GOP Ice Age

We first stumbled upon the work of cartoonist William Warren last month, but his work for the conservative website NetRight Nation is quickly becoming a favorite of our editorial staff.

Warren’s clever cartoon about Barack Obama’s radical roots was featured in one of our previous posts, and his take on the current status of the Republican Party just hit NetRight’s website yesterday.

Also hitting the site was an interesting article called “Pruning the Party” by columnist Isaac MacMillen.

In his article, MacMillen argues that the GOP must adopt the same model employed by far left, fiercely-partisan Democrats like Howard Dean – or for that matter, the same model employed by new Obama Chief-of-Staff Rahm Emanuel.

According to MacMillen, Dean and Emanuel didn’t “turn centrist,” but rather “began revitalizing the party from the ground up, urging it to stand upon its principles and make Republicans pay for every inch of ground they took.”

From his piece:

The conservative movement—and its most accessed vehicle, the Republican Party—must embrace that same relentless attitude. Of course, the GOP—and by extension, the conservative movement—has suffered severe losses. But the Dean Model is the key to renewal. Though some races are still being counted, the Democrats have, in just four years, gained close to 50 house seats, about a dozen Senate seats, and the presidency.

Of course there are multitudes of other factors in play—many of which were against the Republicans. And many issues were the fault of the party; it had left its conservative roots. But history valued only as nostalgia cannot provide a vision for the future. The Republican Party needs to learn its lessons, patch its wounds, and jump right back into the fight, using the tactics that will work for it. Enough “Mr. Nice-Guy;” America needs a party that will put those who work hard—not those who hardly work—first. America needs a party that will embrace free enterprise. America needs a party that deflates the bumbling behemoth that is its Big Government (largely the fault of the Republicans themselves).

Those (and they are legion) inside the party who consistently pander to the left should take warning. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and the big-spenders and free-wheelers of the past will only hurt the movement in the future. Those who claim to embrace conservative ideals would do well to actually employ them. And those in key Republican National Committee positions who have put personal gain above the party’s good need to be unceremoniously shown the door. In short, its time for the “good old boys” to become the “gone old boys.”

Interestingly enough, we heard precisely the same sentiment from a friend of ours down in Beaufort County (S.C.) this morning. Expressed in response to a suggestion from our founding editor to abandon the GOP (which he’s already done) and create a new party created to represent fiscal conservatives/ social libertarians, here’s what our friend had to say:

“The party is okay … We just need to find and kick out all the RINO’s.”

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