Essays
Resources

Contact Me

Politics • Essays

What's Up with the Republican Party?

07-18-2009

Anyone who reads much about politics these days cannot help but notice the fitful effort to "rebrand" the Republican Party into something new and fresh and, well, electable. This over-conscious anxiety in the party to makeover its image can be noted in its vitriolic reaction to speculation that Sarah Palin may run for president in 2012. It can also be noted in the clumsy efforts of RNC chairman Michael Steele to court non-traditional voters, efforts mostly punctuated by him making a statement then retracting or clarifying it 48 hours later.

So why is it so hard for the Republican Party to articulate what it stands for? The simple answer is that it has changed dramatically from the successful formula of the last few decades and wants to keep straying, but doesn't want to say so until it has built a new coalition.

During the Reagan and Bush eras, the Republican Party was an uneasy alliance of "moral" conservatives, fiscal conservatives, libertarians, and global trade proponents. This alliance is now breaking due to the fact that the party fell in love with wielding big government and intruding into our lives, personal affairs, and pocketbooks. They gave us a big, over-priced, and intrusive Department of Homeland Security prying into our travels and communications, a bloated Department of Education to ensure our school system remains monopolized and mediocre, and the National Guard deployed endlessly overseas but seldom to our borders.

And so, out of the dedication to power rather than principles, we find the Republican Party casting for new partners and publicly tempering support for moral conservatives and libertarian-leaning voters. Let me be the first to guarantee that once a new coalition is built, the moral conservatives will be dropped off at the curb. They are, in the modern eye, a lodestone. They are naturally distrustful of human efforts at perfection, and can be easily exploited by the media as being backward and primitive, impediments to "progress."

The libertarian-leaning have already been punted - hence the demonizing of Ron Paul, who can make a rational argument for most positions he advocates, even if he is not always right (this cannot always be said of his followers). When the Republican party responded to Paul as they did in 2008, they consciously branded not only the messenger but his small-government ideas as "kooky." Fortunately, this incedeniary politics drew many people to look past the personalities involved and to start reading up on the country's founding documents. The controversy also jolted many voters awake from the slumber induced by the ruling class whispering "just relax and let us run things."

And so, what is up with the Republican Party? It simply wants to get the federal checkbook in its hands again. Its core value is a desire to regain power and make Americans into good little global consumers rather than proud citizens of a nation that, when it hews to its uniquely optimistic definition of human nature and limited government, is the envy of the world.

Top