Charlie Brown Conservatives and a Lucy GOP
In the famous Charles Schulz comic strip, Peanuts, Charlie Brown is enticed every year by Lucy to placekick a football that she volunteers to hold for him. Charlie runs down the field toward his beguiling friend, who is holding the football on the ground, and swings his leg in a huge arching kick. But at the last moment Lucy jerks the football away and Charlie flies through the air to land on his back with a loud thump and the scream of “Aaugh!” Every year, Lucy convinces Charlie to try another kick, promising not to pull the football away like she did last time. And every year, Charlie runs down the field and Lucy jerks the football away at the last moment with Charlie falling on his famous fanny.
Why does Charlie continue to fall for Lucy’s con? Because Charlie is a good-natured chap, but gullible about human nature. This priceless scene, which played out every year from the 1950s to 2000 in newspapers all over the world, is metaphor for that exasperating trait of large amounts of humans to fall for the beguiling promises of their fellowmen who seek something from them. Much of history is made — from the daily mundane events of our personal lives to the grand, epochal affairs of nations — because of this naïve trust that so many humans have in the professed benevolence of persuasive fellow humans who wish to enlist their support for a cause, a vote, a job, a war, a venture, a romance, etc. The world is full of guile because it is full of fools. Thus life for us as individuals and societies keeps running off the road into messy ditches of disaster.
America is no stranger to the ditches along with the fools who persist in driving us there; and the world of politics is an excellent arena to demonstrate this fact. For over four decades now from 1968 to 2010, the Republican Party hierarchy has been playing the role of Lucy to Charlie Brown conservatives. Every election year GOP politicians promise to millions of traditional conservatives among the party that if they will donate their money, time and votes to elect them, they as Republicans will vigorously challenge the “horrid Democrats” who are obtusely driving America into ditches of disaster. But year after year, just like conniving Lucy, the Republicans we send to Washington go back on their promises and proceed to do as the Democrats do.
Where the Right Has Gone Wrong
Do conservatives show any signs of ever learning from this? Unfortunately, no. They continue to do what Charlie Brown always did. They buy into Lucy’s con. They agree to cooperate with Republican beguilers giving them valuable money, time and votes. This is happening once again as we head for 2012. The Charlie Brown conservatives are insisting that we must cooperate with the Lucy Republicans of Washington. As if the likes of Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, and Sarah Palin are suddenly going to become Jeffersonians and start fighting for strictly limited government. That will happen when mules qualify to run in the Kentucky Derby.
As Patrick Buchanan tells us in his book, Where the Right Went Wrong, “Robert Taft Republicanism is dead… There is no conservative party in Washington. There is a Democratic Party of tax-and-spend, and a Republican Party of guns and butter and tax cuts, too. Washington is all accelerator, the brakes are gone.”
“Republicans believe they have found the Rosetta Stone of American politics, the key to the permanent retention of power: Cut taxes consistently, and don’t let Democrats outspend you. As Dick Cheney told a stunned Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, ‘Deficits don’t matter.’”
“Lobbying groups, manned by conservative activists, have now been set up in Washington to steer clients to the right GOP congressman to get their pet projects funded by taxpayers…. Everybody gets his or her slice of pork, so long as everyone votes for everyone else’s slice.”
“What is the difference” asks Buchanan, “between the compassionate conservatism of George W. Bush and the Great Society liberalism of Lyndon Johnson?”
There is no difference whatsoever. Why is this horrendous profligacy taking place? Because the Democrats and Republicans have a monopoly over the ideas that feed the populace at election time. Statist-collectivist ideology dominates the electoral process and the TV Presidential Debates through the bogus two-party system. Both parties work for the relentless expansion of government to handle all problems. Both parties enshrine egalitarianism. Both utilize Keynesian economics. Both practice wealth redistribution. Both legislate Nanny State cradle-to-grave security. Both espouse open borders. Both tolerate the subordination of American sovereignty to the goal of one-world government. This has been going on for over 40 years ever since Richard Nixon dumped the Goldwater revolution into the Potomac and showed how to win power by becoming Democratic clones.
