Why I am a Republican

To put the world in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must put the family in order; to put the family in order, we must cultivate our personal life; and to cultivate our personal life, we must first set our hearts right. Confucius  The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word 'crisis.' One brush stroke for danger; the other for opportunity. In a crisis, be aware of the danger - but recognize the opportunity. A moment of victory brings greatest peril, and a moment of defeat often brings the greatest opportunity. Richard Nixon "It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat." TR "Citizenship in a Republic," Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910 A few words to Republicans, ...Even though much provoked, let us do nothing through passion and ill temper. Abraham Lincoln

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Mitt Romney for President:  Our primary season is over.  While we may have supported different candidates than those who won our nominations, it is time to join together in a single noble purpose, Restoring American by reclaiming its Government. We need to cement what unites us and surmount what devides us in order to elect the candidates dedicated to restoring liberty, fiscal responcibility and prosperity.  Make Obama fight for Pa, and he will have less available for Ohio, Virginia & other battleground states. There is no doubt Mitt faces an uphill battle in Pa. We have a strong union presence which can organize effectively. We need to organize just as effectively.  Winning would be great, but just keeping Obama's troops pinned down here can ensure victory elsewhere.  It is the war as a whole and not any particular battle that counts.  In the fall, we have cities where volunteers will be needed to keep the vote honest, even with the new ID law. Many hands make light burdens, please join me.

Tom Smith For Senate

Tom Smith is a man who rose from Coal equipment opporator to Mine owner, who still lives on the farm where he was born and still actively farms it.  Like Reagan, he started life as a Conservative Democrat (Pro Life, NRA, rejecting government subsidies).  When the Democratic Party abandoned conservative principles, he followed Reagan to the Republican Party and has been a long term supporter of conservative causes ever since. He has two children in the military. While he is not a career politician, he has been active in supporting political causes and has put his time and resources behind his beliefs.  Tom won this nominationwithout the Party endorsement, and did so with  appealing to our higher natures and not resorting to single issue pandering or attacking opponents on anything other than their policies.  Tom Smith exemplifies the core principles outlined in the Why I Am a Republican above. Youtube video RedState interview Radio Interview Biographical

Scott Perry for Congress

Reclaiming the Presidency will be of small solace if Romney is saddled with Obama's fellow travellors. Locally, that means taking time and resources to support our next Congressman Representative Scott Perry  (House site) Scott Perry is exactly what we need in Washington, a citizen soldier, with experiance in business, who will remeber he was sent to drain a swamp. Democrats may attempt to target this seat, as it is technically an open seat.  The only way we could lose this seat is complacency. Do not make the mistake of thinking someone will do the work for you.  While many hands make like burdens, complancency makes simple tasks impossible.  More importantly, a solid turnout for Scott will also mean a solid turn out for statewide Canadidates who will be fighting an uphill battle in a state that has leaned Democrat, but elected Republicans to Senate and state offices even when the top of the ticket carried the state. Perry GOP "Young Gun" Recognition 

Perspective: Obama can and will be beaten. Niether the electoral nor popular vote Obama in the last election was vaguely historical. From 1900 to 2008, each of the following had higher electoral totals: Wilson (R), Harding (R), Coolidge (R), Hoover (R), FDR (D), Truman (D), Eisenhower (R), Johnson (D), Nixon (R), Reagan(R) and Bush, Sr. (R) , Reagan's re-election had the highest.  On percentage of popular vote each of these had higher percentages: Teddy Roosevelt (R), Harding (R), Coolidge (R), Hoover (R), FDR (D), Eisenhower (R), Johnson (D), Nixon (R), Reagan (R).  See William Kristol Op Ed  The country was relatively evenly divided, it continues to shift flexible alternate majorities, in cycle. We need to take action to shorten the cycle for Obama and lengthen it for his successor, as Reagan did with Carter. 

Go Native, Go Home. The media seem genuinely suprised that establishment republicans have faced stiff challenges with several incumbants going down to defeats unthinkable  in prior election cycles. The voters did not abandon the Party, the establishment candidates had abandoned the Principles upon which the party stands.  The message being sent is  simple and painfully clear.  We intend to reclaim our principles, and hold those who claim the Republican banner to Republican Ideals. We do not want to know what pork you brought home, but what pork you cut from the menu in Washington.  You were sent to drain the swamp, not expand it.  Go Native, Go Home. 

