Removing The Plank From The Republican’s Eye

So, I’m reading Limbaugh & Movement Conservatives: Successfully Distracted by Democrats by Darvin_Dowdy this evening and if you read his post you can likely guess my initial reaction to it… basically that it was a load of Bull…But then I started chewing on it a little…I’ve been thinking for a while that all the writing here about Obama and the Democrats and how they are single handedly ruining this country rings a little hollow and I’ve found myself lately having trouble listening to Rush, Laura, Sean, and the rest of the Conservative Commentariati and being unable to get comfortable listening to them or blogging or even, (GASP) reading Read State and TMR. I think it’s partly because every comment about how bad the Democrats are brings in an involuntary thought of, “The Republicans are just as bad!”

This simple minded attitude has always driven me crazy when people have said it to me because I’ve always believed conservatives had all the right ideas and that the Republican Party which is supposed to represent those ideas is far and away better than the Democrats…well…That little fairy tale has been finally and perhaps irrevocably smashed for me by the very Party I had placed so much faith and hope in.

In issue after issue, from No Child Left Behind, The Prescription Drug Benefit, Steel Tariffs, The Harriet Miers Fiasco, Amnesty, Campaign Finance Reform, the Farm Bill, TARP, inaction on the KELO decision, inaction in the face of judicial overreaching and inaction after congressional victories by our left wing enemy .

I’ve seen everything I as a conservative believe in mocked, ridiculed, trampled upon, spat upon and betrayed not because of any gain in power by my political enemies but at the hands of the very party and the very people I have worked so tirelessly to put in power…what stings all the more is that the betrayals came not as we were building up to and gaining Republican majorities in the House and Senate….it came when we finally…for the first time in nearly 100 years had gained governing majorities in the House and Senate with a Republican President in the White House…

So…after chewing on this bitter pill for a while…I came to the conclusion that yeah…Darvin definitely has a point…I’m not sure what I’m about to outline here is what Darvin had in mind…but it’s what his piece has elicited from me…so here goes:

Starting with the good book:

Everyone always stops there and says this proves you shouldn't criticize anyone ever...but Jesus didn't stop there...He continued to say:

Please note that he didn't say never try to remove the speck from your brother's eye...he said remove the plank from your eye so you can better see to remove the speck from your brother’s.

My reading of this passage comes down to this;...basically we need to tend the home fire before we try to tend the Democrat's fire...We need to remove the plank from our own eye.

The plank? The RINOs that perplex and plague us?....sure Rush and the others are talking about them but we need them to take us a level deeper...identify the support apparatus that keep the RINOs that plague us in positions where they CAN plague us. Who are the money guys? Who are the campaign managers and tacticians that pull their strings? Yet even that isn't deep enough...We need Rush and the gang to shine a light on the party machinery and expose how 1/3 of the party is able to maintain control over 2/3s of the party that vote, contribute and do the work of the party. Who are the guys at the RNC, the NRSC, the NRCC, etc. who are the 168 party persons who make up the voting block of the RNC...not just who are they...but what are they about? What do they believe? What do they advocate and what is their political philosophy? Who makes the decisions about candidate recruitment and what candidates to back during primaries? We need our commentators to educate the grass roots about how to get involved in local politics, how to fund raise and so on...

But most importantly, we need them to put the spotlight on Republican Congressional leadership and refuse to allow them to continue to betray the conservative movement in obscurity...we need them to drive the cockroaches that infest the movement out of the woodwork and help us to cast off the agents of mediocrity that do things like helping the Dummycrats pass trillion dollar TARP and "Stimulus” packages.

Only after we've dug these planks out of our own eye will we be able to rebuild our trust with the public and pick the speck out of the Democrats eyes by attacking the problem from a position of clarity, strength and credibility!

That last word is the source of all our ills now…CREDIBILITY. This is the issue that plagues us…I’ve ranted and raved about RINOS since I’ve been on Red State and TMR…but is it just RINOs that are the problem? They’re a large part of the problem and arguably the main part of the problem…because they caused the lack of credibility. But are they the sole problem? I would say no…The main problem we had up till now is complacency. We were complacent in not watching who was minding the store over the last eight years. It was a complacency born of believing we had one of our own in the White House and we had a Congress and Senate made up of our own…We ignored all the issues I mentioned above because they were all signed by a Republican President and worse…most were passed through Republican Congresses with the largest majorities we had in the last 70 years…

None of the problems we are currently experiencing can or will be fixed until we can regain our credibility. Until we can do that…every post on Red State, every radio show from Hannity, in Ingraham, to Limbaugh will fall on deaf ears because right now…even the most ardent true believer doesn’t believe what they are saying because they can’t believe their leadership will carry through on any item on our agenda without packing it in and throwing it to the Democrats at the first sign of difficulty.

So, let’s remove the plank of complacency from our own eye. Let’s hold our leadership from the precinct chair to the state chair to the Senate leadership to the Congressional leadership accountable…Let us further remove the plank of "no Credibility" from our eye. Let’s encourage Rush and the rest to spend a little time each day educating us who is pulling the strings in the party…Let’s stop being so consumed by what the Democrats are doing and wasting our breath telling people what is wrong with them because nobody believes us any more! Let's spend a little time binding our own wounds and stop the bleeding so we can move against the enemy at the right time...when we are stronger; from a position of credibility.

Maybe then we can remove the speck from our brother’s eye that we can not now see because of the plank in our own!