Can the Republican Party be Saved?

Recently the Republican hierarchy released their report detailing the problems the party is facing and attempting to detail the deficiencies and propose solutions. There were numerous voting blocs where they also found problems. One prime example was their losing the under thirty vote by at least a ratio of three to one. Other such blocs included single women, the less well off, almost the entirety of minority voters, and so forth. From what I saw it was possibly debatable if they even won a majority of the registered Republicans. Ok, I made that up but it was really almost that bad. They also found that they managed to receive fewer votes in every voting group over the results from four years earlier. Somehow the Republicans with candidate Romney were unable to even hold on to the McCain voters as they received fewer votes across the board in this last election. As horrible as this news was it was not as unsettling as the solutions the report provided. The main gist of the offered solution was to move the candidates and campaigns to align them closer to the Democrat message.

My bet is should they pursue this path it will lead to the death of the Republican Party. When the base voters who are the lifeblood of your political party are not getting to the polls your problem is not that you are too far removed from the other party, it is that you are not offering them anything distinctly different from the other party. The solution is not to attempt to be perceived as the Democrat Lite Party but to be the heart and soul Republican Party. Show a difference and celebrate that difference. The Republican Party has not given the feeling that they are proud, confident, or even that they believe in their party. They sound almost apologetic whenever they sound all that different from what the Democrats stand for. If you want a near perfect example of the real problem is that is cursing the Republicans all you need to do is listen to the “old guard” of the GOP during the debates on virtually any legislation where immigration reform is one of the most glaring examples. Another problem is the seeming lack of unity and cooperation between the different factions that make up the Republican Party. Sometimes it appears as if as a whole the Republicans do not stand unified for anything and are without honest and driving principles. We had a perfect example after Rand Paul’s efforts to make a serious protest over the evasiveness and apparent policy which would allow the use of drone strikes on American civilians inside the country’s borders in place of arrests and a trial if the President so deemed necessary with his thirteen hour filibuster and a number of the senior Republican Senators demeaned his efforts on the floor of the Senate. Such disagreements should never be fought out in the public square but should be discussed and resolved within the party. When was the last time you heard one Democrat Senator demean another Democrat on the floor of the Senate? Such would never happen as the Democrats have party discipline and would not stand for parading the party laundry in public.

Another problem the Republican Party needs to work on is simply getting their message out and being heard. Since the mainstream press is actually a willing partner in any Democrat candidate’s campaign, the Republicans have to find a delivery for their message which does not rely on the mainstream press. They definitely need to work on their Internet usage and make more and better use of U-tube, Twitter, Facebook, and all other forms of social media as well as blogs and the new media. There are a good number of conservative bloggers who would be anxious to support getting the republican message out if they only would be included in the campaign planning and get some assistance in coordinating with the candidate. They could offer releases to these bloggers once they had compiled an extensive list. But the most important challenge facing the Republican Party hierarchy and planners is a message around which the membership can rally and be excited over. The current state of the Republican can be summed up in two words, disjointed disarray. Until they can establish something that can be advertised as the Republican core beliefs around which every party candidate tailors their message, the Republican Party will continue to wander leaderless in the political wastelands.

Beyond the Cusp

Conservative Pundits, Please, Enough Already!

All right, I realize that many conservatives would not give President Obama credit for helping a handicapped person across a street safely and would warn that there must have been some conspiracy or that it was a ploy for some nefarious ends involved. I might even agree with some, possibly many, of the insinuations, inferences, and blatant calls for progressive, communist even, programs and laws which curtailed Constitutional rights that could be found buried within his Inaugural Speech. You have disagreements over virtually everything President Obama stands for and represents. That is all fine and worthy of complaint and even opposition if that be your desires. But please, give it a rest when it begins to encroach on pure hatred and unimportant criticisms which sound unbelievably similar in nature to what the most ardent leftists used to say about President Bush and family during his eight years in the White House.

