GOP and Tea Party Need to End the Fight
While everyone knows there’s a left and further-left split in the U.S. Democratic party, less known is the present split in the Republican party.
Right now it’s the Tea Party movement that gives heartburn to the party establishment – conservative evangelicals and right-to-lifers versus moderate conservatives who want to tap into mainstream independents.
The split can roughly be personified in ultra-conservative Congressman J.D. Hayworth challenging the more moderate John McCain to be Senator from Arizona.
Republicans need both Tea Party and establishment Republicans if they hope to defeat the Democrats in 2012, because Democrats are more pragmatic and join forces to vote for their candidate - unless, of course, Barack Obama continues his Presidency in his second and third years as he has in his first year in office: Practically ever policy verging on disaster, thanks to a wounded economy.
To me, McCain is close to being an ideal conservative. He is bipartisan on issues he believes in, he can resist party doctrine, he has the courage to stand alone on unpopular issues he thinks are right – witness his support of the “surge” in the Iraq war that most Republicans thought was hopeless.
The core issue that unites all conservatives, be they Democrats, Republicans or non-party voters, is national security and defense. It’s the same in Canada. Conservative Liberal party members and conservative-Conservative party members may differ on a variety of domestic and policy issues, but they are in harmony when it comes to security and the military. And that’s how it should be. (Canadian socialists like neither security nor defence, which is one of several reasons why their politicians will never be in tune with the people).
I suspect those who know me (or think they know me) would label me conservative. That label is probably because in the days when the Soviet Union was the world’s greatest menace, I was adamantly anti-communist. I felt then, as I feel now, that security and defense are more vital to the country than, say, abortion issues, same-sex marriages, big or small governments, politicians giving themselves obscene perks that are denied the rest of us, and so on. I have no strong feelings about abortion or gay marriage.
All domestic issues fade to irrelevancy if national security and defense are not maintained. Like it or not, terrorism is the greatest threat facing the civilized world since Hitler and Sovietism – enhanced by Western lethargy, complacency and wishful thinking.
It’s mostly in the last decade that Canada has spruced up its military and became, once again, a small but effective fighting force. As a result we are taken more seriously on the international stage than we were when we concentrated only on peacekeeping.
The U.S. and Canada lag in security – reluctant to recognize militant Islam as the threat that many moderate Muslims see. It’s not Islam per se that’s a threat, but Jihadists.
Both the U.S. and Canada pretend they don’t profile passengers at airports and treat everyone with the same indignity - when they know exactly which passengers are most likely to be suicide bombers. It’ll take another 9/11 to waken our countries, and then we may adopt the Israeli approach to security.
Meanwhile, one hopes the Republicans will agree on a leader who represents core values of security and defense, and compromises on less important issues.