Pointing the Finger

It is difficult some times to be a Ron Paul supporter. All the other supporters I have ever met are rather level headed and are attracted by the message of small-government and the restoration of constitutional principles. However, there does seem to be a small number of people magnified by hostile media that are ardent conspiracy theorists.

The other day I heard one on the radio while driving to work. He waited ninety minutes solely to chastise Sean Hannity for not exposing the Bohemian Grove. Of course Sean gave him a brief rebuke and hung up, furthering the aura of a "cover up" in his mind and the aura of lunacy in everyone else's'. The thought that this course of action, even if the theories are true, could make sense only in the mind of some disciple of David Icke or Lyndon LaRouche.

Of course, I don't bring this up as an issue in an of itself. I find it as a more extreme indication of a larger problem on the right. The problem, as I see it, is that conservatives get stuck in a hole of simply pointing out problems. We grumble a bit about taxes, bad mouth about this liberal or that, and use problems as talking points.

This is a dead end in and of itself, conspiracy theories are simply more inefficient as they spend their effort in outlining a far-fetched cause of the problem, without ever coming to a solution. A lesson that should be learned from the Democrats in the 2004 presidential elections(if you're not going to learn from conservative failures) is that complaining doesn't electrify the masses. The far left showed up in droves to vote for John fish-out-of-water Kerry and John Edwards the Poverty Pimp. Karl Rove managed to electrify and motivate the Republican base in many key rural areas and keep open arms to Democrats turned off by leftist vitriol.

Now I'm not saying we shouldn't attack the left, I'm not even saying I would have voted for George Bush in 2004. What I am saying is that to win elections we have to maintain a set of principles and values, attack our opponents where they are weak, but above all we must outline a clear and distinctive plan of action. This is why people are attracted to Ron Paul in the first place.