-By Warner Todd Huston
There aren’t really two major parties in our political system. There are three. Sure there are Democrats–the extreme liberal, Euro-like party–and, yes, there are Republicans. But Republicans are not the conservative party. The GOP is the moderate party. The third party is made of the conservatives and even as they are forced to call themselves Republicans, they have a higher calling than mere party power plays.
Of course, the problem is that since the moderate party and the conservative party are encompassed in the same party, the constant struggle causes the “Republican” Party to lose too often.
The latest example of this struggle can be seen in last week’s incident where the moderate party “leaders” purposefully stuck their finger in the eyes of the conservative caucus with the sudden voice vote on “Doc Fix.”
The conservative faction is still furious at the maneuver meant to defeat them launched by their own supposed leaders.
If you missed this maneuver, it occurred on March 27 where the GOP leadership launched a voice vote on a bill that they knew did not have enough GOP votes to pass. Leadership struck a deal with the Democrats to pass the bill that averted a pay hike for doctors (hence the name “Doc Fix”) by calling for a quick voice vote passage at a time when they knew that many conservatives were not in the chamber.
A voice vote is a procedure where the two parties agree that an issue is easily passable and so they will dispense with the regular, full debate and roll call vote.
So, when the time was right and not many conservative critics of the bill were in the chamber, Arkansas Republican Rep. Steve Womack took the gavel and banged in a voice vote then deemed the bill passed.
Conservatives were apoplectic that their vote on the measure was maneuvered away from them and they wondered why their own leaders sold them out to work with Democrats.
In fact, even as late as April 2 conservatives were still hopping mad that the GOP leadership worked to eliminate their voice in the Doc Fix debate.
But you do see what this means, don’t you? It means that the GOP works harder to defeat its own members (on the conservative side of the aisle) than they do to defeat Democrats. And this is why the Democrats–who have no appreciable governing loggerheads, they are all extreme leftists–can more easily get their agenda passed when they have the power to do so. Democrats have comparatively little internal resistance to the extreme, left-wing, anti-American agenda.
Of course, this shows another thing that is a somewhat positive attribution, at least. It shows that the Republican Party is really the American party. It has relatively liberal members, it has moderate members and it has conservative members. This is something the Democrats don’t have. Democrats only have extreme liberals. No moderates. That means the GOP has a wider, more American breadth of opinion.
That the Democrats are the bigoted, extreme party is beyond question.
In the end, sadly, the conservatives can’t split from the Republican Party and neither can the GOP afford to have them go or both would be out of power for generations. It is a fight that will go on until one or the other is defeated, unfortunately.
Being a party that has so much breadth of opinion, sadly, sets the seeds for its own demise, though.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, Wizbang.com, among many, many others. Huston has also appeared on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN, and many local TV shows as well as numerous talk radio shows throughout the country.
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