Conservative Analysts: Many Values Voters Feel Betrayed by Republicans
by Jeff Johnson and Chad Groening
November 13, 2006
(AgapePress) - - Looking back on the recent midterm elections, a number of conservative voices are suggesting that several Republicans who lost their constituents' vote of confidence were rightly defeated. In fact, one of the founding fathers of the modern conservative movement calls the current leaders of the Republican Party "corrupt and immoral" and says they should be replaced.
Richard Viguerie is best known for his role as a conservative activist, dating back to the Barry Goldwater campaign in 1964. In his book Conservatives Betrayed: How George W. Bush and Other Big Government Republicans Hijacked the Conservative Cause (Bonus Books, 2006), the author predicted the eventual ouster of Republicans who ran on -- but then abandoned -- conservative values.
These GOP candidates "used conservative issues to get elected, certainly [used] conservative grassroots activists, conservative donors, conservative organizations," Viguerie contends. "Then, once they were elected, they abandoned conservatives and, in fact, betrayed them and moved left," he says.
Current Republican leaders are more concerned with maintaining power than with doing what is right, the activist asserts. That is why he says genuine conservatives should retake the GOP, just as they did with the nominations of Goldwater and Ronald Reagan and the "Republican Revolution" of 1994.
"It's not going to be easy, and it's not going to happen over night," Viguerie acknowledges, and conservatives who take on the challenge "must think of this not as a sprint but as a marathon." The recouping of the GOP "may take a lot longer even than two years," he says, "but if we do it right, we will take it over, and we will be able to keep it this time."
The author of Conservatives Betrayed says true conservatives are like the biblical Jews, "who had to wander through the desert for 40 years until that generation of immoral, corrupt leaders had passed from the scene." And truly values-oriented conservatives are not going to get to the political "promised land," he says, until they have new leaders.
Also, Viguerie points out that there is no real middle ground to which values voters can resort when both Republican and Democrat politicians seem more focused on power than principles. A third party is not a viable option for conservatives, he warns, because both parties have "rigged the rules" to protect their control of government.
What GOP Candidates Can Learn From George Allen's Defeat
Pro-family activist Joe Glover of the Virginia-based Family Policy Network (FPN) says he is not at all surprised that Virginia Senator George Allen was narrowly defeated in his re-election bid last week. The Republican incumbent lost his race by only 7,200 votes, and Glover thinks he knows why. He believes the incumbent alienated too much of his base.
Allen called himself a conservative, yet supported a hate crimes designation for homosexuals and failed to support a Virginia marriage amendment until late in the game, the FPN spokesman observes. The GOP candidate garnered 1.4 million votes when he ran previously, but in the November 7 election, he received only 1.1 million.
"Clearly, with a difference of only 7,000 votes, there are 293,000 more people who saw a lack of interest in George Allen this time," Glover says. "Perhaps because they felt betrayed." In any case, he feels other GOP office-seekers can learn a lesson from what happened to Glover.
"If you're going to run as a Republican, stick with your base," the pro-family advocate urges. "If you're going to run as a pro-family candidate, stick with your base. And if you're going to run as a conservative, then support conservative policies like the federal marriage amendment and oppose hate crimes designation for homosexuals."
Allen upset some voters with his apparent departure from or lack of support for conservative values. Glover wants the senator and Republicans to understand that if they will only stick to the values of those voters who make up their conservative base, then "they'll stick with you."
Jeff Johnson and Chad Groening, both regular contributors to AgapePress, are reporters for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
