John Hawkins and Conor Friedersdorf have set themselves into a debate about the direction the Right should take in moving forward. In my opinion, they're both standing on the dock waving hankies at the boat.

Hawk brings up conservative infighting, the failed welfare state, the Reagan agenda, and failure to target minority groups as the four things to address in this segment of the "debate". None of this is particularly relevant, though, with regard to the conservative movement.

Conservative infighting - The Founding Fathers would have called this "debate". Greta van Susteren would call it "the marketplace of ideas". Conservatives have been wrongly demonized for far too long with far too high a price for us to allow our beloved country to continue down the path it's been on for a hundred years. Of course we're going to fight. The very survival of our nation is at stake.

The welfare state - The welfare state is reaching a tipping point? Really? You're just noticing this now, long after the tipping point has come and gone? Illegal welfare programs make up a larger portion of the federal budget than defense, all with no authorization for the federal government to even be involved, and NOW you start complaining? Sorry, John. That ship left port years ago.

The Reagan agenda - Without getting into specifics, Hawkins bemoans the Reagan agenda:

Conservatives WILL NOT win by following the "Reagan agenda" because Reagan's agenda was designed, using conservative principles, to deal with the political situation of his day. Some of those battles have been won. Others have been irrevocably lost. Some have grown in importance. Others have lessened.

I submit that with regard to much of the Reagan agenda, there isn't much difference between the political situation of today as opposed to Reagan's time. Still, even if you accept Hawk's premise, your result is likely to be a candidate/agenda to the left of Reagan, which is unacceptable. Because of today's "political situation", Reagan would be far too liberal to be able to get the job done.

Minority outreach - The solution to minority participation in the conservative agenda is not to be just showing up at every racist liberal minority event on the calendar, but instead to show that we don't look at someone's minority status at all. No one should get the special treatment Hawk seems to suggest we give these people. Simply invite them to the events we go to, and be done with it.

Friedersdorf's piece wasn't as readable, but in a nutshell, said that those elected in 2000 as "conservatives" didn't govern as such. Well, duh. He also pointed to infighting - and didn't even take a side. The whole thing was an analysis piece of why conservatives failed in the last term.

Guys. You need to wake up. Conservatives didn't fail in the last term. Republicans did - and they failed so dismally that they brought about the kind of change that our free nation will not easily survive. Luckily, the change was so drastic that it brought about a real conservative revolution that stands to save America from her captors, despite Republican efforts to re-deliver her to them.

Doug Hoffman's impressive showing in New York is clear evidence that the conservative movement is strong enough to withstand the foolishness of the Democratic Party and its accomplices in the so-called "opposition". Here's a guy who only a few weeks before Election Day was a complete unknown - just an accountant with an idea - and with a more conservative agenda than either other candidate, he came closer to winning the election than John McCain did in his presidential effort last year. If you can come that close, you can win. After all, it was perceived by many that McCain could win ...

Hawkins and Friedersdorf are both of the delusion that Conservatism lives in the Republican Party. It does not. It lives in the hearts of conservatives like you and me. If Hoffman showed us nothing else, he showed us that conservatives don't need the Republican Party to be successful. Whether you think he's the future of conservatism or not, you must acknowledge his having shown us that we aren't some piddly little faction that can be ignored. True to form, the Republicans are still ignoring us, so to suggest that reform within that party is the key to advancing our belief system is a fucking joke.

We don't need the Republican Party, and they don't seem to understand that they need us. That's not our problem. Our problem is the liberal progressivism that plagues our great nation. If the Republicans want to do something about that, they are free to join us. In the meantime, we'll stand up for what we believe in: the vision of the Founding Fathers.

RWR