Townhall
Palin’s Provocative Proposal: A Cost-Benefit Analysis of Conservatives Leaving the GOP
Steve Deace
Jul 06, 2013 

Ronald Reagan once famously said “I didn’t leave the Democrat Party, the Democrat Party left me.” These days, millions of conservatives around the country feel the same about a Republican Party seemingly hell-bent on abandoning every principle other than crony capitalism. 

Recently on Fox News, conservative rock star Sarah Palin channeled that frustration when she said: 

I love the name of that party – ‘ Freedom Party.’ And if the GOP continues to back away from the planks in our platform, from the principles that built this party of Lincoln and Reagan, then yeah, more and more of us are going to start saying, ‘You know, what’s wrong with being independent,’ kind of with that libertarian streak that much of us have. In other words, we want government to back off and not infringe upon our rights. I think there will be a lot of us who start saying ‘GOP, if you abandon us, we have nowhere else to go except to become more independent and not enlisted in a one or the other private majority parties that rule in our nation, either a Democrat or a Republican.’ Remember these are private parties, and you know, no one forces us to be enlisted in either party. 

Whenever I’m asked about this, and I’m asked about this a lot, I usually say “I’d like to try a second party before thinking about a third one.” Venting frustration is one thing. Acting upon it is entirely another. When we’re frustrated, there are plenty of things we can justify as a response, but many of those things aren’t necessarily prudent. That’s why we have the saying “cooler heads prevailed.” On the other hand, there is certainly a time and place to fashion a whip of cords or grab the jawbone of an ass and give ‘em your best Howard Beale. 

This week we commemorate the anniversary of our Founding Fathers declaring their independence from the British Crown without exactly knowing what would happen next. So it seems only fitting to provide the most objective analysis possible of conservatives following suit by declaring their independence from the GOP. I'll weigh the pros and cons, then you can decide. 

1. The Vision 

Cost -- With the light of liberty barely a flicker, the absolute worst use of time for conservatives would be essentially starting over to form a 3rd Party movement that may take decades to realize. Given how much freedom, liberty, and morality we’ve lost, our constitutional republic probably doesn’t have decades. We need to do as much good as we can, and we need to do it right now. 

Benefit -- Loyalty to the Republican Party has done nothing to squelch our slouch towards Gomorrah or statism. We’ve wasted years as it propped up neo-statists and gutless RINOs, with little to nothing to show for it. Instead of wasting more time on the rotting corpse that is the GOP, better to get to work now on what will inevitably take its place. Short-term thinking is what got us here in the first place. 

2. Political Impact 

Cost -- Leaving the Republican Party would essentially hand almost every election of consequence to the Democrats for the next several years and render conservatives meaningless in the grand scheme of things… 

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