The Un-Republican Republican Party
When the primaries began for the Presidential election, I tried to go into it with an open mind and look at each of the possible Presidential candidates without any political bias. However, I quickly discovered that there has been something about the Republican party that I simply didn’t like. Granted, I already had a disdain for the likes of President Bush and most of his administration, but there was something else. Something I couldn’t quite put my finger on until now.
Recently, I watched an episode of Bill Moyers Journal where Bill interviewed former Republican congressman Mickey Edwards and Ross Douthat, senior editor at The Atlantic. During the interview, it was Mickey Edwards that said a few things that really illustrated how I felt:
Republicans used to believe in a certain set of basic principles about divided powers, limited government. What happened is with the Bush presidency, we have become the exact opposite of what we used to stand for. So we may win elections but we are now standing for…an all-powerful presidency..limits on public civil liberties…So we’ve changed everything we believed in order to win elections.
Over the last seven years or so, little by little, it seemed that many of the civil liberties we take for granted were being taken away from us. For all intents and purposes our Constitution was stomped on and wasn’t treated with the respect and purpose that it deserved. History tells us that when once something like this happens that it’s difficult to reverse the damage.
Justice Kennedy said…in the Guantanamo case…the Constitution is not something to be set aside when it’s convenient.
And we have this tendency to do it. Every year as we do things like this, we lose a little more of our system of separated powers and checks and balances. And I’m not as sanguine as you are about the fact that we can go back to what the constitutional system was, which is how we protect our liberties.
It is this very thing that I was looking for out of the Republican candidates. Did they believe in the Constitution? Did they believe in protecting our liberties? Or was the false notion of protecting the security of our nation more important?
In essence, the very things I thought the Republican party stood for was being stripped away. I thought, “Surely these new Republican candidates would strive to regenerate it.” Unfortunately, that didn’t appear to be the case. About the only candidate that seemed to reflect true Republican values was Ron Paul, but even he wasn’t a perfect reflection of the party. The primaries came and went and the choice was narrowed down to a candidate that seemed to be closer to President Bush rather than a candidate who truly represented the party. How did that happen?
The problem is that the American people are being fed a different message about what the Republican party is really all about. They are being told that the Republican party is about true conservative values, traditional family values, preserving those values, and making the right choices to protect our freedom from enemies abroad. But is this really the Republican party? Is it a requirement that you be a member of the conservative movement to be considered a Republican? And is the definition of conservatism even accurate?
Many people when they think of conservative government, they automatically assume small government or simply less government. They also assume that being a conservative means that you are a part of the moral Right. However, Edwards said something that really puts it all in perspective:
Well, first of all, you know, I don’t think the rationale of the conservatism is small government. It’s limited government, but that doesn’t necessarily mean small. It means that there are areas that you cannot take government into. There are there are areas where the rights of the people are paramount. So…in the old system..before America, you had rulers and their subjects, right?
And the rulers told their subjects what to do. And our idea was…we’re going to be citizens, not subjects. And we’re going to tell the government what to do. And there are areas where the government’s not permitted to go. But within those areas the government can act. It - nothing that says it has to be a tiny government if the people themselves are willing to pay the taxes and to support certain activities for the government and it’s within the Constitution, that’s fine.
This is, to me, what the true definition of conservatisim really is in politics. It simply means a way of government that doesn’t go in places where it shouldn’t. It’s about protecting the individual and stepping in when individual rights are being effected. I feel that conservatism has more to do with the government seeking proper regulation and oversight rather than telling the people what to do.
The problem is that true conservatism has been taken over by neo-conservatives within the Republican party ranks in thanks to what Arianna Huffington calls the lunatic fringe:
The Right has been taken over… by the Neo-conservatives who have been wanting to invade Iraq for years. And as the result the Right of the Ronald Reagan era is no longer the Right. It’s now the Right of Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter and Bill O’Reilly…They’ve hijacked America by hijacking public policy.
Folks like Limbaugh, Coulter, O’Reilly, and Sean Hannity of Fox News have done little for the Republican party and conservative movement other than showing its shortcomings. They have a tendency to twist, stretch, and distort the truth and outright lie in an effort to make themselves seem more right. And the sad thing is that doing so creates the form of hypocrisy that they are critiquing. Doesn’t make any sense to me.
Is the lunatic fringe the new face of the Republican party? If so, why aren’t there any true Republican denouncing the attitudes of these so-called members of the media. It’s a radical departure at best from what the Republican party used to be. I just don’t understand why so many people who claim themselves to be Republican and/or conservative find this to be perfectly acceptable.
Unlike the lunatic fringe, I firmly believe that having a particular political belief (conservative, liberal, or somewhere in-between) does not automatically mean you are part of a specific political party. I believe that regardless of whether you have liberal or conservative beliefs you can be a part of any political party. Liberals can be Republicans and conservatives can be Democrats and vice versa. In short, labels should mean nothing.
It boils down to this: Regardless of one’s political beliefs, anyone can have family values, have faith in one’s religion, and/or be patriotic. Whether you’re a Republican, Democrat, liberal, or conservative, it simply doesn’t matter. Being one or the other doesn’t automatically mean that a person thinks any more or any less of their country. It simply means that they have a slightly different way of looking at it that you do from a purely political perspective.
Last I checked we’re all Americans here. Everyone is entitled to one’s beliefs and opinions. It’s given to us by the Constitution. To take it for granted and allow any political system to tell you otherwise would be the very disaster our forefathers fought to keep from happening. Don’t forget that when deciding how you will vote in this election.
