AMBROSE: GOP betrayed its principles
By Jay Ambrose, Scripps Howard News Service
Published June 12, 2008 at 12:01 a.m.
Jay Ambrose
Republicans, I suspect, are going to be drubbed this election year, but not because they gave the country more conservatism than it needed. A major reason is that they betrayed conservatism and let themselves be outwitted by their endlessly mistaken liberal opponents.
The left is arguing differently, maintaining that the right’s ideas were inadequate for this (or any other) era and that a heavy dose of these ideas persuaded significant portions of the Republican coalition to seek rescue in liberal truths.
The conservative ideas were and are good ones, though, and helped propel Republicans to control of Congress in the 1994 elections. I went to Washington as a journalist the next year, and vividly recall the GOP enthusiasm for austerity and bringing the country to a more robust reliance on the states and self instead of on a paternalistic, overly interventionist, fumbling, bloated central government.
But, to use the passive voice that politicians revert to when they get caught letting their ambitions override their ideals, mistakes were made.
The list is long, but not the least of them was spending like there was no tomorrow. The Bush administration would additionally and successfully push for big-government measures and forget certain vital constitutional prohibitions, as in jailing Americans without due process.
The failings — and there were many — were often as inexcusable as they were politically devastating, but not always so grievous as they were made to sound by Democratic propaganda and a compliant press.
President Bush lied us into war, we were told, only he didn’t — the claims he made about weapons of mass destruction were made earlier by President Bill Clinton and his secretary of state, by liberal senators during debate on the war resolution and by the best intelligence agencies in the world.
We were repeatedly informed that President Bush’s tax cuts were “for the rich” and had eviscerated revenues, when, in fact, it was the middle class that profited most. Revenues have mostly been above historical averages.
Even before the current downturn and after the last recession (which began while Clinton was president), the Democrats and many reporters told us how badly the economy was performing, though inflation remained next to nonexistent, growth was healthy and unemployment at historic lows.
It was said the middle class was shrinking, but it wasn’t; the middle class was getting richer by the day. It was said income was stagnant, but it wasn’t; per capita income was rising as most people progressed steadily in their circumstances. The Democrats’ chief domestic purpose today is to give us a health insurance entitlement even as they neglect restructuring a Medicare entitlement that could sink us, and even though there are solutions to health insurance issues that would cost little.
The party would edge us ever closer to the kind of welfare state an economically threatened Europe is now seeking to flee. The presumptive Democratic candidate for president, Barack Obama, spouts naive nonsense in the place of sound strategy for dealing with radical Islam, and could easily bring deadly disaster on our heads.
The overriding conservative principle is the maintenance of liberty in a constitutionally ordered democracy. Its achievement in any meaningful sense is only possible by seriously limiting a government that would substitute its coercive authority for our free will, our consciences, our individuality, all the things that ultimately make us human. An inseparable part of that liberty is a free-market economic system, without which opportunity, entrepreneurial innovation and prosperity are caged, and with which the left has a lasting quarrel.
If Democratic power increases as much as now appears likely, the party will almost surely go much further than the Republicans in waltzing away from liberty, the chief political foundation of our strength and energy. Their own excesses may bring the Democrats to political ruin as well, though perhaps not until vast damage has been done.
Jay Ambrose, formerly Washington director of editorial policy for Scripps Howard newspapers and a former editor of the Rocky Mountain News, is a columnist living in Colorado. He can be reached at SpeaktoJay@aol.com.
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June 12, 2008
6:45 a.m.
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SDaedalus writes:
Had Ambrose not waited 5+ years to voice his concern over the GOP's betrayal of conservative principles his party, and our country, would not face the problems it does today.
Evidence of the GOP 'betrayal' he cites, along with much more he does not, began surfacing in 2002-2003 or so and has been plentiful ever since.
Only now -- in an election year where the trend lines are pointing toward a Democratic-controlled Executive and Legislature -- do we get folks like Ambrose showing such sudden self-reflection about what it -really- means to be 'conservative' and contrasting that utopian ideal against chicken-little conceptions of how a Democratic adminstration might govern.
Is it just wishful thinking on his part, or does Ambrose really think that readers of this column will come away thinking that today's GOP stands for the principles he romantically describes rather than how Republicans repeatedly chose to govern in recent years?
June 12, 2008
9:21 a.m.
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davis_x_machina writes:
Another less than sterling example of the trite and tired argument that "conservatism" cannot fail it can only be failed.I'd think that if the republicans had stuck to those ideals Mr. Ambrose says they possess they'd not have been "outwitted" so often. At the very least they'd have made those ideals a subject of discussion.This worthless screed is little more than a preemptive attempt to soften the blow of the republican's coming assignment to the political wasteland for a generation or two.
June 12, 2008
1:10 p.m.
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Butterfly writes:
"an economically threatened Europe is now seeking to flee."
Didn't the Eurozone recently overtake the U.S. as the world's biggest economy?
June 12, 2008
1:25 p.m.
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mikeyg writes:
machina: a multi-generational demise of republicans and conservatism is the wishful thinking of ultra-leftists like you. americans reject liberalism at every turn when it is exposed. republicans have been, and continue to be confident in running with the conservative label nationally. name the last democrat who welcomed a national run with a liberal label. can't can you?
it took democrats running as conservatives in conservative districts to gain control of congress. hussein obama will be as pitifully disastrous as jimmy carter for democrats and liberalism. whenever liberalism has been implemented over the past 40 years it has been rejected immediately by voters. carter was a one term president. when clinton was elected in '92 he tried unchecked liberalism in his first two years and watched congress shift for the first time in 40 years to conservatives. have no fear, as history will repeat itself with hussein obama.
hussein obama pretends to be a "centrist" in his rhetoric, but his resume is solidly and unrepentently liberal. he is the MoveOn and DailyKos candidate of choice for a reason: he is an international socialist, lying to americans about his supposed "centrism", aided and abetted by an international socialist media with parallel objectives. thankfully, while americans can be fooled sometimes, they don't stay fools for long and will shake san francisco liberalism and hussein obama in two and four years, respectively, once the hangover of this impotent and sellout bush administration recedes in their memory.
June 12, 2008
10:04 p.m.
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MrPeabody writes:
This column is spot on and once America sees what these actual leftist policies look like and impact them personally, they will be rejected.
However, the damage done may well be very lasting. Big social programs like nationalized healthcare have such inertia that once enacted, they are virtually impossible to stop or reverse (see Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid).
The other major concern is Supreme Court judges. Should the court turn even more liberal, we will see more decisions like today's. Justice Scalia in his dissent said "“The Nation will live to regret what the Court has done today. I dissent.”
So, there are many like myself that are left to ponder which democrat to vote for. Do I sit this one out or do I hold my nose and vote for McCain? Vote for the liberal 'maverick' or for the leftist or for none of the above?
"Where are we going? And what's with that handbasket?"
June 13, 2008
11:36 a.m.
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VVVV writes:
No need to stop short. The only logical conclusion is that regardless of party affiliation or public sentiment, politicians are only good for screwing things up worse than when they got there. The only way to bring some sense into the government will be if everyone realizes this and starts to vote accordingly - like never allowing congress to be the same party as the president. Stagnation is the only way to prevent them from abusing their power.
June 13, 2008
2:25 p.m.
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malis writes:
...may I point out the Ambrose column essentially boils down to "...is not! is not! nyah nyah nyah! I can't hear you! nyah nyah nyah nyah!"