I’ve heard a lot of conservative voices saying that Fast & Furious, important as it may be, will not win Romney the election, so conservatives need to stop screaming about it. After all, they reason, people are 2nd Amendment Rights advocates and pro-Border Security are going to vote for Romney anyway, and this scandal is too complicated for the average voter. We need to be talking about the economy, they say, as that is the most obvious sign of President Obama’s failures, and the easiest place for Romney to gain ground.
I could not disagree more.
If conservatives genuinely care about people the way that we assert – if we believe that human life is precious and we want to stand up for the little guy, for the soldier who does his duty and the small business owner and the gun enthusiast and the student; if we believe that truth is vital to democracy and the rule of law governs a free people; then we HAVE to care about this.
This is not about winning an election. Because, in all honesty, if we can’t win an election because we spent too much time rooting out injustice, advocating for victims of corruption and smacking down on those who would use power, wealth, position and influence to circumvent the law, then we don’t deserve to win. If we can’t articulate why this scandal matters and why no amount of “fixing the economy” will be enough until we can root out this systemic corruption, then the soul of America may indeed be lost.
The future of our republic is at stake here. Do we believe in our soldiers, our citizens? Do we believe in God-given rights? Do we believe in the rule of law, or the rule of what’s politically convenient?
Do we believe that the victims of corruption have names, families and stories that matter, or are they just a pawn in our game?