Meet Blake Ashby. He's an entrepreneur and a conservative Republican from Missouri, and he just can't take it anymore. He's had enough of the Bush Administration and, to show how serious is his disenchantment, is attempting to wrest the Republican nomination for President away from George W. Bush.
He hasn't got a prayer, of course, but that's not the point.
Most of the time, just-regular-folks who run for President are either joking or they're insane. Mr. Ashby appears to be neither. Instead, he seems to be a committed Republican engaging in a kind of performance art. He's figured out that George W. Bush is neither conservative nor true to core Republican values. Oh, the President uses conservative rhetoric and is doing what he can to put into effect the kind of theocracy-lite that appeals to Christian fundamentalists in the Republican Party, but he's not really a conservative.
Dismayed by a growing national deficit, disheartened by the Party leadership’s apparent loss of faith in the free market and the right to compete, frustrated by it’s drift away from the traditional Republican values of fiscal prudence and limited government, Blake is committed to using this campaign to bring the party of Lincoln, of Teddy Roosevelt, and of Eisenhower back to its core values.
Ashby knows he's not going to get the nomination. In a section of his website where he asks people to notify his campaign if they read in newspapers that President Bush is running unopposed, he says this:
We might not be very threatening opposition, but we are opposition.
Blake's right. He's not very threatening, except that he's not alone. Out there are thousands and maybe even millions of mainstream Republicans who believe in smaller government, who are against what founders called "foreign adventures," and who grow nauseated as the President puts all his political pandering on our national credit card.
So Ashby has had enough, and when he puts words to his disenchantment, darned if he doesn't sound a lot like most of the Democrats I know.
More than any other Republican Administration in history, this Administration has very casually and recklessly abandoned the prudence and caution that were the hallmarks of the Republican Party's approach to national security, and our country is less safe as a result.
Ashby probably won't vote for Kerry, of course. He's a Republican. But with his Quixotic campaign, waged largely on the Internet and with no budget and no media attention, he's sincerely and admirably trying to pull his party back from an abyss.
Will you stand up to the President? Do you want this to be your legacy? That you stood by and did nothing while our government was bankrupted, and our principles trashed?
I suspect, to paraphrase Barry Goldwater, that in their hearts, Republicans know what Ashby and people like him are saying is right. They're just not speaking up because they're good soldiers and they want to win.
Which is what's wrong with American politics; winning is more important than standing up for the good of your country.
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