Time For A Republican Makeover

The Republican Party must change, or die by its own wild-eyed extremism.Time For A Republican MakeoverBy Cliff Montgomery – May 22nd, 2007Nothing shakes up political parties like the specter of defeat after bitter defeat.In the 1990s, it was the Democrats who cast about the political waters looking for a new direction. It’s now the Republicans’ turn.After losing both houses of Congress last year in epic fashion, the G.O.P. finds itself saddled with a sitting lame duck president who is more hated by the voters than was Richard Nixon during the darkest days of Watergate, and the most unpopular–and fruitless–military engagement since Vietnam.It’s time for a change.The powers within the Republican Party are currently engaged in a no-holds-barred battle to finally ease its social conservatism and better shape its image for the majority of voters, who understand that freedom is itself a moral virtue.One may see this fight on display during the televised debates between the party’s 10 presidential hopefuls. Their most recent shout-fest in South Carolina erupted into fits of name-calling and recrimination as the top candidates’ conservative credentials were questioned by more extremist candidates, who often employ prejudicial language in referring to themselves as the “true conservatives”.But who remains popular with voters? Simply look at opinion polls and the candidates’ own organizational and fundraising strength. Top in the current 2008 G.O.P. presidential field: former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, Senator John McCain (R-AZ), and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, in that order.These men are all, to varying degrees, true conservatives–people who believe that the government should stay out of both the boardroom and the bedroom. In fact, they are the party’s true heirs, rather than the neo-conservative ideologues who have ransacked the party since the rise of Ronald Reagan.The ideologues believe our government should let Big Business do what it damn well likes, while telling the rest of us what to do with every moment of our lives. That’s a lot of things, but it’s not true American conservatism.Whether we judge them by their record on typical neo-conservative fodder (guns, gays and Jesus) or by their current political stands, the Big Three–even when seeking to distance themselves from their reasonable pasts of actually embracing liberty for all–are noticeably different than the other hopefuls.It’s the moderates and true conservatives who are now at the top of the Republican heap instead of on the sidelines, where these more reasonable Republicans have had to sit for the past three decades.What’s perhaps most amazing is that the current front-runner, Rudolph Giuliani, is the candidate who most clearly represents a fundamental shift away from rabid neo-conservatism.At the last debate, Giuliani managed to issue a clever rhetorical tactic in response to a direct question about his political values. Asked if his “pro-choice, pro-gay rights, pro-gun control” views are the “stands of a conservative,” Giuliani instead attacked the Democratic front-runner, Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY). His fellow New Yorker hates a free-market economy, Giuliani claimed, and believes government has a right “to take money from you in order to give it to the common good.”Of course Giuliani offered what’s known as an irrelevant statement–something which had nothing to do with the question at hand. But in attempting to appear as an economic conservative who can fight the liberals, the former mayor forgot something: The wealthy usually do not garner their great wealth through work, but by paying their workers less and ever less while working them harder and harder, by raiding their pension funds, by exporting their jobs to far cheaper countries, and pocketing the difference.Sorry Mr. Giuliani, that’s not wealth through hard work, that’s wealth through robbery. And robbery should never be respected, nor rewarded.While McCain and Romney are perhaps not so politically liberal–that is, believing that freedom and civil rights for all is a good for society, as well as an inherent right–they still represent a new direction for Republicans.Sen. McCain is still the guy who rightly chastised evangelical Christian leaders for being social bullies during his failed 2000 presidential campaign, and poor Mitt Romney is trying to run away from his true conservative–that is, classically liberal–record.What does it say about the current state of an American political party when its top presidential candidates feel pressed to distance themselves from the distinctly American political belief that every adult American has the natural right to live as he or she chooses?It proves one thing: the Republican Party must change, or die by its own wild-eyed extremism.