Takeover (35 page)

When Ronald Reagan was president, discretionary domestic spending went down by 1.4 percent, the only time it has done so in over sixty years. When conservatives held sway in the House of Representatives, spending was curtailed, the deficit went to zero, and the federal government actually had budget surpluses—with Democratic president Bill Clinton in the White House.

How did those conservatives get to Washington?

It’s the primaries, stupid!

What would today’s political narrative be if limited-government constitutional conservatives had not won the 2010 Republican Senate primary in Kentucky and Utah, and the 2012 Texas Republican Senate primary?

The old-line establishment Republican–affiliated power brokers would have been happy to have Utah Senator Robert Bennett back, instead of his replacement, boat-rocking Senator Mike Lee, and with Mitch McConnell’s acolyte Trey Grayson in the Senate, instead of Rand Paul, there would be no pushback against the
Obama administration’s shredding of our right to privacy and the Fourth and Ninth Amendments to the Constitution.

And with establishment Texas lieutenant governor David Dewhurst in the Senate, instead of boat-rocking, limited-government constitutional conservative Ted Cruz, all the special interests that contributed to Dewhurst’s campaign would by now have had their fill of pork funded by hard-pressed federal taxpayers. Increasing the debt ceiling would be just another routine vote in Congress, and Obamacare would be just another bad law Americans have to live with, instead of the existential battles over the unlimited growth of government that Ted Cruz has made them.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the conservative movement was a coalition built around two issues: economic conservatism and anti-communist national defense conservatism. This gave us a base to occasionally win an election, but was not enough to build a successful national conservative party.

That all changed in the latter part of the 1970s when social conservatives added their strength to the movement and Ronald Reagan came forward as the standard-bearer for conservative ideas.

We won three landslide presidential elections in the 1980s, but we were still only slowing the erosion of our freedoms because we were still burdened by the dead wood of the business-as-usual wing of the Republican Party, and its addiction to Democrat-lite policy and spending.

For fifty years I have been saying that to change things and stop the slide to socialism, two things needed to happen: first, things need to get really bad really fast; and second, there needs to be some political vehicle, some means for the people to channel their anger, and to translate their outrage into political action. Guess what: we’re there.

The failure of Republican president George W. Bush to deliver on his promise of conservative governance, coupled with the excesses and corruption of the Republican Congress, have so alienated conservative voters that they began to look outside the Republican
establishment for new leaders and for a new vehicle to translate their anger and outrage into political action.

And when Barack Obama was elected president, with a Democratic majority in Congress, things got real bad, real fast.

Once, twice, three times a day, Obama is going to do something to make you angry—that’s okay. Take thirty or forty seconds maximum to let off some steam, and then fall down on your knees and thank the good Lord for the excesses of Obama, Harry Reid in the Senate, and Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House.

Within thirty days of Obama’s inauguration, the Tea Party movement rose from nothing, but the concern of ordinary Americans for the future of their country, to challenge Big Government Republicans and create a vehicle that translated conservative outrage into a fifty-seat turnover in the US House of Representatives.

And with the rise of the Tea Party came the opportunity—no guarantee, just the opportunity—to end the erosion of our liberties and return us to the constitutional principles our Founders envisioned.

The Tea Party has added a fourth leg to the three-legged stool that supported the conservative movement for the past thirty-five years, to create a large and stable table upon which to build a real conservative governing coalition.

And in addition to sheer numbers at the ballot box, the Tea Party—unfettered by old ties and old relationships with Washington’s Republican establishment—has brought a new willingness to engage in the primary election battles necessary to prune away the dead wood of the Republican establishment and make way for the growth of a new Republican Party committed to limited-government constitutional conservatism.

Tea Party influence in Republican primaries will ensure that voters have a stark choice between Big Government Republicans, who have been complicit in the Democrats’ decades-long campaign to recast America into a collective-centered society built around an intrusive central government, and limited-government constitutional
conservative candidates who stand for American exceptionalism based on individualism, liberty, and the sanctity of the human spirit.

The turnaround we’ve been working for isn’t going to happen with one election. We will have much work to do to find and support candidates who are prepared to fend off the inevitable calls to return to the old ways of compromise instead of principle. As we enter the 2014 and 2016 election cycles, I’m more optimistic about the future of this great country than I’ve ever been, because Tea Partiers and other liberty loving voters are finally beginning to understand—
it’s the primaries, stupid!

T
he focus of this book is one of the most important political battles in American history—and this battle is not between Republicans and Democrats or between Liberals and Conservatives. It is inside the Republican Party.

It is the battle for control of the Republican Party between establishment Big Government Republicans and limited-government constitutional conservatives.

For the one hundred–plus years this battle for the soul of the Republican Party has been raging, conservatives have often been blamed for Republican defeats, including the 2012 debacle, despite the fact that, while substantial majorities of Americans back conservative positions on the growth of government, balancing the budget, and traditional values, conservatives have been excluded consistently from the leadership of the Republican Party.

As the second decade of the twenty-first-century advances, it has become clear that establishment Republican and Democratic politicians have failed America because they have both accepted Big Government. as the solution to every problem.

Far from making “progress” in the sense of advancing liberty and unleashing the potential in every human being, these “progressive”
Big Government policies have taken us backwards to a time when people were ruled by the decrees of kings, and a small, self-perpetuating elite made all the decisions.

If we are to save what makes America exceptional,
we the people
—grassroots conservatives—must lead.

As the Bible tells us in Proverbs 11:14, “For lack of guidance a nation falls, but many advisers make victory sure.”

