The Conservative Split

I have always said that I was a conservative first, a Republican second. In other words, it is the philosophies, policies, and objectives that make good societies, economies, governments and nations that are my primary concern. My experience has been that those who place party faithfulness first are interested primarily in the "game" and the pursuit of power. Not that they don't have ideas, just that these ideas exist more as items in a playbook to be played out on a sports field to achieve personal or party (tribal) supremacy.

Concerned Americans should participate in government and political action to achieve and implement ideas. Power should be sought and employed to achieve legitimate policy objectives, not primarily as a spoils system for the victors. Republicans and Democrats, once in power, basically behave the same in their focus on preserving power. The issues they talk about, the interest groups that support them, the places they spend the money may differ, but the arrogance, abuse of power, and growth of government can be counted on regardless of which party is in power. This occurs when either party is in power for too long and backed up by an establishment that cares only about access and the privileges of the majority.

The Republican party's control of Congress happened because of: (1) Democratic extremism, heavy-handed rule, corruption, lack of leadership, and a general intellectual arthritis; (2) a legislative revolution lead by Newt Gingrich, based upon a positive, conservative set of ideas with a foundation in decades of conservative intellectual work and grassroots politics from Goldwater through Reagan; and (3) grassroots politics fueled by intellectual vigor, cooperation, and money.

I was proud to be part of that revolution, how ever little part I played. However, I am no longer proud to be associated with the hangers-on, panderers, and establishment the Republicans have come to in Congress (and to a lesser extent, in the White House) today.

Since the late 1990's, the Congressional Republican party and the web of business and other institutions it has spawned in the nation's capital and beyond have taken us on a murky course to no where. Part of it is the lack of great ideas or great threats (the end of the Cold War, welfare reformed, taxes cut, etc.). Yes, we have a war in Iraq and terrorism underway, but this is not a war of economic and political factors. It is primarily one of religious-ideology where rationality is an afterthought.

Republicans in Congress have become obsessed with little more than their reelections and holding on to power. This White House has encouraged the behavior. Yes, Bush and the GOP Congress cut taxes (starving the beast), passed tort reform, and have appointed a number of conservatives to the courts. However, they have failed miserably to trim the size and scope of government. They have chosen to protect their political positions by pandering to issues and interest groups. There are no big ideas. Maybe Social Security reform was the last great one and the President deserves kudos for trying, but congressional Republicans proved they lacked any backbones to address it.

Big Government Republicanism, hiding behind a mask of conservative rhetoric, is a deplorable development and one worthy of tearing down.

Likewise, the GOP establishment's obsession with pandering to religious conservatives has really begun to bother me. Every speech, every column, every policy is couched in rhetorical terms of "faith", "values", "families", etc. Now I understand the strategy here - religion and appeals to faith are key associative factors for the Republican party at the grassroots level - but it has become so naked an approach that the pandering has become obscene and ought to appear more than a little insulting to Christians.

As a conservative activist, I have worked down in the trenches with religious conservatives on any number of campaigns, projects and objectives over the year. We came at issues and sought outcomes from a different set of priorities, but we worked together to advance real change, elect new leaders, and generally push a conservative agenda forward.

However, the leadership we put into place has become drunken with their own self importance and determination to stay in power. They scare the bee-geebers out of us by talking about "it would be a lot worse if the other party was in power..." We have to agree. In doing so, we reward their policy slothfulness. We encourage them to take us for granted. We appease them. Then when we demand they show some backbone and do the right thing (e.g. Harriett Miers, cutting spending, Medicare drug benefit, etc.) they scream bloody murder that we aren't being team players, care more about ideas than holding the majority from the barbarians, and generally being an unruly mob.

Let me take this point to an extreme that might offend and infuriate some. I believe that the Republican party's pandering to Christians with such strong and consistent religious rhetorical code words, is of the same approach as Democrats and African American leaders take to the black community. Code words, painting opponents as enemies, building up fortress mentalities that everyone is out to get them and only the self-appointed leadership speaks for them, fights for them, and can be trusted.

Religious conservatives are being insulted on a daily basis by Congressional Republicans and a White House that want to simply associate with their faith to hold them into the political camp, while not doing much at all to actually implement an agenda - whether it includes Christian priorities or a larger conservative philosophical/political agenda that they all pay lip service to.

A good friend of mine from Republican wars of the past is a decidedly economic conservative and social liberal. He warned me several years ago of a growing frustration with the GOP's social right obsession that drove him away. At the time, I wasn't very sympathetic because it was the religious conservatives who were providing the armies of workers who made possible the great policy work going on under Gingrich. We needed to keep the "big tent." But the great policy work has ended. The GOP establishment is all about protecting its power and privileges.

The Republican establishment has become adrift and has apparently chosen pandering to religious voters over actually taking on tough issues (Iraq isn't the only important issue, folks).

George Will has written a very thought provoking column What Next for Conservatives for publication today.

"It does me no injury,'' said Thomas Jefferson, "for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.'' But it is injurious, and unneighborly, when zealots try to compel public education to infuse theism into scientific education. The conservative coalition, which is coming unglued for many reasons, will rapidly disintegrate if limited-government conservatives become convinced that social conservatives are unwilling to concentrate their character-building and soul-saving energies on the private institutions that mediate between individuals and government, and instead try to conscript government into sectarian crusades.
But, then, the limited-government impulse is a spent force in a Republican Party that cannot muster congressional majorities to cut the growth of Medicaid from 7.3 percent to 7 percent next year. That "cut'' was too draconian for some Republican "moderates.''

Will goes on to make the case that the Republicans have failed to control spending and are making the Democrats look fiscally conservative. I won't go into the plethora of examples here.

No wonder that the Democrats are starting to use rhetoric about "fiscal responsibility" and putting the country's "house in order."

Congressional Republicans and their enablers in the White House and on K Street have become every bit as big a supporters of Big Government as the Democrats. The difference is, rather than cloaking it in class warfare, they use the rhetoric of "compassion," "opportunity," "values," and "faith."