In other words, the Lucy Republicans have been jerking the football away from the Charlie Brown conservatives for over four decades. And still the gullible conservatives among the GOP buy into the disingenuousness of Republican promises every election year. When does reality set in? When do the Charlie Brown conservatives wake up and realize they are being played by the Gingrichs, Steeles, Roves and Romneys — the political Lucys of Washington.
Rejecting the Snare and Delusion
There is a solution to this fools’ game. It consists of facing reality and cutting the umbilical cord that draws freedom advocates into the Republican trap every election year. It will necessitate accepting that we no longer have a “two-party system.” As Buchanan puts it, “Our vaunted two-party system is a snare and delusion. Our two parties have become nothing but two wings of the same bird of prey.”
What we, who believe in freedom and constitutional government, must do is face up to this reality instead of clinging so naively every election year to the empty promises of Republican Lucys. We must forge a new political party — a conservative party of our own! But not a party that preaches utopianism to the choir and garners 1% of the vote as the Constitution Party and the Libertarian Party do every year.
We need a REAL third-party that can get 38% of the vote, which would win in a three man race. Contrary to conventional thinking this is now possible. For example, all recent polls show the Democrats and Republicans each getting 30% of the electorate. For the first time since Gallup began asking the question in 1992, says USA Today, 40% of voters declare themselves to be Independent.
What is the source of this profound shift in sentiment? Big, arrogant government and 1) its egregious debt pyramiding, 2) its criminal expropriation of middle class wealth to subsidize Wall Street fat cats, 3) its refusal to check the alien invasion of illegal immigration from Mexico, and 4) the monstrous socialized health-care bill that it so haughtily insisted on ramming down our throats, and which will bring intolerable convolution and misery rather than ease and benefit to our lives.
Thus in today’s political climate so outraged with Washington, if a conservative third-party was geared to end the above four tyrannical policies, it could easily draw 20% from the Independents, 15% from the GOP, and 5% from Blue Dog Democrats, which would be 40% of the vote. Even if the remaining Independent vote of 20% splits 12% in favor of Democrats and only 8% for Republicans, that still would leave the Democrats with only 37%, the Republicans with 23%, and our third-party with 40%. Voila! Victory for conservatives and libertarians. Victory for freedom and smaller government.
A New Political Paradigm
I have written a book that demonstrates how to do this, The Conservative Revolution: Why We Must Form a Third Political Party to Win It. It puts forth a cogent reform plan for our tax and monetary systems that will stop the runaway freight train of government growth and restore sanity to the land. It shatters the myth that we must, at all costs, eschew third-party efforts and “remain within the GOP.” It shows how to unify millions of conservatives, libertarians and independents into one party — the Conservative American Party. Its revolutionary reform plan will dramatically challenge the Washington establishment and bring about a pervasive political realignment equivalent to the Republican displacement of the Whigs in the mid-19th century.
The ideological forces of the past 40 years have been steadily building toward such a paradigmatic challenge, and the world’s present economic crisis is the catalyst that can bring it about. The rising disenchantment we see throughout the American heartland is conservative-libertarian disenchantment. We need to tap into it. The Republican Lucys will continue to do what they are programmed to do — default on their promises. But we as conservatives need to quit playing the role of gullible Charlie Browns. We need a political party of our own! We need to become heroic patriots again. This is the only approach and attitude that can bring salvation to America.