That is the same concept upon which
New Yorker
business columnist James Surowiecki based his best-selling book
The Wisdom of Crowds
. Large groups of people are smarter than an elite few, no matter how brilliant—better at solving problems, fostering innovation, coming to wise decisions, even predicting the future.

What could be in tune more with the ethos of the Tea Party movement and its grassroots, bottom-up approach to politics and government than “crowdsourcing” a plan for conservatives to take over the Republican Party and govern America according to conservative principles by 2017?

On February 15, 2013, I announced on the Conservative HQ website “The Liberty Prize,” a $10,000 prize to generate ideas and plans for the limited-government constitutional conservative takeover of the Republican Party, and urged grassroots conservatives to organize teams to brainstorm ideas or submit a plan for publication in a book.

To facilitate the process I suggested that entrants gather their Tea Party, Republican Club, or friends and neighbors around a table and work through the Vision-Goal-Strategy-Projects/Tactics process that Newt Gingrich had used to help the leaders of the New Right plan our opposition to progressive policies and politicians in the late 1970s and 1980s.

I was overwhelmed by the response—the announcement of the Liberty Prize generated more than a thousand submissions of plans and ideas to guide conservatives to take over the Republican Party and govern America in 2017.

The vast majority of the comments and submissions dwelt upon the sad state of the establishment Republican Party. If there was one
theme that ran through the Liberty Prize submissions, it was that Republicans lose elections when they fail to run on, and deliver on, their promises of conservative governance.

Naturally, I agreed with that analysis. While those submissions provided a useful commentary on why conservatives must devote their energies to taking over the GOP, they did not help us find a path forward.

The question was, and is, how do we change things and take over the GOP to make the Republican Party the political home of limited-government constitutional conservatives, and govern America according to conservative principles in 2017?

Two submissions to the Liberty Prize contest stood out as offering practical—but very different—paths forward to accomplish that goal.

One, submitted by longtime Tea Party leaders Michael Patrick Leahy and Lorie Medina of the Real Conservatives National Committee, focused on identifying, recruiting, and, through effective grassroots campaign techniques, nominating and electing limited-government constitutional conservatives to office—particularly to the US House and Senate.

The other was submitted by Republican precinct committeeman and attorney Daniel J. Schultz of Tempe, Arizona, author of
Taking Back Your Government: The Neighborhood Precinct Committeeman Strategy,
and it focused on getting conservatives elected to Republican Party office—starting with precinct committeeman.

Dan Schultz’s great insight was that the best tool for defeating the Democrat Party at the polls is the Republican Party, but it is weak and ideologically split because not enough conservatives engage in the real ball game of politics—party politics—at the grassroots level as precinct committeemen.

Dan’s submission focused on getting limited-government constitutional conservatives to become involved in their local Republican Party organization and, ultimately, to become the leaders of the Republican Party at the local, state, and national levels.

We had two solid ideas about how to take over the GOP, but
which one was right and which one offered the best path to accomplishing the goal set forth in the Liberty Prize announcement?

Conservatives have indeed begun to master the tools of grassroots politics and campaigning.

As Lorie Medina and Michael Patrick Leahy have demonstrated in the formation of the Real Conservatives National Committee, and their well-focused campaign to defeat incumbent Tennessee establishment Republican senator Lamar Alexander, this includes “RINO hunting.” Defeating establishment Republican incumbents is an important part of accomplishing our goal of governing America according to conservative principles in 2017.

However, electing limited-government constitutional conservatives to office, and especially defeating Big Government Republican incumbents, is substantially more difficult if the Republican Party apparatus remains in the hands of the establishment.

As I have documented throughout this book, the greatest impediment to conservative governance is not the Democrats and liberals—it is the progressive leadership of the Big Government Republican establishment in the halls of Congress, state houses, and at Republican Headquarters, especially at the Republican National Committee.

Just look at the record of the manipulation of the party rules at the Republican National Convention to rob Taft of the presidential nomination in 1952; the attacks on Goldwater as an “extremist” in 1964; the party rules changes in 2012 designed to freeze out Ron Paul supporters at the Republican National Convention; and in 2013 the financial starvation of Ken Cuccinelli’s campaign for governor of Virginia.

All of the grassroots commitment and shoe leather conservatives put into nominating their candidates is wasted if, after we win the nomination, our conservative candidates are undercut and defeated by the opposition of their own party leadership.

Did that mean Dan Schultz was right and fielding candidates for precinct committeeman, county chairman, and state committeeman and state committeewoman should be our top priorities?

The answer is, they were both right. I split the $10,000 Liberty Prize between the two submissions and have included summaries of their ideas and plans to provide you with practical ideas on how to take over your Republican Party.

In the analysis of Michael Patrick Leahy and Lorie Medina, the Republican establishment—as led by the Republican National Committee and its associated organizations—is unduly influenced by a tight-knit and corrupt cabal whose primary purpose is not to win elections for Republicans but to ensure that a small group of well-connected consultants will remain in power and control the lucrative donations that generous (but uninformed) Republican donors continually provide them.

The Republican establishment and its consultants continue to campaign with the tools of past eras while the Democratic Party and the left wing have for over a decade been operating an innovative, technology-driven, highly market-segmented operation that relies heavily on person-to-person, door-to-door, and digital communications.

The results have been predictable. Democrats won the Senate and the House in 2006, and the presidency in 2008 and 2012. The technology advantage the Democrats have continues to widen. The Republican establishment is bringing a toothpick to a gunfight.