BY CHRISTOPHER ADAMO – With this week’s Republican debate having gained a major position in the media spotlight and actually a delay in Barack Obama’s over-hyped “Jobs” (read: Deficit spending and pork) speech, it is inarguable that the 2012 presidential campaign season is in full swing. And though the public is usually loath to once again face all of the pandering, self-absorption, and half-truths of modern campaigning, this election cycle is one that could not come soon enough.
As America watches in horror, its socio-economic foundation is being systematically undermined and dismantled. The very concept of a free market is being forcibly mutated into the nightmarish image of European socialism, with all of its overbearing bureaucracies, crushing deficits, and impending financial calamities. The situation must be reversed, and soon, if the nation is to have any hope of eventual restoration.
Amid such circumstances, the defeat of Barack Obama next fall would seem to be an imminent certainty. And in a sense, it may well be. It is hardly an overstatement that, even at this early date, the 2012 presidential race is already the Republicans’ to win or lose. Unfortunately, given the past track record of GOP fumbling at critical junctures, in and of itself, the current state of affairs offers no guarantee that the Republicans might not obliterate their own chances through ineptitude, cowardice, and a general inconsistency of guiding principle.
To that end, an ongoing movement is once again underway that could ultimately deliver a liberal triumph where the best efforts of Obama, Reid, Pelosi, and the whole liberal Democrat cabal would most certainly fail. That this movement emanates from the innermost circles of the Republican National Committee is, without a doubt, the most abominable aspect of the entire situation. Since it is merely the same old “strategy” of centrism with a little new window dressing, conservatives should be easily able to recognize it and reject it outright. Yet it is not enough to merely be wary of it. The temptation to succumb to it on the basis that it might somehow enhance the possibility of defeating Obama is more seductive now than ever before. And that is the primary reason to shine the light of truth on it whenever the political “experts” attempt to extol it in its latest incarnation.
Once again, the two major factions comprising this Trojan Elephant are the squishy “moderates” who allow their positions on the issues to be defined by wherever they are convinced the “safe” center can be found, along with the RINO Republicans who secretly venerate the liberal agenda but believe they can do more to advance it by claiming the GOP mantle. The single mote of “common ground” shared by these to groups is their abhorrence for true conservatism.
In the past, the key issues they sought to expunge from the Republican philosophy were the right to life for the unborn and the radical homosexual agenda, particularly same-sex “marriage.” Despite the profound motivating and rallying effect that these issues have on grassroots Americans, and all of the ongoing proof that they constitute a net positive at the ballot box, “experts” from inside the Beltway incessantly assure us that their political ramifications are incontrovertibly harmful.
So, once again, in an election season in which such matters can serve to sharply define the contrast between the morally bankrupt left and the traditional morality of the right, conservative America is being told to abandon them until some mythical “later date” when it will suddenly and inexplicably become expedient to address them.
Yet the picture gets worse still. Along with these items, the whole subject of illegal immigration is similarly being shuffled off to the sidelines. So fearful are the “establishment Republicans” of confronting anything deemed “controversial” that they are willing to find reason to sit the fence on this issue as well. Apparently, outside of the admittedly abysmal economic straits in which the nation currently finds itself, the whole gamut of topics that have historically divided the right from the left are now to be tabled until sometime after 2012.
The underlying theory is this: If a majority of Americans can agree to the premise that the economy is in dire straits and pull the appropriate levers at the ballot box on that basis alone, then the nation’s governance will surely shift decidedly right as a result, and those problems will certainly be addressed in a worthy manner at that point. But, once again, history and reality must be ignored in order for this fanciful construction of the upcoming election cycle to bear any pretext of credibility.
First of all, the economic condition of this nation is, and always has been, a direct result of the morals and ethics undergirding it. When the nation aspired to goodness and greatness, its economic engine hummed. The recent downturn can be tied directly to the abandonment of those principles and their substitution by the twisted precepts of Marxism, the grim reality behind the euphemism of “social justice,” and the whole concept of government confiscating and redistributing private property.
From the very beginning American government, even with all of its flaws, was specifically empowered to protect and secure the “life, liberty, and property” of the individual who, on his own, was otherwise powerless to do so. But the perverse notion eventually became acceptable that government could arbitrarily abdicate its role in protecting human “life” among the helpless, as was the true implication of “Roe vs. Wade.” Should anybody then be surprised that respect for individual liberty and private property could just as easily be trivialized and trampled in its wake?
More significantly, those candidates who would abandon any public discourse on these defining moral and social issues, even under the auspices of sound and necessary political strategy, are telegraphing their willingness to cut and run from controversy in general. At a time when the nation needs leaders who will recognize and honestly assess the nation’s looming problems and, more importantly, brave the inevitable firestorm of liberal opposition in order to effectively deal with those problems, retreating to the contrived security of the politically “safe” ground will only ensure that nothing of importance ever gets fixed. And that is a possibility that the nation can no longer afford.
It is true that no conservative candidate can or should construct an entire campaign on any single issue, even including abortion, traditional marriage, or restoring the integrity of the nation’s borders. But the candidate who claims that the country can be restored in its greatness without properly contending with these issues, or who seeks to find a short cut towards doing so while quietly ignoring them, is someone who is neither intellectually honest nor sufficiently ethically grounded to be trusted with the reins of leadership in this dangerous time.