Ever since the Haley Barbour days of the Republican Party of the 90’s, the conservative voters within the party have been told we needed to support a ‘Big Tent’ philosophy. This Big Tent philosophy can be summarized as follows: In order to grow the party, no one should be excluded, everyone welcomed, and that the Republican Party needs to be inclusive and welcoming to everyone. Of course this all sounded nice in theory, but in practice the ‘Big Tent’ seemed mostly used as a ‘Big Stick’ to beat up on those who questioned the GOP’s commitment to it’s own conservative-leaning party platform and to attempt to keep them faithfully towing the establishment’s party line.
Such Big Tent Republicanism gave us a host of moderate, milquetoast – and I might add, losing – presidential candidates such as Bob Dole, John McCain, and most recently, Mit Romney. Candidates all, who had trouble articulating and sometimes – in the case of McCain – barely containing their disdain for the conservative message.
After conservatism reached its ascendency in the Reagan years, it was quickly co-opted. Every Republican (except perhaps those from New York and Maine) suddenly called him or herself a ‘conservative’... at least while they were campaigning for the conservative voter’s support. But when they got into office, it was same old, same old. The term "conservative" was soon rendered nearly meaningless.
More recently, when the Tea Party movement rose to prominence, the establishment for the most part once again gave the appearance of having jumped on the bandwagon. They held their nose and tolerated the unpolished, but popular, Sarah Palin who breathed new life into the anemic McCain campaign. Based on the pleas from Republican leadership, newly invigorated Tea Party voters gave Republicans majorities in both the House and Senate - rightfully expecting that great things were about to be accomplished. But the Boehner-McConnell leadership team in Congress predictably sold us out, caving time and time and time again to the Democrats on budget issues that were of interest to the tea party electorate. Instead of organizing a fight for conservative fiscal principles, they opted to undermine their new conservative delegations and negotiate secret deals behind the scenes with liberal Democrats – deals which gave away virtually everything Obama and the Democrats asked for – and left conservatives feeling used and betrayed yet again.
With that background, is it any wonder that we saw in this election the ascendency of the Republican anti-establishment candidates? From the brain surgeon Dr. Ben Carson, 1st generation Indian-American Bobby Jindal, HP CEO Carly Fiorina, the maverick Senator Ted Cruz, and entrepreneur/entertainer Donald Trump; all offered disaffected Republicans and independents a breath of fresh air, as clear anti-establishment choices, albeit bringing different strengths to the table. More importantly, all these candidates brought newly re-energized conservative and independent voters into the process. In Trump’s case, he even brought disaffected Democrat voters to the table.
But where was the establishment now? Where were their calls for a big tent? Where was the effort to fold in the newcomers? Instead, when this new form of ‘Big Tentism’ proved inconvenient to them, it was tossed aside like a dirty diaper. The Establishment went into panic mode when their annointed and well-funded candidate, Jeb Bush, couldn’t rise beyond single digits in the polls. To make matters worse for them, voters found their Plan B (Christie) Plan C (Rubio) and Plan D (Kasich) options equally uninspiring.
The last straw was calling in the establishment’s previous election choice and a failed candidate, Mit Romney, who took to promoting either Rubio or Kasich depending on which state he was asked to manipulate. Rubio, seeming less and less relevant when it appeared he could not even win his home state of Florida, actually resorted to telling voters in Ohio to support Kasich rather than making the case for himself, presumably in hopes of gumming up the works for the others. And tired, old John Kasich clung to the hope that winning his own state of Ohio might be enough to allow him to limp into the convention and trust that the power-brokers might foment some sort of convention-time coup on his behalf. They seemed to be doing anything to keep either the wildcard Trump or the principled conservative Cruz from securing enough delegates to secure the nomination prior to the convention. They literally spent more energy opposing Donald Trump than they did the Democratic candidates, seemingly oblivious to the fact that all this activity only added to the resolve of the anti-establishment voters.
I’m far from a committed Trump supporter. Personally, I prefer Senator Cruz. The prospect of Donald Trump vs. Hillary Clinton was not and is not my first choice. Nonetheless, it is still preferable to yet another uninspiring and dishonest establishment candidate as our standard bearer in the fall.
I recount all this, not to glory in the fact that we may now be left with Donald Trump as our nominee – or worse that the establishment powers-that-be manipulate the process and give us John Kasich as a ‘unity candidate’. What they still don’t realize is that the Trump phenomenon is almost entirely a monster of their own creation. It was born as a result of lying to and taking their own base for granted far too many times. I completely find humorous that the voters are poking a stick in the eye of the Republican establishment - hopefully in preparation for a thorough house cleaning.
So this is what we are left with: The far left still has it’s home in the Democrat party, whose current two presidential candidates are attempting to outdo each other in their race toward socialism. To make the party (pun intended) complete, about the only ‘free’ – that is, government-provided – thing they haven’t yet proposed is beer and cigarettes for those who vote for them. Squishy moderates, statists, and greedy corporatists have their own ‘tent’, in the Preibus-Rove-Boehner-McConnell-Romney led Republicans. It’s just too bad that those of us who call ourselves conservatives don’t seem to have a tent these days.
Up and against this phony version of the big tent, Ronald Reagan showed the way to building a true Big Tent Republican party – by going around the establishment by inviting and uniting middle-class Republicans and Democrats and values-voting Republicans and Democrats around a common love for their country and traditional values - and doing so with a winsome and optimistic tone. But doing the right thing risks taking some unpopular stands – something career politicians rarely have the stomach for.
