http://acuf.org/issues/issue147/100103pol.asp2009 demonstrated with a vengeance the validity of the old saying that in politics a year can prove to be a lifetime.
It was just a year ago that Barack Obama, the newly minted President, stood as a political colossus. He had not only come from nowhere to vanquish the giants within his own party, but had driven the hated Republicans from the White House, then began his first term with virtually unchallengeable majorities in both the House and Senate. Private analysts and public figures were announcing not just the end of the modern Republican era, but the death of conservatism.
It was almost universally assumed that Obama's election and the Democratic electoral success of both 2006 and 2008 represented not just repudiation of Republican performance but of the basic tenets of modern conservatism that had served Republicans so well since the late seventies. Liberals began writing conservatism's political obituaries and even some within the movement itself began to question the vitality and political appeal of the limited government, fiscally tight-fisted views that had animated the movement for so long.
The world, we were told, was changing, and if we as conservatives didn't change with it we would end up but a footnote in the history of 21st century American politics. The New York Times' in house conservative, David Brooks, was among those who argued forcefully for a "new" conservatism eschewing the old and in his opinion outdated and impossible to sell bias in favor of limited government, free markets and individual liberty.
By the summer of last year, however, it was clear that it was precisely these old, traditional values that were animating millions of Americans to get involved for the first time by signing petitions, attending Congressional "Town Hall" meetings and the "Tea Parties" that sprung up around the country. Reporters covering these developments kept interviewing men and women who had never been involved politically before, but were fearful that something is terribly wrong with the direction in which our country is headed.
This fear was generated by the new President and his Congressional cohorts' moves not only to nationalize America's health care industry, but to involve the government in matters in which it had never before dabbled. In the new era, bureaucrats and unaccountable czars would oversee the private sector, direct the affairs of companies deemed "too big to fail" and review the compensation of men and women doing jobs they couldn't come close to doing themselves.
This fear was made worse by the realization that the President and Congress were spending money at a faster rate than anyone could previously have imagined possible. Voters who had been upset by the Republican's apparent willingness to spend billions through Congressional earmarks were confronted with Democrats who thought not in terms of billions but of trillions. They began to fear, not irrationally, that their new President was bent upon remaking the United States and its economy and doing so on the backs of their children and grandchildren.
Worse was the fact that no one in Washington seemed to care or to listen. Voters were no longer sure they could trust the Republicans and knew for certain the Democrats were on the wrong track. The President and Congressional leaders responded to this public fear and anger by dismissing both the concerns and the citizens expressing them as unimportant, delusional or dangerous.
The reaction to Obama's excesses united Republicans for the first time since the mid-eighties around basic principles. Whether they have finally "gotten it" remains to be seen, but at least Republicans have begun acting like they are listening.
The liberal Democrats in charge of the Congress, on the other hand, clearly don't get it. After passing the President's health care package in the Senate in spite of the opposition of a clear majority of the American people by literally buying the votes he needed, Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid said he couldn't understand why anyone was complaining because what he did was "what we've always done."
It's the demand that our elected officials stop doing what they've always done that unites the newly involved and it is their awakening to the importance of the values that have motivated true conservatives from the movements beginnings that will translate into policy and political victories for those who do "get it" in 2010 and beyond.
Politicians of both or neither party looking for solutions to the problems we face need look no further than the foundational values of a movement dedicated to free markets, free citizens and a government designed by this nation's founders to do all that it must do without being unleashed to do all that any politician or faction might want to do.
In one short year the tables have turned, traditional conservative values ignored by politicians of both parties for a decade are back in vogue, and the movement of which we are a part are ready to once again seize the high ground in the battles of ideas and votes.
Topic: Conservatism Is Back (Read 805 times)