Regards,
Nelson Hultberg
Whiskey & Gunpowder
May 11, 2010
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You have it wrong, and your dangerously wrong recommendation will ensure that Obamacrats rule American forever. It is the job of conservatives to win in the Republican PRIMARIES, then we will have strong Republican conservatives in the election and in th eRepublican Congressonial leadership. Running third party candidates is a loser’s strategy that only ensures Obamacrat victory. Learn form history. When the Republican vote is split, Demnocrats from Woodrow Wilson to Bill Clinton get elected with less than 50% of the vote. When conservatives make sure to win the Republican primaries, we go on to win the geral electon in a landslide, as Ronald Reagan showed us. Your are just being a “useful idiot” as the Marxists say, when you call for a third party. The only solution that will save this country from becoming a left wing dictatorship is a conservative Republican landslide in first the primaries and then in the November election.
I agree w/ the 3rd party, but you only speak of popular vote. The electoral college would be the problem, wouldn’t it? Made up of GOP and DEM and “not bound,” how would we get the electoral college to vote the will of the people?
The answer to your question, “Why is this horrendous profligacy taking place?” is so obvious. The answer is progressive taxation. The majority of voters get far more than they pay for, with almost half of all voters paying no federal income tax at all! So OF COURSE voters will elect those who keep the goodies coming. Unfortunately, there is no hope of fixing this problem given our current culture. We have doomed our children to a grim future.
I’m not sure why a new third party would do any better than the Liberarians or Conservative party already does.
As RJD mentioned it’s probably easier to try and get real conservatives in during the primary season.
Also, I’m not convinved that the majority of Americans are actually ready to end the nanny state. They’ve believed the lies about government cradle to the grave AND low taxes that have been promised for too long. I don’t think we are ready yet (although getting closer) for thigns to actually change.
Pie in the sky ideals, Charlie.
Bread and Circuses Rule!
The citizens of Rome, er, America have spoken.
Let the games .continue
As long as the treasures from the out lands continue to flow, we need not be concerned.
WHY NO POLITICAL PARTY WILL SAVE US FROM THE DESTRUCTION OF FEDERAL DEFICITS.
Since 1913, the federal congress has obtained a “Funding System” that permits them to consume any quantity of the Real Wealth of WE THE PEOPLE they desire to spend, consume, and distribute among their friends and partizans. That is, they have broken permanently, the chains of the Constitution, which once (and still does) require them to obtain the consent of WE THE PEOPLE for every major expenditure.
This requirement is found in the following sections of the Constitution:
Article I, Section 2, Para 3, which states in relevant part:
“Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States…”
And Article I, Section 9, Para 4, which states in relevant part:
“No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken.”
These Constitutional provisions mandate APPORTIONMENT for DIRECT TAXES to pay for necessary EXPENDITURES above that collected from excises, duties and import taxes.
EXAMPLE: If Congress wanted to spend an additional 150 billion on the undeclared war in Iraq, the Constitution mandates they apportion (divide equally) the amount needed by a DIRECT TAX among the adult population of the US. This is just one purpose of the intended census: to count the number of adults for the purpose of apportioning Direct federal taxes.
Let’s say, for examples sake, there are 250 million adult American Citizens, and Congress wants to spend 300 billion more on that undeclared war.
That would come to a tax bill of $1200.00 for each adult American. Just imagine the effect on WE THE PEOPLE PUBLIC if every, EVERY TIME the Federal Congress wanted to spend more than they obtain via indirect taxes, they had to come directly to the American People, stick out their hand and ask: “Pretty please, may we have another 100 billion!
One of the battle cries of the Revolutionary War was, “Taxation without representation is tyranny!”
If “Taxation without representation is tyranny!”, what word would accurately describe spending without representation and consent?
This is where the genius of the Founding Fathers’ taxing provisions in the Constitution comes into full effect.
Every time the Congress wanted to spend sums in addition to revenues raised from excises, duties, and imposts, according to the Constitution, they are supposed to apportion (divide equally) the tax among adult citizens.
This means that appropriations above other constitutional revenues, would require our direct and immediate consent.
Imagine the impact of accountability, if your federal representative wanted to spend more than ordinary constitutional revenues, he had to come to you directly and said he wanted $1200.00 more of your money today! And you tell him NO!
