He points out that leaving the party because it has a vocal minority poisoning it is a stupid move.
Formally that makes sense, certainly the way should be that the majority control the party and force the bad apples out. And the thought of split/exit should not even come up. However that cleanup is not happening. And that toxic minority sits on the key positions like a tick and there is no sign it ever changing.
H talks about “infrastructure”. But is there any such thing really? I thought party is about ideas and people. So if people would move so would everything that counts. Some folks could maybe left behind clinging to the old name by not getting the notice but similar number of newcomers could join on the other.
The time is running, and one of the path should be chosen, either build anew or cure the old. Just coasting with the old left as is IMHO is even more stupid plan.
The door is supposed to start hitting folks already.
8 replies on “Huckabee on new party idea”
Mike Huckabee is absolutely right. Every time the party has been split, either ideologically or by a spin-off party it has resulted in disaster. There are multiple historical examples of this and the lessons of history are ignored to our peril. As we all well know, or should.
The Democrats would love to see a split in the Republican Party. “Divide and conquer” is a principle well known to the enemies of Americanism. Abraham Lincoln said “A house divided against itself cannot stand” and that applies to the Republican Party (which was Lincoln’s Party too) every bit as much as it applied to the Union.
You can have all the pristine ideology in the world but if you can’t win elections it won’t make a bit of difference in our current system. I myself probably favor more of the doctrines espoused by the Libertarian Party but I generally vote Republican because the Republicans can win and the Libertarian Party will never win. Voting for the Libertarian candidates is a wasted vote. Even as a protest vote, no one cares about the protest. Voting for Libertarian candidates has not only no impact, it has a negative impact on what I want for America because it takes a vote away from the people who have a chance of winning.
The most glaring example in recent history is the way Ross Perot split the conservative vote. There was no “Ross Perot” party, there were no down ballot candidates running with Ross Perot. Perot simply split the conservative vote for POTUS and we ended up with an obscure Leftist Democrat governor from Arkansas named Bill Clinton as POTUS. Many of the ills of today can be traced back to that single, stupid move which put Clinton in office. Had Perot not run, Bill Clinton would never have been elected. Clearly splitting the vote, either with a new party or an outlier candidate, is political suicide.
Mike Huckabee is right. If you want the Republican Party to change, do what Bill Whittle says and get involved in that party on a ground floor level. Full Stop.
That’s the only way to both win and to get what you want, everything else leads to catastrophe.
The author of this post isn’t even an American. He lives in the EU and won’t even tell us what country in the EU he lives in. He’s welcome to have an opinion but we Americans do well to take that opinion not with a grain of salt but the whole damn salt shaker full. The Europeans have soiled their nest badly with “new ideas” that are actually not new at all. Europe’s experimentation with broken ideologies is what put Europe where it is today. Y’all do what you like but my opinion as an American is that Europeans can keep their mess in Europe. If I wanted to live in Europe I would have stayed there, if I wanted America to be like Europe I surely would not vote for Conservative interests. Breaking the Republican Party is not in Conservative interests.
A new party is a false hope and I say this not as a Republican in defense of the Republican Party but as a Conservative solely interested politically in advancing the Conservative Ideology. I want what I believe is best for my country, the country that unlike “Paul Balrog” (typo intentional) I actually live in and that is more important than punishing swamp rats or degrading the Conservative vote on ideological grounds which history teaches us is a grave error.
In fact, with the rise of “Trumpism” within the Republican Party, now is the very worst time to split off a new party. Now more than any time in recent history it is more possible to move the Republican Party in the direction it needs to go. There is sufficient force available to do this, finally. That force only needs to be applied. The Democrats have abandoned the middle class working Common Man and that has left a void that Republicans should be striving to fill. It’s not time to destroy the Republican Party, it’s time to change it to what it needs to and should be.
TLDR: how we get rid of Mitch and his company?
If it’s TLDR then why should I take the time to discuss anything with you? Does your attention span have a word limit? Considering that you’re not even an American and neither reside in nor vote in the United States, who is this “we” you refer to? Do you have a mouse in your pocket?
Or more likely that being as English is not your native language you just didn’t understand what I said and chose to cover that up with “TLDR”?
Mike Huckabee answered your question in the video you posted above, as far as that goes. Watch it again. Brief enough for you?
Here’s more TLDR and if you can’t bother to read what I have to say then don’t bother to reply to me. If you don’t understand then don’t pretend you do with “TLDR” bullshit. The whole point of this site is to discuss and people will use as many words as they need to make their point(s). If a quantity of words over an arbitrary amount daunts you, you’re likely in the wrong place and would be better served at Twitter …
Getting rid of Mitch is not the ultimate imperative. Mitch will be dealt with at the proper time and place. Or not. It doesn’t matter because Mitch McConnell is not the gravest threat. Destroying the Republican Party does not address that threat, nor do the impatient demands of foolish people who want to break the only political party that has any chance at all of standing up to the Left.
We’re in an existential battle for the life of the Republic, shattering the only bloc capable of defending Americanism is sheer stupidity.
It’s simple mathematical common sense. If 60% of Americans voted Republican we wouldn’t have this problem, but they don’t. If that percentage voted Republican and even as much as 60% of those voters broke off and formed a new party, both the new and the old would still not have enough voters to prevail alone. The advantage of having 60% of the voters would be destroyed. We don’t have 60%, right now we have 47% … There is no combination of percentages that allows either the old nor new conservative party acting as a single entity alone to prevail against the Democrat Left.
To win both the new party and what remains of the old Republican Party would have to work together completely. Which there’s not a chance they would do else why create a new party at all? But if 60% of whatever percentage actually does vote Republican (46.7% in the last election) wanted to change the Republican Party they could certainly do that. Unlike the Democrat Machine, Republicans still have a substantial degree of control over their Party.
So let’s say there’s less than 50% (-23% of actual voters) of current Republicans who might move to a new party. Or 75% (35% of actual voters), or 30% (14% of actual voters) … No combination of numbers results in a win. Conservative interests lose to the Leftist Democrats in every scenario. There is no reason to believe, with sufficient confidence to experiment and invite total catastrophe, that enough Democrats will jump ship to a new third political party to make up any lack. In fact, the numbers militate for just the opposite.
As the Democrats move ever further left if the Republicans can fill that void which remains unrepresented thereby — then the Republican Party can grow to include those people. This is far more probable than that there is any hope at all of victory in a new third party.
The clear, common sense, obvious choice is to effect whatever change is needed in the Republican Party, not start a new party and commit political suicide. This is possible, the Tea Party proved that and they didn’t have to split off an actual seperate party to do it.
To wrap this up, better the devil you know. If we ‘got rid of Mitch’ by fragmenting and destroying the Republican Party then we’d be rid of Mitch McConnell for good and all. He’d be replaced with something even worse because in the face of the weakened, broken opposition from conservatives a filthy Leftist Democrat would then have the political clout to take his seat.
Which is what I’m getting the feeling is the situation you really want.
Wow, you typed 726 words and still managed to not answer the very simple question. You could just simply say “I have no idea and doubt we can.”
Wow, I did answer it, twice in fact. You counted how many words I used and still managed to miss that. Probably because I didn’t give you the answer you wanted.
Back to ESL school for you.
What’s the classic definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result this time?
Actually, that’s the definition of practice. Ask any athlete.
Touché.