"A Conservative is a fellow who is standing athwart history yelling 'Stop!'” -- William F. Buckley
During the first World War, Kaiser Wilhelm supposedly referred to the British troops as a "contemptible little army." The British soldiers, rather than ignoring the insult of their enemy, adopted the nickname of the "Old Contemptibles" and then proceeded to fight the Kaiser's men to a standstill until eventually the United States entered the war and the Allied Powers were able to march onward to victory.
There's a lesson there for the Republican Party.
The GOP has spent eight years fudging the differences between the Republican and Democrat parties. In large part, that's why the American people tossed the Republican Party out on its collective behind: given a choice between Democrats and Democrat-lite, they chose the real thing.
Now, after being referred to as "The Party of No," the GOP should embrace that label instead of running from it. Yes, we have plenty of solutions, but before they can be implemented, Barack Obama has to be stopped -- he has to fail. Wanting Barack Obama to fail is like wanting someone who's trying to beat your child to death with a shovel to fail. You want him to fail because you love your child and we want Barack Obama to fail because we love this country.
Towards that end, the Republican Party needs to clearly, loudly, and unambiguously say "No" to...
Closing Gitmo: We don't want to close a prison for terrorists without knowing what we're going to do with them. The idea that the President of the United States might actually release terrorists trained by Al-Qaeda into the general population of the United States, which is something Eric Holder has openly discussed, is beyond-the-pale. The President of the United States is supposed to keep terrorists out of this country, not bring them here.
The Government Running Banks: No more money for the banks, no more turning down attempts to pay back taxpayer money, and we need the government out of the banking industry as soon as possible. The GOP needs to be asking every day, EVERY SINGLE DAY, "When is the government getting out of the banking industry? Give us a date and the sooner the better."
New Taxes: Barack Obama has suggested the largest tax increases in American history, including a cap and trade tax that would dramatically damage the economy and cost more than $3,000 per family. Let the Democrats be the party that wants to take ever more money out of your pocket for ever more useless government programs without any Republican support. Let the Democrats drive up energy costs, drive corporations overseas, and hammer the poor and middle class with a huge new cap and trade tax without a single Republican backing their decision. Let the Republicans be the Party of "No" on new taxes.
Cutting Border Security: There are few more contentious subjects in politics than illegal immigration, but that's not true about border security. The American people overwhelmingly support securing our borders, so much so that every politician, even the most hard core amnesty supporters, proclaim that they're for securing the borders. So, that is one area where the Republicans shouldn't back down one iota in any way, shape, or form. Any attempts to cut spending, weaken our laws, or introduce an amnesty for the illegals that are already here before our border is secure should be a non-starter for the Republican Party from top-to-bottom.
Socialized Medicine: Does anyone believe that the very same man who is going to run a 1.8 trillion dollar deficit, 4 times the size of the previous high, is going to reduce the cost of medical care? Of course not -- and we already have the best care in the world, so there's no way that Obama can improve the quality of medicine. Bringing armies of bureaucrats and hundreds of thousands of pages of regulations written by people who know nothing about medicine into our healthcare system -- when our country is already broke and deep in debt -- would be an utter disaster. Let the Democrats play political games with the American people's lives and let the GOP be the Party of "No" on the issue.
Bailouts: Just to be clear, there should be no more bailouts of any other American companies, under any circumstances -- and no TARP 2. The GOP may have supported the original TARP program, but even the Republicans who voted for it under Bush should be able to see the error of their ways at this point.
What Obama Has Done at Chrysler: Nothing good has come out of Obama's machinations in the auto industry, but it goes far beyond that with Chrysler. What he has done at that company is not just corrupt; it may merit him being put in a cell next to Duke Cunningham for the next few years. His administration wasted billions of dollars in taxpayer money, made threats against people who stood up to him, broke contracts, and gave his political allies in the union a special deal that made them majority owners of the company. A special prosecutor should be appointed to investigate what happened and -- if as it appears, Barack Obama crookedly used billions of taxpayer dollars to maneuver his political allies into power -- he should go to jail. What happened at Chrysler is not okay and Republicans need to be shouting that from the rooftops.
What it all comes down to is that we already have a socialist, soft-on-terror, anti-business, tax-and-spend, pro-amnesty-and-open-borders, anti-freedom party in Washington and there isn't much of a market for a slightly more moderate version of the political party that's destroying our country's future. The GOP needs to have the guts to stand on its principles, present clear contrasts, and take a page from Nancy Reagan by just saying "No."