You see, then the power to limit profligate spending would be, as it was intended, in the immediate hands of WE THE PEOPLE. Under the rule of apportionment, without your consent, their greedy hands would be tied.
Today, the reality is that the federal congress, per their covenant with the private central bank, has broken this “chain” of limited expenditures based on obtaining our consent. Instead, they spend and consume immediately, what ever amounts of our Real Wealth they want to, without obtaining our approval, and obeying the Rule of Apportionment of Direct Taxes.
Thus, as long as the Federal Congress has available to them, an system of unlimited funding without our consent and without accountability, it will never matter who, and what kind of party is in Washington.
Once any government has obtained an open, unlimited electronic “checkbook” on the Wealth of WE THE PEOPLE, it matters not who signs and cashes the check!
The Great Objective of the sacrifice of thousands of True American Patriots during the Revolutionary War, was the same as the hope expressed by Lincoln in his most eloquent Gettysburg Address:
“…that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom— and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
The evidence today, of upward spiraling, exponential federal expenditures without our consent, gives powerful sway to the argument that “.. government of the people, by the people, for the people…” has already perished from the earth.
[...] Charlie Brown Conservatives and a Lucy GOP [...]
[...] Charlie Brown Conservatives and a Lucy GOP [...]
Grand idea, unfortunately it’s a pipe dream. A new “conservative party” would only ensure that the obamanaughts control this nation for evermore, eliminating the USA as we know it forever. RJD has it correct, although I would add it would be great if the “blue dog democrats” took over their party or at least a large part of it. To start a third “conservative party” would be cutting our own throats. It would do to the next republican what Ross Perot did to Bob Dole and again to Bush 2 and what Ralph Nader (fortunately) did to Al Gore ini 2000.
[...] Charlie Brown Conservatives and a Lucy GOP [...]
You are correct re: the constant Republican con of promising conservatives that they will act like conservatives when elected. But if you are considering Patrick Buchanan as a true conservative then I have to agree with F.A. Hayek’s essay from 1960 titled “Why I Am Not A Conservative.” Hayek was very much a limited government believer. You speak of Jeffersonian limited government but Buchanan’s politics are not even close to true Jeffersonian limited government. He believes in massive government intervention and I have never heard him identify the fact that the Welfare/Warfare state is nothing but a threat to individual liberty. True limited government political theory in the tradition of Locke, Jefferson, Mises, Hayek, Rothbard et.al. will not be achieved by the likes of politicians like Buchanan who believe in government intervention but just want intervene differently than the left is intervening today.
The Welfare State destroys liberty and morality and yes, Social Security, Medicare, Unemployment Insurance, et.al. are welfare programs that steal from the productive to subsidize the unproductive. Unemployment Insurance is a lie as no one can insure against becoming unemployed. The Welfare State shortens everyone’s time preferences and rewards immediate gratification and punishes deferral of gratification (saving and providing for one’s own needs).
Mr. Hultburg,
I have not read your book but if you are a true conservative you must support the disbanding of the welfare state and this includes eliminating the major collectivist welfare programs of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, School Lunches, Unemployment Insurance, Farm Subsidies and AFDC. If you are not willing to tell the truth about these programs and to teach people these programs destroy liberty and enable Hobbes’ Leviathan to reach into each of our lives to degree that would never have been tolerated by our founders, then you are merely part of Lucy’s con.
Ignore those whose shorts are a bit tight. You nailed it! You have put a lasting picture to my own thinking. I am so sick of the liberally minded elephants and their like minded jack ass rivals. Their only difference is the color of their hair dye. They are equally fake and equally liberal. I couldn’t give a shit if a man marries his goldfish. That may be odd but frankly that is none of my or the government’s business and the subject is not worth the time to discuss. I simply want to live without government intervention and keep a reasonable part of my earnings. Government should be like a good sport referee. The game is played, a few calls are made early and they never become a part of the game. A bad referee is a key player admiring his own nifty calls and the game is ruined.
