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Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 30, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Secret to Immortality
Caroline B. Glick Silencing dissent in America
Oct. 29, 2009
Lini S. Kadaba: Do tactics avert flu or reduce humanity?
JWisdom.com We Must Revamp our Religious Vocabulary With Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 28, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Atheists in Bubbleland
JWisdom.com Why what we wear impacts who we are With Rabbis Mordechai Becher, Menachem Golberger and Aliza Bulow ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 27, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static
JWisdom.com The Science of Love With Rabbi Jonathan Rietti ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 26, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Damaging disclosures with a twist
JWisdom.com Wisdom and Wonks With Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 23, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Are you ready for the ultimate pleasure?
JWisdom.com Watermark and oneness with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick Stop using limited powers in a way that expands our enemies' advantages over us
Oct. 22, 2009
Steven Emerson: Terror Cases Share Desire to Kill Americans
JWisdom.com No More More Family Fights --- Really? By Sarah Chana Radcliffe ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 21, 2009
Tonya Alanez: Holocaust denier sues survivor, calling Auschwitz memoir 'vicious lies'
JWisdom.com Meditating Jewishly: A Panacea for Success by Sarah Yoheved Rigler ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 20, 2009
Dennis Prager: Obama and Dalai Lama: Why Israel Worries about U.S. President
JWisdom.com Abraham was not religious By Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer ( 6 minutes)
Oct. 19, 2009
JWisdom.comWhy Good People Do Bad Things By Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 16, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Perfect Number
JWisdom.com Hearing Voices By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick How Turkey was lost
Oct. 15, 2009
Jeff Jacoby: Peace vs. the 'peace process'
JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: Taming a Control Freak (A VERY fast 15 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Oct. 3, 2007 / 21 Tishrei 5768

The GOP needs a survival instinct

By Tony Blankley


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | The likely rout of the GOP in next year's elections proceeds apace. Last week, the Republicans, improbably taking their lead from President Bush, put down their marker against health care for America's kids. Don't get me wrong; I completely agree with the GOP policy. The SCHIP bill is a cynical effort to expand an unnecessary entitlement for middle-income and even upper-middle-income (more than $80,000 annual income) kids and young adults, funded by a tax on primarily blue-collar Americans (cigarettes).


But politics is a cruel business, and about 75 percent of the public, according to the most recent Washington Post poll, opposes the GOP position. Even allowing for possibly sneaky phrasing of the question, common sense tells one that the GOP will be badly on the losing side of the PR fight about kids' health care. And health care, remember, is the most important domestic issue to the public. When a party such as the GOP has lost about 10 percent to 15 percent market share in the past two years (from national affiliation rates in the upper-40 percents to the mid-30 percents), it's no time to stand on a principle the party cannot even persuasively explain to a majority of its own remaining party regulars.


Meanwhile, the GOP currently is trying halfheartedly to explain (correctly) how free markets will provide the best care for Americans. But the Democrats — who can read a poll, if not their conscience — are offering "free" health care to anyone stupid enough to believe such a thing is free. That number is now in the high-40 percents of an ever more dumbed-down public. Meanwhile, Hillary is offering to bribe the public to the tune of $5,000 per kid, using the tax dollars of working Americans to effectuate the bribe. While I admire the GOP's adherence to principle, I also admire a political party with a healthy instinct for survival. The congressional GOP has got it all backward: The time to be principled is when you are governing (as they failed to do for about eight years before they lost power). When in minority opposition, a party must think about winning — not whining about unpopular principles. It should campaign on principles it believes in, but it should not pick its least popular principles to highlight.


The GOP is now less trusted than the Democrats on every issue except terrorism — and even on that issue, they are a point or two down. But on that most vital issue of supreme national interest, the GOP has the good fortune to be not only instinctively in the right, but to have the one presidential candidate in either party who genuinely is seen as the nation's leader on the issue. That would be Rudy Giuliani. He is the one candidate who the Democratic operatives privately fear. Moreover, as a social liberal, he would be competitive in such usually reliable Democratic states as New York, New Jersey, California, Oregon, Washington, Pennsylvania and others.


So in this season of slow-motion GOP suicide, it is only logical that earlier this week, leaders of the party's social-conservative wing declared him not only unacceptable, but so unacceptable that they may run a third-party candidate if he gains the nomination. By doing so, they would assure the election of Hillary, who, notwithstanding anything she might say to get elected, surely will set in motion policies that will kill more unborn humans and advance more biblically prohibited policies than Rudy ever would. Moreover, she would appoint the most liberal judges she can find. Rudy would nominate the most conservative ones. I fail to see the moral high ground to which these divines claim to be climbing.


They also would be walking away from a coalition that, since 1981 (and particularly since 2001), has delivered a higher percentage of their agenda than it has to any other part of the conservative coalition. Fiscal conservatives received tax cuts but not spending cuts. Hawk conservatives received assertive foreign policy but bad management of it and a dangerous running down of the Army. But social conservatives received first-rate Supreme Court justices, a real effort at faith-based initiatives, constant rhetorical support for biblical values, and in fact, they have been denied nothing of consequence that brought them into politics. It would be an act of historic ingratitude to sabotage the GOP candidate at this point. It also would be a short path to undermining everything they have gained in national politics in the past quarter century.


Every faction within the GOP coalition should agree immediately to make no further demands of their party. Just as the liberals did in 1991 and 1992, the conservatives of 2007 and 2008 simply should let their strongest candidate campaign in a way most likely to gain victory. Every conservative principle thereby would be safer than if heavy demands yield a Hillary presidency. Given the grotesque irresponsibility of the national Democrats, keeping them out of the White House should be the first calling of every patriotic conservative.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

Tony Blankley is editorial page editor of The Washington Times. Comment by clicking here.

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