The Struggle Within The GOP

I rarely refer to myself as a Republican because I consider myself a conservative first, and part of an active minority within the party. The active majority are what I call RINOs. These people are not conservatives. They look askance at the conservatives when we sally forth against the drift leftward in our party and our nation. Most often, we have been up in arms over some piece of legislation championed by Senator John McCain. I laugh every time I hear him refer to himself as a conservative.

I believe most people who are registered as Republicans are conservatives, but have lives to lead outside politics and do not really pay that much attention to what is going on within the party except a few months every other year or every fourth year.

One of my favorite North Carolina Bloggers (and a staunch conservative) has some words of wisdom to share with us on the struggle within the party and the coming struggles in the nation and world:

Since day one of the campaign for the oval office 2008 conservatives have scratched their collective heads in wonderment at the candidates the GOP wheeled out for our inspection. At first, we thought it was a bad joke. Then, it was rumored that the upper echelons in the party were saying they didn’t need conservative support to win the White House. We KNEW the party was in serious trouble at that moment.

There has been a tug of war within the GOP since the conservative take-over in the mid 1990’s. The resentment of the bluebloods and the country club Republicans toward the K-Mart Republicans has been palpable. You see… we conservatives are something of an embarrassment to them. For the most part they are the moderate to liberal branch of the GOP. (Oh, yes. Just as there are conservative democrats there are liberal republicans.) Unfortunately, the liberal republicans carry with them that “liberal guilt” just the same as their democrat counterparts. I am of the opinion there is nothing so dangerous to the country as liberal guilt no matter if the liberal is republican or democrat.

Source: Insight on Freedom (read the whole thing and add him to your bookmarks or RSS Reader).