Gotta Play to Win
Shirley, Craig
Gotta Play to Win Conservatives shouldn't sit this one out. by Craig Shirley In the movie A League of Their Own, Tom Hanks was given two of the best lines in the history of baseball flicks. The...
...Conservatives are so suspicious of man's nature that they naturally shun claims of absolute certitude in politics...
...Hanks's brilliant response: "it's supposed to be hard...
...Republicans should not be upset if Americans have come to expect not very much in the way of ethics and morality from Democrats...
...If liberalism still has an organizing philosophy, it is a white hot, unreasoned, and, yes, frightening hatred of all things conservative and all things Bush...
...Republicans are not so confident about themselves as to believe they have all the correct answers all the time...
...Liberals are unencumbered by such standards except those of political correctness, and who can figure those out anyway...
...He is now writing a book about the 1980 campaign, Rendezvous with Destiny...
...With the midterm elections almost upon us, conservatives need to take that to heart...
...The second came when one of his players quit the game, telling Hanks it was "too hard...
...Whether or not the GOP majority survives the November elections, these debates will take place...
...The first, as we all know, was, "There's no crying in baseball...
...Yes, some Republicans have abused their charge...
...some have engaged in corrupt behavior...
...In the latest version, Marquette decreed last week that grad students shall not display quotations from humorist Dave Barry on their doors...
...For my money, I'll take the messy and mistake-prone but good-hearted Republicans over the brooding, power-hungry, and uncommonly good-looking Democrats...
...Democrats do not allow debate within their party...
...As Larry Kudlow has warned, the Bush tax cuts will not be safe just because of the veto pen...
...But the fact that conservatism is hard is what makes it great...
...so let's focus on the important differences between the parties...
...The Washington Post declared last week that Democrats are "prettier" than Republicans—"Democrats seem to be fielding an uncommonly high number of uncommonly good-looking candidates" (glad we've got that settled...
...if it wasn't hard, everyone would do it...
...Hard is what makes it great...
...They won't win by quitting...
...some don't even know why they are Republicans...
...If you support some part of the president's foreign policy, as in the case of Joe Lieberman, you are defeated in a primary and then shunned...
...Organizing a political movement around the principle of freedom combined with moral rigor has never been easy...
...I suspect that most of those people in the GOP who are most upset are not Security Moms or the religious right but the "angry white males" credited with delivering Congress to the GOP in 1994...
...President Bush," he points out, might be "confronted with a [Hobson's] choice of vetoing a so-called $500 billion deficit reduction package that would overturn and rollback" his tax cuts...
...Quin Hillyer, on the American Spectator website, poses the question well: "Who do you want, going forward, to handle taxes, national security and judges, the conservatives or the liberals...
...And it's true: No one ever calls a Democrat a hypocrite on moral issues...
...As Ronald Reagan might ask, whose world would you prefer to live in four years from now, the liberals' or the conservatives...
...And in this, populist conservatives should take great comfort...
...If Republicans have disappointed the American people, it's because they have standards and rules that they sometimes fall short of...
...Some GOP commentators are wailing that 20 years ago, the recently deceased congressman Gerry Studds, a Democrat, did not suffer for his homosexual relationship with a 17-year-old congressional page...
...A Democratic Congress would not sit still...
...But that's hardly a selling point for a party...
...Within the Democratic party today, the reigning idea is an outright craving of power...
...Democrats are furious because they can't understand why they, the party of government, have been denied control of Washington by the American people...
...It is not a weakness of the GOP that some of its members are at daggers drawn over foreign policy and national defense, economic policies, and the federal role in education...
...some have violated conservative principles...
...So should all conservatives...
...and Hillary and the seedy liberals who came to dominate the Democratic party...
...These middle class dads became increasingly repelled by Bill Craig Shirley is the president of Shirley & Banister Public Affairs and the author of a history of the 1976 campaign, Reagan's Revolution: The Untold Story of the Campaign That Started it All...
...Republicans have established high standards for themselves, and this is a good thing, as we've seen in the Mark Foley case...
...What the garden-variety angry white male needs to remember is that Democratic anger has a different source than his own...
...Now, some are frustrated with the GOP But consider this, my fellow angry white middle-aged males: Ever since economic libertarians and social conservatives came together to form a majority party, the Republicans have thrived on vigorous internal debates...
...Democrats aren't angry at the moral failings of Republicans...
...If you are pro-life, as in the case of the late Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, you are ostracized...
...And yes, many in the "base" are angry with . . . take your pick: growth of government, spending, corruption, steel tariffs, illegal immigration, McCain-Feingold, Mark Foley, the war in iraq...
Vol. 12 • October 2006 • No. 7
