Bill Bolling has launched a PAC, called the Virginia Mainstream Project that will target mainstream activists and voters in order to offer the Republican Party an alternative to the current political and social issues facing Virginians today.
As a management consultant I have opportunities to observe many techniques that allow companies to improve their methods of production. Beginning with Ford’s interchangeable parts and assembly lines thru today’s improving customer relations and supply chains via the Internet, utilization of robotics, lasers, and high tech solutions are just a few of the innovations that have helped industrialized nations maintain their competitive edge. Such was the idea of a conveyor belt, which today, is taken for granted throughout organizations. I have observed conveyor belts over several miles in length that move crushed ore from the mine face to the smelter.
The Conveyor of Politics
I would like to use the conveyor belt as a political metaphor to provide some insight into the conflict of visions we are seeing today in the world of politics. Especially in the Republican Party here in Virginia where establishment moderates seem to think there is some middle ground or mainstream position that they alone can identify and occupy instead of the hard choices that face America.
Let’s assume that our political conveyor belt runs to the right or left. It can be turned off, if necessary, but for it to operate at all, it must move to the right or left.
The left end of the conveyor belt is Socialism, including all of its mutations (Communism, Fascism, and Progressivism).
The right end locates true democracy which is nothing more than mob rule and anarchy. Our Founding Fathers rejected that form of government out-of-hand because it cannot endure and is always replaced by some form of tyranny. Notice that at each end of the conveyor belt stuff falls on the floor or for our purposes society fails.
The middle of the conveyor is where work gets done and for our purposes this is where our form of government, called a Constitutional Republic, is located. For too many years this conveyor has moved to the left, maybe more slowly at times when moderate Republicans are in office, but invariably to the left and Socialism.
The Socialist end of the conveyor belt has some interesting characteristics and consequences that many Democratic voters don’t seem to realize or perhaps welcome. These include:
- A powerful, centralized government,
- Concern about equal outcomes and redistribution of wealth and not about equal opportunity,
- Diminished individual responsibility and personal liberty,
- Dependence on government for all aspects of your life,
- High unemployment,
- Scarcity of goods and services,
- Crony-capitalism that stifles competition by rewarding political friends,
- Society intentionally segmented by race, religion, gender, sexual orientation,
- Higher and higher taxes, including inflation, until crushing debt is the only alternative,
- Private property owned by government elites,
- Rationed healthcare.
These consequences arrive slowly over many years under the disguise of gradualism and the velvet glove of the welfare state.
“We can’t expect the American People to jump from Capitalism to Communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving them small doses of Socialism, until they awaken one day to find that they have Communism.” Nikita Khrushchev, Premier of USSR
I mentioned previously that on the opposite end of our political conveyor belt resides pure democracy which was rejected outright as non-sustainable. Instead let’s focus on the middle and where the Constitutional Republic or what our Founding Fathers conceived as a republic resides, if we could keep it. Their experiment in governance began with the sovereign individual who was blessed with God given rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
When those sovereign individuals formed their society, including their local governments they created groups of sovereign states that were the original thirteen colonies. The creation of the United States of America was formed by an agreement between the sovereign states to construct a more perfect union and by doing so created the Federal creature. This creature was designed to be in servitude to the sovereign states and ultimately to the sovereign individual. They did this by constraining the Federal Government by a list of negative rights and three distinct sections of the Federal government intentionally designed to be inefficient and systematized with internal checks and balances. Rights not listed were retained by the states and the people.
This Constitution is our founding document and with its amendment process is considered a living contract, of, by, and for the people. As originally conceived our Constitutional Republic offered you the individual, liberty in thought, action, and expression; freedom of movement and private property ownership. An economic system called Capitalism including free markets and with freedom to succeed comes the freedom to fail and differences in outcomes; indeed our failures, most times, are the birth of creativity and success. Justice is applied equally under the law and not granted by government edict to identified classes and victims. Opportunity is more important than eventual results. Charity begins at home and from the heart, not a government entitlement.
Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness can only happen with a limited Federal government. The bigger the government; the less liberty for the individual. Enslavement arrives in the form bigger and bigger Federal government characterized by deficit spending and its ever increasing national debt, the Federal Reserve creating money from imaginary liabilities. Unfortunately the scourge of inflation hurts the very people the Socialists claim to want to help.
