The Rebirth of the Republican Party

[jkbatca]

Originally Posted by TnHilltopper

Don't mistake the religious right for conservatives even if there are conservatives among the religious right. They are not mutually exclusive.

The term conservative might best be looked at first by its current definition: conservative - definition of conservative by the Free Online Dictionary, Thesaurus and Encyclopedia.

From there I would suggest folks looked at how many different variations of the theme conservative there are, because there are several but they all stem from a very basic root as mentioned in the definition above.

In traditional American political conservatism or what I would now call "paleoconservativism" are a few basic tenets such as a desire for smaller government, fiscal responsibility, and adherence to principles of liberty.

The idea of keeping the government smaller is for many reasons, one that the smaller the government is the more efficiently and non intrusively it can run. The United States Constitution clearly lays out the role of government and government should operate strictly within those bounds. Smaller government also means less bureaucracy, red tape and lower cost to operate so thus less money is needed in taxes to function.

Reagan's idea about lowering taxes was how he saw as a means to starve the government of funding and there by cutting its spending habits. Problem with this is that the government started to borrow ever greater amounts of money at interest and passing these debts that would normally be obtained through growth and taxation onto the next generation. Which in my opinion is immoral as every person, organization and generation is responsible for the debts they incur.

Concerning foreign policy, conservatives in days gone past have tended to favor less interventionist policies. Conservatives had long desired to stay out of wars because wars were not deemed good for national prosperity but only to a select few, such as those making bullets and bombs. Even George W Bush ran on a platform of "no new nation building"... whoops! Just look at the founding fathers views on wars and alliances to find that most were very conservative in this respect and despite changing times, history is replete with the cause and effects of war on a nation.

What will the next Republican Party look like is anyone's guess at this point. However, never confuse the term Republican with conservative as in the past they may have been synonymous, this isn't the case today.

I agree with everything you've said here! I would like to add my opinion that Reagan's goal of smaller government was, and is, never going to be realized until EVERYONE is on board with that idea. Until Congress and people's support for smaller government is behind this, no matter what a potential conservative president does, the US will never see a smaller government. Reagan's lower taxes were a means to a smaller government end, not for larger deficits. Bush did the opposite where he lowered taxes but INCREASED the size of government!!!

On a side note, in my opinion, the most insidious effect of Bush / Cheney / Rove on the Republican Party and conservatives in general was the ability of the left and especially Obama to lump Bush's neocon's interventionist / larger gov't / less liberty - self reliance policies into one big fat Republican / conservative label. That's all you heard from Obama all campaign long. In other words George W Bush => Republican Party => Conservative. This is despite the fact Bush stood for the opposite of what virtually everything conservatism means!!! Unfortunately, lumping Bush / Cheney, Republicans / conservatives has apparently worked for enough stupid people that now it's going to be a decades long, uphill battle to overcome that perception. Thanks for nothing Bush!