Conservatives Actually Suck at This

John Boehner can do whatever the heck he wants to. The GOP could be making the argument that the White House has offered nothing on spending and the American people want spending cuts as much as they are okay with tax increases, but instead John Boehner will publicly negotiate with himself.


And he can. He can throw conservatives off fiscal committees without consequence.

Conservatives can complain, moan, wail, and scream all they want. They can call for third parties or no parties or sit at home.

It doesn’t really matter. Conservatives suck at this and the leadership knows it.

Leaders of both parties only pay attention to money and serious primary challengers. They have the money advantage. As for conservative primary challengers, conservatives have put up quite a few, but most are terrible, few win, and even fewer win the general election. Conservatives have done better on the Senate side, but some of the folks tea party groups and others stood up to challenge incumbents on the House side were downright embarrassing.

That last bit just turns people off. There’s no sense in putting up primary challengers if they don’t have a shot to actually win. Eventually the bulk of Republican voters will get worn out and go back. In the meantime, the leaders are still leaders and have effective scapegoats to blame.

The fact is conservatives need to show conservatives can win. They can make a first stand in Virginia with Ken Cuccinelli. But they must do more — we must do more.

If conservatives want to show they are not paper tigers, they must actually make concerted efforts in 2014 beating Republican incumbents. Conservatives have a better track record of this than liberals, but have their share of clunkers. They need to give it a full go.

In the past decade, conservatives have also lost a lot of brand recognition. The GOP and “conservatives” are used interchangeably. People now read National Review to find out what Republican leaders are doing instead of conservatives. People check the American Conservative Union scorecard to see how Republican a person is, not how conservative they are. Too many conservative organizations are draining donors dry with no real results to speak of. A heck of a lot of conservative organizations will disappear overnight when their geriatric leaders die because they’ve become too wrapped up in the identity of their leader, not in the cause they have long claimed to serve.

Some of these groups are stifling the regeneration of the conservative movement through hoarding donors, co-opting the projects of younger groups only to fail at execution, and otherwise just taking up space as a conservative group when often it’s just an excuse for another cocktail party to give out more awards where the GOP establishment will come and kiss rear ends in the Beltway nonaggression club of uselessness on the right.

CONTINUE READING:
http://www.redstate.com/2012/12/05/conservatives-actually-suck-at-this/