Every election cycle millions of reliable Republican voters die and even more millions of Democrat voters get the vote. Messaging and pandering won’t fix the problem. Reforming the party might.
Libertarian reforms offer the best hope, because all the other conservative factions – evangelicals, Second Amendment, home schoolers, fiscal – have hit their high-water marks. We saw that in 2012. Liberty, however, sells with the kids. Or it might, if Republicans would try it.
But I’m losing hope fast.
In the past week, Catherine Hanaway played Lucy to Ed Martin’s Charlie Brown by snatching away the RNC Rules Committee as Ed was about to put it through uprights.
Ed’s a big boy and he’ll continue to work for a stronger, larger Republican Party. But Hanaway’s back-stabbing, bait-and-switch, backroom politics damages the party with its most important block: young libertarian voters.
The GOP Screws the Ron Paul People Every Chance It Gets #
Back in the early days of the Tea Party movement, our ranks were swelled by the Ron Paul folks. Not all would vote Republican, but groups like Campaign for Liberty and Liberty Restoration Project gave us energy, organization, and idea—all qualities lacking in the Republican Party since 1994.
While the libertarians remained wary of the GOP hacks like Hanaway, a new breed of Republican candidates, like Ed Martin, kept many in the fold.
Ed’s place on the reviled Republican Rules Committee was a big win for the libertarians, and a shot in the arm to the GOP’s future. It was the libertarian wing, after all, that Beshore and his Rules Committee cronies tried to undermine at the 2012 RNC convention.
Catherine Hanaway and Lance Beshore Prove The Cynics Right #
Republicans like Hanaway and Beshore make it hard for me to ask young voters to have faith that the GOP will make things better. As Erick Erickson pointed out:
The fact is too many conservative groups and Republicans in Congress think the problem in Washington is Democrats in charge of government and not government itself.
I know that Republican insiders don’t like to hear it, but someone has to tell them: you are ruining this country. Stop blaming the Democrats and the press. Stop blaming tea party “whackos.” Look in the mirror and see what we see.
Until you stop trading our futures for your personal political ambitions, we don’t have your backs. We’ll stand by our champions like Ed, instead. And we’ll help him pick up the pieces when you’re done smashing our country to bits.