Conservative Extremist to Moderates: Let Them Depart

While all good conservatives were out conceding that the GOP needs to become more moderate in national elections, an extreme right wing leader at a major speech in Washington insisted the GOP lost because it wasn’t conservative enough:

I don ‘t know about you, but I am impatient with those Republicans who after the last election rushed into print saying, “We must broaden the base of our party”—when what they meant was to fuzz up and blur even more the differences between ourselves and our opponents.

It was a feeling that there was not a sufficient difference now between the parties that kept a majority of the voters away from the polls. When have we ever advocated a closed-door policy?…

Our people look for a cause to believe in. Is it a third party we need, or is it a new and revitalized second party, raising a banner of no pale pastels, but bold colors which make it unmistakably clear where we stand on all of the issues troubling the people?

The major figure then doomed his own political chances by sending an anti-moderate message and suggesting a course which, according to thousands of media wisemen, can only lead to disaster for the Republican Party. :

A political party cannot be all things to all people. It must represent certain fundamental beliefs which must not be compromised to political expediency, or simply to swell its numbers.

I do not believe I have proposed anything that is contrary to what has been considered Republican principle. It is at the same time the very basis of conservatism. It is time to reassert that principle and raise it to full view. And if there are those who cannot subscribe to these principles, then let them go their way.

At a time when the GOP needs more members not less, this “leader” suggested shrinking the party. No doubt this leader’s failure to follow the party line will doom him as well as anyone who follows him.

By the way. The name of this leader?

Ronald Reagan? And the election he was speaking of? The Disastrous 1974 mid-term elections. Funny how history repeats itself.