Republicans are poised for real renewal. We need to remember that "in victory lies the greatest peril, in defeat lies the greatest opportunity."   It is time to examine our Party, to purge imperfections, and to renew our commitment to principles and policies which will restore and renew our Selves, Homes, Communities, States, Country, and World.  We do that best by changing ourselves; and then our Party, starting at the personal level and proceeding upward. 

Lincoln admonished the GOP, "Even though much provoked, let us do nothing through passion and ill temper." Obama and his fellow travellors will undoubtedly test our endurance, but we must not sink to their cesspools or rise to their bait.  Avoid allowing them to hijack the race by baiting you into irrelevancies like his place of birth or religion. While their are questions regarding both, and certainly evidence that he cannot keep his own story straight, they are still not what this election can and should be about.  It is Obama's policies and official actions which threaten our present and future;  it is on his perilous policies we need to focus.

Focus on Obama's fiddling while Europe teeters on the brink and threatens to drag the west down with it.  Obama's foreign policy has been an disaster, unrestrained it will get worse.  Contrast Reagan's microphone check remarks (which sent a clear message to Russia that we would stand up to aggression) to Obama's "we can cut a deal, after I am no longer accountable to the people" comment in Russia. 

Focus the energy crisis, the wasted money on firms that sold electric cars which cannot be given away even with historic gas prices, and a fifty dollar light bulb no one wants.  Contrast that with the dramatic drop in natural gas prices due to environmentally sound natural gas efforts which forge a stewardship balance and foster economic growth. 

Focus on the difference between allowing states to experiment with ways to address legitimate health care concerns, and the nationalization of healthcare which Obama insists on shoving down our throats despite ovewhelming opposition in all polls. 

Contrast the open support of Israel from the GOP and the serial offenses directed toward Israel by this administration, Obama's close ties to the worst of the hate mongers, and his refusal to stand up for Israel in the international community. 

Focus on his arrogant interference in local matters like the Joe Beer incident and the current incidents in Florida where he, his minions and fellow travellors have never failed to fan flames of race and class warfare.  Remind them of the heavy handed attempts to use the FCC to restrict free speach and his epic misappraisal of the Islamic Brotherhood as a "secular organization." 

Throwing gasoline on a coup in the Arab Spring has caused the rise of a far more militant and anti-West trend in the middle east; whereas a more deliberate process might have enabled the true secular leaders to develop the infrastructure of parties necessary to avoid the hijacking of the revolutions by extremists. One may legitimately ask is he entirely igorant of history, or did he intend this result? 

Don't Be Enticed by Third Party Circes

Odysseus despaired of reaching home and risked listening to the call of Circes when hazarding Scylla and Charybdis. I feel the same way about calls for a third party alternative. I believe in reform from within, rather than the periodic, self-immolation involved in third party movements in general elections.  If it was ever going to work, it would have been with TR. It did not. TR elected Wilson by splitting the vote with Taft. By all means remain active in the primaries and feel free to present alternatives to the establishment selected candidates, but when the dust settles and there is a nominee from either side, remember that electing a Democrat with whom you disagree on most issues remains worse than electing a Republican with whom you disagree on a few issues.

I share many of the goals of the Tea Party movement; but the fact remains that while dumping Tea in a Harbor will get attention, real change takes organization, time and sacrifice. If you really want to take this country back, take the time to ensure that each and every person in your neighborhood knows where you stand and why you want them to join you at the primaries and in the genral election.

Then making sure all who do stand with you not only register and show up to vote with a valid photo ID; but volunteer a couple of hours each week for a candidate they have met believe in and know will follow sound principles in Washington.

Beyond local, state and federal politics, there is simply the process of reclaiming community by seeking out the local problems and solving them locally without government involvement. It is helping an unemployed neighbor network to find a suitable job.  It is making sure the elderly neighbor is well has rides where they need to go and that their gutters are not clogged.  It is being part of a community that sees it youth as its greatest treasure the elderly as a great respource and every individual as a mutual responsibility.

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I am not a Republican because I love all that is done in their name.  The most vitriolic Democratic commentator could not hope to match the ire with which I meet those examples of unprincipled conduct perpetrated by my fellow republicans which sully our name and deprive us of the example which our principles if adhered to consistently would provide to inspire those who seek opportunity for personal fulfillment in our land of opportunity. 

I prefer a honest if misguided Donkey, to a chameleon-like RINO. The one can be beaten in an open contest of principles and ideals; the other is a wolf in lambs clothing whose harm is far greater for its distortion of what it actually should mean to be a Republican.  I do not propose an issue by issue litmus test.  I could not pass the most likely of those tests.

