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GOP or GIP?

Dr. Ellis Washington | July 15, 2009 | 0 Comments

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

~ Sir Edmund Burke

The Republican Party used to be called the “GOP” – Grand Old Party. Implicit in that name is the storied history of being the “Party of Abraham Lincoln” – the party that ended slavery, instilled liberty, freedom, God, morality and a fidelity to the Constitution. In the Age of Obama, all of that is gone.

In an earlier article, I referred to the GOP as the GIP – the “Grand Irrelevant Party.” Why? Since Ronald Reagan left office the Republicans for the past 20 years have been operating from a position of weakness, ineptitude and fear; where polls, positivism, political posturing and platitudes mean more to these craven pols than God, principle, constitutionalism and Veritas (truth).

When I read a recent link I saw on the DrudgeReport.com, “Palin to stump for conservative Democrats?” I almost fell into despair: Why are Republicans campaigning for Democrats while Obama is campaigning for Democrats? Who’s standing up for conservatives? Where’s Edmund Burke? Where’s Lincoln? Where’s Churchill? Where’s Reagan? We need a real leader of the conservative movement to reform and organize the GOP and craft a coherent message of hope for a brighter future during these Orwellian times of despair and angst.

I realize that the Republicans lost the presidency and are in the minority in both Houses of Congress as well as on all of the influential committees; nevertheless, why on the first day of the confirmation hearings did that Quisling, Sen. Lindsay Graham, proudly exclaims that “absent a complete meltdown” Judge Sonia Sotomayor will be confirmed to the Supreme Court? Remember the confirmation hearings of Kennedy, Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer? The GOP seems most comfortable grabbing the ole ankles and allowing the president to ramrod yet another radical liberal activist judge to the Supreme Court without even a pretense of a fight.

GOP or GIP?

Obama’s socialist power grabs and the overreaching of liberal Democrats installing FDR’s New Deal, Part II have provided the GOP with a golden opportunity to regain the Congress in the 2010 elections, but instead of solidifying their powerbase and streamlining their platform to distinguish themselves from President Obama, what is the GOP doing? They are mired in dumb ethics scandals. The most notable being Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina and his mistress from Argentina that he is apparently still in love with. What about Sen. John Ensign of Nevada who has spent almost $100,000 in bribes and hush money to his mistress and her husband, both former members of his staff?

Then there is the irrepressible Sarah Palin, who outdid the two GOP politicians cited above in shock value. On the day before America’s 233rd birthday, Palin dropped a bombshell announcement that she would resign before completing her first term as governor of Alaska effective July 31, to “do other things” and “to help conservatives win.” I’m just glad Ronald Reagan isn’t around to see the party he spent so much of his life almost singlehandedly reforming descend into the flames of self-immolation.

GOP or GIP?

Where do we go from here? If economic projections and unemployment rates remain depressed a year from now, I think the GOP will be poised to retake both houses of Congress, rendering Obama a lame duck president into the 2012 election and almost assuring that a Republican will become the nation’s next leader. That’s why Obama is so desperately trying to pass his FDR welfare state legislation before the August recess.

Here’s what the GOP must do:

Like Reagan did 30 years ago when he ran against the bumbling socialist Jimmy Carter, get three or four policy platforms on economics, domestic policy, foreign policy and health care, and get behind a person who can best articulate this focused vision.

We need candidates not intimidated by Obama’s radical racialism. Any GOP candidate will be relentlessly demonized as racist, sexist, homophobic Nazi. Here is the GOP platform in a statement: Obama is a certified socialist with fascist tendencies. The welfare State he erected has destroyed our civil liberties and has made us all slaves of the federal government. The Democrats have ruined this country economically and made America a joke internationally. If elected, I vow to return America back to the Constitution.

Any politician running on the GOP ticket that doesn’t have the guts to spend 15 minutes in the crucible of “The Savage Nation” radio show in my opinion cannot and should not represent my country, because I would consider them cowards and duplicitous and therefore untrustworthy when it comes to zealously defending America’s vested domestic and foreign interests.

We need GOP candidates that can speak in the authentic voice of the American people –freedom, liberty, Natural Law, constitutionalism, limited government, anti-socialism, anti-welfare and an America-first foreign and domestic policy.

In conclusion, whether the GOP wins in 2010 and 2012, or the GIP loses in 2010 and 2012 will be a simple matter of determining which candidates can stand flat-footed without a teleprompter, without a deer-in-the-headlights look, without saying “uuuhhh,” “aaahhh” or “you know,” without vacuous rhetoric of bipartisanship or “my friends across the aisle.” We don’t need another Benedict Arnold, another Neville Chamberlain, another “Maverick”; no more Fords, McCains, Bushs or Upper Eastside, country club Republicans. This is war! Therefore, we need a wartime consigliore in the GOP to stop Obama’s ruination of America, not an empty suit or a ventriloquist doll with lipstick, a tight skirt and a convoluted sports metaphor to explain simple questions. Enough is enough!

The great English writer and Christian apologist C.S. Lewis wrote: All that is not eternal is eternally forgotten. My paraphrase of Lewis is this: “All that is not eternal is eternally irrelevant.” Republicans, what will you be: the GOP, the Grand Old Party, or the GIP, the Grand Irrelevant Party? If you continue to forsake the eternal truths America was founded upon, you will continue to be the Grand Irrelevant Party with the tombstone inscription of your Whig Party predecessor … R.I.P.

© Ellis Washington

Ellis Washington, currently a professor of law and political science at Savannah State University, former editor at the Michigan Law Review and law clerk at The Rutherford Institute, is a graduate of John Marshall Law School and a lecturer and freelance writer on constitutional law, legal history, political philosophy and critical race theory. He has written over a dozen law review articles and several books, including “The Inseparability of Law and Morality: The Constitution, Natural Law and the Rule of Law” (2002). See his law review article “Reply to Judge Richard Posner.” Washington’s latest book is “The Nuremberg Trials: Last Tragedy of the Holocaust.”