"We Need Your Help!"

So it's been a couple weeks since anything hacked me off enough to write about. Here's one: I am tired of being insulted by the people who are supposed to represent my views.

I gave a couple hundred bucks - once - to the Republican National Campaign Committee, and agreed to serve on their Business Advisory Council, thinking this might be an opportunity to offer up some observations or suggestions, me bein' a small business owner and all. Imagine my delight (can't you just?) when Chairman Tom Cole notified me that I'd been selected for the honor of being an "Honorary National Chairman - Texas" for all my contributions to the cause. At this point (after playing with the little wooden gavel they mailed me that had a solid brass plaque proclaiming my achievement), I started thinking, "Wait - have I actually made a substantive contribution other than my two c-notes? Hmmm...." Surprise of surprises, I then started receiving "personal" faxes from the selfsame Tom Cole, telling me how delighted he was, yadda yadda yadda, and (you guessed it) asking for more money. Fool me once, shame on you...I wasn't about to be fooled twice. Sent my polite declination (I kept the cool gavel, though), and have continued getting the "personal" faxes (and phone calls, and letters) telling how important I am to the conservative cause and seeking my input (and my money).

Look - in '94, we sent a Republican majority to Congress, the first majority in 40 years, and excitement and anticipation were high that ethics and integrity were making a comeback. Twelve years later, we lost the majority, partly because the people we sent to represent conservative, small government, anti-pork values took less than two years to become completely enslaved to the same system they ostensibly were elected to clean up.

So when my own party starts telling me how "we need your help to return conservative values to Congress", I get a real and increasing pain in the hind parts. That, and I start thinking, "These people really do think I'm a rube!" A twit. A tool, a pawn, a yawping yokel. Further alliterations fail me - I'm dangerously close to the fate of Screwtape when he got so apoplectic he turned into a large caterpillar.

I didn't stop being a conservative. The party of Lincoln, the party of conservatism turned from principles to profit and power above all else, betrayed and left rank-and-file conservatives holding the reins of the valiant Reagan steed. It's time to reject the perfumed princes. It's time for tea parties, not just in protest of the horrendous "stimulus" and bailout packages, but in protest of those who presume to speak for conservatism but in reality just want, to quote Mel Brooks, "their phoney-baloney jobs" back.

Blind Hogs and Acorns - Alinsky's Rules

"[T]he answer I gave the young radicals seemed to me the only realistic one: 'Do one of three things. One, go find a wailing wall and feel sorry for yourselves. Two, go psycho and start bombing—but this will only swing people to the right. Three, learn a lesson. Go home., organize, build power and at the next convention, you be the delegates.'" - Saul Alinsky, Rules For Radicals.

I can't believe I'm quoting the man whose ideas about what the United States of America should be are as diametrically opposed to my own as it is possible to be. Here's the problem: the conservative movement in this country has been co-opted by those we sent up to Washington to represent our conservative values. At best, with few exceptions, they have become a part of the system that the '94 conservative waxing of Democrat incumbents was supposed to rout: earmarking, pet projects, kowtowing to lobbyists and special interests, "big government". At worst, they have sold us out, more interested in power and prestige than in public service. I'm having trouble seeing the baby for the bath water.

Is Ayers right? Except for "left" in the above quote, his advice to the young idealists of the Eugene McCarthy/Bobby Kennedy crowd could apply very well to those of us who are pushed to the breaking point by the fecklessness and, yes, betrayal that is the majority of our current crop of Republicans: cry about it, get violent, or "organize, build power and" be the delegates. The first two are completely unhelpful and fly in the face of all that is America. The third just may be the only way to reclaim conservatism and the "servant" part of "public servant". Oh, and my personal opinion is that nobody should be allowed to be a member of Congress for more than eight years. When people have to go back home for good in a finite time frame, they may be less likely to "go native" in Washington.