As I’m sure I’ve said before, I’m in Illinois.

The local Repubs had their own version of this civil war several years ago that resulted in a squish (Topinka) losing the Governors’ mansion to Rod “crook” Blagojevich of some recent notoriety.

One of the other results was Alan Keyes squaring off against Barak Obama. Why Keyes? Because the Topinka squishy wing would rather *lose elections* than admit their base contains conservatives. So, pitting Keyes against Obama, then giving Keyes almost no support was an obvious bone, but also a steel glove across the face of Illinois conservatives.

The end result is pretty obvious – at this point the Illinois republicans are unlikely to retake the Governors’ mansion even after Blagojevich, and Kirk is a longshot against the corrupt Giannoulias for the Senate seat Obama left behind.

I’m not saying to knuckle under. I am saying that we need to understand the opponents, both in the Lib/Dem party and in the GOP leadership. A more organized conservative organization could have propped up Keyes enough to make his race close or, better, fought to get a candidate who could appeal statewide.

Just sayin, if there’s no other way than splitting the GOP, then we’d better start building a parallel structure Right Now….

Mew

…and that name is “statists” or “big government republicans”.

Call a thing what it is.

You’re dead-on perfect with your analysis of the problem – enough Repubs who aren’t interested in small government – which is why, although the country is center-right, our government is trending ever further leftward – because we the conservatives cannot figure out how to get the non-conservatives to work with us.

Which is what I was saying.

So, go ahead and vote ‘em all out. Be my guest. What’s your plan for the day after?

Mew

The problem the Repubs have *always* had is that the 20%, once called “country-clubbers”, tend to say “F.U.” to conservative candidates. They’d rather a “principled loss” (and retreat to the club) than a rabble-rousing conservative win.

Did you read up on how much support the Illinois country-clubber-driven GOP gave Alan Keyes in his race against then-unknown state senator Obama? If not, it’s a fascinating case study.

The conservative movement needs to grow one thing – Nessa points toward it, Coldwarrior went out and *did* it – ability to organize and govern – traditionally that’s been the one thing the country-clubbers did better, having more time and money to throw at the problem while the rest of us try to stay employed…

You can rail about how I’m throwing old arguments, but unless we find a way to work both inside *and* outside the party, unless conservatives can push candidates like DeVore over country-club network choices like Fiorina onto the ticket, then – bluntly – I’m not wrong.

And shattering the party to make it happen *will* result in more Dems getting elected. The model to look at there is Canada’s decade-long experiment with two conservative parties.

So.
Mew

… but given the Illinois experience, a scorched-earth take-no-prisoners approach has it’s own downsides.

While the country-clubber strategies need to end, it needs to be in a way that doesn’t leave victory even further away.

Mew

p.s. What other industry uses a “big tent”? Pest control.

… The primary and general serve two different roles, as you’ve observed around here somewhere.

There are also at least groups who react based on what happens in the primary.

There’s the conservatives whose candidates sometimes get blown out of the water. (Fred!, for ex) We get to decide whether to support the milquetoast (McCain, for ex) that we end up with as a candidate in the general. Note – I strongly believe the selection of McCain cost the GOP 2008 in part because the conservatives took their votes and stayed home. IIRC, polling exists to support this.

Then, there’s the party hacks, gutless weenies, country-clubbers, etc. They get to decide how much support to give to the candidate – and frequently they decide to under-support non-gutless candidates.

What I’m trying to say (and feeling rather casandra about it) is that if the conservatives put in a non-gutless candidate, we’d better be ready to go to the mat in the general because the party may decide to walk away.

Have you looked up Alan Keyes’ senate run yet?

The reason I think you don’t quite get me is I’m writing from a state that already had the “revolution” y’all are talking about – only the conservatives lost.

Mew

Not trying to be hostile, just to make sure that when we start talking about revolution, that we game it out further than just “put the country-clubbers in their place!” …

We need to be ready to replace the structure we’re talking about .. well, to borrow my own analogy, fumigating.

Mew