If I have to suffer one more talking head whining about the First Lady’s custom designer dress and the broach holding the halter in place with questions of how much it cost and what better purposes could have been found for those funds I will likely scream. I do not care how much they spent on his celebration on his inauguration as he earned it when he won the election. Enough with what the progressives would have said if Mitt and Ann Romney had worn similar expensive clothes and thrown an equally lavish number of Inaugural celebrations, it does not make your whining sound any less like sour grapes. I do not care what the Progressives would have said about the Romneys had they acted similarly if they had won the election. Are you conservative expounders not constantly claiming how you are superior to the progressives and are the grown-ups who do not stoop to such low levels in political discourse? Well, today, with your inane whining and roiling criticisms over the lavish and extravagant excesses of the Inaugural celebrations, many just seemed to have completely lost their minds over trivial minutia. Just let it go; it will be the Obama’s last one, so live with it. Save your vitriol for actual actions and legislative overreach. Save your venom for their excessive spending which is ongoing and setting baseline budgetary levels which are unsustainable.

The Inaugural celebrations were simply lavish excess because they actually earned it. Allow them their hard earned victory in the election. It is understandable that there may be some sore spots that were scratched causing you pain because it rubbed in that you lost yet another election you thought you had or should have won. It is not President Obama who ran an insufficient campaign that left more of your voters staying home on Election Day than the progressives did. If you had simply gotten as many votes as you had four years earlier you would have likely had won because President Obama also received less votes that he had received four years ago. So, you were just as unpopular with your base as he was with his and that means the result remained the same. For that reason he gets to celebrate and if you were really all grown up you would have just let it be. Sounding like a spoiled brat who is jealous of his sibling because they got the Christmas present that you wanted and you just got a sweater does your credibility no good. You did your causes and supporters absolutely no good today with your petty criticisms and empty jealousies. It is absolutely counter-productive to gripe over such inanities. Save your vitriol for the coming actual damages he will attempt to perform against our Constitution. Keep your ammunition ready to shoot down actual criminal intent through decree by Executive Orders. Lay in wait to trip those agendas hidden piecemeal, slowly being assembled by attaching individual pieces onto vital budgetary and other legislation just as the initial setups for Obama Care was attached and passed with the renewal of the Patriot Act. Be prepared to reveal any and every scheme to shortcut around the delegated authorities of the Congress and the Judicial Branch. Stay your voice as there will be reasons, real and damaging reasons which will call for your voice to rise above the din of the distractions and disguises of misdirection woven into speeches and grand visions used to disguise vile intents. But the petty complaints of lavish celebration is below those claiming to answer to the high calling of protector of the people’s rights and guard of the Constitutional limitations of the excesses of governmental power which will be attempted over the coming four years. Remember the boy who cried wolf was ignored simply because he abused the right to cry warnings simply by misuse of that right. You are crying excess when it matters little. Save the cry of alarm for when the damages really amount to something worthy of crying wolf or your future warnings will fall on deaf ears. Decrying that the parties thrown to celebrate his last Inauguration were excessive, please, get real.

Beyond the Cusp

Rifts Becoming More Accentuated Between American and Israeli Jews

There have been differences between the Jews in Israel and their counterparts in the American Diaspora and these differences have been becoming more obvious making the two groups more distant. It is becoming likely that the two largest populations of Jews on planet Earth are going in diametrically opposed directions with the Jews in the United States becoming more assimilated and less religious while the Jews in Israel are moving closer to Torah observance and less concerned with whatever differences may exist between the increased importance of religious belief within Israel when compared to the trends throughout the rest of the Western World. These differences are evident in other areas which, when investigated more closely, can be traced back to the shift towards religion in Israel and the increasing separation from religion throughout the West.

 

The number of children has fallen in the West and is below replacement level through much of Europe and among other population groups within the developed world while in Israel and the developing world religion is increasingly important and their populations are growing, not shrinking. This also results in an older average population and increasingly larger segments of the population being immigrants who come from lands where custom, religion and almost every important theme in life are very different and foreign causing great friction between these two populations as they increasingly find themselves competing for control of the society and its norms. In Israel the population is increasing which relieves them of the increased strife of a burgeoning immigrant population slowly becoming the majority in the society. But what are the most evident signs of any real attitudinal differences between these two major Jewish populations which one can readily see?

