LI President Defines Criterion For Being A Conservative

December 14, 2010, Arlington, VA—With the recent elections behind us, how should conservatives move forward? Who should lead this movement? LI President Morton Blackwell answers these questions in his recent blog post.

Mr. Blackwell’s RedState blog post entitled, A Better Definition of Who is a Conservative, begins, “The most important political development of the just-concluded election cycle is the enormously effective, new, political involvement of grassroots conservatives through the Tea Party groups and other, major, analogous organizations.”

“My Leadership Institute has trained newly active conservatives in partnership with every one of these major groups.  My staff and I therefore probably understand all these groups as well or better than anyone else.”

“If these groups continue active and growing, the 2012 elections will go much as the 2010 elections did.”

Mr. Blackwell’s ponders what makes a person a conservative.

“In this era when claiming to be a conservative can be a pathway to power for opportunists, we must better define who is truly a conservative.”

“I suggest this criterion:  Conservatives are people who do more for conservative principles than they think they absolutely have to do.  Only meeting such a standard will sustain the enthusiasm of the millions of grassroots conservatives who emerged politically in 2010.”

To read the full blog post, please click here.

The Leadership Institute is an educational foundation whose mission is to increase the number and effectiveness of conservative activists and leaders in the public policy process. To accomplish this, LI identifies, recruits, trains, and places conservatives in government, politics, and the media.  Since the Institute’s 1979 founding, more than 90,000 people have been trained (with half of those being in the last six years) in one or more of the 40 current programs offered in all 50 states and across the globe. For more information, please visit: http://www.leadershipinstitute.org

 

-30-