Webloggin » That’s One Screwed Up Elephant

A recent caller to Rush Limbaugh captured my attention for being so frank and observant of the situation around us. The caller expressed strong regret for his role as one of many Republicans who thumbed their nose at the party in 2006. The obfuscation for the abandoning parties was in putting logic and principle second to naked idealism and a superiority complex. The caller acknowledged this in expressing what I warned people about last fall: abandoning the best of two clear choices in the election would not get you closer to what you want.

Just days before the 2006 elections, I said:

“If you lean towards Republicans but are convinced that the answer to your beefs lie with some political cartoon, consider what a Democrat Congress will push: anti-war, anti-religion, anti-marriage, anti-life agendas. We will be suffering through two years of showboating investigations while our leadership is trying to conduct a war with villains and deal with enemy states who thrive on the kind of politics that Democrats promote. We will have Harry Reid as majority leader in the Senate. Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House. ~~John Murtha as Majority Leader of the house~~. Charlie ‘I never met a tax-cut I liked’ Rengal chairing the Means and Ways Committee.”

So we have the Pelosi/Reid ~~Justice Department~~ Congress to deal with now. By and large, we’re not howling at the moon every night in angst over the election results. We take it on the chin and with a grain of salt. For us foot soldiers on the conservative/Republican side of things, we’ve taken it as an ideological lesson for the Republican Party. We’ve accepted it. Which is why Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid can get away with pushing the envelope of decency and character and we don’t go postal over it.

And Republicans should be held to a higher standard.

Which is why it’s time for David Vitter to swiftly step down his Senate seat. This isn’t because I care that he has infidelity problems or pays women for sex. My drive is based on what’s good for the party. While losing another Senate seat isn’t necessarily great for the party, is it really that troublesome?

The GOP needs to police itself and get rid of the problems. Starting with the absurd and the overt. Republican response to the Mark Foley scandal was swift and decisive. Even so, the Left’s response to the scandal included cries of “hypocrisy”…for a member of the ‘family values’ party hath fallen.

In that circumstance, Foley and the party leadership did the right thing in not dragging it out. Republicans have generally stepped down or policed itself in some manner when bad personal habits and corruption engulfs one of its own. But if Vitter doesn’t immediately resign or if Republican leadership refuses to show the same swift decisiveness in threatening to expel him, then Democrats will have more ammunition behind the moral hypocrisy accusations. Democrats/Left seem to almost honestly believe that the issue that put Bill Clinton in the hot seat was his extramarital personal life, so of course it’s easy to say that Republicans who do the same are hypocrites. Neither Vitter nor his staff, to the best of my knowledge, lied to a Grand Jury, made bribes, obstructed justice or swore to the American people that he wasn’t doing what he was doing. To his credit, he admitted it and apologized.

But really - does anyone care that he has found forgiveness from his wife? Or God for that matter? He may have made peace with God, but God isn’t a registered voter in the state of Louisiana and his wife doesn’t represent the future of the GOP. If this scandal had arisen from some distant, pre-public service time in Vitters life, it would be inconsequential to me. But as an elected official, he has to bear some responsibility in the direction the party goes.

I’ve said in the past that I’m glad that I’m with the party that has standards; that can identify right and wrong, good and evil; that promotes ‘family values’. I have yet for someone to explain to me how it is worse to have and encourage standards (even if some fail to meet them) than not have any standards at all, which seems to translate into ‘I can get away with more, face less criticism and feel better about it because my party doesn’t promote social and moral standards.” Well, here’s a cookie!

And yes, I’m aware that David Vitter is by no means the only person in Washington who cheats on a spouse or runs with whores. But thus far, he’s one of a small club who actually are on public record for doing so. That’s why his remaining in the party will only feed to the disillusionment of it’s base and the aggressiveness of it’s opponents.

Republicans were at their best, as candidates and politicians, when they were strong, direct and principled. That seems lost on a party that, while holding their own on Congressional defense, is currently doing nothing to rally people to their support in the coming election season. There is plenty to rally people around. Congress approval ratings are at a dismal 14%. While I know it’s fashionable to believe that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid should take credit for Congressional successes while blaming the problems in Congress on everyone else, Republicans should see an opportunity in trying to win over some of the 86% who have little to no faith in Congress.

Republican voters and conservatives want an alternative to Democratic waffling and eulogizing over the Iraq War. Republicans who pull this pandering crap on us over fear of losing their seats deserve the same kind of scorn and contempt that I’ve given Democrats over the past few years. And as I’ve said before, if Republicans give the voters a choice between Democrats and Democrat-lite, voters will elect the real thing most of the time.

For instance, the perception of what is happening in Iraq is and has been media manipulated. Add to that the emboldened and unified anti-war front among Democrats and their ability to feed sound bites into the American conscience…and where are Republicans? Flopping around in the very winds that slapped the Democrats around throughout the first part of the decade. Senators Lugar and Warner are only adding to the problem and the perception of a mixed-up, muddled principle-less party that crumbles while Democrats work to squeeze the last drops of life out of our posture in the war against Islamic terrorists.

It’s up to Republicans to save this war and they have to start by climbing out of the shadows, opening their mouths, supporting the president and General Petraeus with enthusiasm and selling this fight to the American people again. Democrats have worked feverishly to undermine this war since Saddam’s statue fell and they have convinced a significant majority of Americans that the war can be abandoned without consequence and that it should be. There is no reason that, starting now, the Republicans can’t start a successful campaign to reinvest the American mindset into this war, and have positive results for themselves by next November. Petraeus is just weeks into his new strategy, reports are coming out that show some signs of effectiveness and this is a golden opportunity for Republicans to rally the people behind the effort.

If you want to save your party, start by cleaning house and saving the war. Otherwise, we might as well accept our Democratic masters.

[Discuss this article with Otto over at the Otto Show...]