What the Republican Party needs to do in the aftermath of the last election debacle is more than mere soul-searching and finger pointing. The finger pointing is inappropriate. The soul-searching is unnecessary.
The Republican Party has been described as a three-legged stool made up of three different types of conservatives. There are those who are economic conservatives. There are others who are more concerned with social conservative values. Finally, the third leg is those who are foreign policy conservatives.
I think the more apt description would be three-legged cauldron. The problem is, the witches brew they have cooked up over the last thirty years is not exactly most accurately described as conservative. Yet, each of the three seems content to point fingers of blame at the other without looking in more than cursory detail (if indeed that much) at their own failings.
The economic conservatives have merrily raped the treasury over the course of the last eight years or more and have engaged in the kind of pork-barrel politics and corporate welfare policies that would make a Great Society Democrat blush.
The social conservatives have never met a constitutional amendment they didn’t love, whether it be pro-life, defense of marriage, or even one to prevent flag burning. They seem to love federalism except when federalism doesn’t give them what they want in every state of the union.
Finally, we have the foreign policy conservatives, who have always been the most immoderate and by far the less conservative of the three. They are arguably the biggest threat to the GOP. They are not one wing, but two, and they have been at war with each other for some time now. Since they are the worse offenders, but by no means the only danger to the conservative ideology of the GOP, I will tackle them first.
Bluntly put, the Republicans need to kick the Neocons to the curb. They are the cause of the widespread dissatisfaction with the Republican Party stemming from their Iraq War policies. Had we followed their lead to this day, what happened the last election would look like a razor thin margin of victory. Obama’s victory would have been of Johnson-Goldwater proportions, and the Democrats would probably have a solid sixty-two seats or more in the Senate. In the House, they would look more like a third-party joke than a major party.
The Neocon philosophy of war is textbook Kennedy-Johnson and even Truman philosophy. We saw how well all that worked out. It ruined Truman’s presidency, despite the esteem he is held in today, and it ruined Johnson’s presidency as well. It seems predicated on the proposition that if you establish a presence and fight a defensive war of containment, all will work out in the end-an end that never comes. North Korea and South Korea are still technically at war. Vietnam ended with our humiliating defeat and withdrawal. This is quite simply because we were never permitted to fight a true offensive, but relegated instead to defensive posturing only.
Nixon attempted to reverse this horrendous and fallacious policy but was hampered every step of the way by left-wing protesters and by an unsympathetic (to say the least) media blitz that portrayed us as the bad guys. In truth, by the time Nixon took office the damage was probably already irreversible.
The resulting take-over of the Democratic Party by the far left saw the migration of this incredibly naive philosophy to the Republican Party, where it took root and, nourished by the flames and gasses of 9/11, it asserted it’s power over the Bush Administration. It was a failed policy, just as it was in the Korea and Vietnam conflicts, and was reversed only by the adoption of the Surge, led by David Petraeus.
Truthfully, however, there has never been a foreign policy conservative of any authority since the days of the Hoover Administration. The closest of any note is Patrick Buchanan, who had no foreign policy authority in the Nixon Administration. He was a mere speechwriter. Such true foreign policy conservatives are unlikely to acquire any influence under any major party, and this is simply because the fuel that powers the foreign policy engine of the United States is the money found in defense contracts. You can only make so much money by funding weapons systems to defend the United States, so you have to invent boogy-men where none exist in order to “spread the wealth around”. You have to keep NATO years after it has outlived its usefulness and expand it into the face of national entities who have every reason to not want it there, and then you take their reaction as “proof” of its necessity.
This is not conservative by any stretch of the imagination, and it needs to stop. For now, however, it would be beneficial just to rein in the Neocons. They are off the charts. Well, remember, they were originally Democrats. By the way, I don’t want to hear anybody say that my use of the word Neocon is anti-Semitic. No it is not, and if you say that, you are being politically correct, something I despise from Republicans as much as I do from Democrats, if not more so.
The next thing Republicans should focus on is the economic conservatives. Their philosophy of lower taxes and less intrusive regulations is fine, and their recent burglaries of the state treasury in the name of corporate welfare under another name, atrocious as it is, should be a severe lesson for the party leaders as to what can happen when you have the wrong kinds of people in the wrong positions of power. The biggest thing they can learn, however, is the fact that some things just don’t play well. One of those things is their love affair with the philosophy of de-regulation. Nobody wants to hear it. That is just the facts, ma’am.
They should retool their message to insist on lessening regulations and making them less intrusive, more efficient, less burdensome, and less oppressive. Nobody wants to hear how they should be eliminated, and the term de-regulation smacks of precisely that. Sorry, that ship just won’t sail out of the docks-not in this day and age.
In a perfect world, there would be no need for regulations, and companies and corporations would act appropriately out of the greater good, due to a perception that it is in their own best long-term interests to do so. Unfortunately, we don’t live in a perfect world, and never will. Even if they could be convinced it is in their long-term best interests, far too many of them are concerned more with their short-term gains. It’s a dog eat dog world out there, so anybody that doesn’t fight fire with fire will just get burned. That’s just one reason to have some kind of regulations. Another reason for the federal government specifically to impose them would be that pollution, for example, doesn’t seem to care about state borders. A poison that is dumped in the Mississippi River somewhere between Missouri and Tennessee isn’t going to go away or stay where it’s at. It will float on down to Louisiana whether we like it or not. That’s just one example of why nobody buys it when Republicans preach the supposed value of de-regulation. It comes across as self-serving.
