For those of you who may doubt that the GOP needs to be replaced, I point singly to the actions – or rather, the inactions – of our house majority leader as an example of why.  You know what those inactions are.  It's why we have yet another "continuing resolution" and no budget.  If that’s not convincing enough, then consider the recent slamming of the eminently sensible and logical Michele Bachmann for suggesting that an investigation of Huma Abedin’s possible links to the Muslim Brotherhood be undertaken. Huma Abedin is Hillary Clinton’s aide and Deputy Chief of Staff in the United States Department of State. She is in close contact with very, very sensitive national security information at all times. So who was slamming Bachmann (and four other congressmen, but mostly Bachmann) for her letter suggesting the investigation? None other than GOP leadership icons Sen. John McCain, former Gov. of Mississippi as well as former Chairman of the Republican National Committee, Haley Barbour and Republican Speaker of the House, John Boehner. It wasn’t limited to those people, however, with numerous other GOP elected figures chiming in along with the pseudo-conservative, George Will. Finally, we need only to look at what Republicans have failed to do when it was within their power to do it. The instances are too numerous and too well-known to permit another airing here. You know what they are.

So, why not work within the Party, getting conservatives installed? Great thought, but as a practical matter it won’t work. The first thing to understand is that this leadership knows what it’s doing. These people are not inept and not stupid. The just do not share the vision that most Americans support. Any support they gain at the polls is a combination of the facts that they were seen as the lesser of two evils or that people actually believed that if elected, they would do what they said they would do. Why are they this way? Many reasons. But at this point “why” is not important. Only corrective action is important. Take the “debates” for example. We can elect as many conservatives as possible, but when the presidential debates are set up precisely to make any conservative appear to be an idiot, or worse, we’re going to lose, as we saw this year. The other part is that the State Committees all over the country are socially structured. It is these committees which decide, for example, who the RNC chairman will be. Ever see a conservative in that position? There’s just too much to overcome, using their structure, a structure which they are skilled at controlling. What’s needed is a structure which will allow reason and doctrine, instead of fashion and higher social standing, to prevail.

Why will it work? That’s a pretty valid question, especially where there’s already a Constitution Party out there which has been in place since 1991 in one form or another. They have many good things in their platform and, in my opinion, would be quite successful if not for their overt linkage of Christianity to their political platform. That’s a loser for today’s Americans who like their religion separate from their political party. It’s also counter-productive to alienate non-Christians who might entirely agree with your platform basics otherwise, but shun the party for fear of becoming some sort of underclass or second-class citizen. That is not to say that the embodiment of Judeo/Christian principles in a party’s platform, as they are embodied in our constitution and Declaration of Independence is a turn-off, for it is not. Those basic precepts are how most of us live our lives anyway.

There's huge demand for a breath of fresh air in our politics and a real dialogue with the constituents.  The new party will work because as you have talked to your friends, and they have talked to their friends, and their friends have spoken with other friends -- everyone's disgusted.  Everyone is looking for a leader in a party which represents their interests, but under the GOP, when such a person emerges, like Sarah Palin, they are squashed.  Then we see the dismal congressional approval ratings.  We don't need to do a study!  Americans are not happy with what congress and our federal government are doing. That is mostly GOP Americans, people with nowhere else to go, who don’t like what’s going on. Sure, some of those people are Democrats, but we know that most Americans are not Democrats. If we give them a party which will represent them, they will come.

Why wouldn’t they come join us? If you had a place to go now other than the GOP would you be there? I would! If you could join a party which pledged that its candidates, if elected, would fight to abolish the EPA and the Dept. of Energy, for example – or be expelled from the party if they did not carry out that mission, would that interest you? What if the party pledged that its candidates would fight to dismantle the current income tax establishment and replace it with a simple, one-page tax reporting document? What if that party bypassed the states’ formats and held primary elections for its candidates alone, refusing to allow any but registered members to vote for its candidates, and then went out and got the signatures necessary to place them on the ballot in the general election? That would prevent liberals from choosing our candidates in any way. Would that be of interest? Do you think we could attract some funding? And, speaking of funding, wouldn’t it be nice to donate to a party which actually means what it says and which intends to fight with everything it has to realize its agenda? Does that describe the GOP?

Ladies and Gentlemen, it's only a matter of will.  Do your elected representatives share your will?

There are so many, many areas of discussion where there would be huge public demand for our party’s fixes, that, if we formed a party with an internal structure which prevented any small group of narrow interests from controlling it, I believe that we would become the dominant party in short order.  That internal structure is the key:  Policy leadership must represent broad agreement and elected officials should be the instruments of that policy, not the authors.

Lastly, do you think that Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich or Herman Cain might like another place to go right now? What do you suppose their inner thoughts are about the Republican Party at this juncture? What about Rand Paul, Jim DeMint and … Sarah Palin? Is it possible that a party such as the one I’m describing (in very limited detail) would hold some appeal for them? Would those people admit that now? I doubt it, because that place doesn’t yet exist for them and they would be jeopardizing their present status. However, I think that properly done, we could cause an initial jump of a lot of high-profile political figures to our side and that that would create a landslide away from the GOP to our side. With the party thus formed, to use Obama’s terminology following the 2012 mid-term elections, I think we would give the Democrats a shellacking that would finish them politically as the socialist party they have become. Ditto their little brother, the “big government” GOP.

Jeff Dover

August, 2012