{"id":10222,"date":"2011-08-07T09:00:48","date_gmt":"2011-08-07T16:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/?p=10222"},"modified":"2011-08-07T08:23:19","modified_gmt":"2011-08-07T15:23:19","slug":"a-strategy-for-the-republican-party-that-can-actually-win-elections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/10222\/a-strategy-for-the-republican-party-that-can-actually-win-elections\/","title":{"rendered":"A strategy for the Republican party that can actually win elections"},"content":{"rendered":"

[Back to the top from November 6, 2009. –GSS]<\/em>
 <\/p>\n

The national Republican party is riven by an insuperable internal contradiction.<\/p>\n

Out of one side of their mouths, Republicans wish to portray themselves as tax cutters, red-tape slashers, champions of liberty fearlessly hacking away at the slimy tentacles of the leviathan state. Ignore for the moment that they’re spineless jellyfish when it comes time to cut, slash or hack; this is how they wish to present themselves.<\/p>\n

Out of the other side of their mouths, Republicans offer American voters an alternate set of slimy tentacles for the same old leviathan. The state they promise to shrink will simultaneously promote a nebulous family values agenda and forbid abortion. Republicans will simultaneously dismantle the Department of Education and<\/i> supplant ecosocialist indoctrination with theocratic indoctrination. The leviathan state will lose the power to ban cancer drugs but gain the power to ban rap records.<\/p>\n

Things fall apart. The center cannot hold…<\/p>\n

Whatever the Republican party seeks to be in the states, in the counties, in the towns, what it cannot<\/i> be at the national level is the party of both smaller and larger government. It can’t because as a strategy it makes no sense, and it can’t because there is no common ground between the liberty-seeking Republicans and the theocracy-seeking Republicans. Those two wings of the party can only fly apart in the long run.<\/p>\n

But: There is a way around this: The Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution:<\/p>\n

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If the national Republican party were to concentrate solely<\/i> on shrinking the Federal leviathan to a strict adherence to the Constitution, devolving all<\/i> of the usurped tentacular powers to the states to do with — or do away with — as they choose, the party could achieve these goals:<\/p>\n