I guess I didn’t emphasize enough that I’m drawing on the the Reagan coalition definition that Conservatives built on social issues, national security and fiscal responsibility.
Okay. I'm drawing on a more "classical" definition, a conservative being someone who wants to "conserve" or leave a politcal system unchanged. You can be socially conservative, fiscally responsible, and for a strong national defense, and still think the Commerce Clause is an open ended grant of power to control anything you do that could conceivably result in your buying or selling something that could possibly have crossed a state line some time during it's existence.
When asked what they had given us, Ben Frankline said "A republic, if you can keep it!". That kind of power in DC is incompatible with a having a republic. As Rush likes to say "Words mean things." I don't see how we can be "conservative" if we can't even conserve the republic.
Let us examine Ronald Reagan a bit:
1.) He was a Democrat who changed over to the Republican Party. He once said: “I didn’t leave the Democrat Party, it left me!”
2.) As Governor of California, he raised the State income taxes.
3.) As President, he was a BIG spender, and added significantly to our National Debt. He once said: “Deficits don’t matter.” This quote was later repeated by another BIG spender, GWB.
4.) “The Big Tent” Republican Party idea grew under Reagan’s tenure, winning elections at the cost of causing the Ship of State to drift with the strongest PC wind of the Court of Public Opinion, from then to now.
5.) Reagan trusted the Democrats in Congress to do what they promised to do with alien illegal entry on our southern border.
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It is all well and good to carve out new ideas for past deeds, but let us be honest about the source of flaws that will doom our efforts to repeating the same mistakes that were made in the past. Reality knows no loyalty to anyone.
Reagan was one of our greatest Presidents, but we now have to correct the errors made by him and all the other Presidents. We cannot do that by being everything to everybody. We must clearly define our limited goals, and not be distracted.
BTW, it pains me to say it, but President Harry Truman said it best: “Those who cannot learn from the lessons of History are doomed to repeat them.”
For another read on my idea of conservatism, read the first few pages of Mark Levin’s “Liberty and Tyranny” available on Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1416562877/ref=rdr_ext_tmb