Taking Over the Republican Party

Nelson Hultberg

One of the biggest fallacies in politics today is the claim that we, as conservatives and libertarians, can only be effective if we stay loyal to the Republican Party and work to gain control of it by electing more free-market conservatives every election year.

We at AFR believe such thinking to be tragically misguided. To expect the Republican Party to challenge the modern day juggernaut of statism is as foolish as expecting socialist professors to instill Americanism into our youth. It won't happen anymore than the planets will one day reverse their orbits. This is because the members of the GOP hierarchy who control the party have bought into the  collectivist ideologies of Karl Marx and J.M. Keynes. Thus they want the same thing that Democrats want - a society in which "equality of results" replaces "equality of rights." They merely want it to be established more gradually than do the Democrats.

Conservatives have been trying to take over the GOP for more than 40 years now by electing "conservative legislators" to Congress; yet nothing has changed. The Republican Party continues to give us relentlessly expanding government. It continues to exploit, lie to, and make fools out of conservatives.

Those who continue to cling to the hope that they can transform the Republican Party into an engine of freedom are like battered wives who continue to stick around to take their husbands abusive beatings. The marriage is over. Conservatives, libertarians, and patriots must abandon the GOP.

The GOP Hierarchy

The problem with the conservative strategy is that electing conservative legislators to Congress can never bring about a takeover of the party because the GOP hierarchy buys off 90 percent of the legislators that we send. Who and what is this GOP hierarchy? It is the vast network of elite intellectuals, bankers, and corporate leaders throughout America that make up the "neoconservative establishment."

The intellectual sector of this hierarchy is comprised of prominent scholars and pundits such as William Kristol, Robert Kagan, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Norman Podhoretz, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and Charles Krauthammer - prestigious organizations such as the Council on Foreign Relations, the Hudson Institute, and the Foreign Policy Initiative - scholarly magazines such as Foreign Affairs, Commentary, Public Interest, and The Weekly Standard.

Completing the hierarchy are the major bankers of the Federal Reserve system and the myriad of corporate moguls throughout the nation. The members of this GOP hierarchy call themselves "neoconservative" because it makes it easier for them to sell massive statism to the American people. Unfortunately allegiance to the founding principles of America is not in their lexicon.

These prominent scholars, pundits, bankers, moguls, and institute heads are not true conservatives (and they are certainly not libertarian) because they don't believe in the fundamental base of America - which is the Founders' spirit of free enterprise and limited government. Yet this GOP hierarchy continues to claim that its Republican Party is a vehicle for freedom and adherence to the Constitution. They make such a claim because they know Americans still adhere to such values. But their claim is as deceptive as the pickpocket's brush against your coat in a crowded subway.

The scholars, pundits, bankers, moguls, and institute heads of this hierarchy wield great power, both ideologically and financially - enough so to buy off most of the incoming patriotic congressmen. Such newcomers to Washington adopt the GOP hierarchy's "pseudo conservatism" soon after their arrival in the capital because they know if they don't vote in step with neoconservatism, they will receive no ideological and financial support for re-election from the party and its influential hierarchy.

Preferring an easy road to re-election, almost all new patriot arrivals, thus, sell out their "true conservative" principles to stay in Washington. They cross over the aisle and gradually turn into advocates of statism. This is why sending conservatives to Congress has gotten us nowhere over the past four decades and will get us nowhere in the future. Incoming conservatives don't stay conservative; they are bought off. Lord Acton told us why over a century ago.

Thus it is impossible to take over the Republican Party by just sending more conservative legislators to Washington. To get control of the GOP, we first have to replace the neocon ideologues who control the party - i.e., the hierarchy. A whole new generation of scholars, pundits, bankers, moguls, and institute heads will have to be ushered in. This will require 70-80 years to bring about. Shifts of this magnitude take many decades. America doesn't have this kind of time.

Ideological Change Works Slowly

As proof, let's examine the time span of liberalism's takeover of the Republican Party. The actual political takeover began with Richard Nixon in 1968. But liberalism's "political takeover" of the GOP had to be preceded first by its "ideological takeover" of the educational institutions of America - the schools, the churches, the media, the publishers, and the movie industry.

This is why converting the Republican Party to "freedom and conservatism" (as many Tea Party members and other activists are trying to do) can never happen. Because conservatives do not control the schools, the churches, the media, the publishers, and the movie industry in this country. These were the vital factors in liberalism's takeover of the GOP during the 20th century. These five institutions relentlessly spewed out collectivism, which shaped the minds and motives of the scholars, pundits, bankers, moguls, and institute heads who joined the GOP and formed its present hierarchy. Without this "mind shaping," liberalism could not have taken over the Republican Party.

