“[Secular conservatism] is a party which never conserves anything. Its history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is today .one of the accepted principles of conservatism; it is now conservative only in affecting to resist the next innovation, which will tomorrow be forced upon its timidity and will be succeeded by some third revolution; to be denounced and then adopted in its turn. American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader. This pretended salt bath utterly lost its savor: wherewith shall it be salted? Its impotency is not hard, indeed, to explain. It is worthless because it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of sturdy principle. It intends to risk nothing serious for the sake of the truth.”

Our country is collapsing because we have turned our back on God (Psalm 9:17) and refused to kiss His Son (Psalm 2).

John Lofton, Editor, TheAmericanView.com
Recovering Republican
JLof@aol.com

PS – And “Mr. Worldly Wiseman” Rush Limbaugh never made a bigger ass of himself than at CPAC where he told that blasphemous “joke” about himself and God.

The Republicans in the northeast have tried the Democratic-lite, me too idea. How has that worked out for them. All it does it gets politicians like LIncoln Caffee who are incapable of leading anything and are incapable of doing anything. The only way that the Democratic-lite idea works is if you assume that fiscal conservatives, social conservatives, and neo-cons are as stupid and as loyal as black and Hispanics are. If anything one should learn from elections is that those groups on the right are not.

I don't see it as that binary. There are the anti-corporate, pro-welfare Democrats on the left and the Bible thumpers on the right, but there's also a whole continent of moderates in between. They're quiet but important people, with blogs and everything.

Well then, I guess that says it all.

Perhaps I should stop there. But let me ask you… what in your view distinguishes whites from non-whites? Is it complexion, or hair texture, or eye slant, or something? Is it some innate difference in IQ, or some innate difference in personality? What? In other words, what in your view distinguishes whites from non-whites? Likewise, what is fundamental to the modern Republican base except, perhaps, a curious (and IMO destructive) adherence to what is commonly referred to as religious fundamentalism (and what Andrew Sullivan, among others, refers to as “Christianism”)?

The idea that the Republicans can resurrect themselves is laughable. All they can really do is decide which method of their own demise. They can either decide to appeal to their base and let demographic changes overtake them. They can become Democratic-lite and destroy any difference between themselves. Or they can have a mix of the two which is what President Bush and Karl Rove tried to do.

No matter what the Republicans do, they have little chance of long term viability. What I read above is just another version of the Democratic-lite, let's me only half way pregnant type of thinking. I have read many versions before and they all boil down to let's do everything that the Democrats think is hip while throwing a few bones to the current base of the Republican Party. It fails to appeal to any non-whites, it fails to hold any part of the current Republican base, and it will untilmately fail. Such ideas as above usually come from urban whites who forget that the less than half of the Democratic voters are white and that the Republican Party cannot treat social conservatives the same way that blacks are treated by the Democratic Party.

Come on now. This post is about how the GOP can resurrect themselves. And it seems to me you're not helping much. And frankly, the spirit of what you said just now belies the provincial approach you previously advocated. I suspect you need to get your thoughts in order.

The Democrats have been the ones pushing the environmental laws that have made the infrastructure improvements very hard to do. If the National Environmental Protection Act had been around the in 1950's, the interstate highway system would never have been built. The same can be said for most most hydroelectic projects or even transmission lines these days.

The Republicans used to talk about government takings laws and the insane amount of paperwork requried to comply with federal regulations. They gave up on that and becoming Democratic-lite would mean that the Republicans have fully become the paperwork bureaucracy party just like the Democrats.

Look at how the Obama ADministration decided to kill the nuclear power industry in the U.S. even though there are permit applications for 30 new reactors to be built in the U.S. that use fuel that comes from Canda, the U.S., and Australia.

The second part (whether Democrats or Republicans do it better) is beside the point (at least for the moment). On the other hand, I'd say belief in the first part is part of the modern GOP's problem, as it represents a significant departure from previous thinking. For example, the Eisenhower administration was primarily responsible for pushing the interstate highway system. Whatever else could be said about it, it revolutionized interstate commerce. Likewise, his administration pushed hard on many large hydroelectric projects — projects that involved inter-state transmission lines. And what about nuclear projects? Without federal assistance none of them would ever be built. The list goes on.

On the flip side of the coin, imagine if states had primary authority over internet availability. And I would argue that one of the big obstacles to modernizing the electrical grid is the byzantine nature of state and local regulations. That problem has to be addressed if regardless of whatever improvements are invisioned, but particularly if non-carbon based alternatives are to be successfully offered (including, but not limited to nuclear).

In short, I'd say a parochial mind-set such as yours is yet another drag on the GOP. I'm not saying that states aren't a better locus of control than the feds on some issues (and often hybrid approaches are the best), but to make it a blanket assumption is destructive, not constructive.

And that brings up another issue that I think is worth mentioning: it seems to me that the GOP spends way too much time defining itself as the mirror opposite of the Dems in an ideological sense, rather than casting themselves more as the rational alternative. The Dems did that rather successfully. They accepted “Blue Dog” Dems into the fold. I'm sure they'd hate the characterization, but you might call them “Dean Republicans” in the same sense that many moderate Dems became “Reagan Democrats”.

