Thursday, May 25, 2017

For those who’ve lost their political home, there’s hope

Every day, I go through certain news sources religiously. Part of it is for the sake of our news aggregator, but it’s also important for me to stay on top of political, religious, and cultural events to help the Federalist Party remain ahead of the news curve. RedState has always one of my daily sources and one story in particular sparked the need for a response.

J. Cal Davenport posted a story titled, “No Party Is Serious And I Feel Politically Homeless.” As a conservative, he feels like the Republican Party is losing its core, the Democratic Party continues to embrace a miserable ideology, and all other parties are failing and/or irrelevant.

I can appreciate this because it’s exactly where I was around this time last year. The GOP had been leaving me for a long time but I was just coming around to accepting it. The Democrats are… Democrats. I spent months looking into the other parties small and large and realized they all missed one major component: good strategy. That’s what prompted me to pursue building a new party. It’s what drove me to call people I respect to get counsel and rally support. In the end, this angst drove me to realize objectively we have a reason for hope.

The idea of a perfect storm has materialized. If I looked into building a new party three years ago, I’m fairly certain I would have concluded that we need to fix the GOP from within. If I waited a year or two before looking into it, I may have decided that getting into the political world would be fruitless. Whatever it was that pushed me to explore the possibilities at this moment in time, I count it as a blessing. What I’m seeing is a groundswell of support driven by an increasing number of people disenfranchised with their current political homes. Many conservatives are seeing their Grand Ol’ Party acting more like 90s-era Democrats while many evangelicals are quickly learning that values, ethics, and principles are negotiable within the modern Republican Party.

The Democrats are facing a similar dilemma. Contrary to popular belief on the right, there are plenty of Democrats who would never embrace socialism. There are Democrats who are pro-life. There are even Democrats who don’t believe in growing government. I know this for certain because I talk to them every day; over 20% of those inquiring about the party are current or former Democrats. It’s not just frustration with the leftward push towards communism their party seems to be making. Many, particularly minorities like me, say they were raised Democrat and could never allow themselves to become Republicans, but they love what they’re hearing from us about getting the government out of their lives.

As for other parties, our appeal is our strategy. From “boots and bytes” for growth to our focus on local elections first to our plan for holding representatives accountable, we’re opening eyes of many third-party enthusiasts. We’ve been told we seem to have a better grasp of how to move forward five-months since our formation than their parties have been able to muster after a quarter-century of failure.

I’d love to say with certainty that we’ll be successful, but certainty isn’t a luxury anyone has in this political atmosphere. I’d love to say we’re coming in at the right time since it seems like things are falling into place nicely, but it’s impossible to know if the nation can be set on the right course in time. All I can say for sure is that good things are happening and every effort is being put into this to give us the best chance possible. I’m not promising victory. I’m simply saying there are good reasons to not give up hope.



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