“Muhafidh” means “conservative” in Arabic. I believe the Republican party is a party of ideals first, and conservative merely by virtue of its relative position in our nation’s historical shift toward Republican ideals. The Republican party itself has continued to uphold its original ideals. We were radical at first, when we nominated Lincoln and pushed the country’s first civil-rights legislation into enactment. We were later liberal, when we voted in strong enough majority for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that we confounded the Democrat effort to kill it. We were then moderate, and finally conservative today. Despite occasional deviations, the Republic party has been the major US party of principle, believing in equal rights, upholding the value of life, acknowleging the need for morality-oriented education to ensure a free society, and trusting the common man to know what is in his own best interest. The Democrat party, by comparison, has always been the major US party of coalitions. As such, the Democrat party has welcomed an array of political positions from racism, espoused by a peculiarly Democrat-styled “conservative,” to socialism, espoused by today’s “liberal” Democrat. Its only agenda has been to seek power. Without the Republican ideal, we would have become totalitarian a long time ago.