Since next week the libraries here in Albuquerque will be closed, I'll skip posting on the 15th.  I'll be back - if the Lord tarries and the crick don't rise<g> - the week after that, on the 22nd...which happens to be my granddaughter's birthday, but the party's going to be the day before.    :)

The goal of mounting a political campaign is victory.  One of the reasons I didn't care for John McCain in 2008 was that he didn't seem to care very much whether he won or lost - and when he lost, it didn't seem to bother him much if at all.  That is, of course, a good way to lose, and if losing was his intent, he succeeded marvelously (surely his intent wasn't to run such an incompetent campaign that Obama would win...surely not...).

But what is victory?  Is it merely winning an election, regardless of who gets into office or what he does once he's there?  The liberals don't think so.  They regard it as victory if a liberal wins, someone who will promote the liberal agenda.  They're not willing to elect anyone just so long as he runs on their ticket; if Ronald Reagan had run in 1980 as a Democrat, he would have received a thorough trouncing in the primaries, and a stern lecture from the party brass to the effect that conservatives need not apply.

For conservatives, victory is not merely electing someone, but electing someone who's conservative.  Brethren and sistren, we have won nothing if we elect Republicans to the presidency and to Congress in an unbroken succession for the next 100 years - and every one of them is a liberal, and takes us down the same path that Obama is following.  That's not victory, but defeat.  It is defeat for liberty, it is defeat for the Constitution, it is defeat for conservatism, it is defeat for us.

For us victory is the election of conservatives.  If we conservatives elect liberals, we've failed.  We've lost.  If we elect people whose only difference from the out-of-the-closet liberals is that they don't admit they're liberal, we've cut our own political throats.  For us to elect liberals is, politically, no different from Germany's Jews voting as a bloc for Adolf Hitler.

We must elect conservatives.  The question then becomes, where can we find conservatives to elect?  I submit that we won't find them - at least not in significant numbers - in the Republican Party.  Yes, there are conservative Republicans, and unlike the Democratic Party, whose conservatives are all "peons" who are Democrats simply because that's what they've always been, and will eventually die out, some Republican conservatives actually hold important public offices.  I can think immediately of two governors, Sarah Palin of Alaska (of course she’s no longer the governor) and Bobby Jindal of Louisiana.  Those of you who have the great good fortune to have a conservative Senator or Representative in Congress - and you're decidedly in the minority - can name others.  And there are quite probably some here who can name conservative Republicans in your state legislature, or sitting in the governor's office, or serving in county or city positions.

But when you take the Republican Party as a whole, and those whom it likely will run for office in 2010 and 2012, you're going to find that conservatives are a minority.  And you're going to find that the liberals have more of a voice, and are more likely to succeed of nomination, than the conservatives.  That's the state of the Republican Party today; it's been getting worse for decades, and despite the honest good intentions of so many, there isn't the slightest bit of evidence that the trend is going to reverse or even slow down.  The Republican Party has committed itself to liberalism, and my prediction is that in another 50 years it'll be just as liberal as the Democratic Party is now - the only conservatives left will be those who were there to begin with, and who remain for no other reason than that they've always been Republicans.

So where do we turn for conservatives?  Y'all know by now that, having gotten fed up with 20 years of Republican liberalism, having spent literally three months wondering what to do, and having finally wrenched myself out of the Republican Party, I am now a member of the Constitution Party.  I chose the CP because:

     1. It is explicitly conservative - at least as conservative as any other party of which I'm aware

     2. It is explicitly pro-Christian - more so than any party of which I'm aware (this is vitally important to me, for I'm sick unto death of my faith being a socially acceptable target of mockery, harassment, discrimination, and hatred)

     3. It is explicitly pro-Constitution - more so than any other party of which I'm aware

     4. It appears, from what I've seen, to be by far the best organized conservative third party in the country

     5. It claims - and no one has given me any reason to think otherwise - that it's the third largest political party in the United States, and growing rapidly

     6. It therefore seems to me to be the best avenue for conservatives to use in seeking to elect conservatives to office at all levels of government

In short, I believe that if we want true victory - not merely winning elections with liberal candidates, but actually electing conservatives to public office - the Constitution Party is by far the best way to go.  I firmly believe that if we really want to win, if we want to evict the liberals from office, and install conservatives in their place, we first will never be able to do so with an adamantly liberal Republican Party, and second will - if we pull together - be able to do so, and in the reasonably near future, with the Constitution Party.

And so the question we all must ask ourselves is: What do we really want?  Let me break it down into the alternatives:

     1. To support, nominate, and elect liberals to public office, simply because they're Republicans

     2. To support and nominate liberals, because they run as Republicans, only to lose to openly liberal people from some other party (obviously, they're most likely Democrats, but they might also be Green, Libertarian, etc.)

     3. To support, nominate, and elect conservatives to public office, even if that means leaving the Republican Party behind

And of course there's a fourth alternative:

     4. To support and nominate genuine, adamant, unflinching conservatives, and see them lose - but at least lose without selling our political souls by voting for liberals

Currently that fourth alternative is most likely, but it's the one I'll choose, if the only other option is the first one.  I can't speak for others and won't try to, but from February 14, 2009 I have committed myself to never, if I have a choice, voting for another liberal in my life, and to always voting for conservatives, even if the conservative loses.  I spent 30 years voting for Republicans just because they were Republicans, and when the candidate I voted for won, helping to elect liberals to office - liberals whose goals and methods are anathema to me.  No more - I would rather lose voting as an unashamed conservative, than win voting as a liberal. 

But I believe that the fourth choice is only a temporary one.  I think that, despite the fury of those who attack conservative third parties with more vigor than they attack the liberals (truly puzzling, that), the third option will soon be real, and - if only conservatives will act like conservatives - we can begin the work of purging our government of the parasites who are currently draining away our life.

In other words, I believe that in my lifetime, conservatives can achieve victory.  The only ones preventing it are, ironically, conservatives themselves.  As long as conservatives cling to a moribund party which doesn't want anything to do with them, and fights them at every turn, we're going to suffer defeat even if we win the occasional election - because those sporadic electoral wins will put liberals into office, and a Republican liberal is still a liberal, and will work to extinguish our liberties.  But if ever conservatives get fed up with voting for liberals, and decide that win or lose, they're going to vote only for conservatives, I can promise you that we will win.  That will be the day of our victory.  For conservatives outnumber liberals - if that weren't so, the liberals wouldn't need to undermine the will of the people with fallacious judicial rulings.  When conservatives quit voting for liberals, and start voting only for conservatives, the liberals will lose - and we will, for the first time in decades, truly win.