Not Conservative Enough?
Everyone has explanations for the GOP losses Tuesday and where the GOP should go from here. The Dallas Morning News, which endorsed John McCain and practically every other Texas Republican on the ballot, is free with its own advice, too. The DMN says the GOP shouldn't blame "the liberal media" or duped youths or identity politics for their losses. The DMN says the fault lies within the GOP itself: they weren't conservative enough.
This is yet another dusting off of an old Republican excuse, what political analyst Rick Perlstein first recognized as the attitude that "conservatism never fails; it is only failed."
Modern conservatism is founded on the principles of low taxes and limited government. George W Bush and the Republican Congress delivered on the first, by cutting taxes in good times and bad. The tax cuts benefited primarily the wealthy, but the GOP told us that's only because the wealthy pay most of the taxes.
What the "real" conservatives complain about is the GOP failure to deliver on the second half of their foundation, limited government. There is a hard-nosed, practical reason the GOP didn't do this. It would mean cutting social programs like Social Security and Medicare and education, all the government programs that benefit primarily the middle class and the poor. So, the GOP agreed to a grand social compact with the electorate. The rich would get their tax cuts and the poor and middle class would keep their social programs. The result was a deepening hole of debt.
It worked... for a few election cycles. But the economy can defy gravity only so long. Eventually the GOP-built house of cards collapsed. The country now faces a hard choice: either reform the tax code so we again start paying for the social programs that a huge majority of the electorate clearly favors, or let the rich keep their tax cuts and give up the no-longer affordable safety net that Americans like. For the DMN to think that the latter is the way for the GOP to win back the hearts of the voters is pure folly. But it is in keeping with the old notion that "conservatism never fails; it is only failed."
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