The Lamentable Republican Civil War

I always appreciate Thomas Sowell's writing. I'm not so sure I agree with him about Republicans' fighting amongst themselves being a bad thing. It seems to me that conservatives either need to take control of the party or form another party that is able to articulate conservative principles to groups beyond the traditional constituency of the Republicans. Click on the title to read the entire article from the Philadelphia Bulletin!

The Lamentable Republican Civil War

By Thomas Sowell, For The Bulletin
Thursday, March 19, 2009

As if it is not enough that they have been decimated by the Democrats in the past couple of elections, the Republican survivors are now turning their guns on each other.

At the heart of these internal battles have been attacks on Rush Limbaugh by Republicans who imagine themselves to be so much more sophisticated because they are so much more in step with the political fashions of the time.

New Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele’s cheap shot at Rush’s program as “ugly” set off the latest round of in-fighting. That is the kind of thing that is usually said by liberals who have never listened to the program.

Regular listeners to the Rush Limbaugh program or subscribers to the Limbaugh newsletter know that both contain far more factual information and in-depth analysis than in the programs or writings of pundits with more of a ponderous tone or intellectual airs.

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There is certainly a lot to be said for inviting wider segments of the population to join you, by explaining how your principles benefit the country in general, and those segments in particular. But that is fundamentally different from abandoning your principles in hopes of attracting new votes with opportunism.

No segment of the population has lost more by the agendas of the liberal constituencies of the Democratic Party than the black population.

The teachers’ unions, environmental fanatics and the ACLU are just some of the groups to whose interests blacks have been sacrificed wholesale. Lousy education and high crime rates in the ghettos, and unaffordable housing elsewhere with building restrictions, are devastating prices to pay for liberalism.

Yet the Republicans have never articulated that argument, and their opportunism in trying to get black votes by becoming imitation Democrats has failed miserably for decades on end.

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It seems to me that the recent election proved that being "Democrat Lite" has failed the Republicans miserably. It is time to encourage those Republicans who think we need to be more like the Democrats to gain votes to just go ahead and become Democrats. Let the Republican party stand for conservative ideals and articulate them clearly instead of being embarrassed by those who do.

---Katie