should be shunned.
The Democrat Party believes that only a powerful central government is essential to guarantee their predetermined "equitable" outcomes, a promise they contend will finally settle the divisions of the groups that exist in America.
The Democrats cannot achieve their plans through the ballot box without using these tactics of division and deception. The majority of Americans believe in limited government and are not quick to grant the federal government too much power. When in 2006 and 2008, the country elected a Congress and President that adheres to the most radical leftist political ideology in our history, the antithesis of the principles the people claim they want, the Democrats actually believed that it meant this nation had become center-left. The reality is, they achieved their political success because their deception and tactics of division worked well in fooling the American populace.
The Democrats were able to gain their power through the manipulation of the fact that unlike the leftist collectivists, folks on the Right think independently. Because of the individualism of the voters on the Right, there is division on some issues. In fact, there are primarily five distinct groups that make up the right of center majority.
Some members of the Right inhabit more than one of the groups I am about to list, and there are even smaller groups that don't even get noticed. But, for the most part, the Right is made up of five groups - and the Democrats manipulated each of them masterfully in order to gain power in 2006 and 2008.
First of these groups is the single issue voters, such as those that support the pro-life position, or the individual right to own a firearm. These voters are steadfast on their resolve that their issue is one issue they will not compromise on. The progressives of the Democrat Party quickly learned that well-placed language can successfully affect this demographic. Barack Obama, as a candidate, took advantage of this. Though Obama is a steadfast promoter of unfettered abortion rights and suffocating gun control, he simply stood at the podium and proclaimed himself to be a Christian seeking to make abortion rare and an opponent of gun control legislation. His oratory skills in the delivery of these speeches were convincing, so Barack Obama won much of the Christian and pro-gun vote than any of the previous liberal Democrat nominees for President. After all, since many of the center-right voters had believed the rhetoric that everything was Bush's fault, which led them to have temporary disdain for the Republican Party, they thought to themselves that perhaps this Obama fellow isn't so bad after all.
The second group of right of center voters is the fiscal-conservative-but-social-liberal voters. Understanding this particular group was the reason that Barack Obama seemed to move to the center during his campaign. He pledged not to raise taxes on 95% of the people, and he pledged to control spending that Bush had allowed to get out of control. Barack Obama was lying deliberately. There was no evidence based on his past stances on economics to make anyone think he would be willing to follow such conservative sounding promises. But since the fiscal-conservative-but-socially-liberal voters were also angry with the GOP as a result of the Democrat Party's rhetoric regarding Bush, these voters were willing to sheepishly follow the leftist candidates for the Congress and the White House who said they were willing to be fiscally conservative, even though they were Democrats.
The third group of voters are the Republicans Only. They have been voting for the GOP for the simple sake of party. These voters are not necessarily policy oriented, they are just convinced that only the Republicans can run a country without dropping the whole thing into the toilet. However, because these folks see everything from a party point of view, when a member of the GOP screws up, they blame the entire party for it. So, to manipulate them the Democrats only had to convince them that the behavior of the Republicans was so bad, it would actually be in their best interest to vote for a conservative Democrat, or stay home on election day, to punish the Republican Party for their bad behavior.
The fourth group of right-side voters is the Conservatives, who are the ones that tend to hold more tightly to the concept of limited government, and the principles of the U.S. Constitution. These folks were split. They knew that Obama was lying, and that Democrat control of the government would be devastating. But they did not necessarily wish to vote for a moderate like McCain because liberals in the GOP have been destroying the party for a long time, and the GOP seemed to be at a crossroads. To vote in a person like McCain could very well destroy the party, and turn the Republican Party into something not much different than its leftist counterpart. Of this group of voters, the ones that did vote for McCain primarily did so because he chose conservative Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. The rest either stayed home, or cast their vote for an independent candidate.
