“To win back the trust of the American people, we must be a “big tent” party. But big tents need strong poles, and the strongest pole of our party — the organizing principle and the crucial alternative to the Democrats — must be freedom. The federal government is too big, takes too much of our money, and makes too many of our decisions. If Republicans can’t agree on that, elections are the least of our problems.”

But where are some the specifics for freedom?

What about giving the people a choice on light bulbs, like incandescent bulbs instead of only flourescent?
Banning subsidies for corn ethanol, and the craze for alternative energies? Becoming an overt friend of the oil companies and to drilling off shore? An overt friend to pro marriage groups and groups that help people out of the homosexual lifestyle? (Are we to acquiesce to bullying people out of the millenia long marital precedent so that marriage is no longer marriage and fornication is an alternative and acceptable lifestyle?)
(I can support widows and orphans, but I’d tell married gay lovers with one deceased from such marital bliss to go get a job.)
What about telling Al Gore to answer a question about how much he stands to make off the global warming scam that he’s promoting?
What about Henry Waxman disclosing how he is benefitting from the stimulus and global warming shiznet?

What about telling Obama sure we want you to succeed, but without tax cuts you simply will not succeed?
I simply want to see a vigorous debate amongst the branches of government, while the troops are fighting a war. So since there isn’t a debate, where’s the nightly Fox news appearances? Are we to let Glenn Beck and Rush do all the dirty work?
Telling the party of Donkeys, the same party that kissed bin Laden’s butt so vigorously while GW was in office, needs a verbal sparring slap down, and not some vague goal of freedom, cause we won’t get any of that in the future at this pace.
Do I have to dress in a Barney Frank costume, punch you conservative Republicans in the nose, insult your wives and dress them burqas before we get 3.75 years and 1.6 years of verbal sparring started up there on the Hill?
Is everyone on the Hill as scared of Obama and the Democrats as much as the carmakers bond holders?
Thank God for Ford motors and all the banks that have returned the TARP money.

And in this editorial I believe is the ‘glue’ to hold all the legs of the stool together. I’m probably more dense than the average, ordinary piece of wood but the several megawatt light bulb went on in my head while reading DeMint’s comments.

Endless amounts of time is spent on this website arguing between all the ‘Con’ legs, and trying to assess blame for the recent election debacles with a hefty amount of the blame being heaped on the “SoCon” leg. What DeMint so eloquently delineated was that there *aren’t* and *shouldn’t* be any ‘legs’ at all…just one unshakeable pole - freedom - because in the end that’s what all 3 legs are all about - freedom from overarching government tyranny.

Here! Here! Sen. DeMint. And an amen.

countless times. We can build a majority based on liberty and small government. It has nothing to do with being moderate. We can be as radical as anyone focusing on liberty, freedom, and the Constitution. What surprises is that we are just figuring this out.

with this:

“The real mistake is that Republicans became more concerned with staying in D.C. than reforming it.”

That’s when the “go along to get along” with the Democrats attitude started and unfortunately many voters seemed to decide if the GOP is going to mirror the Dems they may as well vote for the Democrat.

Great article, Senator DeMint, and thanks, hogan for bringing it to our attention

Join the RedState Strike Force

“No. You can’t” -Moe Lane

They do not understand people like Senator Demint.
He stands on principles, doesn’t rely on focus groups to decide what to say today, and is very comfortable shooting from the hip since his message is consistent. It is easy to keep your story straight when you tell the truth.

The Ivory tower (and libs) play the “how can we fool them today?” game on a daily basis. They have no core principles, unless you count the principle of “what’s in it for me?”
This mindset would make it difficult to understand a man with strong core values, unswayed by the presses reaction to his comments.

There is another group, however that is interested in the Republicans having a big tent.
The NYTimes and similar crowd that helped pick McCain for us early in the primaries just love to see the party watered down with liberal leanings. This helps reduce our effectiveness immensely.

Not that we should turn people away that don’t completely agree with our core principles, but such folks should not be running things, compromising our core values as has happened so much in the last several years.

The Senator has been sending this message for quite a while, glad to see it being publicized here.
Good job, hogan

Regards

“Freedom Republicanism is about choice — in education, health care, energy and more. It’s OK if those choices look different in South Carolina, Maine and California.”

