By: Erick Erickson In 1960, Barry Goldwater published The Conscience of a Conservative. In it, he noted Conservatism is not an economic theory, though it has economic implications. The shoe is precisely on the other foot: it is Socialism that subordinates all other considerations to manâs material well-being. It is Conservatism that puts material things in their proper place â that has a structured view of the human being and of human society, in which economics plays only a subsidiary role. The root difference between the Conservatives and the Liberals of today is that Conservatives take account of the whole man, while Liberals tend to look only at the material side of manâs nature. Fifty-three years later that remains a constant. Unfortunately for conservatives, much of the hand-wringing over paths forward to victory involve haggling over taxes and balanced budgets and spending and debt to GDP ratios, etc. Ben Domenech gets to the heart of this. The choice for the Republican Party is whether to invest more in the 2010 strategy of this populist strain, to refine it and connect more policy proposals to it ⦠or to embark on an effort to restore the partyâs standing as the adult in the room â the competent, clean cut, good-government technocracy that sees the chief appeal of Republican politicians as combining agencies and seeking out efficiencies rather than rolling back government power and draining bureaucratic swamps. The GOP swung back to this technocratic approach on a national scale in 2012, and letâs just say the electoral results left much to be desired. The budgetary and economic wonkery only gets the GOP so far and that isnât far enough to victory. In truth, I think it will take a magnetic personality to pull the GOP out of the gutter. We live in an age of personality politics. But that personality will have to have a message that resonates with the American public. What resonates right now with the American public is a deep-seated distrust of government. Any Republican way forward must capitalize on this. In other words, the faces in Washington who can play the role are very limited to people like Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and â if immigration can go away as an issue and the base forgives him â Marco Rubio. The message to seize on is pretty straight forward. Under Republican and Democrat policies in Washington, particularly accelerated in the past five years, the United States meritocracy has given way to an aristocracy. Only those of means can get ahead. Increasingly, they view their role as making life comfortable for the less well off instead of enabling the less well off to become well off. Wall Street, banks, major corporations, politicians, bureaucrats, lobbyists, and the rich are the only ones who can prosper because they are the only ones who can either navigate the system or afford to pay others who can figure out how to navigate the system. For the rest of Americans, from small business to the middle class, the only path is one of dependence on a governmental structure too byzantine to figure out and, should one be smart enough to figure out, too costly through litigation, regulation, and complication to navigate through. An America where, as Lincoln said, every man can make himself, is replaced by an America where men are made by how the government takes cares of their individual circumstances. Students are no longer trained to be creative, entrepreneurial citizens, but to be workers for others. The self-employed are encumbered to the point of needing to be employees of others. The nuclear family is disincentivized and destabilized. The America where one could work hard and get ahead is less and less possible because Democrats wish to force us all onto a safety net on which all are entangled, ensnared, and punished if we escape. Republicans, for fear of being disliked, would rather nibble at numbers than paint a picture of a better America for everyone. Just one fact worth noting: under the present system, enabled by Republican and Democrat alike, a single mother on $29,000.00 a year and government benefits would have to get to $60,000.00 in salary to make it worth her getting off the safety net. This is a bipartisan construct, but one only an outsider conservative can build a campaign around fixing to the betterment of the single mom and everyone else. http://www.redstate.com/2013/05/29/go-big-or-go-home/
Politicians have constructed a trap that keeps the impoverished comfortably impoverished. Cries of 'let me out of the trap' have been replaced with cries of 'more cheese please.'
Thsi would have been good advice when that dope George Bush came into office. Now, I am afraid it is too late. We have had probably 20 years of basically open borders under clinton, Bush and Obama. Obama has unveiled the sort of populist demagoguery that is a staple of latin american politics, as well as the corruption that thrives in its wake. We actually have a significant section of the republican party arguing that we should put all these people on the path to citizenship. As Heritage noted, that means probably 30 million more over time, as our insane chain immigration policy works its magic. Like liberals who would rather be at the mercy of thugs than arm themselves, the republican establishment seems to have lost the instinct for self preservation. It is unclear to me why we should follow them over the cliff. The shrinking productive sector of society will never be able to support the hordes the politicians will add to our welfare rolls in exchange for their votes. We may get bailed out in the short run by the shale oil revolution, which has the potential to turn us into Saudi Arabia. Otherwise, we face a grim future, and there appears to be little we can do about it, except learn passable spanish, which we will be needing.
We haven't passed this insane immigration plan yet AAA. Maybe there is still a sliver of hope. Things in the bill like the $3000 incentive payment to employers to hire an immigrant over a citizen should halt this conflagration of a law in it's tracks. http://news.investors.com/041713-652257-immigration-reform-meets-obamacare-employer-mandate.htm