Otherwise, hey, let’s do away with all laws that punish any kind of criminal activity. If eliminating regulations on business and corporations will eliminate the need for regulations, well, I don’t know about anybody else, but I could certainly look forward to a world without murder, rape, or theft. Why outlaw such things when a desire for self-esteem and community respect would obviously negate the need for such laws?
Moving on to the third need for change, we peer within the social conservatives mindsets. I can sum this problem up with something I read somewhere else, but I don’t remember exactly who it was that said it, or where I read it. It is quite simply this-
“Not everybody wants to live in an Ozzie and Harriet world.”
Breaking that down into its various parts, not everybody cares that much about gay rights, the flag, or protecting the theoretical rights of fetuses within the wombs of rape or incest victims. Social conservatives need to understand that they do their various causes far more good by adopting postures that are more reasonable. Right to life amendments to the constitution, or aimed at protecting the flag, or incorporating the Ten Commandments in public schools and courthouses, just are not going to fly with the majority of Americans.
Finally, all Republicans need to do a better job at outreach to the various sectors of American society. For far too long now they have framed their cause around issues many people either see as relatively minor issues, or do not care about at all. Then of course, you have those who take the absolute opposite stance.
I hope I am not misunderstood here. I am not advocating that Republicans or conservatives abandon or even compromise their principles. They have already done that, and frankly, that is the cause of most of the problem.
There is nothing conservative about a foreign policy posture that seeks to be the guardian protector of the world, and there is certainly nothing conservative about nation building or in spreading democracy through force of arms. There is nothing conservative about the vast amounts of money funneled by way of defense contracts to feed an international machinery that is self-perpetuating for its own purposes.
There is nothing conservative about a domestic policy posture that rewards corporate malfeasance and the importation of American jobs with tax breaks and de-regulation, while engaging in profligate spending on credit.
Finally, there is nothing conservative about trying to ramrod constitutional amendments based on punitive means to change people’s behavior or to grant privileged status to a special class at the expense of others.
Conservatives are at their best when they promote the values of self-sufficiency, of small government with lower taxes and minimal regulation, and of respect for state’s rights-that last of which they have for far too long allowed the Left to frame as racist and reactionary.
There is not one single issue facing the country today that cannot be better served by a small government, low tax and relaxing of regulations approach, nor is there any problem the states can’t handle as well or better than the federal government, if they are only allowed to do so. Nor is it any business of a person in California if a woman in Kentucky can’t get an abortion based on the proposition that if she does not she might suffer from headaches or depression for a couple of months. Nor is it any business of anybody in Kentucky if a woman from California can get one just because she might not look good in a bathing suit for a while if she does not.
It’s not any business of some Baptist preacher in South Carolina if Mr. Sulu from Star Trek gets married to his male companion. Social conservatives need to get off this kick. This is not something to devote resources necessary for a constitutional amendment. It becomes less of an issue with every election, and will play even less well the next time it is used. If a gay couple moves in the house next door to me, I am relieved that they are a couple and not a single gay man who might be drunk and lonely one night and put me on the spot. Otherwise, I figure there’s a good chance at least one of them will make a good chess opponent. What they do with each other in bed is none of my concern. I also understand that whatever that is, they will do it with or without a marriage license. I am deeply concerned about animal abuse when it comes to gerbils, but that’s a different issue.
Finally, if somebody wants to burn the flag, as regrettable as that is, it’s not something I am going to lose a lot of sleep over. I figure the people that engage in such activities, as I’ve said many times, are only hurting their own causes with their actions with the majority of Americans. Since I oppose most if not all of what they stand for, frankly I have no intention of hindering them from making complete asses out of themselves.
We have the most unique country on the face of the earth, and I hope we keep it as is. The only way we can come close to hoping to do that is if at least one of the major parties realizes that we are special and unique for a reason. The further away we get from our original values as outlined in the constitution and the Bill of Rights, the further away we get from what made us great.
It’s bigger than mere capitalism, which is practiced to some degree everywhere. It’s more even than just democracy, which is in its pure form little more than mob rule.
It’s the concept of respect for both the majority as well as minority rights, and the concept of freedom in concert with the rule of law, along with the guarantees that neither the federal government nor the states shall impose its will on or against the people in those areas guaranteed by the founders to be off-limits, yet at the same time protected. It’s the concept that government governs best which governs least, yet is held accountable for doing what it has to do. It’s the ideal that the people make up the United States of America. The government is a mere construct, one which serves their will. It’s the concept that each individual state is in fact a sovereign state, bound together by certain constitutionally mandated prerogatives, yet at the same time, uniquely independent and free, as compared to, say for example, a former Soviet Republic, or a French Department, or a state in Germany or Mexico. All of these other “states” or regions are recognized as such only for the sake of administrative purposes. They have very little if any actual autonomy to speak of.
Besides, the more power an individual state has over its own internal affairs, when appropriate, the more people become involved in their state political matters. That is as it should be.
Finally, we should never forget what we stand for-“Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness”. Government can protect those ideals, though only to a degree. It can certainly never impose them. Think about it. How can you force somebody to live, to be free, or to be happy? All of the social engineering experiments in the world will never change that.
All government can do is protect people’s rights, and otherwise stay out of their way and allow them the freedom to do what they can do so long as they respect others and obey reasonable laws. That in a nutshell is what the Republican Party’s message should be. For the Republican Party to be successful from here on out in promoting the conservative cause is not that hard to do. Of course, they first have to actually be conservatives.
