Look for the Party Label
By Steve Byas
"No labels" is the latest attempt by the non-conservative crowd to obscure their goal of increasing the reach and power of government. We should reject this effort.The so-called No Labels leaders have in the past called themselves centrists, moderates, or what have you, but in reality they are Big Government Liberals. The Left has been stealing terms for many years, while continuing to advance more governmental control over our personal lives.
Liberal itself used to be a good word, meaning a person who favored individual liberty. So, the Left took the term for themselves in a brazen larcenous act. Why? The statist Progressive Era ended in 1920, when the American people elected Warren Harding president in a landslide rejection of statism. Harding specifically rejected the foundations of the Progressive Era when he said that all human ills are not curable by legislation.
With the term "Progressive" in disrepute, these haters of limited government applied the term "liberal" to themselves, to cover their tracks.
By the late 1960s, the term "liberal," like "progressive" before it, was beginning to be associated with social engineering, more government controls, less free enterprise, and so on, and by the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, it was a term that its proponents no longer wanted associated to them.
Now they have gone back to their old "Progressive" moniker.
Lying is not honorable.
Hiding your true beliefs is deceitful. Yet, we even see some advocates of such deceit within the ranks of conservatives, libertarians, and Republicans.
We even have advocates of allowing "independents" to vote in political party primaries. I say let them form their own party, if they want to have a primary. Nonmembers of a political party should not be choosing our party's nominees.
John McCain would not have been the Republican Party's nominee for president, had New Hampshire not allowed Democrats and Independents to mess it up. All political party primaries should be closed to members of that political party. Methodists should not be choosing the deacons in your local Baptist church, and Baptists should not be voting on the next pope.
Another misguided effort is to remove the party label from county officer races. I have listened to Republicans whine about how they have no say in choosing a county commissioner or a county assessor, because it is all settled in the Democrat primary. Abolishing party labels is a defeatist attitude that should also be rejected. When we go to buy an automobile, or a can of soup, we look for brand names, because we then have a better idea as to what is under the hood and in the can.
While I will concede that party labels are an imperfect way of determining a person's political beliefs, they are a whole lot more effective than no party labels at all!
I would extend party labels to city council and school board races. "Nonpartisan" contests for city council was one of those "gifts" left over from the aforementioned "Progressive Era." Why do you think the Progressives (that is, liberals or leftists, socialists, or Big Government types) want no party labels?
With no party labels, it is much easier for the advocates of bigger government to win city council races. Without party labels, choosing candidates who favor less government becomes a more difficult task, and not just at the city council level.
We even have those who want to remove party labels from the ballot altogether! While those of us who follow this politics stuff very closely would find out who was naughty and who was nice, the vast majority of voters would be lost in the years of the "long ballot," here in Oklahoma. Republican is an imperfect label for conservative, or limited government type of politics, but generally speaking, Republicans are a whole lot more conservative than Democrats. As it is now, if a political party offers a plate of leftist candidates, the voters can take notice and avoid that brand.
Look for the party label.
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