Stephanopoulos says that Republican bloggers suggest that a brokered convention would be the best hope for Gingrich. Who are these bloggers and why are they being so stupid? We dodged a bullet when Gingrich decided not to run and I see no reason to shoot ourselves in the foot deliberately by making him our candidate. His negatives are almost as high as Hillary and he’s a lightening rod for negative press. Our candidate is going to have a hard enough time, why would we make it so much harder? If the nation is looking for change, why would we want to offer him? If he went up against the Clintons, it would be all about the 90’s all over again. Bleh! I’m bored already.
The following also demonstrates why it would be a mistake to choose him as the standard bearer for our party:

I think the brokered convention would pick one of the people who had filed for president, but I think the process, after all, it was… You know, Abraham Lincoln was running third and won the convention. He didn’t come in first on the first ballot, and so, I think there’s nothing unhealthy about the Republican Party having a serious discussion. We are at the end of the George W. Bush era. We are at the end of the Reagan era. We’re at a point in time when we’re about to start redefining — as a number of people started talking about, starting to redefine — the nature of the Republican Party, in response to what the country needs.

Excuse me? But why would we have to change in response to what the country needs? What we believe is a way to govern in all situations. We don’t have to redefine ourselves to meet some ever changing need of a fickle public? Leadership isn’t about changing who you are so that others will follow, true leadership is compelling others to follow by the sheer force of your ideas and your ability to articulate them. Those Republicans who keep to the principles of our founding fathers will have no problem attracting others to their candidacy because it will be compelling. We are looking for such a leader, even when we don’t realize it.
Here’s Rush’s take on the death of conservatism and the need to “redefine” our party:

Well, conservatism isn’t dead because it cannot be dead. Conservatism is not manmade. Conservatism is a philosophy. It’s not a scheme. It’s not a plan to figure out what the American people need and want, and then give it to them. That’s populism! Conservatism is a philosophy based on God-given natural rights. The Declaration of Independence, is that dead? Of course not! What’s dead is leadership on the Republican side, and because there is a lack of leadership of someone who the substantive understanding of liberty and the political skills to advance it, we get all this cockamamie nonsense about the death of our principles. Our principles are not dead! Our principles cannot die. I’ll tell you, in a lot of ways this reminds me of Jimmy Carter and his malaise speech. He blamed the American people for his miserable failures as president. Now we have conservatives and conservative wannabes, many of whom have held high office or hold high office or speak and write from formerly conservative outposts, who blame conservatives for their own miserable failures. What is lacking is not ideas and principles. What’s lacking is the right people to speak those ideas and principles, folks. Admit it.
You know it and I know it, and that’s why this Republican roster of candidates has always been somewhat disquieting, and we know that it is because if you look at it, it’s pretty much evenly spread, the support around all the top-tier people. Look what happens, by the way, when one of them happens to pipe up. Look what happens. I have a headline: “A Combative Thompson Sways Voters — ‘But then last night — we hadn’t even been thinking about him — all of a sudden it was clear he was the one,’ said Mr. Berenberk, a retired teacher. ‘The bluntness, the forcefulness. He was really impressive.'” He’s talking about Thompson in the last South Carolina debate. So candidate aside — put Thompson aside for a moment — when conservative truths are heard, it’s an affecting and effective message. People have revelations when they hear it. They just haven’t been hearing it from people who want to lead the party and who want to lead the country. So what’s lacking here is not ideas and not principles, but the right people to speak them and the right people to develop strategies to win elections based on those ideas and principles. What’s lacking, if you will, is intellectual and political leadership. Let me be even more specific. Where’s the Russell Kirk? Where’s the Bill Buckley? Where’s the Milton Friedman of our day? Where’s the Barry Goldwater, the Ronald Reagan? We have people who claim to hold the mantle of these greats, and yet they also claim that the mantle to hold is not worth holding, that we gotta redefine it because the era is over. If you believe that liberty, national security, free enterprise, faith, and the Constitution are dead, then what are you saying? On what do you base your definition of conservatism? If we don’t properly diagnose the problem, we aren’t going to be able to fix this.

The problem isn’t who we are in principle, the problem is with our leadership. They’ve lost their way and we are too scared to follow the one man who has articulated the principles of the Republican party ever since he entered this race because we are afraid he can’t be elected and that he entered the race too late. Don’t worry about any of that, vote for him anyway. Over the last seven years we wanted a president who would articulate the conservative message and now we have a candidate who does, he’s the only one who has lived what he preaches and who understands how this country should be governed as the founding fathers intended it to be governed. We need to trust that others will see what we see and will want to be governed by principle and not political calculation and expediency.
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