Duped, Dismissed And Derided

The American Thinker:

Bush approval ratings are up! The Democrats are in disarray! The Republican leadership announces, happily, that they have been buoyed by recent events regarding their chances in the upcoming elections. They are kidding themselves.

Tragically, the damage done to the conservative cause by the White House and Congressional Republicans is much deeper than they seem to realize.

The essential ingredients to winning elections include many elements; energy, hope, meaning, purpose, and most importantly, belief. Voters want to believe they are making a difference. They need to trust that candidates they support will sincerely follow through on positions and policies they espouse during the campaign. For conservatives, this trust has been lost. The scales have fallen from the eyes of many former believers and they have been burned beyond salvage. The jig is up It is inexplicable, but somehow Republican leadership just doesn't understand that vast numbers of their party members are beside themselves with outrage at the state of the conservative agenda. They find themselves, after years of dedication to the cause, to have been duped, dismissed, and derided.

Read the whole thing.

The problem conservatives have is: Where do we turn? Principled conservative aren't going to be able to find many palatable candidates offered by the party of Howard Dean, and staying home from the polls (or voting for a third party candidate) would only result in putting control things like spending and possibly the war on terror in the hands of people like Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.

Those alternatives don't look very attractive to this conservative. I often think that I'd like to punish the Republicans for their failure to listen to their conservative base on many issues outside of social issues like gay marriage and flag burning, but the idea of putting a Demcorat President in charge of the war on terror in 2008 just seems like madness to me.

I wish there were a way to punish Republicans without necessarily rewarding Democrats.

(via Tom Shakely)