Last week, The Hill reported that Glenn Beck is leaving the Republican Party.

“I’ve made my decision — I’m out,” Beck said Wednesday on The Glenn Beck Program, his broadcast on TheBlaze.com. “I’m out of the Republican Party. I am not a Republican. I will not give a dime to the Republican Party. I’m out.”

The host said Republicans lost him with their inaction on both ObamaCare and illegal immigration.

“All this stuff that they said and they ran and they said they were doing all of these great things and they were going to stand against ObamaCare and illegal immigration they set us up,” Beck added. “They set us up. Enough is enough. They’re torpedoing the Constitution and they’re doing it knowingly.”

The next day, Beck unloaded on neoconservative strategist, and would-be Republican kingmaker, Karl Rove, telling Rove and his supporters:

You guys have the spine of a worm, the ethics of whores, and the integrity of pirates. (My apologies to worms, whores and pirates)

It is sad that you can no longer hear the American People because they could save you. Instead you listen to your political consultants and the amazing thing is you still believe all of it.…

It’s impossible for any conservative with even the backbone that God gave a tapeworm not to sympathize with Beck’s frustration. Ann Coulter was right when she wrote, “If a Republican majority in both houses of Congress can’t stop Obama from issuing illegal immigrants Social Security cards and years of back welfare payments, there is no reason to vote Republican ever again.”

Just a short list of the ways the Republican establishment has betrayed its working and middle class, religious and patriotic base in the past 30 years would have to include:

• Appointments of judges like David Souter and Anthony Kennedy, who have upheld legal abortion and are primed to terminate marriage — opening every Christian business in America to crippling anti-discrimination lawsuits and even arrests. Did Clinton or Obama appoint anyone who just “turned out” to be conservative? Why does this only happen under Republican presidents?
• No serious effort to overturn Obamacare, apart from empty, symbolic gestures. We have instead relied on judicial activism, in the hope that unelected magistrates will save us.
• Support for Common Core, which imposes federal controls on every high school in the country. Yeah, there’s no danger to liberty there. A future Democratic Education Department would never think of infusing curriculum guidelines with ideology.
• Repeated surrenders on immigration, culminating with the acceptance of Obama’s amnesty-plus (plus uncounted millions in Earned Income Tax credits for identity thieves).
• Complicity in gross deficit spending exceeded only by the current administration.
• A fondness for crony capitalism and corporate bailouts.
• The ruinously expensive enlargement of Medicare in the name of “compassionate conservatism.”

The only answer to an establishment that scorns you is to teach it to fear you. The big-business social liberals who run the Republican party are afraid of the Israel lobby and the gun lobby — two pressure groups that did their jobs and promoted their points of view, in perfectly democratic fashion.

You know who the RINOs are not afraid of?

Pro-lifers, working class whites, and religious conservatives — the very people who deliver Republican victories. They know they can buy us off with scraps, and wave our favorite issues before us, ever out of reach. Keep dangling that carrot, and we will keep on pulling the cart.

That cart must come to a sudden, thundering halt.

But how can we make a threat of rebellion credible? Twentieth century history suggests that forming a third party is not a good bet.

Third Parties Haven’t Worked Since 1860

If I hadn’t sprained my ankle, I would have made the final interview, and probably gotten the job as Press Secretary to Pat Buchanan’s 2000 run for president on the Reform Party ticket. I’ve never forgotten the address Pat gave at the 1992 GOP Convention. It’s a great speech by a great American that still resonates today:

But the campaign, once it was launched, turned into something of a fiasco, as Buchanan was forced to tangle with well-financed obstructions — including opposition from a “Natural Law Party” candidate who claimed the power to levitate. New York State laws were so rigged against new parties that Buchanan felt forced to ally with the crank Lenora Fulani, in return for her “slot” on the ballot. Withering media scorn soon gave the campaign the flavor of a children’s crusade.

There is no reason to think a conservative third party would work any better this time — not with Fox News and others repeating the mantra that we would only be “helping the Democrats.” And they’d probably be right.

This fact is what the establishment is counting on, to keep conservatives as powerless over the Republicans as black voters are over the Democrats.

But there is more than one way to skin a fat-cat.

What Is to Be Done?

Forming a national conservative third party would burn up enormous resources, face implacable opposition, divide the right bitterly and generally help the left for at least two national elections, if not indefinitely. But that doesn’t mean conservatives are helpless before the ever-leftward march of national politics. The defeat of Eric Cantor proves that.

We have to learn the right lessons from that victory. Happily, Beck and his radio talk show associates appear to get it. They later clarified that Beck has been distancing himself from the GOP establishment for years, and that now as before, he will continue to identify and energetically support solid conservative Republicans in primaries and general elections. That’s a step in the right direction.

Here’s a plan for moving the Congress firmly in favor of conservative principles:

1. Identify congressmen and senators who cave on critical issues, such as abortion, immigration, government growth and marriage. Like the Israeli lobby and the gun lobby, impose strict standards and reject the politicians who betray them.
2. Focus time, money and attention on fielding and supporting smart, intellectually consistent candidates in the primaries to oppose those legislators who sold out conservative principles.
3. If a consistent conservative wins a primary, follow up with strong ongoing support.
4. Remember that until this battle is won, our issues are THE issues. Let others worry about secondary issues — since they certainly aren’t worried about ours.
5. If the true conservative loses the primary and there isn’t a dime of difference between the two major candidates in the general election, then write in the conservative nominee who lost. It is more important to restore principled conservatism to the party than to hold onto one or two seats here and there — especially if the RINO warming that seat votes like a Democrat on our issues. William F. Buckley applied this principle when he favored moderate Democrat Joseph Lieberman over liberal Republican Lowell Weicker.
6. While such tactics can equally be applied in a presidential election, they are less likely to be effective there. We may have to settle for a “moderate” president hamstrung by a solidly conservative Congress.

All these steps can be taken, and can succeed. Such steps were taken by the gay lobby, the pro-illegal immigration lobby and the pro-abortion lobby. If we will not learn from our enemies, then we deserve to lose.

But America doesn’t deserve it. Our children don’t deserve the godless, bankrupt, chaotic LGBTGQ-istan that the Republican establishment is colluding to bring to birth. We owe it to millions of innocent Americans, present and future, to stop bringing nerf bats to a knife fight.