Here I Stand… (UPDATE: Rush asks, “Why should we shut up?”)

Dan Riehl says: Stop being sissy cry babies, Fred Thompson supporters!

Or, in his own words,

Tell me, what would do the most damage to conservatism, Fred dropping out, or Hillary “getting in?”

If you answer that question honestly, you might come to understand why it’s past time to move on. Come on, Fredheads, conservatism needs you. It’s time to get a life.

I say, respectfully: Bite me.

Hillary Clinton can’t damage conservatism, not if she were President for twenty years. The only ones who can do that are conservatives who sell off their principles like bowls of pottage.

Conservatism does in fact need us, because it’s not really conservatism without principled conservatives, now is it? See, conservatives who have backed Thompson haven’t moved off of the bulls-eye. I’m still exactly where my principles have led me. I didn’t walk over to the amnesty-embracing, enforcement scorning, free speech-hating, elitist John McCain. I didn’t cuddle up to Mitt Romney, whose conservatism resembled a G.I. Joe action accessory kit where he can snap on and off whatever principles suit him based on the election he’s in. I didn’t join the Huckabee tent meeting where their Constitution is “living” and their social gospel is as putrid as that of Hillary Clinton, or FDR, or Woodrow Wilson. I didn’t buy Rudy Giuliani when he pinky-promised, “Hey, trust me. I’ll appoint those judges that do whatever that thing is you want”.

More after the jump.

I didn’t play the “realism” game where I triangulate every candidate’s position in order to figure out which one stood the best chance of beating the Democrat favorite of the month in November. I know enough about sports to know that no team puts together a firm plan for a game that’s nine months down the road against an opponent they only think they’ll face. The New England Patriots didn’t sit down in August and concoct a game plan to beat the New York Giants in the Super Bowl. It would have been silly of them. Instead, they did what competitors have always done. They put together a plan that took the best advantage of their strengths and covered their weaknesses then they went out with the confidence that they could beat any team in the league with that plan. Doing anything else would have been esceedingly foolish.

Only in politics do we sit down and concoct a different strategy depending on who will oppose our favorite. That’s why we end up with lukewarm and distasteful candidates. It’s really hard to get behind someone whose positions and approaches shift with every new opinion poll. At some point you have to start shedding principles because shifty politics and anchored principles are incompatible.

No, I stood fast on the stuff that has won elections every single time it’s been the strong conssitent platform of a Presidential candidate. I stuck by the only person in the race who didn’t just use the occasional conservative principle like a Wonder Woman wristband to deflect the latest well-earned criticism for some harebrained liberal ploy they pulled. I stuck with the guy who campaigned exactly the way that we have been begging for candidates to campaign for the past twenty years: calmly, without theatrics, leading with issues and substance, making direct connections with the voters by meeting them face to face, talking right to us and not using the MSM as a free press-release rebroadcasting service. I stuck with the guy who is, on every point, the strongest and most reliable conservative candidate we’ve seen in a couple of decades.

Plenty of these folks want a conservatism like existed when Ronald Reagan was President. Well, I’ll tell you, Ronald Reagan didn’t become President by being the most “electable”. He didn’t win on a platform of “change” even though it was certainly an appropriate theme. He won by leading with his unwavering devotion to freedom, the greatness of America, the wonder of being our friend, the horrible consequences of being our enemy, and the reverence to a tradition that is unique in the history of the world. In short, he won because he was a conservative who was not ashamed to be a conservative and for no other reason. Tell me who in the Republican field fits that description. If you can’t come up with a name in a hot second, it’s because you’re trying to equivocate your way into an answer or you’re figuring out how to not say Fred Thompson’s name. But I’ll help you.

So I don’t feel inclined to move from where I am. My principles are here. They will remain here. I will not move them anymore. I’ve done that for eight years and I’m sick and tired of it. I won’t play the fools’ game that’s given us pathetic candidates, a rebellious State Department and CIA, spending the likes of which Franklin Roosevelt would have approved, and a government that is into my business more now than it was eight years ago. So, to Dan Riehl and those who say I should come to them, I say what is attributed to Martin Luther as he stood before the Diet of Worms and was told, basically, to compromise his convictions and principles, “Hier stehe ich, ich kann nicht anders, Gott helfe mir. Amen!”

(via Hot Air Headlines)

UPDATE: Rush Limbaugh (via Michelle Malkin) is doing some standing of his own and isn’t afraid to bring Ronald Reagan back into the discussion either.

Let me give you a quote, ladies and gentlemen, from the great Ronaldus Magnus, especially since the Drive-Bys and even some pundits on our side continue to hate hearing references to Reagan. “A political party cannot be all things to all people. It must represent certain fundamental beliefs which must not be compromised to political expediency or simply to swell its numbers.” Let me translate. It must represent certain fundamental beliefs which must not be compromised to political expediency or simply doing anything to win. And that, I fear, is what’s happening to the Republican Party. Bring in anybody you think can beat Hillary. That’s really what this boils down to.

No related posts.

Category: The 2008 Horse Race