America Needs a Conservative Party and it’s Not the GOP
Republicans have Abandoned Conservative Principles for Politics
House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy understands exactly the crisis the extreme right wing members of his Republican caucus are imposing on the country:
“This is a whole new concept of individuals who just want to burn the whole place down,” McCarthy said. “It doesn’t work.”
McCarthy is right. The political reality is that the hardliners can shut down government, hurt the middle class Americans and small businesses they claim to represent and do long-term damage to the economy. But their obstructionism can’t achieve the social policies or the deep spending cuts they claim are their goals. The extremists are making a pyrrhic stand, seemingly oblivious to the reality that even if they succeed in the House, their budget has no chance of success in the Senate.
Yet, they are willing to “burn the whole place down,” as McCarthy said.
McCarthy, of course, is the one who all along has provided both the fuel and the matches for the right-wing arsonists. And, if this were just an internal battle among factions of a political party, one could be content to be a sideline observer, cheering for a favored team. It is more than that, though, and the consequences for the country’s future are enormous.
America urgently needs a thoughtful, innovative conservative political party. Instead, it has the Republican Party - a deeply partisan political machine that offers few meaningful solutions, no innovation and certainly little in the way of conservative thinking. It is a party that uses its power to obstruct and divide, not to govern.
Republicans need to rebuild their brand around core conservative principles. There is no better time to start than in today’s budget crisis. Three principles stand out:
Budget grandstanding is a fool’s mission
The need today is for budget honesty. Republicans aren’t going to fix the country’s debt by holding harmless defense spending, interest payments on the national debt, Medicare and Social Security and refusing to talk about tax increases. And, pretending that eliminating waste, fraud and abuse is a viable solution to excessive government spending is fantasy.
Instead, conservatives need to do the hard work of reforming how tax dollars are collected and spent. Take, for example, defense spending. The Pentagon long has argued that it has excess infrastructure - military bases that are kept open for political reasons, not national security needs.
A true conservative would eliminate unnecessary bases and weapons programs that are dark holes of wasted spending. The savings could go toward improved housing for military families, maintenance on the remaining bases, upgrades to effective equipment and weapons systems and a reduction in the overall federal budget.
Or consider the cost of emergency disaster spending. The Biden Administration is seeking $16 billion in additional disaster relief funds to pay for the calamitous storms and fires that now are an ever-present and growing reality. Whatever one thinks about the science of climate change, one can’t deny the impact and frequency of severe floods, hurricanes, fires and other natural disasters. The conservative response is to pay for what is needed. Why not add a small natural disaster surcharge to every American’s income tax bill? Most Americans likely would support a dedicated tax to help victims of natural disasters and conservatives could take the high road of fiscal honesty.
Stop believing the unbelievable
Too often, Republican philosophy seems guided by the White Queen in “Through the Looking Glass.” She’s the one who told Alice, “I daresay you haven’t had much practice” in believing what is impossible. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
So it is with many Republicans. They often practice believing the unbelievable - the charlatans who promote fake science, the napkin-theory of “trickle-down” economics and the arrogance of those who, like Ann Richard’s said of George H.W. Bush, “He was born on third base and thought he hit a triple.”
Conservatives are driven by solutions rooted in facts. Conservatives trust knowledge. They reject those who exploit the ill-informed. Conservatives celebrate expertise, whether gained through formal education or are self-taught.
Conservative policies would invest in evidence-based public health, basic research and development in critical areas of technology and science and high-quality education for all. Spending in these areas is an investment in a stronger economy and a better-educated, healthier citizenry.
Instead, today’s Republicans rally around the likes of Rep. Jim Jordan who uses his powerful role as chair of the House Judiciary Committee to cast a pall on those institutions and people trying to fight misinformation. False information on health-related issues imposes a huge cost on the U.S. economy. Unchallenged propaganda and lies in social media and other channels undermine democracy. And economic and cultural myths divide our society.
The White Queen’s faith in the unbelievable is a dangerous Republican trait. Investing in evidence-based solutions and facts is a conservative principle.
Help people at times in their lives when they are most vulnerable
Perhaps nothing has been sacrificed more by today’s Republicans than the notion that government can be an influence for good. To be sure, liberals have challenges of their own in defining the appropriate role for government. Too often, Democrats conflate the guarantees of equal opportunity with an imagined right to equal outcomes. The former is a bedrock principle of our country; the latter betrays the core American values of hard work, ethics and risk-taking.
Republicans, for their part, too often rely on the myths of lazy and undeserving welfare beneficiaries. Here’s the reality of most federal programs intended to relieve poverty: the dollars disproportionately go to those people and families who economically are well off.
Consider the child tax credit. When the Biden Administration loosened some of the eligibility requirements for low-income families, 3 million children were lifted out of poverty.
Since then, the criteria for eligibility have been tightened. The result is that next year, without changes to the tax credit, three-quarters of children from families in the bottom 40% of the lowest earners - families with annual income of less than $51,000 - will receive a reduced credit and many will receive no child tax credit at all. Meanwhile, 99% of families in the top 20% of earners will receive the full or partial credit.
The same inequity is true in federal programs for housing, higher education, health coverage and just about every area of support. Those who need the federal dollars the least receive the most. That should be an indefensible policy for conservatives. It misuses taxes and delivers a terrible return on the dollar in benefits to society and the economy. Yet, Republicans embrace and expand the disparity.
These and other conservative principles - the very concepts that would make government more efficient and effective - are lost on most Republicans. Instead, this dysfunctional party believes the height of integrity is to hold firm to budget policies that are as irrelevant to controlling the national deficit as they are unachievable in a divided government.
Many House Republicans seem to think closing government is no big deal. Rep. Bob Good of Virginia, a member of the far-right Freedom Caucus, echoed the sentiments of many of his colleagues recently when he said, “We should not fear a government shutdown. Most of the American people won't even miss it if the government is shut down temporarily."
Perhaps he is right if the shutdown is brief. But Good and others miss the point. What Americans miss most whether a shutdown is avoided or not is principled conservative governance.
Tom, your essay points out many ways that a rational country-loving conservative party could benefit all of us. However, you raised one issue without stating the reason the issue exists. "A true conservative would eliminate unnecessary bases and weapons programs that are dark holes of wasted spending." The Republican Party can never be a valued conservative voice as long as it continues to represent the ultra-rich. It can never propose spending cuts that hurt the banking, defense, or housing industry. The Party will not abandon tax cuts for the Americans who least need them.
Thus, it cannot be honest because honesty would drive away the monopolists and wealthy who support it. In order to divert Americans from their mission it lies and lies and lies about fundamental health, political, and scientific truisms.
A Conservative Party would value its voice as a moderate truth speaker. But the Republicans cannot be truthful because their mission is to scare citizens and pick their pockets. I hope one day we see the Conservative Party that you describe.