AMERICAN CONSERVATISM IN 2008 AND BEYOND

Even before the November 2008 defeat"even before the financial crisis and the congressional elections of November 2006"it was already apparent that the Republican Party and the conservative movement were in deep trouble. And not just because of Iraq, either (although Iraq obviously did not help).

At the peak of the Bush boom in 2007, the typical American worker was earning barely more after inflation than the typical American worker had earned in 2000. Out of those flat earnings, that worker was paying more for food, energy and out-of-pocket costs of health care. Political parties that do not deliver economic improvement for the typical person do not get reelected. We Republicans and conservatives were not delivering. The reasons for our failure are complex and controversial, but the consequences are not.

We need to modulate our social conservatism (not jettison"modulate). The GOP will remain a predominantly conservative party and a predominantly pro-life party. But especially on gay-rights issues, the under-30 generation has arrived at a new consensus. Our party seems to be running to govern a country that no longer exists. The rule that both our presidential and vice presidential candidates must always be pro-life has become counterproductive: McCain's only hope of winning the presidency in 2008 was to carry Pennsylvania, and yet Pennsylvania's most successful Republican vote winner, former governor Tom Ridge, was barred from the ticket because he's pro-choice.

We need an environmental message. You don't have to accept Al Gore's predictions of imminent gloom to accept that it cannot be healthy to pump gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. We are rightly mistrustful of liberal environmentalist disrespect for property rights. But property owners also care about property values, about conservation, and as a party of property owners we should be taking those values more seriously.

Above all, we need to take governing seriously again. Voters have long associated Democrats with corrupt urban machines, Republicans with personal integrity and fiscal responsibility. Even ultraliberal states like Massachusetts would elect Republican governors like Frank Sargent, Leverett Saltonstall, William Weld and Mitt Romney precisely to keep an austere eye on the depredations of Democratic legislators. After Iraq, Katrina and Harriet Miers, Democrats surged to a five-to-three advantage on the competence and ethics questions. And that was before we put Sarah Palin on our national ticket.

Every day, Rush Limbaugh reassures millions of core Republican voters that no change is needed: if people don't appreciate what we are saying, then say it louder. Isn't that what happened in 1994? Certainly this is a good approach for Rush himself. He claims 20 million listeners per week, and that suffices to make him a very wealthy man. And if another 100 million people cannot stand him, what does he care? What can they do to him other than … not listen? It's not as if they can vote against him....

Okie, I understand that your suggestion that I quit talking to ci is justified, if my objective were to obtain rational responses from ci. That's not my objective. My objective is to calibrate ci's irrationality. More accurately, my objective is to measure his irrationality to determine if it is decreasing or increasing and at what rate.

His last response demonstrated his increasing rate of decline. His inability to admit that the quality of life for increasing numbers of Americans has dramatically improved over the last 100 years, reveals his decline to be even worse than I suspected. What's his irrational argument to the contrary? He points out that not every American's quality of life has improved to the same degree, therefore there has been no improvement. His additional examples to demonstrate his point are the lives of people in the world who are not blessed with living in America's constitutional republic.

I deduce from his arguments that he values equality of results far more than he values equality of rights in the pursuit of happiness. While he may not respond to this post of mine to you, if he were to respond, I expect it would be even more revealing of his decline.

I have already agreed that you are entitled to your opinion, Walter. I don't require that you agree with Williams' opinion or mine. But I have as much right to my opinion that you have misunderstood Williams' intent and analogy as you have the right to believe that he (and I) are ignorant about your history and he (and I) are completely stupid or wrong in our respective views of the world. I appreciate that you went to the university and studied history as you frequently remind us. But if we are to believe that your understanding of German history is superior to ours, then perhaps you might understand that our understanding of our own history and our own use of our own language might possibly have a bit of merit too.

It never ceases to amaze me how much liberals seem to hone in on the manner of speech or the words or metaphors or analogies used and so often seem unable to focus on any point of the merit of the argument being made. Why do you suppose that is?

OMG. Tell me it ain't so, Ican! CI is a commie? and he hates the Constitution?

Whether or not (the rhetorical) you agree with him, they do make a body stop and think don't they? A least I think they do for those bodies who bother to actually think about any point of view other than their own.

The fact remains that under a capitalistic free society, it is those very rich who take the risks

Medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas said of Greed: "it is a sin directly against one's neighbor, since
one man cannot over-abound in external riches, without another man lacking them...
it is a sin against God, just as all mortal sins, inasmuch as man contemns things eternal for the sake of temporal things."

Private property that they own, yes, I agree. Private property owned by others, no. I just cringe at the thought of the poor children of parents who smoke, just as much as those who drink heavily. The consequences are obvious and there's no way to control it even if it's clearly child endangerment.

Hey, come on, Foxy, conservatives prey on the same syntaxes and semantics. We're quickly jotting down out thoughts here and I do make allowances some clear mistakes in judgment when posting. Are you going to defend anyone that appears to be liberal (sometimes you can't tell how conservative or how liberal a poster is until they've been on the site for years) but does not attack syntax and semantics and stick to the point? Like Walter?