Talk Radio News Service: News, Politics, Media

Coffee Brown, University of New Mexico, Talk Radio News Service

In light of disastrous setbacks for Republicans in the last two election cycles resulting in the fruition of long-deferred liberal dreams, some are debating that this may be the end of conservatism as we know it.

Democrats currently control both houses of Congress, both led by a Democratic President who has pledged wide-sweeping reforms in the face of widespread economic crises. Many blame Republicans and the administration of President George W. Bush for the current state of the U.S. economy and the resoundingly unpopular war in Iraq.

“Republicans lost in 2008 and 2006, not because they ran on conservative ideas but because they ran away from conservative ideas,” says Lee Edwards, Ph.D., Distinguished Fellow of the right-leaning Heritage Institute.

“Can conservatives govern? That’s a reasonable question, given the glaring miss-steps and failures of the Bush administration,” Edwards said. “In 2001 the Bush administration, working with a Republican Congress, enacted a monumental tax cut of $1.6 trillion, the largest in U.S. history, which kept the economy humming until the financial collapse of 2008.”

According to Edwards, the core principles of conservatism should be: ordered liberty, individual freedom and responsibility, limited government and a strong national defense.

But David Boaz, Executive Vice President of the Liberal-leaning Cato Institute, disagrees. He says that conservative values have become rigid in a society that has naturally become more liberal.

“The conservative ascendancy was also helped by the decline and fall of American liberalism – its swift descent marked by a tell-tale shift from concern for the common man and middle America to a preoccupation with minorities and special interests,’” he said.

And now, the center is farther to the left than it used to be, the left has moved toward the center and “many Americans have looked at the future of the welfare state and they like what they think they see – the entitlements,” Boaz said.

Quoting famed Libertarian and former National Review Editor Frank S. Meyer, Edwards said, “The freedom of the person is the central and primary end of political society. The state has only three limited functions: national defense, the preservation of domestic order, and the administration of justice between citizens.”

Edwards, has written more than 20 books on the history of conservatism, and said that history is repeating itself.

“American conservatism seemed on the edge of extinction after the crushing defeat of Goldwater in 1964,” he said. But, “Reagan wrote that the landslide majority (that defeated Goldwater) did not vote against conservatism, but against the false image of conservatism that our liberal opponents successfully mounted.”

“Starting in 1989, traditional conservatives, neoconservatives and libertarians have been fussing and feuding – partly because they miss the unifying threat of communism,” Edwards said, adding that in order to survive, Republicans must embrace ideological diversity within the party.

“What we need is a politics of inclusion, not a politics of exclusion,” Edwards said. Republicans need “a renewed fusionism that will unite all the branches of a now-divided conservative mainstream.”

Social conservatives have become among the most important constituencies, as they provide the necessary ground troops in the political wars, he said.

And what makes a conservative renaissance possible? “The philosophers would not have been able to write their books, and the popularizers would not have been able to publish their magazines, and the politicians would not have been able to run their campaigns without the support of conservative philanthropists. Men of means and vision,” Edwards said.

It will be hard to work with the new Democratic majority because “conservatives are uncomfortable with compromise, and they scorn accommodation,” Edwards said.”

Outlining the road back to power, Edwards said that conservatives are well funded, but need to master the new media and choose a charismatic figure to be this generation’s Ronald Reagan.