The Virginia Mainstream Project by Bill Bolling
This brings me to the point of this article. Bill Bolling has announced the formation of a new political action committee called the Virginia Mainstream Project that will focus on recruiting and electing mainstream (read moderate) Republicans to public office and promote responsible policy solutions (read bi-partisan, cooperation and compromise) for the most important challenges facing the Commonwealth. Mr. Bolling also says that he wants to “develop and promote responsible conservative policy solutions to the most important issues facing Virginia, with an emphasis on fiscal policy, economic development, tax reform, education reform, transportation and health care.”
The Direction of the Bill Bolling Conveyor Belt
So, which direction is Mr. Bolling’s conveyor belt running?
I contend that any bi-partisanship or compromise or cooperation with the Democrats by moderate Republicans means the conveyor belt is running to the left and Socialism, albeit maybe a little more slowly than the all-out speed preferred by Socialistic Democrats.
We need leaders in this state and in this party that are willing to stop the conveyor belts left ward direction and force it back to the middle and our Constitutional Republic. So Mr. Bolling,
- Should the Republican Party cooperate with the Democrats and pass reasonable gun control laws?
- Should we cooperate with them to promote Obamacare and embrace “death panels”?
- Should we compromise and raise taxes, increase the debt limit and continue deficit spending until the country falls apart?
- Should we hollow out our military to fund bigger social programs?
- Should we grant amnesty to illegal aliens whose world view is comfortable with large, powerful, centralized government?
- Should we sacrifice our individual liberty and property ownership rights so the United Nation’s Agenda21 can be pursued by every level of government?
- Maybe Mr. Bolling would be more comfortable adopting the left’s political correctness by referring to the Muslim Brotherhood as moderates instead of calling Islamic Jihadists, terrorists?
- Should we accept, on a bi-partisan basis, the unproven concept of a warming planet or the myth that man can actually affect the climate, when we know it is not about the environment but government control of every aspect of our lives?
- Should we continue to cooperate with the left as our money is devalued and inflation becomes uncontrollable and society deteriorates?
Please tell me where this mythical “mainstream” utopia exists or do you have to be a “special” moderate Republican to see it?
There is no alternative reality or third direction on this political conveyor belt; no matter how much moderate Republican’s wishful thinking is applied to it. The Republican Party is either facilitating the Democrats by their attitudes of bi-partisanship, cooperation and compromise or they make the decision that the political conveyor belt must move back to the middle so our Constitutional Republic is restored.
The only thing that the Republicans can control on the political conveyor belt is direction and speed. The only mainstream discussion I am interested in; is alternative solutions within mainstream, constitutional conservatism. Anything else means the conveyor belt is running to the left and that is unacceptable.
Thanks to progressive Democrats and moderate Republicans we have moved too far left already and the last thing we need is another moderate, mainstream, Republican PAC.
Virginia Mainstream Project will target ill-informed Republican and Independent activists and voters with the imaginary political position of being in the middle or mainstream. By doing so these duped citizens, will by cooperation, bi-partisanship, and compromise with Progressive Democrats slowly push our Constitutional Republic into Socialism. We have a clear choice in the direction and speed of this political conveyor belt. The Constitutional Republic is in reality the only middle ground that will save this country. Republicans must decide which way they want the conveyor belt to run and there is not much time to make that decision. Smaller government, more liberty, and personal opportunities for property and wealth creation or constantly try to compromise to facilitate agendas initiated by the Democrat policies of entitlements, political correctness, collectivism and the further destruction of American Exceptionalism and self-determination.
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Mr. George is a founding member of the Fair Lakes Area Tea Party. He is also a member of the Northern Virginia Tea Party, Fairfax County Republican Party, as well as, the Virginia Tea Party Patriots Federation.
Currently, Mr. George is involved in establishing the Virginia Voters Alliance which is a state wide organization devoted to improving the voting process by sponsoring legislation, recruiting election officials/poll watchers, and combatting voter fraud in the Commonwealth. The Virginia Voters Alliance is empowered by the True the Vote organization located in Houston, Texas where it was successful in reducing fraudulent voter registrations in Harris County.
Mr. George is a Management Consultant specializing in strategic planning, post-merger integration, enterprise system architecture, and project management. He resides in Chantilly, Virginia with his wife and daughter.