People of sincere Republican principles can reach different conclusions on particular flash point issues which the media never tires of using as a divisive force among and between parties.  I am more concerned with the issues we do not know those that come up in the day in and day outedness of governance.  Policy by poll is followship, not leadership. Principles alone provide the security we need in our elected officials. 

The link at the top of the page provides a summary of principles I look for; yours may differ in one or more respect. My point in posting them is to encourage you to devise a set of your own, and then look past the sound bites to concrete evidence of such principles in action in their public and private life. 

If I am to choose between the two, I would say a candidate's private life is a better window on their actual principles (or lack of principles) than their public professions.  If a candidate cannot govern themselves in private conduct; they cannot be relied upon to do so in public conduct.   Wolves are distinguished by their conduct, not their words.

I am a Republican in large part, because Richard Nixon inspired me to become a Repblican in his 1969 First Inaugural Address. Below is a portion of the speech and a video of the full speech, 40 years later it is still timely ....

... Standing in this same place a third of a century ago, Franklin Delano Roosevelt addressed a Nation ravaged by depression and gripped in fear. He could say in surveying the Nation's troubles: " They concern, thank God, only material things." Our crisis today is the reverse. We have found ourselves rich in goods, but ragged in spirit; reaching with magnificent precision for the moon, but falling into raucous discord on earth.We are caught in war, wanting peace. We are torn by division, wanting unity. We see around us empty lives, wanting fulfillment. We see tasks that need doing, waiting for hands to do them. To a crisis of the spirit, we need an answer of the spirit. To find that answer, we need only look within ourselves. When we listen to "the better angels of our nature," we find that they celebrate the simple things, the basic things—such as goodness, decency, love, kindness. Greatness comes in simple trappings. The simple things are the ones most needed today if we are to surmount what divides us, and cement what unites us. To lower our voices would be a simple thing. In these difficult years, America has suffered from a fever of words; from inflated rhetoric that promises more than it can deliver; from angry rhetoric that fans discontents into hatreds; from bombastic rhetoric that postures instead of persuading. We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another—until we speak quietly enough so that our words can be heard as well as our voices. For its part, government will listen. We will strive to listen in new ways—to the voices of quiet anguish, the voices that speak without words, the voices of the heart—to the injured voices, the anxious voices, the voices that have despaired of being heard.Those who have been left out, we will try to bring in. Those left behind, we will help to catch up. For all of our people, we will set as our goal the decent order that makes progress possible and our lives secure. As we reach toward our hopes, our task is to build on what has gone before—not turning away from the old, but turning toward the new.In this past third of a century, government has passed more laws, spent more money, initiated more programs, than in all our previous history. In pursuing our goals of full employment, better housing, excellence in education; in rebuilding our cities and improving our rural areas; in protecting our environment and enhancing the quality of life—in all these and more, we will and must press urgently forward. We shall plan now for the day when our wealth can be transferred from the destruction of war abroad to the urgent needs of our people at home. The American dream does not come to those who fall asleep. But we are approaching the limits of what government alone can do. Our greatest need now is to reach beyond government, and to enlist the legions of the concerned and the committed. What has to be done, has to be done by government and people together or it will not be done at all. The lesson of past agony is that without the people we can do nothing; with the people we can do everything. To match the magnitude of our tasks, we need the energies of our people—enlisted not only in grand enterprises, but more importantly in those small, splendid efforts that make headlines in the neighborhood newspaper instead of the national journal. With these, we can build a great cathedral of the spirit—each of us raising it one stone at a time, as each reaches out to their neighbor, helping, caring, doing. We are not called to a life of uninspiring ease, nor are we called to a life of grim sacrifice. We are called to join in a high adventure—one as rich as humanity itself, and as exciting as the times we live in. The essence of freedom is that each of us shares in the shaping of our own destiny. Until one has been part of a cause larger than oneself, no one is truly whole. The way to fulfillment is in the use of our talents. No one can be fully free while his neighbor is not. To go forward at all is to go forward together. Humanity’s destiny on earth is not divisible; however far we reach into the cosmos, our destiny lies not in the stars, but on Earth itself, in our own hands, in our own hearts. As our eyes catch the dimness of the first rays of dawn, let us not curse the remaining dark. Let us gather the light. Our destiny offers, not the cup of despair, but the chalice of opportunity. So let us seize it, not in fear, but in gladness—and, "riders on the earth together," let us go forward, firm in our faith, steadfast in our purpose, cautious of the dangers; but sustained by our confidence in the will of God and the promise of man.

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