We’ve seen activist liberal judges destroy freedom every chance they get all over the country (mandatory busing, mandatory emissions standards, legalized gay marriage)… don’t we need a national agenda to head off the ‘inevitably’ the libs love to bestow on their favorite causes?

seeing a football coach tell a story that was appropriate to this, I think. It might have been Mack Brown talking about Darrell Royal, but it was definitely one of those old Big 8/12, Southwest Conference guys. It was towards the end of a game where his team had been blown out, and he expressed the opinion that what was going on then just didn’t matter. The other older, wiser coach responded, “no, this is the most important time. Because when you see who’s out there giving it their all when they’re losing by 30 points in the fourth quarter, you know who you can depend on and build around, and you also know who you can’t.”

I do think the party may have to get smaller, down to a dependable core, before it can grow again. I know that’s not a popular theory with some around here, and in the party, but I’m not sure it can be avoided.

“To win back the trust of the American people, we must be a “big tent” party. But big tents need strong poles, and the strongest pole of our party — the organizing principle and the crucial alternative to the Democrats — must be freedom. The federal government is too big, takes too much of our money, and makes too many of our decisions. If Republicans can’t agree on that, elections are the least of our problems. ”

Big tents all need to be … big. I have posted this here before, but it bears repeating in this context. What is the republican plan to win the Hispanic vote? Or the Asian vote? Or the African-American vote? We cannot simply say “we are for small government and fiscal responsibility” and expect voters to come running our way. How do we plan to win the gay vote,? How do we plan to win back the teachers, steelworkers, and longshoremen? How do we plan to win the youth, the new voters who will be the future of the party some day? How do we plan to win the non-Christian vote? Because every vote we lose is a vote we give away.

I visit Redstate every day. It is one of my favorite sites. I see a lot of pontificating and a lot of good ideas about the direction of the party and the true nature of conservatives. But I don’t see a lot of specifics on how to make the small tent bigger. Remember, without votes, we cannot win elections.

We have to change the system in DC. The system is rigged to take a well intentioned person arriving in DC and mold them into the horsetrading/career politician network that is many times at odds w/ the best interests of the people. We have to change the system to produce a better product. Sending new well intentioned people into the rigged system will produce little real positive change.

Changing the system to produce better product in part requires our ElectedElite to largely reduce their careers/power voluntarily. How the heck can we make that happen? is the 64,000 question.

Secondly, we need a whole new marketing/PR campaign. Using business product marketing lingo, features and benefits, we say we are for small government. Small government is a feature. Most voters don’t know what that means or have negative feelings about it. “I’m gonna get less help!”

People don’t buy or vote for features, they buy/vote for benefits. The customer doesn’t really care about the features of a product, they want what those features can provide=benefits.

We have to show the customer(voter) several specific ways how smaller government and our other platform solutions will actually benefit them.

Our image is that conservatism is like bad medicine. Tastes bad but its good for you. Or that it’s hard work without showing how the benefits are well worth it. We have to change that.

Freedom implies without cost, responsibility or consequence.

It is “Liberty.”

More specifically, it is our unalienable rights: “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Endowed by our Creator, guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution by the consent of the governed, and secured by the blood of patriots, enormous personal sacrifice and staggering amounts of our national treasure.

The conservative stool has three legs for a reason. They each represent one of those same Founding principles. They also rely on each other for strength and direction.

Those Founding principles must be the core of the GOP, and from which, there is no compromise.

While I agree mostly with what DeMint is trying to get at, I say screw the tent idea. Tents are only meant to enclose, and they require change to grow. I say get rid of the tent, all one needs is a loud speaker on which people can hear clearly (good clear message showing real differences - bold colors). People will come and listen when you have something to say, it is just hard to hear the message when everyone is saying something different (non clear message - pale pastals). Moderates can still speak, just stay out of the microphone (the binding principles, of which DeMint is trying to get at).

I know it is just words really, and is more philosophic discussion than, the real meat and potatoes- policies and the like, but I want to toss the idea of the big tent. Join the no tent party. Yeah I know it is just a different way of saying the same thing…..I just am getting sick of hearing ‘big tent’ all the time.

I always question where posters and certain elected official reside when they attack “big tent” ideals.

I guess its easy to attack moderates when u reside in a red state

To read through a rating service like acurating.org just to get a feeling for how Congress splits on the votes. I understand we won’t all agree on ACU’s value for each vote on each measure, but it’s as good a summary as any. Congressional Republicans consistantly pull career ratings above 75%, most above 85%. The Dems are mostly in the single digits, very few above 20%. But the Dems are a big-tent party while the GOP is exclusionary??? NOT!!

