A Conservative Road Map To Winning In Future Elections (Part 2)


The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) just announced that if we lower taxes on all taxpayers making $200,000 a year or less, like the president wants, it will grow GDP by 1.25%. The CBO went on to say, if we lower taxes on everyone (including the rich) it will grow GDP by 1.50% a year. Liberals (Chris Matthews, for one) often claim tax cuts do not generate revenue, but the single highest revenue-generating year the federal government experienced was 2007, under the Bush tax cuts.

With that piece of thought food, let us contniue our road map for winning back our country's future. For all you Republicans and Libertarians who are ready to throw up your hands and give up, you will do well to remember one thing. Eight years ago, it was the Democrats who were in the dumps. Republicans had solid control of Congress from 1994 to 2007, and they held the presidency from 2001 to 2009.

What were the Democrats doing in those years? Were they feeling powerless and sorry for themselves? No. On the contrary, they came together (instead of throwing each other under the bus) and began making their ground game. Did they moderate their views in order to win? Not at all.

Meanwhile, Republicans were becoming complacent. They assumed the electorate was on their side because of their past successes. They assumed the facts, the debates, and the logic of their policies would carry the day, without mounting a serious ground game. Their 2008 presidential candidate, John McCain, embodied this attitude. He compaigned on little else besides his own record of military and public service. But voters are not interested in rewarding public figures for their life accomplishments. Voters are interested in what elected officials will do for them. McCain was soundly defeated by Barack Obama.

This year, Mitt Romney ran a classy campaign and presented himself as a capable aspirant for the presidency, but time was against him and he suffered from a conservative movement that sat back and assumed Obama would defeat himself. The facts of Obama's amateurish, incompetent, narcissistic, hypocritical, and unpatriotic leadership were indeed visible for all who wanted went out of their way to discover them.

The only problem was, CNN, NBC, ABC, and others covered-up, made excuses for, and ignored the inconvenient truths of the Obama catastrophe. At this late stage, how many people know about the Benghazi cover-up that the media and the president have been engaged in for nearly two months - in the full blaze of the presidential campaigns? Not many. Several of my closest friends are hazy on the details of it.

The reality is, only Fox News gave adequate coverage of this most shameful scandal in presidential history. Benghazi-gate makes Watergate look like a Boy Scout event. Nobody died in Watergate. Nobody died in the Valerie Plame scandal. But the media obsessed over those shenanigans because Republican administrations were responsible for them! In Benghazi-gate, four Americans were butchered by terrorists in cold blood after they were refused help after three, desperate pleas. One of them, Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods, ignored stand-down orders and saved thirty lives before dying like a hero, for his country!

Instead of telling the American people the truth about Bengazi, President Obama, Secratary of State Clinton, and UN Secretary Rice spent weeks blaming an American-made youtube video for this calamity and have now made a political prisoner of its maker. How is that for upholding the rule of law? How is that for upholding Constitutional liberties? How is that for democracy? It's more like thugogracy.

The Romney campaign was cowed into silence about this by the media. As their poll numbers grew, they chose to play it safe and run on positive messages. Was this a mistake? Who knows.

Romney ran on fundraisers from wealthy donars and campaign stops in key cities, but where was the get-out-the-vote drives? All along, the Democrats were busing people to the poll stations. They were inserting their advertisements in the magaizines, newsletters, and television channels of their constituencies. They were barnstorming the college campuses.

Where were the grassroots conservatives during all this? For crying out loud, where was the Tea Party? It melted away from the scene after the (successful) 2010 midterm elections, and let Occupy-Wall Street step into the vaccum, the following summer. Where were the evangelicals? Romney only won 73% of them. We now know that 3 million (2008) McCain voters stayed home and denied Romney crucial votes that could have come close to defeating Obama. Romney was a fine candidate, but one man does not make a campaign succeed. If conservatives want to win, they must ditch an outdated and wimpy playbook, and build a permanent ground game. My next post will focus on what this ground game ought to look like.

Jason A.