Friday, February 15, 2008

We're So Screwed

While I generally don't like whining about situations I'm in, because it makes me out to be a child, I think I have good cause to. The conservative movement of the Republican party is, for all intents and purposes, dead. At what point it happened, I don't know, but movements tend to taper off over time, so it probably started at around 1998 when the Democrats won back seats after the attempted impeachment of Bill Clinton. I guess that happened because the conservative movement failed to deliver on their contract they had with us back in 1994. While they had proposed modest goals, that were easily attainable, they failed to deliver on a single one. What's more, the perception was that they were focused on impeachment more than meeting these goals. Finally, Newt Gingrinch stepped down as Speaker of the House in the aftermath of the 1998 elections. That was probably the beginning of the end. I think he should have stuck to his guns and held his position. If he had gone on the attack, maybe, just maybe, Congress today would be a lot different.

But 20/20 hindsight is just that. This year, we have seen the end of the conservative movement within the Republican party. The final nail was when Mitt Romney, himself no real conservative but a friend of them, decided to suspend his campaign and then transfer his delegate wins to John McCain. Romney used the standard excuse of beating the Democrats to save us from terrorists. And while his reasons may be genuine, he is using poor logic.

Romney's departure was probably the biggest blow to the conservative movement in the past 10 years. I wonder if that was his plan from the beginning. I wonder if he made a deal with McCain and Guliani that whoever is ahead after Super Tuesday, the others would essentially drop out. Still, what's done is done. No going back, only moving forward to a terrible candidate.

So that's it folks. The conservatives in the Republican party have been snubbed for the last time. Sure there will be some who will vote to stop a Democrat from getting elected. But the truth is, it won't matter. John McCain, Hiliary Clinton, or Barak Obama are not all that different.

So like I've said in the title, we're so screwed. Say good-bye to liberty and property and hello to security and welfare (but only for the "poor"). If things continue the way they do, then I think Atlas will shrug here in the United States in a few decades from now.