Where is the Republican pushback?
For a party that was formed to oppose the spread of slavery, today's Republican Party seems perfectly content with allowing the expansion of leftism. With the exception of President Donald Trump, conservative pundits, and a handful of Republicans, there has been no pushback against the left's onslaught.
The left, led by the Democrat Party, has launched two major offenses in the ideological war for the culture in this country, and all conservatives get from the Republican Party are daily texts asking for campaign donations. Republican politicians, by and large, stayed silent during the Wuhan Virus lockdown and have done so again during the George Floyd tragedy. They have missed opportunities to rightly condemn those on the left who have exploited both crises for political gain.
Where are the Republican political leaders calling out the Democrats for their outright pandering to the black community with this insane desire to defund the police? And why aren't they challenging the whole absurd notion of systemic racism? How come the only national voices spotlighting the Democrats' effort to keep candidate Joe Biden sequestered have come from conservative pundits? I have not heard a single Republican leader pointing out the declining mental faculties of Mr. Biden. You can bet that if Biden were a conservative, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters, and liberals you have not even heard of would be fighting to get camera time daily to criticize and slander.
"But no, no that would not be above board on the Republican side. That would be hitting below the belt, and that's just not who we are." What a crock.
The left has launched multi-pronged cultural and political attacks in its effort to remove President Trump from office. Leftists are proving that they are willing to crash the economy and set back racial relations 100 years to get rid of the "Orange Man Bad." While they are throwing everything they can at conservatives to scare and demoralize us, our leaders imitate the proverbial monkeys who see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil. The only time you see a Republican elite speak out against policy with any sort of passion is when he is backstabbing President Trump.
"Yes, but that is the beauty of the Republican Party: we are a bunch of independent thinkers who are not afraid to criticize our own." Spare us the empty platitudes. We have been hearing it for years, and conservatives are done with it.
You do not see Democrats engaging in such duplicitous behavior against one of their own (they save that for private). No, our adversaries on the left are merciless in maintaining party discipline just as they are ruthless in exploiting any crisis to their benefit.
The left plays the long game, while Republicans simply react to what the left is doing. As such, Democrats determine the rules of engagement. Republicans lose an election, and they halt any conservative progress while providing little to no resistance to Democrat policies or judicial nominees. Democrats lose elections, and leftism does not stop. They resist tooth and nail Republican policies and judicial nominees. Republicans lose and willingly accept minority status. Democrats lose but maintain the attitude of the majority.
Until the election of Donald Trump, the Republican Party seemed content with playing the role of the Washington Generals to the Democrats' Harlem Globetrotters. If you have ever seen the Globetrotters, you know that the Washington Generals are their perennial opponents. The Generals may have the lead at halftime of their exhibition game, but the Globetrotters always win. That is the attitude of Washington, D.C.: Republicans may win the occasional election but leftism will always prevail.
Republicans keep using Marquess of Queensberry Rules against the dirty fighter tactics of the left. You have to fight dirtier to win against a brutal opponent. The left has declared war on the culture of America. Their goal is to intimidate into submission anyone who disagrees with them. They have removed any pretense of reasonability and are going full authoritarian as exemplified by their willingness to use violence, censorship, and cancel culture to achieve their goals. They are hell-bent on remaking America in their own image and eventually throwing out or rewriting the Constitution. Count on it.
Average conservatives get what is going on and are scared to death for the country. Some, not all of us, have become demoralized because only our president seems to be resisting this largely on his own. Republicans (again with very few exceptions) have been just as silent in the past few months as they were with the Russian collusion hoax and the impeachment debacle.
For years, conservatives have called the Republican Party "the stupid party" because they seem to live for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. They have had a history of ignoring any opportunity to tie Democrats to their behaviors. We see that Donald Trump does not do that, and that is why his base will never desert him.
Conservatives understand that we are in the midst of a civil war declared by the left. We had grown tired of being led by a bunch of timid George McClellans in the presidency (Gerald Ford, the Bushes) and wanted more bold Ulysses S. Grants, as exemplified by Donald Trump, who are not just unafraid of the enemy, but are willing to take the battle to the enemy.
I believe that a great many conservatives are more cognizant of the lack of support Republicans have shown the president. Hopefully, it has become clear that in order to stop the left (politically speaking), we will have to elect more U.S. Grants and maybe some William Tecumseh Shermans to the House and Senate. Conservative politicians and academicians need to develop the philosophy of the long game and begin anticipating and checkmating the moves of the left politically, rhetorically and by refusing to cede any more of the culture.
One truth is for sure: we are full of cold anger and come November freedom loving Americans will do what many of their elected leaders have not done: We will push back the socialist-Communist left and they will not know what hit them.
Dex Bahr is the author of the book, No Christian Man is an Island. He is also a freelance writer and lecturer.