The Religious Right's obsessions with running other people's lives has always irked me. I do mean always. Remember civics classes in junior high? I remember a series of discussions where specific cases were brought up and th question was how the Supreme Court would decide. One of them was the Blue Laws in New York. The Jewish business owner lost his appeal that he should be able to close on his Sabbath and be open for business on Sunday even though the state was trying to claim that it was for the employees sake. Then why Sunday specifically? I hated that decision even then. Then there was Missouri history, including the treatment of the Mormons. My thought process was just that they had their religion and everyone else had theirs. If you tell them they can't live according to their religion how is that not just this side of having a state religion if you force others to live according to the strictures of your religion? Yes, I'm a social libertarian, believing strongly that how people choose to live in their private lives is none of my business and mine is none of theirs.

Economic libertarianism, OTOH, never made sense to me because we have proof that it doesn't work that well and will only get worse. Read Dickens. Scott's point about limited government versus small government is valid. How can you have small government when you have almost a third of a billion people, are the fifth largest country by area and have a complex interstate infrastructure? It just wouldn't work. If your only source for thinking about how to do things and what approach to take is the past you necessarily deny the possibility that something new can happen or at least leave yourself in a position where you are unable to do anything about it because a mindset that worships the past and tradition has no basis for confronting something new.

It appears the Democrats are doing the same thing, maybe even worse. Personally I voted for Obama cause I really believed he would bring about “Fiscal Responsibility”. I could not have been more wrong.

He also appears to be assisting his supporters with our taxpayer money. The whole Bush Obama Bailout Bonanza is nauseating. All this money and 700,000 people lost their jobs. Yet the wall street people are making money. Go figure.

At this point I hope a Ronald Reagan type figure will rise out of the Republican ashes for I am tiring of Obamas spending policies and budgets, bailouts, new taxes etc.

Infrastructure spending is a state responsibility and the Democrats have not been any mbetter at it than the Republicans. During both the real estate boom and the previous dot.com boom, states refused to spend on infrastructure. They spent on payroll, pork, and social engineering instead. Image if California had spent the dot.com money on infrastruture instead of pension for state employees. They probably would not be running a huge deficit now.

Maybe a new conservative party should promise to think past the next election and not start programs with short term benefits that have long term costs. If a group of politicians could demonstrate that they can have for the future, they would separate themselves from the pact.

HemmD

First, Karl Rove believed that the Repubicans could be the second big spending, big government, big pork party. History has shown that he was an idiot.

I believe History will show that President Obama will spend at such a rate to make all previous spending look insignificant. In one year, President Obama will add more to the national debt than President Bush added in four years.

Another I would add is Don't ignore excesses in defense spending. In fact, if you really want to reduce waste, that would provide some very large low-hanging fruit.

If the Dems are monolithic, then the Republicans are myopic.

The size of government per thousand population has grown and shrunk over many Presidents, The largest growth occurred under someone you know, Ronald Reagan. Sorry to bust that right wing myth. Check it out.

http://angrybear.blogspot.com/2007/06/comparing…

Don't over-simplify your criticism, it is discounted by the facts.

What no one points out is how Democrats always expect others to follow rules that they themselves have problems following (see the Democrats inability to pay their taxes).

And I don't think someone is qualified to discuss a topic as broad as twenty-first century conservatism unless they can talk about generalizations without descending to comments like “how dare you imply we're monolithic?” I”ll bet you can do better, Jim.

Go populist without going populist:

From the outside, the McCain/Palin attacks against Obama were almost cartoonish in their unbelievability. Implying conspiracies and hearkening back to the style of McCarthy kept the less educated enthrawled, but those who studied history were turned away. Even so, the race was still within your grasp.

According to The Google, conservatism means “to save or perserve”, and that includes “the status quo” or the “status quo ante.” McCain lost the election when the credit crisis hit. He knew that “the way thing are” wasn't good, but he knew no way to take us back “to the way things were before.”

Obama pulled away from that point on because he demonstrated a pragmatism not only economically, but also in a populist manner. By this I mean he read the fear of people and presented them with a confidence. Even though I believe he didn't really know the economic complexities, he knew that people were desperate for “the way things were before.” Ronald Reagan used that same form of confidence to energize the voting block that remembered his allusions to the way things were before. The allusions he used would no longer work today as that responsive generation has largely left the scene.

William F Buckley was someone who I may have disagreed with on occasion, but I never doubted his confidence that came from a thorough grasp of history, philosophy, and the way things were before. The group of intellectual conservatives you mentioned are your primary source for recovery. These are the people who will find where things are now, in the 21st century. The over-simplified responses we see today in the remnants of the GOP show a palpacy of intellectual awareness of how things have changed. Draw from those in your midst who understand NOW, not the way things used to be. If you look to the past, look to the reason our Constitution was written and then immediately amended through the Bill of Rights. The Founding Fathers saw the government they had created, and then they knew what they wanted “to save or perserve.”

Realism? No, I don't think that someone who thinks that “the left” is monolithic, much less looking for complete economic equality for all is capable of standing for realism at all.

So Scott has a promising idea, and I'd love to see it sharpened. I don't understand the difference between small government and limited government, but there's something there: my main beef with the left is they can't articulate any limiting principles for government and seem happy to keep raising taxes forever.

This reads like another version of democratic-lite. Be authoritarian on environmental issues, be libertarian on sex and drugs, and pass out lots of government money.

Most of the current Republican party would stay home instead of being involved in such stupidity.