The GOP: What is To Be Done?

Linda Chavez, in the latest Human Events, asks where the Republican leaders are--why is there nobody on the scene to pick up the tattered banner on the stricken field?

She starts by saying:

The Republican Party needs a leader, and so far, no one has stepped up to the job. The mainstream media have had great fun declaring talk show host Rush Limbaugh the de facto head of the GOP, which caused newly elected Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele to assert, testily, that he's in charge, not Rush. Frankly, neither man is right for the job. And if the party can't find someone who is -- and fast -- Republicans will have a tough time fighting the Democrat juggernaut.

The problem with the Republican party is very simple: it has lost its primary focus and purpose. That must is obvious. But *chto delat'?* What is to be done?

Our party's original purpose was the termination of chattel slavery as it was practiced up until 1860, and the promotion of free small business employing free men. (Have we forgotten our first slogan? "Free Soil, Free Silver, Free Men, Fremont." Maybe we should remember it.)

Between 1865 and 1876, our party was focused on the reconstruction of the Union and the reknitting of the states into and under the Constitution (and of course our party's perpetuation in power, against a resurgent Democracy that was still slaver-controlled).

Between 1876 and 1896, maintaining power became its primary focus, alas, much as it was between 1996 and 2006.

From 1896 to 1912, it was the party of "reform and progress"; its program and power at the time largely driven by the personality of T. Roosevelt; as he went into decline, so did the party.

Between 1921 and 1933, again, it was interested largely in self-perpetuation.

Then, exile.

What does our current situation resemble?

Many would say it resembles 1933, and that we are fighting as grim an economic meltdown as did the second Roosevelt: and in fighting Obama ("Roosevelt") we risk (and fear) having the meltdown become welded around our necks for half a century.

This is madness. While we are clearly entering an economic autumn, it is not as bad as it was in '33 by several orders of magnitude. And Obama is *not* Franklin Roosevelt; he's Jimmy Carter, rested and ready to resume governing in accordance with an economic flat-earthism that will take less than a year to become obvious.

We have no leaders right now because the leaders we have are preparing to fight "the last war"--or more accurately "the last fight." The cold war is over; the Global War on Terror has come to a (temporarily) successful standstill. We have to look forward, not back. (And by-the-bye we must shun the siren song of neo-Calhounian state sovereignty, which is a deadly trap.)

We need to be getting ready to fight the NEXT fight: a fight against global centralization; a fight against granting sovereign powers to the UN and surrendering our own; a fight against the delegitimization of the political participation of believing Christians and Jews; a fight against a politically correct *gleichschaltung*, a fight against the silencing of the right; and MOST IMPORTANTLY a fight against the dehumanization of the demographically vulnerable: abortion, state sanctioned suicide, and the murder of the helpless, the old, the weak, the disabled. We must learn to protect the weak AND to celebrate natural nobility and excellence, without falling into the traps of socialism or neo-supremacism.

HUMAN LIFE IS TO BE PROTECTED, NEVER TERMINATED BY THE POWERS OF THE STATE WITHOUT DUE PROCESS. HUMAN EXCELLENCE IS TO BE FOSTERED, NOT RESTRAINED.

In other words, we must become as the abolitionists were, once more. Without a moral core, we're just moneymen, Hamiltonian debt-collectors with neither conscience nor guiding principles worthy of mankind.

We keep looking for "the next Reagan." Which is as useless as looking for "the next Lincoln." Each generation has its own unique leader; one cannot look to the past for a model that fits our changed circumstances. (And fond as I am of the honorable Governor of Alaska, I don't think that she is whom we seek.)

The reason we have no leaders at this instant is because the ones we have--Gov. Palin aside--are retreads from the last fight. It is time for new voices. We must resist the siren song of the new serfdom of state sponsored peonage: and call it by name. We must again become who we are: free men on free soil, unashamed of that which we protect.