Okay GOP, Now What?

Okay, so conservatives now own the GOP. Now what do we do?

  In previous newsletters we have mentioned how the Constitutional Carry legislation passing was a litmus test to see if the tall building crowd truly did want a truce in Oklahoma politics. The fight between the Tea Party/conservative faction and the Chamber of Commerce/tall building crowd has raged for over ten years and they have spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to control the legislators and the legislation coming out of the Capitol. Why?

Going back to the founding of the country we saw that the wealthy value stability above all else. Hard to hang on to your money and property if there is chaos. Hard to stay alive and keep your property and money if there is a pack of howling Democrats or radicals screaming for your head. In Hamilton's day the big fear was the French Revolution and the havoc a pure democracy would bring. Thus the electoral college, fifty senators versus 450 or so representatives, and states rights. Today the wealthy still fear pure democracy and radicals running the government. Who are these radicals that strike fear in the heart of the 1%?

Unions of course, using pure democracy to make labor so expensive that businesses have problem surviving and the wealthy having problems passing down their wealth to their future generations. They fear the Sally Kern types, homophobic ultra religious people, who are truly the tyrannical despots that insist things are their way or else. Close kin are the Dan Fisher/T. Russel Hunter type anti abortion/abolitionist types. And I do not mean the Pro Life folks who gently but persistently press for making abortion rare. The tall building crowd fear anarchists of all types including the radical Libertarians.

The wealthy fear those that are completely out of step with the average citizen and those that provoke fights with others because of how they live their life, who they love, or who are one dimensional and bigoted in their politics. Perhaps they feared the Tea Party because it was a sudden mob of people that sprung up out of nowhere in their view when in fact it was the average American saying “Stop!”. The Tea Party paved the way for Trump's win as it was mostly the average red blooded American that supported Trump and still backs his policies.

On the other side, the side that won on Saturday, are the Tea Party folks, the 9/12ers (Glen Beck supporters), the Constitutional types, and the more moderate Libertarians. A few radicals supported both Mike Turner and David Mclain but not many. If the radicals did it was because there was no one else they could support.

And now a bargain has been struck between the moderate right and the tall building crowd. Each has to bend a bit for the marriage to work. One of the festering problems has always been a Republican Party with this wonderful platform that was not being followed or reflected along with the legislative battles that would have advanced legislation for Constitutional Carry, states rights, lower taxation, or the so called social issues such as abortion, gay marriage, and privacy issues like red light cameras and invasive police state ID cards like Real ID.

To make this work both sides have to bend. Republicans are going to have to agree to simply leave the gays alone while at the same time not giving them special rights and that includes so called “hate laws”. The tall building crowd understood that opposing the 2^nd Amendment was in the way of unity so they laid down while Constitutional Carry was passed. We Republicans will have to say “NO!” to the radical Dan Fisher/T. Russell Hunter types and refuse them a place in the Party while supporting the Pro Life folks fully in their quest to make abortion rare. The tall building crowd will have to accept that anti illegal alien legislation needs to be passed. Some of they depend on cheap labor and all benefit from having wage rates kept dismally low compared to inflation over the last thirty years.

And what would both sides garner from cooperation? Republicans would see that 70 to 80% of their Party Platform could be followed, a far cry from the 30% average that we see currently where the legislators pay lip service to keeping taxes low and government limited. The tall building crowd would see the Dan Fisher/T. Russel Hunter crowd suppressed and by the way it was no accident that STP spent a lot of effort stopping both Dan Fisher and T. Russel Hunter and banishing them from polite society. Both will survive in the OCPAC/John Birch Society crowds although the majority of the moderate patriots will abandon those groups simply because they see them now as useless and emasculated.

Elections might become less expensive for the tall building crowd as they could be assured that the Republican Party could keep the elected officials in line. Republicans would see that the longest running fight, the fight over making elected officials follow the Party Platform, would end. County GOP organizations would be able to require candidates to “mark up” a copy of the State GOP Platform or even their own county version, in return for the use of the Republican name when running for office. In turn the county GOP would spend more time and money informing the Republican voters on who is following the Platform and who is a fake Republican. In short, the Republicans would control their brand for the first time in history.

The radical libertarians and radical Sally Kern/John Birch Society/OCPAC types lose the most. Both will not have a Party that accepts them or their radical ideas. But they are fringe and always will be fringe so this 5 to 10% of the population will never have enough clout to cause problems. The more intelligent of their crowd will leave and the remaining souls will fester and decay as they concentrate and the moderation of their views is eliminated.

The first step is to take the GOP State Platform and consider what is called the Statement of Principles, the wonderful first page of the Platform that the Tea Party adopted back in 2010:

Oklahoma Republican Party Statement of Principles:

We believe in limited government, individual liberty, and personal moral responsibility.

We believe Oklahoma should be a place of opportunity where people who work hard and abide by the rules can pursue their own dreams with a reasonable expectation of success.