 

One very easy to measure difference was made so very evident in the latest United States Presidential election where Israeli Jews supported Mitt Romney casting over 80% of their ballots for the Republican candidate while the Jews in the United States supported the reelection of President Obama with 69% of their votes. Even more telling was a race in New Jersey which pitted Orthodox Rabbi Shmuley Boteach in a race for the 9th District against a very liberal Democrat candidate, Bill Pascrell. Rabbi Shmuley Boteach lost the race by over three to one margin, 22.8% (29,214) for the Rabbi and 76.1% (97,646) for his opponent. This split between American Jews and Israeli Jews can also be found in their perceptions of politics in Israel. Where Benyamin Netanyahu is heavily favored to be reelected as the Prime Minister of Israel and the Knesset is very likely to result in not only a stronger swing to the conservative agenda but also to see a definitive increase in the religious Zionist party representation, this is trending in the opposite direction from their American counterparts who are almost unified in their liberal, progressive political tendencies. This is largely rejected by Jewish Americans who many feel revolted by Prime Minister Netanyahu and reject the conservatism and religiosity of their fellow Jews in Israel. What could possibly be driving such a disconnect between the Jews of the United States from the Jews of Israel?

 

The most significant driving factor by far is the relationship and attitudes of the two Jewish populations to Torah observance and in their feeling of a connection with G0d and feeling that this connection is an intricate and defining force in their lives. The religious sector of society in Israel has been making significant gains in numbers which was made infinitely evident with the celebrations of Daf Yomi seven-year study cycle of the Talmud which was staged in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and other places around the world early this past August and was the largest such celebration of participants in modern history. In Israel the religious Zionist political parties and the straight religious parties have both been slowly gaining numbers while the far left liberal Meretz Party has seen falling numbers in membership and representation in the Israeli Knesset. Meanwhile, in the United States the Jewish population, with the exception of the shrinking Orthodox Jews, has been increasingly turning more and more secular in their nature and intermarriage is reaching threatening levels that may lead to a more rapid vanishing of the American Jews. The religious services and traditions of both the conservative and Reform Jewish congregations have seen their services slowly contain less and less Hebrew while the amount performed in English has increased. Less American Jews keep a Kosher home or strictly observe the Sabbath admonitions and limitation and drive automobiles; turn on and off lights; use their computers, televisions, microwaves, stoves, ovens and other devices; and do not spend the day in prayer, study, and complete rest from normal daily activities. Recently in Israel a group of secularist Jews in a suburb of Tel Aviv attempted to force the permitting of public transportation to be provided on the Sabbath and ran into a massive wave of opposition and the referendum was soundly defeated. The ever widening gulf between the Jews in Israel and in the United States is evident in every aspect of life. It permeates through their lives, religious observance, politics, societal norms, and just about anything else one may choose to observe.

 

There is something which appears to be paralleling the falling away from their religious center by the Jews in the Western industrialized world, and that is an overriding concern placing Israel above all other concerns. It is as if these Jews have forgotten Yerushalayim and who would not be able to identify with the sorrow and feeling of an emptiness expressed in the “Song of Babylon” which is also known as Psalm 137. Instead, these Jews are concerned about abortion rights, homosexual marriage, assisted suicide, minorities’ rights and other leftist concerns. What is distressing is the number of liberal leaning Jews who have not only lost their love of Israel and no longer live for Jerusalem but have gone over to the opposing side and support those who claim that Zionism is a form of racism, Israel is practicing apartheid, the Jews of Israel stole the land from the Palestinians who lived in their own country peaceably before 1948, and support the BDS movement (Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions) against Israel as well as supporting the Palestinian claim to their “Right of Return” thus supporting the end of the Jewish State. There is a prediction which some believe is approaching, myself included, namely that there is fast approaching a crucial change and time of choosing for the Jews of much of the West. Things are slowly building where those who are Jewish are going to face a choice, adopt Zionism and go love in Eretz Yisroel or forget their Jewishness and adopt a secular humanist life devoid of religion in the traditional sense. Truth is that secular humanism as it is now pursued has become a religion itself. The branches of the secular humanist religion run the entire range of liberal and progressive political beliefs. The time where there are a significant number of practicing Jews outside of Israel is coming to an end and Israel will likely soon be the entirety of the future of the Jewish peoples.

 

Beyond the Cusp