Thank you, third party all the way and until then I just vote “Outta Here” to any and all incumbents. They all have failed us!
What a slew of terrific comments–as always. I don’t think there is a viable solution to the tax beast with two wings as things are, although we should certainly do our best to locate and polish candidates now for 2012. If there are elections in 2012, of course.
[...] Charlie Brown Conservatives and a Lucy GOP [...]
Thank you RJD! The struggle against the eggheads and academic navel-gazers who think their “bright” ideas are going to suddenly cause everyone to say, “By golly Mr. Hultberg, you’re right, why couldn’t generations of limited government conservatives see this before your brilliant ‘Peanuts’ anology?” Ha, ha.
In order to create a viable three-way race the constitution must be changed to eliminate the notion of a Republic and State’s rights by eliminating the electoral college and following the trend demonstrated by the 17th amendment for creating a homogeneous voting block from sea to shining sea.
You continue in the tradition of “useful idiots” who advocate the progressive strategy of divide and conquer based on a seemingly shallow understanding of how the US constitution defines our two-party system. Encouraging would-be effective participants in our political process to self-marginalize and abandon the most powerful political tool on earth into the hands of the enemies of liberty is the same thing that Libertarians did back in the 70′s; diluting the conscience and removing the ‘brakes’ from the GOP.
You are right in that lessons are seldom learned in politics and even more seldom by academic egg-heads who think that strong feelings can be manifested into reality by endless theory. Your recommendations simply continue to undermine the leadership and example demonstrated in full living color by Dr. Ron Paul.
Regards,
-Jahfre Fire Eater
Great post Fire Eater! You make a brilliant point that the creation of the Libertarian party served to dilute and weaken the libertarian strain in the GOP. (Barry Goldwater had a strong libertarian streak). As such the balance between the libertarians and social conservatives got out of whack, and a lot of fiscal conservatives/libertarian types left the GOP, especially in the Northeast states and California. The resull was Obama carrying a lot of rich suburbs that had no business voting socialist Obamacrat but couldn’t warm up to Bush’s socially conservative but free spending GOP.
We need to rebuild Reagan’s ” big tent” conservative movement. The principles that unite conservatives are clear.
!. End big government and the high taxes that are needed to fund it. 2. Oppose defict spending and stealing from our grandchildren. 3. Keep the country safe and sovereign over its territory. 4. Make sure the Supreme Court sticks to enforcing the Constitution, not trying to contorl our lives by making up new law alien to the Constituion. 5. Support free enterprise and resist socialism.
Fact is the conservative movement needs the capitalists, the social conservatives, the libertarians, the strong defence types, and yes the Reagan Democrats who have been abandoned by their own party. We need then to keep the Republican Party in balance with appeal to the broad conservative majority in the USA.
Splitting into a third party will guarantee that the Obamacrats control the country for at least 8 years, and several more Supreme Court appointments. That will allow Obama the time to carry out his threat (campaign pledge) to “transform” this country into a Marxist one party welfare state tyranny.
So folks, we either rebuld the conservative “big tent” or pack it up along with Constitutional goverment in the USA.
With respect to all astute comments above, there are NO provisions in the United States Constitution for a two party political system, or for any kind of party system. In fact, the Constitution was crafted as the Supreme Law to control and prevent any one political interest from abrogating, diluting or altering it to their particular individual whims.
As the Supreme Law, The Constitution represents the distillation of thousands of years of human experience, which had proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, once and for all times sake, what was RIGHT and WHAT was wrong with all forms of all governments before.
As such, it was to last for as long as the Earth endured: for the permanent objective to “…secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” The definition of the word ‘Posterity’ means all succeeding generations.
[...] Charlie Brown Conservatives and a Lucy GOP [...]
[...] Re: Unsolicited Good Press in the Alibi – Nelson Hultberg at Whisky and Gunpowder posted Charlie Brown Conservatives and a Lucy GOP. [...]