Finding Our Way
by Michael A. Beardsley
Aside from a few years in college when I fell off the wagon, I have been a conservative all my life.
In 1980, I was 10 years old, but even then, I realized the big guy with the warm smile and the quick wit was a better guy than the dopey looking guy with a drawl debating him. I could not vote that year, but if I could have, that vote would have been easy.
My first election was in 1988; I registered as a Republican and voted for George H.W. Bush.
As I got older, I started paying attention to the issues and read our Party’s Platform.
I realized I am a Republican because I am conservative.
I am a Republican because the Republican Party is the best modern vehicle for conservative ideas and values
Primarily, I am a Republican because the Republican Party holds, as one of its central tenets, that human life deserves protection from the earliest stages.
I am a Republican because ours is the only Party that remembered the value of human freedom when most of the world was ready to consign billions to slavery.
I am also a Republican because the Republican Party is the Party that understands there is a moral value inherent in living within our means; and knows the danger Reagan spoke of when he said, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”
The consensus among Conservatives is that we have forgotten that last one. We overlooked the fact a Government “hand up” tends to become the government “hand-out” and when government acts as a crutch, it often becomes a ball and chain.
Nevertheless, because the Party still, nominally, holds to the Sanctity of Life and God-Given Natural Rights, they have me.
However, because of events like the nomination of Harriet Miers, the championing of candidates who ignore the bedrock issues of our platform, and, as in the case of the RNC and NRSC in Rhode Island, actively attack conservative Republicans in primaries, I must now add: Conditionally.
At one time, we took as self-evident that a government could not give to someone what it had not first taken from someone else. Recently, we have willingly sacrificed our freedoms and our money for the “greater good” under the guise of Medicare, hurricane relief, or the ever-popular “matching funds” for our communities. At some point, we Republicans stopped caring about spending.
I can accept that. Not happily, mind you. Nevertheless, I can accept it because I thought I understood what I was getting in return: The end of Roe.
For that I have traded a lot. I have been tolerant of Arlen Specter, Olympia Snowe, John McCain, and Lincoln Chaffee. I have made peace with the fact that Republican politicians, like their Democratic counter-parts, like to be re-elected. I have accepted the fact that this White House and Congress see money as power.
Now it seems, the Grand Old Party, both in Maine and Nationally, is willing to move away from the Protecting Life in an attempt to gain favor with the media.
There is plenty of blame to go around. I blame President Bush and Rick Santorum, for loyally getting behind Arlen Specter and dooming us to one more RINO in the Senate, limiting the President’s ability to ever put Roe in jeopardy. I blame Bill Frist, who could not hold his caucus together well enough to fulfill the Party’s promise to pro-lifers. I blame John McCain, and every other Republican, who cares more about getting face time on Meet the Press or a glowing editorial from the New York Times than continuing the Reagan legacy.
In 2004, pro-lifers and believers in Federalism combined to give Republicans a governing majority. We gave our time, talent, and treasure and in return, they patted us on the head, and went about business as usual.
Let me be clear with the RNC: Pro-lifers will not be to the GOP what Blacks inexplicably are to the Democrat Party.
If the difference between you and the Democrat Party is the difference between being functionally pro-choice and being assertively pro-choice; if you have, abandoned even the pretense of believing in Reagan’s principles; then voting for you is nothing more than material cooperation with evil.
To the Donkeys in Elephant clothing I say: NO MORE.
Not one more dime from me; not one more vote, not one more knock on a door for a get-out-the-vote effort; not one more inch for a Republican who says great things about a culture of life, but protects the culture of death, all the while spending like a Democrat.
As Reagan did with the Soviets, I am drawing a line in the sand. I am looking for principled conservative candidates and I am not alone.
Michael A. Beardsley is the President of the Maine Republican Assembly, a Conservative Grassroots Organization dedicated to working within the Republican Party to promote the active participation of our members toward the endorsement, support, and election, of principled conservative Republican candidates.