Gone are the days when the Republican Party was home to conservatives of all varieties, from the far-right conservatives like Barry Goldwater to the center-right like Nelson Rockefeller, as some within the Republican National Committee want to take the Republican Party even further to the right than it already is (emphasis mine):
Conservative members of the Republican National Committee are circulating a new resolution that calls on party members to stand up to President Obama’s “socialist” agenda and would prohibit RNC funds from going to GOP candidates who disagree with elements of a proposed ten plank ideological platform.
The language of the proposal is still being tweaked ahead of January’s RNC Winter Meeting in Hawaii, where it could be submitted for a vote before the full committee.
Jim Bopp, Jr., an RNC committee member from Indiana and the chief sponsor of the resolution, said the goal of the resolution is to “re-establish the party’s conservative bona fides.”
“This would establish standards for candidates and hold them accountable to RNC’s conservative platform,” he told CNN.“We are open to diverse views, but you do have to agree with us most of the time.”
So let’s recap: the RNC is open to “diverse views,” so long as those views happen to agree with the views of the RNC “most of the time.”
A Conservative Checklist for Republican Candidates: The Dumbest Idea I Have Ever Heard
I am rarely surprised when the group of conservatives that the mainstream media calls the “Far Right” decide to grab something and run with it, but this one really has my head shaking. This group of “Right Wingers,” that clearly lacks the ability to set down their Going Rogue textbooks long enough to recognize that conservatism is not about a checklist of talking points and issues, has decided to draft a resolution to submit to the RNC that would force Republican candidates to adhere to a 10-point checklist of key issues / principles. To be as kind as I can about the matter, and to avoid using the expletives I screamed out loud as I read about this (I am trying to clean up my potty mouth a bit), I will simply state that this is the dumbest Republican idea I have heard in my lifetime. I understand that I may not be as old as some who may read this, but nearly three decades of stupid ideas and gimicks all pale in comparison to this one. My only hope is that the idiots who drafted this resolution, and those who allowed it to leak to the press, are so fringe, so far out in “lala land”, that no one in the Party gives them even a moment of their time. These people are not the “right wing” of the Party and they are not conservatives. They think they are because they purport to stand for “conservative” issues and principles, but they lack any understanding of the fundamentals of True Conservatism.
True conservatism is about a principled and virtuous adherence to the fundamental intentions of our Founding Fathers expressed through our Founding Documents. The principle and the virtue are individual in nature and are not derivative of any one religion or culture. The intentions are strictly interpreted and rely primarily upon the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. Conservatism is NOT about a laundry list of issues. This is why many on the “far right” lose me. They get so caught up in defending issues they deem to be “conservative” that they lose sight of the explanation and justification for their arguments. This is where religion gets infused with conservatism on a compulsory level and discredits the message altogether. The religion, or more accurately the principle or virtue, are supposed to be individual in nature. Our Founding Documents which we as conservatives purport to protect make it so. That is the very idea behind the 1st Amendment.
http://republicanredefined.com/2009/11/24/stupid-republicans-their-friggin-lists/