The American Spectator : The Spectacle Blog : Kathy Shaidle on 'Rebuilding'

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Kathy Shaidle on 'Rebuilding'

By Robert Stacy McCain on 1.23.09 @ 8:45AM

Taking a few shots at David Frum's New Majority, the blogger/columnist writes:

Alas, too many of these "rebuilding" enterprises share a misguided focus that's also bound to be the seed of their own undoing: that is, an obsession with "winning elections." NewMajority's slogan, for example, is "Building a conservatism that can win again." But what good is "winning" if the "conservatism" that "wins" is faddish, unprincipled and unmoored from traditional American, Anglo-Saxon exceptionalism? [B]ack in the early sixties, it was grassroots activist and housewife Phyllis Schlafly's self-published, million-selling anti-GOP Establishment book, A Choice Not An Echo, that led to Goldwater, who led to Reagan. Not bad for a small-town mom running an accidental movement from her kitchen table, without email, the web -- or any support from Party bigshots. Unless the "new GOP" is run bottom up, by the grass/net roots, it is doomed to fail.

Shaidle (who blogs at Five Feet of Fury) somewhat inflates Schlafly's role in the '64 Goldwater movement -- which was built by Young Americans for Freedom, Cliff White, William Middendorf, Bill Buckley and many others -- although there is no doubt that "A Choice Not An Echo" was a major factor in galvanizing grassroots support. As to the larger point, Kathy is correct that the GOP in recent years has tended toward a top-down method of operation that drained enthusiasm from the grassroots.

View all comments (9) | Leave a comment

Alan Brooks| 1.23.09 @ 8:55AM

find someone like Coolidge, someone who doesnt yap like a baptist speaking in tongues.

you dont have to smarm the grass roots.

Alan Brooks| 1.23.09 @ 10:50AM

or is glossolalia done by presbyterians?
what do i know?; if i did know anything i'd write for AS and not just comment.

J David| 1.23.09 @ 11:02AM

Ann Coulter does not think Shaidle's props for Schlafly are at all inflated, and says so in one of her books(now so many I don't remember which one)and credits her with inspiring Ann's own efforts in the movement(now being killed by Knee-Pad RINOs). Schlafly is a hero, a real, honest-to-Goodness hero very much unsung.

J David| 1.23.09 @ 11:07AM

Alan Brooks, you dufus, Baptists do NOT "speak in tongues"! Any Baptists caught is such activity would likely be immediately frozen out of the fellowship of fellow members, if not tossed right out. You are thinking of another wing of Evangelicals, Church of God/Assembly of God/Pentecostals, or splinters of those in Charismatic or Vineyard Movement churches. Don't go around bad-mouthing what you are emotional but blindly ignorant of, please!

J David| 1.23.09 @ 11:13AM

And Presbyterians don't do that either... Or Methodists, or even Wesleyan or Grace Bretheren. That typically will not be seen in evangelical Gospel/Bible churches either, unless they are moving into the Vineyard or Charismatic Movements.

Alan Brooks| 1.23.09 @ 12:07PM

yep, am a dufus, was going to write Assemblies of God, but then wasnt sure. Soon after writing Baptist it didnt sound right. Presbyterians? some of 'em.
but again, if i had what it takes, i'd write for AS and not merely comment.
as for the rest of you? submit an article and wait for the rejection slip.

Alan Brooks| 1.23.09 @ 12:09PM

fifty lashes with a wet noodle for the Baptist error.
banned from AS for one day.

Alexander A.K. Hoggsbuckel IV| 1.23.09 @ 2:07PM

David Frum is and will forever be a nitwit. Rudy's attempt to reshape the 2012 field sans social conservatism is self serving and short sighted. The 2012 presidential race will almost entirely be based on social conservatism versus liberalism, well in evidence on Day 3.