If you are a conservative who has been waking up angry, upset, and frustrated with your representation in Congress in the week since the presidential election, you are not alone.
Many of us are wondering why the Republican Party seems to have been reactive and defensive rather than aggressive in support of President Trump and the America First agenda.
Many of us want to know which of our elected Republican representatives are supporting and defending us and which ones are eying the exits. We are looking to these officials to stand up and protect our voices, and now to ensure that the integrity and transparency of our electoral system are upheld.
Some of our Republican “leaders” seem to be playing defense instead of going on the offense.
Playing not to lose while the Democrats play to win is not what we expect from a party that is there to represent our ideas, and to uphold the Constitution that defends our inalienable rights as Americans.
The Republican Party is a vessel for preserving and deploying our agenda. Many of us are conservatives first and Republicans second.
We have watched as our president has tirelessly fought to make and keep America great.
During the recent House and Senate races, we had many Republican candidates who benefitted from the president’s base and the MAGA followers he inspired. But many of these candidates have been strangely silent after the November 3 elections.
There are American patriots out there who are fighting for the president and for our Constitution, but they seem to be few and far between. There are not many Jim Jordans or Matt Gaetzes.
Instead, we have far too many Republicans who are “cold and timid souls,” unwilling to be bloodied and marred in the arena. Theodore Roosevelt’s “Man in the Arena” replays itself louder and louder in my mind:
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming.”
TR’s words resonate this week with me and with many other conservatives who are concerned about the outcome of the presidential election and the future of America.
The Republican Party was aware of the extreme risks and susceptibility of widespread fraud in our elections. Even Democratic Party operatives knew of this, and voiced their concerns in 2004 when U.S. Representative Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) explained, “paper ballots are too susceptible to fraud.”
If so many were sounding the alarm, why didn’t the GOP and the president get the necessary measures in place to protect the integrity of our elections?
Why are so many of our Republican elected officials remaining silent and relishing the success of holding or winning their own individual seats?
In 1864, during President Lincoln’s reelection campaign, there was an elaborate plot to use mail-in ballots to steal the election. This plot was described recently in the Washington Post.
The Party of Lincoln would not be fooled, however, and ensured success by taking the appropriate actions to thwart that attack on the integrity of the election and maintain a system that let Americans at the time vote without compromise 156 years ago.
We Republicans proudly proclaim ourselves to be the “Grand Old Party,” but we need to refresh our understanding of history, and we need to be more proactive in protecting the ideals that we hold so dear.
In addition to getting into the election canvassing trenches and sitting vigilantly in election observation booths, our Republican leaders need to refuse to “Rage, rage against the dying of the light,” as the poet Dylan Thomas put it so eloquently. “Do not go gentle into that good night.”
In this poem, Thomas describes the fight for life over death: “Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.”
This verse aptly describes how some in the Republican Party are willing to “go gentle into that good night.” Not this patriot!
In the next congressional races, patriots will rise. We will be like the young prophet in Isaiah 6:8, each hearing “the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send?’”
All of us should be ready to say, “Here I am, send me!”
During these trying times, we patriots need to protect the system of checks and balances that our framers put in place to protect our liberties, which is the genius of our Constitution and Bill of Rights. We will ignite the fire in the belly of the Republican Party, and by doing so will ensure that our elected Republican politicians will make Abraham Lincoln’s Grand Old Party proud.