As Republicans we believe:

1. Our rights of life, liberty, and property are natural rights granted to us by God and protected by the Constitution.
2. In the right to worship as we please without government intrusion or interference.
3. The federal government’s power is constitutionally limited, yet responsible for protecting our sovereignty, establishing justice under law, and securing our liberty through a strong national defense and effective law enforcement.
4. God is the Author and Creator of life and that all human life, both born and unborn, should be protected.
5. In traditional marriage consisting of one man and one woman.
6. It is the private sector and free market principles that best stimulate economic development rather than government subsidies or programs.
7. Taxes collected at all levels of government should be used only for legitimate government functions, and those functions carried out efficiently so that tax rates may be kept as low as possible.
8. That government closest to the people governs best and is preferred to centralized control.
9. It is the right of every parent to act in his or her children’s best interest including choosing the form of education, whether public school, private school, or home school.
10. We should welcome immigrants who want to legally seek freedom and opportunity, who want to work for a living and who will embrace our values, learn the English language, and respect our national sovereignty.

What needs changed to mollify the tall building crowd? Not a lot actually.

The second line, #2, about the ability to worship as we please means that even Muslims are allowed that right. The vast majority of Republicans agree, however the other side and the Muslims themselves must understand that they must assimilate after thorough background checks and not ask for special privileges. Sharia law cannot exist, nor can unchecked immigration be allowed nor can tax dollars be used to support extra wives and children. The very first line rules all, personal responsibility, pay for your own damned expenses.

#4 must be followed, all life is to be protected including a woman that has a medical condition that requires ending her pregnancy. Yet abortion should never be used as birth control.

#5 has to be modified. Get the government out of the business of who decides who is allowed to marry, make that religion's purview. And yet, as a society bigamy laws are needed be they Mormon or Muslim. Leave the gays alone but give them no special privileges or protections that the rest don't enjoy.

#6 is going to have to be accepted by the tall building crowd. Corporate welfare or allowing the Chamber of Commerce to sell advantages has to end.

#7 has to be accepted by the Chamber of Commerce. Everyone must be taxed including the poor so that everyone feels the bite. Re work the tax code but only after first trimming government down to size and scope.

#8 has to be accepted by conservatives to include stopping local governments from stripping away property rights. Yes local control is important but not at the cost of property rights.

#9 needs to be accepted by the tall building crowd. Excellent schools include charter schools and the ability to home school as long as the students are able to pass basic testing to show they have been educated. Both Christian and Muslim alike need to accept secular control over whether kids are educated well enough to understand how to vote as an educated voter and how to get along in life. We are talking history, math, science, reading, and writing. Not a dime needs spent past those goals.

#10 is the biggest sticking point for the tall building crowd. They must understand that businesses need to pay a livable wage and not depend on Sooner Care or Food Stamps to supplement a families living expenses. You don't get there by setting high minimum wages that lock out unskilled or inexperienced workers, or worse, the handicapped that might never be able to make a living wage. You get there by limiting illegal immigration and even legal immigration so that wages rise enough to support a family for the normal job. Are there scenarios where imported labor could be used? Prison labor or even county jail labor? Of course. But that imported labor should be reserved for the production that competes with cheap imported goods. Then at least the suppliers will be American and the majority of the profits remain in the U.S.

And the Platform is 35 pages long. While it is well thought out and precise we need a Platform one half to one third that size.

Why is it so large? Because it has always been the practice to shove the new people into the Platform Committee. The incestuous GOP leadership in the past didn't want the new people in the Rules committee that set the rules that governed the party, neither did they want them in credentials where they might help overrun the party with the religious right, the Ron Paul libertarians, or the Tea Party folks. Better exile them to the Platform Committee so they can't while they are being left out. The result is a bloated Party Platform that whines about cell phones and RF frequencies, Smart Meters, or 5G technology. Not saying those issues aren't important or are false, saying that there is no place for them in a Party Platform.

We don't need discussion or prohibition of the U.N. or international treaties if we have already stated that local control is best for all government functions. We don't need a sentence on protecing the elderly and the disabled from exploitation as we already have laws for that. Much of this sort of crap is little more than virtue signaling or appeasing single issue whack jobs. Cut the parts about Common Core out as they are redundant as we already established that local control is best.

Half of the Platform is bloated simply because it first lays out what it opposes and then what it supports. Pick one please. Don't obfuscate with duplication. Some of the items like forcing local governments to hold school board elections on the same dates as other elections need not be in the platform but would be better on a legislation wish list for legislators to mine for ideas for legislation. Much of the party duplicates the State and Federal Constitutions. One line requiring that both be followed and perhaps a list of Constitutional failures that need addressed.

Now if the Party wishes to have an extensive website that discusses each plank in great detail, awesome, but don't clutter up a Party Platform with a page of discussion about a single item like who is responsible for someone's health care.

In the end we need a list of ten major and inclusive principles that a candidate or elected official must follow in order to use the Republican brand. Nor should we ask for 100% compliance, 70% would be wonderful, 90% would be amazing. The local County can ask each candidate to mark up a copy indicating what they agree with and what they refuse to support. Then elections would be about policy and reputation, not a popularity contest. Fake Republicans would lose support and if a Democrat wanted to cross over and become Republican they would know what they should support.

The tall building crowd already made a down payment in good faith with the Constitutional Carry legislation.  Now the Republican conservatives and grass roots have put in a conservative but reasonable team leading the GOP.  Now it is time to settle the only festering point left, reconciling the GOP Party Platform with the actual voting and ruling decisions of the elected officials that carry the GOP brand.

Or we can continue to fight among ourselves, spend massive amounts of money on elections, and both sides can continue to settle for a fraction of what we could have if we cooperated.