Thus if conservatives are to take over the GOP, it will require that we first gain ideological control of the the schools, the churches, the media, the publishers, and the Hollywood movie studios so as to shape a new hierarchy. This will require at least 70 years to accomplish (assuming we can actually do it).

The liberal takeover of these cultural institutions was a 70-year process that began in the early 20th century with the Progressives' encroachments into our school system and then throughout the rest of our society. Seventy years later they had gained control of the GOP during the Nixon-Ford administrations and made it the little sister to the Democrat Party. But they were only able to do this because they had also gained control of the schools, churches, media, publishers, and Hollywood.

Turning a political party around is like turning a huge aircraft carrier around. There is a delay between the time you start turning the steering helm to when the ship finally completes its turn. The steering helm of a political party is the ideology of its hierarchy, which is determined by the schools, churches, media, publishers, and movie industry. These five institutions must be turned first if the party itself is to be turned. This cannot be done overnight.

Therefore, if conservatives intend to take over control of the GOP, they must prepare for a 70 year struggle. Unfortunately, America doesn't have this kind of time. Economic collapse looms over the horizon. And tyranny looms on the other side of the collapse like it has with all political-economic breakdowns of countries throughout history. In times of disintegrating chaos and peril, people who are ignorant of the causes of their chaos and breakdown always opt for order and stability in the form of regimentation and dictatorship.

Freedom's Last Stand

There is a chance, however, to save the country if we can avoid the dictatorial takeover that is sure to be promoted in the aftermath of the coming collapse. But to do this, the American people must be told the truth about what has brought on the economic crises we are experiencing at present, and what must be done to properly climb out of the economic mega-crisis that looms up ahead.

We must climb out of the coming collapse in the direction of the Founding Fathers and decentralized government, not in the direction of the globalists and World Government. Unfortunately the Democrat and Republican hierarchies are committed globalists, ideologically poisoned by the Marxian-Keynesian brainwash that has been seeping into America for many decades. They will never work to return to the Founding Fathers; they will work fervently to usher in a New World Order, a World Bank, and the elimination of American sovereignty.

But there is still a chance to save freedom because a sizeable sector of the people still favor freedom. Most conservatives, libertarians, independents, and blue-collar Democrats (50 percent of the voters) remain opposed to Marxism-Keynesianism if the rudiments are clearly explained to them. They still believe in "honest money" and "limited government." All they need is a courageous, conservative political candidate to explain how we must get back to such values.

Thus we must bypass the Republican Party and go directly to the people. We must launch an Independent political campaign that will tell the truth to American voters about the Democrat-Republican monopoly and how it is smuggling us into a centralized dictatorship via Marxism and Keynesianism.

Stopping the Drift

In conclusion, trying to take over the Republican Party by voting in more true conservative congressmen will never stop America's dictatorial drift. We've been attempting to do this for over four decades now. And the freedom advocates we send to Washington continue to get bought off by neoconservatism as fast as we send them.

There's a much better way to fight. Our goal at AFR is to recruit a prominent free-market conservative such as Ted Cruz or Mike Lee or Michele Bachmann to run an Independent campaign on AFR's Four Pillars of Reform for our tax, monetary, immigration, and foreign policy systems in the next presidential election (like Ross Perot in 1992). By going directly to the people with the truth, such a patriot, conservative campaign would give us a chance to save the country.

In this way we can challenge the Washington establishment and unify all conservatives, libertarians, independents, and blue-collar Democrats into a vibrant grassroots force. We believe a nationally-known, free-market conservative, running as an Independent, would get 40-45 percent of the vote and win the 2016 election. In doing so, his campaign would act as the launch for a new political party - the NATIONAL INDEPENDENT PARTY - that would further the fight into the future. For more information on this cause, go to our website, www.afr.org.


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Nelson Hultberg is a freelance scholar/writer in Dallas, Texas and the Director of Americans for a Free Republic www.afr.org. His articles have appeared over the past twenty years in such publications as The Dallas Morning News, American Conservative, Insight, Liberty, The Freeman, and The Social Critic, as well as on numerous Internet sites such as Capitol Hill Outsider, Conservative Action Alerts, Daily Paul, Canada Free Press, and The Daily Bell. He is the author of The Golden Mean: Libertarian Politics, Conservative Values.