Unlike conservatives, Jeffords is
more interested in principles than in the Republican
label. Wayne Morse, who made the same switch in
1955, also valued his liberal principles over the
party label.
This fact leads us directly into another
fact of history that liberals never mention, and
that conservatives - ALL CONSERVATIVES BUT ME -
have kept hidden: That fact is that Republican conservatives
have NEVER valued principles over party.
No conservative Republican has ever
considered the future of America more important
than the Grand Old Party of Abraham Lincoln (Please
see December 16, 2000, THE THING THAT WOULDN'T DIE).
In 1932, 1934 and 1936 the Republican
Party almost ceased to exist outside of New England.
Liberals took over the national Democratic Party,
but conservatives stayed with the Democrats because
they had enormous power in Congress because of their
seniority. By 1936, less than a FIFTH of the House
of Representatives was Republican and many of them
were liberal Republicans.
In 1936, conservative Republicans
had no power anywhere. If they had had any interest
in conservative principles, they would have left
the Party of Lincoln to its handful of liberals
and voted for conservative Democrats. There is no
record of any conservative Republican ever considering
such a move.
So what did conservative Republicans
do after the 1936 rout? They could have chosen to
join their fellow conservatives in the Democratic
Party and rule the country. At that time and for
a generation to come, the American electorate contained
a solid majority of Southern and ethnic conservatives,
especially Northern Irish, and conservative Republicans
in the Northeast and Midwest and West.
But putting principle before party
never even occurred to Northern conservative Republicans.
They simply gave their national party to their liberal-moderate
minority. After 1936, to save the party label, Republicans
began to nominate one moderate after another for
the presidency.
From 1940 until very recently, conservative
Southerners, Westerners, Midwesterners, and socially
conservative Northeastern ethnics made up a solid
majority of American voters. But liberals ran our
national politics.
Because party labels meant more to
conservatives than did principles, they were fatally
split. The base of the Democratic Party was made
up of Southern and ethnic conservatives. The base
of the Republican Party was Midwestern and Western
conservatives.
The South voted for anybody with a
Democratic label. The Midwest voted for anybody
with a Republican label. Conservatives would vote
for anybody with the right party label, no matter
what they stood for.
So liberals held the balance of power.
In plain English, the party label
was more important to conservatives in both parties
than the fate of their country or their principles.
It was conservative Democrats who
finally put principle above party.
Finally, beginning in the 1950s, we
conservative Democrats began to support the Goldwater-Reagan
wing of the Republican Party. Ronald Reagan was
one of those who left the Democratic Party to pursue
their conservative beliefs.
We had a hard fight. Most Republican
conservatives remained loyal to the moderate and
liberal Party leaders. They backed Nixon. They backed
Ford, Bush, and Dole. If there hadn't been so many
Republican conservatives who backed them the party
would have stayed conservative after 1960.
Lincoln Republicans are still at it.
NATIONAL REVIEW, the magazine that represents respectable
conservatism, is now conducting a vicious campaign
against the Confederate flag. It demands that all
conservatives unite behind the principles of Abraham
Lincoln.
So Jeffords is not the real traitor.
He is working for his leftist principles. Anyone
with a conscience would rather have a Jeffords on
their side than NATIONAL REVIEW and its kind of
"conservatives."
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