Radical Reasoning
columnist: Bear Gunderson

Topic: Presidential Campaign 2008
McCain: The New Winfield Scott

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The Republican Party is about to repeat the same mistakes the Whigs made in 1852.

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by Bear Gunderson
(Libertarian)
Wednesday, February 6, 2008

In 1852, the Whig Party of the United States attempted to salvage what was left of their coalition of opposition to the Jacksonian Democrats. Seeking to bridge the deep fissures of division over slavery, the Whigs tried to have it both waysby nominating Winfield Scott, a decidedly anti-slavery candidate, but keeping the institution of slavery as part of the national platform. It was the opinion of many rank and file Whigs that Scott should not have been the nominee, particularly the Whigs of the south, and those in the north were shying from the party due to regional tensions associated with slavery. Indeed, the upper echelons of the Whig Party were blinded by their own electoral ambitions, and their dismissal of Millard Fillmore created a party environment where the factions that made up the coalition decided enough was enough.

What were the Whigs in 1852? That is, substantively, what did they stand for, and was it exemplified consistently in their electoral behavior? For two decades they had prided themselves on being the champions of the legislative branch, but in their later years, the only thing Whigs seemed to agree on was that they weren't Democrats. Even then, the political implications of such a "platform" meant that the Whigs had very little to bank on in a general election--it offered no solutions, no firm stances on key issues (slavery being the most important), and no ideological basis for its existence.

The Republican Party is now in a similar position, thanks to the party elites who have decided that John McCain is "the" original conservative, the standard-bearer of the Reagan and Goldwater eras. He is not, and the majority of conservatives realize this whether they be "values voters" or business-minded libertarians. The coalition that was forged in the years of Barry Goldwater and solidified during the Reagan years is now on shaky ground at best, yet the Rockefeller elites who have hijacked what is left of the Republican Party seem to think that the coalition will pull together based on some sort of innate fear of Hillary being in the oval office.

If only this were so, but then again, globalists are hardly fans of history. The Whigs of 1852 had a very similar attitude. Their victory in the previous election with Taylor as their nominee led the party to believe that the issues dividing the various segments of the party were irrelevant at best, and that ultimately, the goal was to not let another Jacksonian get elected. I wonder what they thought of their master plan five years later. Oops, sorry. The party didn't exist anymore.

Now party figures such as Bob Dole, Mel Martinez, Charlie Crist, and a whole host of "conservative" Republicans come to the aid of Senator McCain espousing his "conservative" record and his dedication to "conservative" government. The only problem for them is that this is not working as planned; even right-wing pundits with neoconservative impulses such as Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh now are doing everything in their power to bastardize John McCain and show him for what he isa raging liberal who works with people such as Russ Feingold and Ted Kennedy to draft key legislation on controversial issues dear to the conservative voter. And I, as a Republican, am expected to vote for this man in the interest of the party?

John McCain cannot win in a general election. He cannot win when he's championing the economic suicide of the Bush administration, nor can he win when he goes off on ideologically senile tangents and talks about staying in Iraq for over another century. The thought that my grandchildren, who will not be born for another forty years at the earliest, will be agents of the same type of imperialism as my generation is not just absurd, it is an evil proposition. And what is the justification for this evil? Party-line Republicans will justify a vote for him by saying "well he's the only one who can beat Hillary" or "he's the only other choice." Not only are they wrong, but they have willingly committed an act of moral treason by not voting their conscience and their beliefs. They deserve to be ridiculed for this foolishness, but thankfully, history will do that for us in time.

The outcome of this election will inevitably be one of two things when John McCain gets the nomination. Both include Democrats winning, so it'd be good to get that little fact out of the way first. Either the Republican Party will completely dissolve in the manner the Whigs did, or it will become a sectional party in the way the Democrats did from Reconstruction all the way up through the 1930s. Either way, the coalition will be destroyed, and we will witness the rise of a new era of globalist dominance through the Democrats. Pick your poison, folks.

In the end, the demise of the GOP begs the question: what does "conservative" mean anyways? I often thought of myself as conservative, and men such as Ron Paul to be conservative. Maybe, we as Republicans were naive to think words can't change in their meaning, because the majority of the Republican Party seems to no longer care about what I would consider to be "conservative." Maybe, after all this time, we were just libertarians trying to force our ideas into the mainstream by using what was available to us.

It's time to take a stand, Republicans, whether you're an evangelical or a libertarian such as myself. Let the Republican Party die in piece, and let our Winfield Scott of today fade into the pages of history as a political has-been. If anything, the one positive result of all this will be the death of a political party that can't admit it's a haven for closet-socialists.

George W. Bush perverted and killed conservatism. John McCain is here to bury it.

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2008 Bear Gunderson, all rights reserved.
Published: Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Last modified: Wednesday, February 6, 2008

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