Please let’s not hear any more about there being “No difference between the two parties.” Yes, there are outliers. There’s a Dem in Mississippi who scores 66%, (the only one above 50%, now there’s a real “Blue Dog”) and a Conn GOP congressman at 44%. Incidently, Specter abandoned the lowest Senate rank (44%) to the Maine girls who clock in just below 50%. But any conservative who couldn’t tell the difference between McCain (82%) and Obama (single digits, when he bothered to vote) last year just wasn’t trying.

The main problem the GOP has with their outliers is that the MSM (and they still matter) dotes on them, and they become the face of the party, especially when they are bashing the party. This demoralizes the base and sows confusion among the unattached. How many times have you seen the MS Blue Dog on national TV bashing Pelosi? This is not an excuse, just the facts, Ma’m.

for a political movement that I could embrace would be three (it makes for a simple message that way):

LIBERTY
RESPONSIBILITY
CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT

The organizing unit of such a political movement is the individual American, having full ownership of herself/himself, and in possession of all their Natural Rights. Unfortunately, this would likely be a political movement attractive only for those who are mental adults. And sadly, even these core principals would be immediately deconstructed, dissected and parsed by the radical left and their lapdogs in the MSM until they resembled nothing like their plain meanings but became code words for some virulent sociopathy.

The potential strength of a political movement based on these core principals is that they represent already internalized human IDEALS for many Americans, and thus do not require a charismatic leader or a huge political organization to “sell” them. Revolutions have been based on such ideals. So, how many Americans are still adults enough to embrace Liberty, Responsibility and Constitutional Government? That I cannot answer.

…when debating Liberals, either in person or on blogs, is to simply ask them what part of the conservative agenda and conservative philosophy it is that they disagree with. I follow that up by asking what part of the Liberal and Obama agenda they support. I’ve yet to have one give me an answer. They always evade the questions because they simply don’t know. They cannot think, they only feel and then react.

Liberalism is the triumph of emotion over reason.

I agree wtih DeMint that the GOP should get away from pandering to voters with Democrat-lite ideas. Instead they should stick to conservative principles, win or lose.

But I think we have to be honest with ourselves and realize that most Americans are not very conservative and support big government.

For example, if you were to ask people “Should government prohibit private businesses from discriminating against African-Americans?” most Americans would say, “Yes. Absolutely. But in reality, the government has no business telling private businesses who they should hire or fire. The whole “let’s eliminate discrmination” has led us down the garden path of trying to ban discrimination against homosexuals and the disabled. The result is that an alcoholic who doesn’t show up for work or who shows up for work drunk might not be fired by an employer out of fear of the Americans for Disabilities Act.

The minimum wage is very popular among voters. But the idea that the government should dictate to businesses what employee wages and benefits should be is both bad and socialistic.

Smoking bans are also popular. But, again, the government has no business telling restaurants or businesses in general whether they can allow smoking in their establishments.

The root of the problems with the GOP can be traced to the views of the American electorate. The American electorate is very much in favor of government intervention in almost every area of public life and distrustful of the free market.

This is why Mike Huckabee was successful during the GOP primaries last year. He was, as Fred Thompson pointed out, a pro-life liberal. And many “conservatives” strongly supported his candidacy.

You can’t expect conservative politicians to emerge in an electorate populated by voters desiring socialism.

Demint was on a local radio show here a few weeks back and I called in and asked him a couple of related questions, and he nailed every one of them.

What’s more, he wasn’t bitter or snarling. He never is. He is both optimistic and unapologetic. That is why I like him and was proud to vote for him. It is unusual to see in a Senator. They are usually very pompous and arrogant. Perhaps he is different because he hasn’t been there that long.

On his major point, he couldn’t be more right. A perfect example of what he is talking about can be seen in American churches. Look at which denominations are growing and which are withering and dying. Those who are abondoning core Christian doctrine (ie: the Epicsopals) are dwindling while those who are unashamed of the Gospel (ie: Souther Baptists) are flourishing. That is because no-one wants to be part of a phony, unprincipled organization. The same could be said for political parties. If the GOP gave freedom-loving Americans reason to get excited, we would turn out in droves like black folks did for Obama last year, and no-one could beat us.