A question for Colin Powell, Tom Ridge, Newt Gingrich and all the other so-called “big tent” or “moderate” Republicans: have you all been in a coma for the last two elections?

We had eight years of a moderate Republican president who was sold to the base as a conservative. We had a moderate Republican majority in Congress that brought this country to the brink of economic ruin with massive spending hikes. We had the uber moderate Republican, John McCain, as the party’s presidential candidate, largely due to the fact that moderate Republicans apparently saw nothing wrong with letting Democrats vote in Republican state primaries.

What is it about getting drubbed in two straight elections that eludes you moderates?

I’ll tell you what eludes you: Courage. Faith. And most importantly, principles.

Maybe the relentless pounding by an in-the-tank media over the years has eroded your resolve. What a pity when resolve is the one thing critically necessary to withstand the odious liberal agenda about to be inflicted on this nation. You don’t like someone like Rush Limbaugh because he’s “offensive” or “divisive?” Compared to whom? The liberals who called George W. Bush a “Nazi” for eight years? The editors at the New York Times who were more than willing to reveal national security secrets in the middle of a war? How about the current president whose contempt for people who “cling to guns and religion” is a integral part of his worldview?

Snap out of it, gentlemen. Moderates are killing the Republican party.

Moderate Republicans are people like Colin Powell who, when offered a choice between a moderate Republican and a radical Democrat for president, hitched his star to the Community-Organizer-in-Chief. They’re people like Tom Ridge who apparently believes that providing terrorists with details about what we will or won’t do during interrogations hasn’t made us “less safe.” They’re people like Newt Gingrich, a late convert, who believes “big tent” Republicans should embrace global warming as “indisputable,” despite the fact the earth hasn’t warmed an iota in ten plus years. And, for reality-check’s sake, moderate Republicans are people like George W. Bush whose rightness on terror could’t obscure his wrongness on “free” prescription drugs, amnesty for illegals and a host of other issues where “compassionate conservatism,” aka “moderation” proved to be the entire party’s undoing.

As I’ve said before, the “big tent” concept is a complete crock. At its core, it is the idea of abandoning principle for popularity. It is akin to Catholic university Notre Dame unable to see the difference between having the president of the United States address their graduating class and offering a dedicated pro-abortionist an honorary degree. The former is fine, the latter regrettable.

Does adhering to principles win elections? Maybe, maybe not. But we know a lack of principle is a stone, cold loser. Americans were willing to roll the dice with the very same liberalism they rejected for years precisely because Democrats, however misguided, presented the electorate with a far clearer choice of who they were than Republicans did. And we know something else as well: the deeper this nation slides into cultural and economic decay, the more the American people will be looking for no-nonsense individuals who aren’t afraid of taking the heat for standing on principle.

Furthermore, what’s the point of watering down one’s principles to attract the fence-sitters when you alienate the base at the same time? For example, do you really want to be the big tent party on abortion at the precise moment a majority of American are embracing the pro-life side of the argument? Do you want to continue to tolerate the aforementioned free-spending compassionate conservatism, even as “tea parties” gain strength and numbers? Do you want to be the “me too” party on amnesty for illegal immigrants despite the populist firestorm that defeated it two years ago? How about the party who thinks Dick Cheney “went too far” defending the former administration for keeping us safe, even as the current administration’s “mea culpa” approach to Islamic jihadism would be considered utterly bankrupt by most Americans if we were attacked again?

Do you honestly believe America needs ANOTHER political party whose “core values” begin and end with the acquisition and maintenance of power regardless of the damage it does to the country?

In sports, there’s an expression known as “letting the game come to you.” With respect to the Republican party, it means keeping a conservative candle burning in the window which will help people find their way home when the unsustainable nature of modern-day liberalism finally reveals itself. Americans may not currently realize that nationalizing banks and car companies, or telling the world what a rotten country we’ve been, or ringing up multi-generational levels of debt is as wrong-headed as it gets. But nothing is forever. Eventually they’ll come back to reality and they’ll need a place to go–a place anchored in principle, not political expediency.

That’s called “long-term thinking,” gentlemen. Perhaps such thinking doesn’t accrue to individual egos or ambitions, but a lone voice of sanity wandering in a temporary wilderness is a helluva lot better than a mob of semi-malcontents moping around a big tent hoping they can out-Democrat Democrats with populist pandering.

You want to be “all things to all people?” Open a delicatessen. But spare genuine conservatives your lectures on moderation because we’re not buying it–now or ever. People with bedrock principles don’t allow those principles to be compromised by ebb and flow of power. We know who we are, and we’ll still know it, long after the moderates have moved on to newest incarnation of semi-intellectual, “why can’t we all get along” mush–and still wondering why they just can’t seem to get over the “electoral hump.”

Moderation? Spare me.

atahlert@comcast.net

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