The general theme that comes out of this collection of essays is Francis’ reaction to the rise of the neoconservatives. During this period, the Right of someone like Robert Taft was replaced by the Right of the neoconservatives. The triumph of the neoconservatives:There's no doubt that the GOP Establishment is violently opposed to populist conservativism, and there's also no doubt that the Tea Party movement is populist to the core. If there's a path forwards, it seems that it must be through a populist revolt within the Republican Party, one that aims at breaking (in Francis' neat turn of phrase) the alliance between overclass and underclass against the middle.
For the Buchananite Right, the Christian Right, the Old Right, the Hard Right, the paleo-conservatives, and the paleo-libertarians, [] will mean political oblivion, the final disappearance of any serious hope of influencing American politics in a direction away from the gargantuan state and the state’s alliance with both overclass and underclass against the middle, or in a direction toward dismantling the warfare- welfare state, controlling immigration, reversing the erosion of national sovereignty, withdrawing from the pursuit of a globalist-imperialist foreign policy, and restoring a Eurocentric cultural order.
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I couldn’t agree more that the serious Right needs to work towards its own liberation from watered-down progressivism. Francis believes the solution is a populist Right. He notes several areas in which conservatism was actually successful during this period and notes that they were all areas in which mainstream conservatives were initially hostile to the views of the broad conservative populace:
On the issues of immigration, gun control, trade, and Big Government, mainstream conservatives and Republicans simply were on the wrong side of the emergent populism of the Right.He also thinks that in attempting to make itself acceptable to the progressive elites, mainstream conservatism lost all its interesting thoughts.
Monday, July 15, 2013
How to save the Republican Party?
Foseti reviews Sam Francis' book Shots Fired and makes me want to read it:
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4 comments:
So how do we light a fire under the middle class to create a populist revolt? These are the people for whom self-sufficiency is a way of life. They're too proud to take government handouts and too busy working to try to throw their political weight around. Or to spin it another way, they're complacent.
About the only thing I can think of that they'd see as a threat is sudden change. Sure, change has been happening steadily for decades but they mostly just adapt and keep working. What will it take to get them to push back?
The question is, how?
Concur, but as asked above, HOW???
I have another question: Why? What does the GOP do that really needs doing and that others could not do better if not saddled with dinosaurs like the Bush clan, McCain, Grahamnesty, and company?
Granted that there are a lot of decent, honest conservative folks at the local levels. However, all that precious metal at the local level seems to get refined out, leaving only dross at the national level. Politics smelts the party in reverse. The national level republicans are either progressives, cowards, or traitors, with a few rare exceptions. Why bother to save that? Why not just let the RNC destroy itself in order to allow a new coalition of conservatives and libertarians to grow up in the ashes of their ruin?
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