DENNIS DURBAND

Unity Anyone? No Thanks

February 3, 2005

You do not appease leftists, liberals or RINOs. You defeat them. They are one and the same.

The Arizona Republican Party leadership will do well to remember this.

And so will the unnamed "business leaders," cited in a recent story by the Arizona Republic, who claim the rift between conservatives and liberals may hurt GOP fundraising. The differences between these rivals did not hurt the party's election results in 2004. However, the AZ GOP mysteriously had trouble finding its checkbook when a conservative ran for attorney general in 2002 and when a conservative ran for mayor in Phoenix in 2003.

The Republic story on the recent state Republican convention, written by Chip Scutari, included the following remarks:

The ongoing rift between conservative and moderate Republicans surfaced in about a half-dozen key legislative primary races in September. In recent years, the brewing intraparty animosity has played out at the Capitol over issues such as abortion, health care, education and gay marriage.

Don't be fooled: those "moderates" are actually "liberals" and everyone but The Arizona Republic knows that. Pro-aborts and big spenders are "moderates" in the Republic's lexicon, and there are no "liberals" this side of Mars. Why is it that when real Republicans oppose liberal Republicans, it is a "rift" and "intraparty animosity" causing concern to the party?" If the voters in District 20 choose by a 2-1 margin to replace a RINO state senator (Slade Mead) with a conservative (John Huppenthal), is that a "rift" or is that the will of the voters being expressed?

Unite at Your Own Peril

The Arizona GOP state convention last week featured several signs bearing the word "unite." The people who needed to read that are not the vast majority of platform Republicans, but the Republicans In Name Only who put Democrat Janet Napolitano in the governor's office and elected liberals to the state legislature. To use an analogy, when one or two kids misbehave in class, the teacher doesn't need to discipline the whole class. It is the trouble makers who need to be dealt with. We will unite with the left at our own peril.

It is highly unlikely that calls for unity did not originate with the prompting of RINOs who regularly take heavy losses at primary time. The thought of the party reaching out to these unrepentant renegades is sheer lunacy. It is the renegades who should get in line with Republican principles or leave the party. Last year, Arizona Republicans spoke with their votes, and as a result there are now only two Democrat-friendly RINOs remaining in the Arizona Senate. Republicans are recapturing their party after leftist infiltrations had given liberals control of the Senate in recent sessions.

When did "business leaders" ever pressure former AZ GOP Chairman Bob Fannin -- a mushy moderate -- to preach unity? They didn't have to; he was already in their back pocket. Now that the retired Fannin is not around to diss conservative Republican candidates and to extol the virtues of the pro-abortion Republicans, suddenly there is a crying need for "unity."

Should we show unity -- or even mercy? -- to Mead and Linda Binder, the two RINO senators who were shown the door without a parting prize last year? Binder saw the writing on the wall and did not even have the courage to defend her seat against conservative challenger Ron Gould; she merely stepped aside for a real Republican to claim her Senate seat. Mead, Binder and RINO friends did everything they could to derail Republican policy and legislation, pleasing the state's liberal mainstream media every time they opposed fiscal and social responsibility and kneeled the altar of Governor/Goddess Napolitano.

Should the entire state GOP bend over backwards to accommodate RINO clubs like Mainstream Arizona, the WISH List and the Arizona Federation of Republican Women? No. Nine out of 10 Republicans in Arizona oppose these radical Democrats in sheep's clothing. These groups belong on the outside looking in.

Instead of offending the heart and soul of the party with "unite" signs, the Arizona Republican Party ought to show discipline and leadership in extolling the virtues of the party and reward those who are loyal. Those virtues are recorded for all to see in the Republican National Committee's 2004 platform. The platform supports the sanctity of life, traditional marriage, less government and more fiscal responsibility, among other virtues.

RINO Congressman Jim Kolbe and RINO state legislators oppose a culture of life and they spend other people's money with reckless abandon. In the corporate world, organizations attempt to cull renegades from the herd, rather than extend their arms around the runaways as Fannin did in his three years at AZ GOP.

True blue Republicans are already planning strategy to defeat RINO State Senator Carolyn Allen in 2006. The two RINOs who ran for the House last year in Legislative District 15 gave voters no reason to vote for them, since they did not differentiate themselves from their Democrat opponents. We need more true blue Republicans opposing RINOs and Democrats in elections, not emulating them. This is a no-brainer. A majority of Americans oppose abortion. A majority of Americans support traditional marriage and fiscal sanity. Republicans need to run on these winning issues -- or lose as did legislative candidates Mead, Tara Roesler and Oksana Komarnyckyz, who chose not to.

Chairman Salmon says we won't win the governor's office without unity. No one should expect the Napolitano-supporting members of the Arizona Federation of Republican Women (AFRW) to support a pro-life Republican in 2006. So why then are we appealing to the rebels for unity? We need to expose and defeat those who oppose us. Party affiliations have become greatly blurred by ideology; grassroots activists understand this simple concept, but party leadership does not. In other words, we are not only opposing Napolitano in 2006, but we are also opposing the WISH List, Mainstream Arizona and the leadership of the AFRW at the same time. There is no point for leadership to deny this reality any longer.

Anyone entering into any kind of competition needs to recognize the identity of the enemy. And many of our enemies are wearing Republican clothing. But they are pseudo-Republicans working against us. Among them are: Senator John McCain, former Attorney General Grant Woods, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, AFRW President Dot Greener, Arizona Corporation Commissioner Kris Mayes, State Reps Michele Reagan and Tom O'Halleran, among others. We will not make any gains by appeasing these people. We -- grassroots worker bees and party leaders -- should work only to bring them into line ... or defeat them.

Dennis Durband is publisher and editor of The Arizona Conservative, is also a freelance writer and webmaster and a longtime journalist.

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