The libertarians comprise the final group. These folks are distant cousins of the Conservatives, disagreeing on a few issues with the GOP and Conservatives, but not many. To manipulate this group, the Left only had to hammer away on the disagreements, and turn these folks off from the GOP. One issue the Libertarians differ with the Conservatives and Republicans on is the policies regarding the use of the military. As a result of the Democrat Party hammering Bush, and the rest of the Right, as a bunch of warmongers, the Libertarians took a pass on the Republicans in the last elections, choosing instead to either stay home, or vote for a third party candidate. It is these folks that are now leading a third party movement, and will be the most difficult for the GOP to bring back into the fold.
Ultimately, the Democrat campaign to portray the entire Republican Party as corrupt, country club corporate types, and unresponsive to their constituents, achieved its aim, and the Democrats were able to pull off victories in 2006 and 2008. In addition, the Bush derangement syndrome campaign pinned George W. Bush as a Conservative, when in some ways he was not, and then characterized him as an illiterate, incompetent fool who besmirched the Republican brand, and revealed the reality of what conservatism is really all about. As a result, conservatives and their allies began to put distance between themselves and Bush, and ultimately between themselves and the GOP. With McCain on the ticket, and the Arizona Senator being portrayed as just another clone of Bush, the right-of-center voting groups threw up their hands and stayed on the sidelines, leaving the voting duties to the people fooled by the Left, and of course the hardcore progressive faithful.
Once in power, the intimidation campaign took its place in the Democrat armory of political weapons. The Democrats set out to find and exploit individual examples of corruption, misspoken words, perceived insensitivity, and false charges of racism - literally following the teachings of Marx and Saul Alinsky: "Make the enemy live up to their (sic) own book of rules. When pressed to honor every word of every law and statute, every Judeo-Christian moral tenet, and every implicit promise of the liberal social contract, human agencies inevitably fall short. The system's failure to 'live up' to its rule book can then be used to discredit it altogether, and to replace the capitalist 'rule book' with a socialist one." (Saul Alinsky's Rules For Radicals)
With the biased media at their side, the Left was able to hurl a maelstrom of accusations against the Republican Party and her ideological allies. The power of accusation took its place in the Democrat arsenal. Evidence was not needed. With an accusation the media would take it to the bank, and the mere accusation would then become fact, and would turn the populace even further away from the GOP. Meanwhile, the Republicans, fearing the tactics, refused to refute any of it - shaking in their boots, unwilling to make waves.
The lack of a spine portrayed by the GOP literally helped the Democrats achieve their aim. By refusing to challenge the attacks, the lack of Republican response was seen as tacit concession. In fact, to appease the leftists, some Republican officials have been willing to "reach across the aisle" in spending, and other liberal policies, in the hopes to look like they are not too extreme, foolishly hoping to garner the blessing of the main-extreme media. By straying from the principles that gave America 25 years of economic growth (1983-2008) the Republicans then further separated themselves from the voters, and any hope for forgiveness from the various right-of-center groups that were already angry with them.
The Tea Party movement emerged with the slogan, "Throw all of the bums out, regardless of party." The movement has caught fire, and is evidence that the public has now waking up to the long-term damaging effects of Barack Obama's Left-dominated government policies, and the unwillingness of the GOP to stand on conservative principles. A battle has ensued to take back the Republican Party, and the Tea Party folks are optimistic that the mid-term election in 2010 can curtail, and maybe even overturn, these hard-left policies brought on by the liberal Democrats.
Taking the country back can happen, but only if the right-of-center voters can be convinced of the benefits of the Republican Party, and then once the Republicans are in office that the GOP adheres to the desires of their base. Of course, a lot of that depends on the voter's willingness to hold the Republican's feet to the fire.
The GOP should not be rejected. Only those Republicans that stray from the principles of Ronald Reagan, and the U.S. Constitution, should be tossed in the soup with the rest of the establishment politicians and hard-left liberals. We must be active in the party, and win back the Republican Party, not abandon it. We need a unified party to defeat the Democrats. Otherwise, we are only following the intentions of the Democrat's strategy of divide and conquer. . . a technique that is nothing new:
-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
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