Young Republicans, a dying breed throughout the United States, are desperately trying to avoid extinction according to a story by ABC News:
"I think young people could play a very central role in creating a more moderate and more pragmatic Republican notion of conservatism that is about change, but about change that is more consistent with traditional Republican principles," says Professor Michael Delli Carpini, an expert on generational differences in politics at the University of Pennsylvania. [emphasis mine]
There are two problems with this thesis: first, the establishment of the Republican Party completely rejects the notion of a more "moderate" platform and second, change is entirely antithetical to conservatism because by its very nature and definition, it rejects change unless that change is backwards to revert to some mythical golden age which doesn't actually exist. The party establishment has already begun demanding a rightward shift and entirely rejects those who would moderate the party in order to win elections. Here in Minnesota, the Republican Party has gone so far as to target for defeat those that do not tow the party line.
It will be a tall task for young Republicans to rebuild the party into something acceptable for large portions of their age demographic. The ideologues that currently run the party are not going to give up control without a fight and will take the entire party down with them if they don't get what they want.
It will be a tall task for young Republicans to rebuild the party into something acceptable for large portions of their age demographic. The ideologues that currently run the party are not going to give up control without a fight and will take the entire party down with them if they don't get what they want.
2 responses to "A More Moderate Pragmatic Conservatism..."
Unlike the union people who offered the Sixth District Elwyn Tinklenberg as a DFL choice, the Republicans are intransigent and dogmatic, and will not give up entrenched power to people seeking a change from business as usual. A party of cronyism over principle. Willing to take the entire party down with them.
Forget "conservatism," please. It has been Godless and therefore irrelevant. Secular conservatism will not defeat secular liberalism because to God both are two atheistic peas-in-a-pod and thus predestined to failure. As Stonewall Jackson's Chief of Staff R.L. Dabney said of such a humanistic belief more than 100 years ago:
"[Secular conservatism] is a party which never conserves anything. Its history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is today .one of the accepted principles of conservatism; it is now conservative only in affecting to resist the next innovation, which will tomorrow be forced upon its timidity and will be succeeded by some third revolution; to be denounced and then adopted in its turn. American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader. This pretended salt bath utterly lost its savor: wherewith shall it be salted? Its impotency is not hard, indeed, to explain. It .is worthless because it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of sturdy principle. It intends to risk nothing serious for the sake of the truth."
Our country is collapsing because we have turned our back on God (Psalm 9:17) and refused to kiss His Son (Psalm 2).
John Lofton, Editor, TheAmericanView.com
Recovering Republican
JLof@aol.com