Thanks Finny. I appreciate your thoughtful comments. I’m sorry if mine were taken as insensitive.
You know, I agree that the GOP is liberal lite. I’m not happy about it. I’m interested in constructive ways to address it.
But in the context of this race I think the reasons we don’t have a more conservative front runner, in rough order of importance are:
1.) No excellent more conservative candidate stepped forward.
2.) The ones that did step forward were marginal in terms of background.
3.) They underperformed. (Except Ron Paul, who overperformed)
I would add reason 0.) above them all: we are a more liberal country in many respects than we were 30 years ago. The Republicans want a hand in governing. We have a two party system, and inevitably both parties try to sit on the middle of where the voters are to get to 50+1% and win.
Thus neither major party is ideologically pure. For a while, we had a tiny bit of momentum to roll back FDR’s restructuring of America (say Newt’s Contract as the high water mark), but we blew it. Some of the most ideological Republicans blew it the worst. (Including the Clinton impeachment which totally killed the smaller government momentum in Congress.)
I recently re-read “The Conscience of A Conservative”. Goldwater sold a few million copies of the paperback when running for office in 1964. It is interesting to read. Most of the things that he is disputing are completely settled. He argues against special union laws. He argues against much of the 1964 Civil Rights laws.
As long as we have Social Security we are saying to citizens “It is the governments job to take care of you”. At least some of the time. (When you are young, old, unemployed, have babies you can’t afford, sick, retired or can’t afford your medicine).
When was the last time you heard someone seriously argue for eliminating social security? Bush wanted to let people under 40 put 20% in stocks.
That was demagogued like he was proposing putting swastikas on the flag. Even 30 years ago you could still talk about whether Social Security made sense.
So, with all that in mind I have little patience for people proposing that George Soros is controlling the timing of primaries. Hey, he doesn’t need to work that issue!
If my tone conveyed exasperation it was with the extremely tenditious arguments and confused issue jumping of the orginal article.
I have deep contempt for the traitorous Fourth Estate, especially as I have a degree in journalism and worked with and around so-called "newsmen" for years. Now, thank goodness, I can ignore them in my work. I don't blame them directly for Thompson's drop or the primaries. I do think, and have always thought, that open primaries are a form of oxymoron. So the question of the blame is not on my radar, though I'll gladly broadcast my contempt for the blatant fraud perpetrated by "newsmen" of the MSM -- they are not newsmen, they are propagandists, pure and simple. They are supposed to be our eyes and ears; instead they are our censors and they are too pompous to acknowledge it to themselves. They do an enormous disservice to our nation. They deserve considerable contempt, and they have it.
My thinking is that there are identity politics going on here where one set of "conservatives" gets the title solely determined by the fact that they embrace Gospel morality (as do I) that says, among other things, that abortion and homosexuality are abominations and should be battled at all times. I choose those two examples because they are so evidently at play in 21st century America. This principle of Limited Government does not factor into the social conservative's politics. This Gospel conservative, if you will, thinks that "conservative" means using the government to enforce Gospel morality on a free people.
The second and in my opinion truer conservative, is the one who gets the title "conservative" because he believes in being conservative in the application of government the way a smart person is conservative in the application of salt to the dinner plate. Sparing, cautious, minimal, is what this "conservative" stands for in terms of government. In other words, Limited Government.
As it turns out, it was the abandonment of Limited Government that led to the very things that social conservatives rightly hate and despise the most in American culture -- a government that is actively participating in forcing the cultural normalization of homosexuality on people, and a government that has successfully forced all people to support with their labor (tax dollars) the abortion industry. The Federal Government thinks it's immoral to discriminate against homosexuals in the workplace or in organizations like the Boy Scouts, and the Federal Governmen thinks it's immoral not to fund abortions for poor women. If that Federal Government had been LIMITED, the national enabling of abortion and homosexuality would never have come to pass and social conservatives wouldn't even be DEALING with two of the things that bother them most.
Sadly, the two "conservatives" are diametrically opposed and never the twain shall meet. Either you're for limited government or you're not. Fidelity to Limited Government conservatism would have prevented Roe v. Wade and the prospect of gay marriage because it would have allowed us to wholesomely, freely discriminate against them of our own free will.
To me, the real solution is for us to convince social conservatives that their moral concerns are best served by Limited Government, as is illustrated in recent history.