But politics is a fact of life. If the economy starts to recover, the Dems will bludgeon the GOP with talking points about how they opposed the stimulus that saved the universe and there’ll be consequences for that at the polls. It must be nice to live in fantasyland where everyone always votes on principle and pays no price for it whatsoever.

Sorry, Allah, but this argument is absolute bunk, and it serves as a perfect example of why conservatives/libertarians/Republicans are steadily losing ground politically and culturally. You and those like you still operate under the delusion that the GOP can somehow nimbly navigate its way through a culture whose institutions and information streams have been completely co-opted by Leftists who absolutely hate our guts…that we can somehow make these Faustian bargains with the Left and expect that we’re going to get some sort of credit for it.

Quick quiz: name one conservative, non-RINO Republican in the past 30 years whom you believe has received a minimally fair shake in the US news media — one who hasn’t been portrayed as an out-of-touch old codger, religious nut, bigot, or doofus. Just one.

Nuff said.

Let’s look at the four possible outcomes of GOP votes on this “stimulus” package.

1) The GOP votes for the stimulus and it succeeds.

Remember: the GOP’s primary raison d’être is less govt, less spending. What does a vote for this bill say? It says that the GOP is making a transparent calculation for votes at the expense of abandoning everything that it’s supposed to stand for. It also says “Hey, big govt works!” So if that’s the case, why not just continue to vote for Dems? At least they actually believe in what they’re doing. What’s the GOP’s excuse?

2) The GOP votes for the stimulus and it fails.

In that case, the public will rightly judge the GOP as a party that is bankrupt of principle. “Well, we didn’t really believe in this stimulus package, but we didn’t want to risk losing any more seats.” What a great campaign slogan! The public still knows that the vote was motivated more by a fear of Congressional losses than by any real desire to staunch the bleeding through govt intervention. So again: why vote for the imitation (GOP) when you can get the real deal (Dems) for the same price?

3) The GOP votes against the stimulus and it succeeds.

You’re absolutely right that this is going to hurt the GOP’s chances in 2010. But it’s mainly going to hurt their chances amongst people that already believe — to one degree or another — in big govt in the first place. Blacks are not going to vote for the GOP under any circumstances. Hispanics — contrary to popular opinion — vote for Democrats: in this last election, they simply reverted back to what they’d always done prior to 2006, giving Obama the same vote percentage as they gave Gore in 2000. And white Democrats aren’t going to start abandoning the Democratic party en masse until about 2020, when they look around them and no longer recognize — in any way, shape, or form — the country in which they live. But at least the GOP will be able to say that it stood by it’s principles. And the benefit of doing so doesn’t come overnight…it comes years down the road.

We all know that all of this out-of-control govt spending — coupled with the looming time bombs of Soc. Sec. and Medicaid/Medicare — is going to result in a fiscal disaster down the road. But unfortunately, 10% of the American public are Leftist true believers and 80% still get ALL of their information from institutions that are utterly dominated by the Left. But eventually, reality will intrude. When that happens, what position do you want to see the GOP in? As a principled party that has been warning about this coming disaster for over a decade, steadfastly refusing to feed the deficit beast that will destroy us? Or as a party of unprincipled cowards who were more interested in Congressional seats than they were in doing what they knew was right for the country?

3) The GOP votes against the stimulus and it fails.

Again, we’re not going to get any credit. The MSM is going to paint the failure as the fault of the GOP. And guess what? It’s going to work to a large degree…for now. But again, “now” isn’t what really matters. The long term health of the nation is what matters.

So you see, none of these scenarios is really going to give a big boost to the GOP. But this principled stand — coupled with another one here and another one there — will help to swing those centrist voters who went for Obama back to our side. Also, it begins to lay the foundation for a HUGE resurgence over the next two decades, as 1) we continue to build our media capabilities for bypassing the MSM to inform the American public and 2) the Left’s propaganda machine is unable to hide and blame-away the undeniable reality of the cultural and economic devastation their policies will have caused.

Vladimir Lenin said, “To rely upon conviction, devotion, and other excellent spiritual qualities; that is not to be taken seriously in politics.” We all know the end result of that kind of thinking. Is that where you would have us go?

rvastar on January 27, 2009 at 4:45 PM

The MSM won’t give them credit, but that doesn’t mean Republicans won’t get it from the voters. If the Republicans stand on principle (wow, did I just type those words?) and the stimulus fails (death … taxes … the failure of Keynesian stimulus), they will have a nuclear powered sledgehammer of a talking point … and the Democrats will bear full brunt for the failure.

Voters believed that high oil prices over the past few years were due to price gauging by US oil companies. Where did they get that idea?

Voters believe the current economic crisis is the result of Republican deregulation. Where did they get that idea?

Voters believe that something in Lil’ Lord Obama’s past qualifies him to be President. Where did they get that idea?

If this stimulus package passes without GOP support and fails, the Democrat’s Ministry of Disinformation — i.e. the MSM — will do what they always do: they go into overdrive blaming the GOP by saying that not enough was spent. They will screech about the GOP only wanting tax cuts for “their fatcat, corporate buddies” and other such nonsense. They will have Leftist economists hacks sitting on panels with other Leftist economist hacks and Leftist politicians decrying the GOPs “obstructionism” and “anti-American selfishness”. And they will relentlessly hammer the American public with that meme from now until the next election.

And the brain-dead American public will buy it. They will buy it because they’ve fully bought into the lie that govt is the answer to everything and that where there’s a failure of govt, the GOP is behind it.

The American public are not going to be cured of the Leftist rot that they’re infested with until real hardship hits – in the form of an attack somewhere that kills tens of thousands of people or in the form of another economic meltdown on the level of the Great Depression. And by letting the morally confused, ideologically blinded Left take control of our culture, one or both is an absolute certainty eventually.

rvastar on January 27, 2009 at 8:27 PM